Space Elevators

"The ocean of stars in our galaxy is finally within our reach… The universe lies ahead of us, waiting to be discovered.
And now, at last, we have a gateway to ascend to it. Over and over again."
Kei Nagase – Ace Combat 7

This mod is based upon updated and reworked code from the formerly defunct Stellar Pioneers Origin by Amoren which was part of the 2020 ModJam. I lacked the time and ability to restore the entire origin however I have managed to give a new lease of life to one of the mechanics from it which I found most interesting, space elevators. For those of you interested in the origin, Amoren has released a newer version of Stellar Pioneers here.

So, what does a space elevator do? Well, it’s a building you unlock with the Starhold technology which can be constructed on a planet much like any other building, providing a small amount of amenities. But wait, there’s more, after researching Orbital Habitats you unlock the Orbital Zoning decision, allowing you to reserve the space in orbit above the planet for space elevator construction projects.

Activating the Orbital Zoning decision adds a decision to construct a habitat in orbit around the planet, this functions like any other orbital habitat but with a twist. For every pop job on the habitat, the space elevator will provide a bonus to the planet below, representing the space elevator sharing resources and infrastructure between the habitat and the planet, these bonuses are as follows, be aware the bonuses are refreshed on a monthly tick and will not update until the end of the month.

A full list of all jobs included in the mod can be found here, most versions of a particular job type are included however some specific empire types also get different bonuses more suitable to them.
*Empires with the Catalytic Processing civic get +1% food bonuses from foundry and refinery jobs instead of +1% minerals as they use food instead of minerals.
**Machine empires and Lithoids get +0.5% to all resources instead of +1% to food from unity jobs, unless they are Rogue Servitors or Driven assimilators in the case of machine empires.

These bonuses can be mixed and matched as you wish, you can also construct an orbital habitat the traditional way with a construction ship above any planet in the system and the space elevators bonuses will still function. Space elevators themselves can only be constructed on natural planets, not orbital habitats or ringworlds. If you’d like to boost the speed of the orbital habitat planetary decision, check out my Planetary Decision Build Speed mod.

Furthermore if you have the Overlord Expansion and unlock the Orbital Rings technology it adds another decision allowing you to construct an Orbital Ring around the planet, both Orbital Rings and Orbital Habitats can be built above the same planet using decisions.

But that’s not all, if you build both an Orbital Ring and an Orbital Habitat above a planet with a space elevator you will gain access to the Space Elevator Terminus decision on said habitat, allowing you to upgrade the top of the elevator to a high capacity terminal which functions similar to the building at its base, granting the bonuses from buildings on the local Orbital Ring to the Habitat.

Additionally if you’re using the Orbital Ring Buildings Updated mod by Borsk the Space Elevator Terminus will also grant the associated bonuses from those buildings.
Special thanks to Danboy for creating the Orbital Ring planetary decision.

English
Simplified Chinese – partial translation by MyresMkG
Russian – partial translation by Petrovytsh

Unfortunately due to losing contact with some of my translators I have had to resort to using machine translation on some newer descriptions.

This mod doesn’t overwrite any vanilla game files and should be compatible with most other mods, though any that change orbital habitats may have strange interactions so let me know if you run into any, I will update this with any reported issues and fix where possible, if you have any feedback or questions feel free to leave them below.

Special thanks to everyone at the Stellaris Modding Den [discord.gg] for all their help.
Banner art belongs to Leon Tukker [www.artstation.com]