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About this mod
Provides a bunch of game balancing tweaks to bring out the survival aspects of the game. Also introduces a new craftable spacesuit mod and a starvation affliction which requires food to cure.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
Note on the crash bug: Resolved. There was a serious bug that messed up save files (if saving while starvation spell was applied) and wouldn't allow them to be loaded again. The initial release version files were archived upon becoming aware of this issue. The issue has been fixed as of version 0.1.1. Be sure you are using the latest version (files should have a modified timesteamp of 11/2/2023 or later). As always with any mod, make sure you keep a backup of your save file. Save off a new file to create a branch and be aware that those can end up broken. So far, aside from this issue, I have not seen any other issues that would create a bad save game file or crash the game. Anything game crashing or majorly problematic will be noted first thing here and any bad versions of files will be removed/archived. Please file a bug if you find anything at all and it will be looked into. Thanks to everyone for catching this and helping to resolve the issue. Very much appreciated. Apologies to anyone who was affected by the issue.
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This mod is intended to be an overhaul of the game difficulty and survival mechanics. The goal is to make you plan and think more when playing the game, but not in a rage quite kind of way.
Please note that this is a work in progress. Things will be tweaked to further balance things based on play testing and your feedback. Yes your feedback! I can't promise every specific request will be implemented or that I'll agree with everything everyone says, but I am looking for a consensus of the sorts. In most cases the popular opinion will prevail here. What initially exists here is just a starting point.
Why did I make this mod?
Well, I wanted to introduce more of a challenge into the game and to be quite frank, I was confused about why the environmental hazards even existed in the game. I was also confused why food existed. I never found myself using food, crafting food, crafting aid items, nor worrying about the environment. That's a bit strange, no? So I wanted to see if I could pull out some of these finer details in the game.
I have other mods planned (combat, economy, missions, etc.), but I wanted to start here because it taught me about modifying and adding new spells, magic effects, craftable objects, and so on. It also taught me how to use Papyrus to introduce completely new mechanics. It touched a lot of surface area for my first mod and it gives me confidence that I can "fix" Starfield so to speak. By that I just mean re-tune it and balance it a bit.
List of Changes
Injuries Hurt More
Generally speaking, all of the (Severe) injuries have had their effects doubled in magnitude. Some have added either bleeding or shock effects which will slowly drain health. The frostbite and radition (Acute) injuries also have shock and bleeding effects applied respectively. These should be the only (Acute) injuries that drain health (unless lacerations or something else did by default in the game).
The health damage to shock has been doubled. Internal bleeding has also nearly doubled. There is a range for oxygen damage due to pain and the maximum has increased by 60%. Nausea has an effect on reducing the effectiveness of food and this has been doubled. Before you think food is useless anyway, read below for adjustments to how food works.
When you are unbalanced, there's an effect on aim stability and melee damage.These have been doubled. All other affliction damage penalties have remained the same for now.
Increased Chance of Injury
I didn't see injuries enough