Mass Effect Legendary Edition

File information

Last updated

Original upload

Created by

moonknight1993

Uploaded by

moonknight1993

Virus scan

Some manually verified files

About this mod

A redesign and expansion of the Alliance Dress Blues and the representation of its military ranks.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs
This mod is a redesign of the Alliance Dress Blues, with the goal of expanding the representation of the Alliance Officer Ranks, while trying to stay be as lorefriendly as possible, to preserve the original style. As such, it is not a complete revamp, but a modification based on the original textures. The main feature is the differentiation between the male and female dresses, differences that already exists in vanilla, but the female texture is used only by 2 female NPCs in the prologue. The rest of the female Alliance personnel, Shepard included, wears a dress on which is assigned the male version of the texture, which also included a male normal map for the hands, making them look kinda rough. The female dress has black torso and pants, which is coincidentally similar to the the unused Mass Effect 1 version.

The mod is based on the Alliance Ranks provided by the ME Codex. The ranks are represented by bars on the shoulders. In vanilla, there are just 4 types of bars.

4 Gold Bars, 1 Red. Fleet Admiral Hackett. 

3 Gold Bars, 1 Red. Admiral Anderson.

3 Black bars. Many NPCs, Brooks and Shepard.

2 Black bars. The members of the Council in the prologue.

They are very few and they don't cover all the admiralty and officers ranks. So I had to invent. This is the system:



ENLISTED
  • Serviceman 3rd Class / Private 2nd Class
  • Serviceman 2nd Class / Private 1st Class
  • Serviceman 1st Class / Corporal
NCOs
  • Service Chief
  • Gunnery Chief
  • Operations Chief

Enlisted and NCOs have no bars. The mod, in these category features Brooks and, optionally, Traynor. As Bioware didn't give us anything about their ranks, I really coudn't figure a lore friendly position as officers for them.
OFFICERS
  • 2nd Lieutenant - 1 Black Bar
  • 1st Lieutenant - 1 Gold Bar [Kahlee Sanders, Gregory Adams (Optional), Steve Cortez (Optional), James Vega (Optional)]
  • Staff Lieutenant - 2 Black Bars
  • Lieutenant Commander - 2 Gold Bars [Ashely Williams, James Vega, Shepard (Optional)]
  • Staff Commander - 3 Black Bars [Shepard]
  • Captain / Major - 3 Gold Bars [Kaidan Alenko]
  • Rear Admiral / General - 1/2 Gold Bars and 1 Red Bar 
  • Admiral - 3 Gold Bars and 1 Red Bar [Anderson]
  • Fleet Admiral - 4 Gold Bars and 1 Red Bar [Hackett]

There are 2 characters here that you can assign to another rank as an option:

James Vega - The Wiki and all the characters in ME 3 address him as Lieutenant, but in Paragon Lost he was the second in command to Captain Toni, so that would make him Lieutenant Commander, like Shepard in Mass Effect 1, where he was XO to Captain Anderson. It's a confusing situation, so there's an option to change his rank.

Commander Shepard - It's another unclear situation. Shepard starts ME 1 as Lieutenant Commander, but in the ME 3 character creation screen, he/she's addressed simply as CMDR, and the characters calls him/her simply Commander, unlike Ashley, although this doesn't mean much, since he/she was addressed like that in ME 1 too. It's possible that in the months between Saren's defeat and his/her death at the hands of the Collectors, he/she received a promotion, but nothing in the game supports this. So, you can optionally give them the rank of Lt. Commander.

Another debatable option is the Defense Committee in the prologue. Due to how Bioware changed them during development (they were supposed to trial Shepard, this is why he starts the floor below in the Detention Center ), we don't know if they are military or politicians. So, by default I gave them the ranks of Fleet Admirals, making them equal to Hackett, but optionally you can decide to have them dressed as civlians.


Alternate Version

The mod offers an alternate version with a ranking system inspired by the one deviced the Audemus in his AHEM mod.

OFFICERS
  • 2nd Lieutenant - 1 Semi-Black Bar
  • 1st Lieutenant - 1 Black Bar [Kahlee Sanders, Gregory Adams (Optional), Steve Cortez (Optional), James Vega (Optional)]
  • Staff Lieutenant - 2 Black Bars
  • Lieutenant Commander - 3 Black Bars [Ashely Williams, James Vega, Shepard]
  • Staff Commander - 4 Black Bars [Shepard (Optional)]
  • Captain / Major - 1 Gold Bar [Kaidan Alenko]
  • Rear Admiral / General - 2 Gold Bars and 1 Red Bar 
  • Admiral - 3 Gold Bars and 1 Red Bar [Anderson]
  • Fleet Admiral - 4 Gold Bars and 1 Red Bar [Hackett]




Installation

Simply drag and drops in the ME3Tweaks Mod Manager

The Mod is based, and as such requires:

LE3 Community Patch and Framework

Expanded Galaxy Mod by
KkJiro

Compatible with

Ashley Consistency Project by Jenya66


Thanx to

Mgamerz (for the Mod Manager and the tools that allow us to mod the game)
Audemus and the Mass Effect Modding Discord server for the help