u/flashy_joer

Mod Updated to v1.04!

This is a rather substantive update. I'll list off the items done.

1) A new Game Setting has been added, by request, to allow you to choose if Hull Breach chances kick in at 25% ship HP, or at 50%.

2) Distress Calls, I realized you could trigger one while landed. This would never work, so added an IsLanded = false condition on that.

3) Starship Engineering Skill is now linked to repairs you do in EVA, and those Vasco does to the ship. Anything below rank 2, you will do 25% recovery of ship system health. At rank 2 and 3, you will do 50%. At rank 4, you will recover 100% of the damaged system's health back.

4) It was brought up on Reddit that if your ships HP was at 100%, but the individual systems were messed up bad, you couldn't repair them with the Ship Services tech, due to him not doing repairs if your ship's HP is 100%. So I added a whole new dialogue to my custom dialogue function that looks purely at ship systems, while ship HP is 100%, and allows you to repair those systems. You will know the one it is as it is prefixed with (S+).

5.) And the big juicy content one... There is a new "activity" and game setting, called "Grav Drive Parts Quest", that when in an enabled state, will scan planets you land on, as you move around the planet or moon, looking for very specific POI types, to hide a "grav drive component" in a loot crate. This could be a "dungeon" POI, either interior or overland. It could be a Civilian Outpost (the ones with NPCs who offer you "fetch quests"). Or it could be crashed ships. Coolest thing? Batten's Shipwrecks POIs are picked up by this event manager. 

A note about the Civilian Outposts... I am having the dickens of a time finding their dialogue. So, I cannot (yet) craft a bartering interaction. The grav drive part will spawn at their POI, but its always, ALWAYS, in a locked crate, or one that isnt locked, but everything is marked as theft. So... if you get one of those locations, you're gonna have to be nimble fingered!

Anyways, as you walk around the planet, there is a 50% chance that this event manager will fire off and set things up for you. You will know it has happened when you see a newly active "activity" appear directing you to get the grav drive part.

Note: this event ONLY fires off if you have a 100% destroyed grav drive. And it will never fire off if you have a grav drive part on you, in a companion's inventory, your rover's or your ships. They are not sellable either. You can only have ONE at a time. And its SOLE use is to give to Vasco, so he can do the repairs, at the cost of 10 ship parts and the grav drive component. And by give, I mean, ask him to repair the ship, he will "take it" from you.

Alright, the game setting... it has three active states:

1) EXPLORATION - this means you have an active "activity" in your quest log, but no marker to show where you need to go.

2) GUIDED - this mean the activity fired and you have a quest marker pointing at the map marker for the POI. if there isnt a map marker at the POI, for whatever reason (and by mapmarker, I mean BGS set up the mapmarker with the proper location ref type - and trust me, they didn't do that for all of their POIs, so... ), anyways, if there isnt a "mapMarkerRefType" at the POI, the quest pip will resolve to the loot crate itself.

3) SPOON FED - Easy, the quest pip will ALWAYS be on the loot crate.

Once you retrieve the grav drive component, the activity will resolve and leave your quest log. All you will need to do next is take it to Vasco and ask him to fix your ship (10 ship parts still required + the grav drive part). He's getting more and more necessary as a ship crew member with this mod now.

More to come... I've only just started to fill out the "skeleton" of this mod.

Not really a "reveal", I already brought it's existence to light earlier in the week.

But now... now I am ready to show snipets of what it does. Whats being shared is not everything. Just some of the things.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsXxfLTG27xdGBQjY4BAMaSS5xyffzX9J&si=kHOIVX2Nj0b3nyEW

That link is a playlist on Youtube with eight different videos highlighting aspects of the mod.

EDIT: it is available now on NEXUS.

Been slowly working on this for the last couple of weeks, while I have been aquainting myself with Creation Engine 2 CK and the newer papyrus functions/events. Been working on this behind the scenes of the other quick turnaround mods I've been putting out.

Now that my teeth are thoroughly "cut", as they say, on this newer CK, time to put the FlashyJoer magic that was so well-respected in Fallout 4 into action in Starfield.

Not ready for any kind of reveal just yet, as I still have five more "modules", function sets, that needs to be completed, in order to call it "release ready".

But boy oh boy, does this ever change the space game from being "Skyrim in Space" and more like Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen.

Not sure of ETA. Its a highly complex machine, on the scale of Advanced Needs 76 - though not about the player this time, and all about the ship you fly. LOL, survival mode for ships!!! :D

Stay tuned... :)

Available now on Nexus. Creations tomorrow.

Starfield Stories Vol.2 - These Are The Voyages

This is another mod in a series that fixes a narrative gap in the game. Or to be specific in this instance, fixes technical issues that have plagued the First Contact (MS06) quest since launch day, where, if you installed the Grav Drive, the ship would just vanish, never again to reappear as it was intended to, at random places all over the Galaxy Map.

What Does This Mod Do?

It is an interceptor that sits silently, much like "Sometimes They Leave", listening for First Contact quest stages, running parallel to that entire quest line and all of its moving parts, performing actions to correct issues that spring up due to how this quest was created. It will properly allow the ECS Constant to move around the galaxy map, at random intervals, looking for a new home, should you have opted to help them install a grav drive, as was originally envisioned, but sadly, poorly executed upon. 

Technical Info:

No overrides on base game forms. Its all intercepted via a script that runs latent until MS06, "First Contact", fires up. Once its running, it will stay running, until you go through Unity, at which time it will go back to being a listener, waiting to see if you tackle MS06 again.

Available now on NEXUS and Creations (for all three platforms).

Advanced Needs Vol.4 - Exploration+

This is a small 'niche' mod that I made for myself to play alongside the other entries in my Advanced Needs "Volumes" mods for Starfield, that adds an interesting, and simplified, mechanism that locks you out of accessing your inventory when you are not in your spaceship, or one of a number of "safe zones" within the game. This forces you to plan accordingly for your adventures, locking your weapons, med items, etc, to your favorites bar because once out exploring, you will not be able to access your inventory to swap weapons or armor. And that makes the possibility of introducing damage to spacesuits realistic simply because the player cannot just take off their armor and put a new one on in the middle of whatever world or dungeon POI you are exploring. 

This mod, being so restrictive, is definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea. And thats okay. It's mainly for "hardcore" enthusiasts, like myself.

Note: Shattered Space and Terran Armada are required to run this mod.

How do loadouts work?

Well, its not like in any other game, where you set up the weapons and armor into slots (thinking Mass Effect here). Its not like that at all. Essentially, you load up your inventory with what you want to bring with you. You assign things like weapons and med items to your favs. And then when you step out of your ship, you are locked out of your inventory and must rely on using your favorite slots alone.

Notes: While this mod does block you from accessing the inventory directly from the menu while out adventuring, you can still access it to transfer items to your ships cargo via your SHIP menu screen. You can still access your inventory when dealing with vendors. You can certainly access your inventory when looting corpses. And yes, you can get at your inventory when accessing a container, like a crate in a dungeon, and you can certainly switch to your own inventory and are able to swap weapons and spacesuits there, if you really wanted. But thats where it all comes down to self-control and wanting to adhere to the immersion the mod offers, of locking you to a loadout while out exploring.

So, aside from my ship, where else does this mod consider safe, to allow full access to my inventory?

Neon, New Atlantis, Akila City, Cydonia and all of their attached locations. Also Hopetown, Paradiso, Gagarin, New Homestead, The Red Mile (the spaceport and interior), The Eye, The Den, The Clinic, The Key, the staryards (Deimos, Stroud and Trident), as well as parts of Dazra and Anchorpoint Station. And of course, lets not forget your outposts! Also, while the mod cannot cover every specific mod-added player home, it certainly does make allowance for the LocTypePlayerHome keyword, so if homes are correctly set to this keyword, they should work too.

However, even if you are in one of these locations, you will not be able to access your inventory if you enter into a combat state.

So, how does loadout locking help introduce spacesuit damage?

Lacking the capability to access your inventory to swap spacesuits, adding systems that simulate damage to them is now realistically possible. You know, if someone tried to make a spacesuit damage system mod but didn't lock you out from swapping spacesuits, you could just nullify the whole point of that system, right? But with this mod locking you into a loadout, now when your suit suffers damage, you can't do anything about it, aside from manage it or leave your AO and get back to the safety of your ship (or an otherwise sealed environment).

Managing your suit damage in the field could be as simple as applying a patch, which this mod allows you to craft and carry with you (another fine example of something you will want to have in your favorite's bar loadout), or getting into the interior of a POI, clearing it out and then having access to your inventory, using the boss crates, to swap out the damaged suit for one you might've picked up that isn't damaged. Of course, on worlds with breathable atmosphere, this isn't such a problem to manage, but not all planets are breathable and knowing the risks, preparing for them, knowing what to do in case of emergency, is key to your survival.

That said, since you can disable loadout locking if you want, most of what was said above remains true, aside from the fact that you will be able to swap spacesuits while out adventuring on unsafe planetary bodies.

How does the mod know what armor I am wearing?

It doesn't specifically know, but when you enable spacesuit damage it will examine keywords attached to the armor to get its modified chance of being breached. And every time you change your armor while that mode is enabled, the mod will analyze your amour. Every time. Your armor and breach chances will always align.

What does causes damage to my spacesuit?

Bullets, critter bites and environmental hazards could trigger suit damage effects. Literally anything that has the capacity to breach your sealed environment protection will cause damage to it. And while not directly responsible for the damage your suit could suffer, your encumbrance state can make you a lot slower, thus doubling your chances of suffering suit breach.

What effects do I suffer while wearing a damaged suit?

Slowly, your available oxygen will deplete and your capacity for regaining oxygen is completely disabled. Once you run out of O2, you start suffering periodic damage that will, eventually, kill you, unless you get into a breathable area or patch the damage. This might give you some added use for the Personal Atmosphere power (hint hint). 

Patching the damage?

Yeah, you can craft spacesuit patch kits at the Industrial Workbench to carry with you and apply, like you would a med kit, that will immediately patch the breach, removing the O2 loss, as well as restoring your ability to regenerate O2.

Note: To craft suit patch kits, you must have researched Spacesuit Mods 1.

Can my suit become so damaged that it is effectively destroyed?

Yes and no. There is an optional setting that you can enable in Game Settings, where if enabled, repeated damaged to an unrepaired spacesuit will unequip it. At which point, if you aren't in a breathable environment, you will die, because you can't get at your inventory. 

Are there other mod controls in the Game Settings?

Loadout inventory locking is available to enable or disable, as you choose, though it starts out disabled. Spacesuit damage and spacesuit destruction have enable or disable settings. Their default state is disabled. Also included is an option to choose what the base chance of suit breach, per hit, will be. There is also a toggle to not use any popup onscreen messages, which then will use the sidebar 2 second notices and sometimes, the middle upper screen "tutorial" messages. Last, there is also an "easy mode" that you can enable that will reduce your suit's breach chances by 50%. 

What are the breach chances anyways?

The default is 2%, but you can alter this in the Game Settings. I know that seems low, but when you consider just how many bullets you take, thats still a high chance. But, the mod is coded to take advantage of your armor quality and the presence of some legendary mods. Every time you equip a spacesuit when suit damage is enabled, the mod will analyze your suit, assigning you a base percentage based on its quality and mods. Your percentage can drop as low as 0.5% if you have the highest tier of quality and the anti-ballistic legendary mod installed. Easy mode would drop that to 0.25%. So yeah, low when you look at it, but again, given the bullet sponge that you are, and the demon that is BGS RNGesus, thats still a pretty good chance of getting messed up at some point.

And remember, your encumbrance plays a role here, affecting your chances - if you are over encumbered, your chances of suit breach, per shot, doubles. This penalty is recalculated at the onset of any combat encounter (it doesn't stack, it will always reset when you leave combat).

Suggested Uses?

I made this for myself, to be used alongside the other "Advanced Needs" modules. Receiver Failures because your guns break, you cant swap them out due to inventory locking. Hardcore Encumbrance because you cant access your inventory and need to manage just how much you are carrying, picking up, sharing the burden with Lydia, errr, Sarah (or whomever). Auto Eating and Drinking, well, letting the system take care of that frees up a few slots on your favs bar for your loadout. And of course, whatever base game difficulty settings you want to use. For me that is certainly ammo weight, sustenance and the environmental hazard settings maxed out.

If I find the mod is not for me, what can I do?

Dont uninstall it mid-game, I can tell you that! Wait until you are in the Unity and swapping out mods for your new universe. But if you REALLY need to shut the mod down so it stops affecting your inventory access until you reach Unity and can safely remove mods ahead of the NG+ clean save, you will be given a single use "shut down mod" aid item - I suggest you store it somewhere safe, like in your personal locker in your bedroom at the lodge, in case you ever need to use it to shut this whole mod down.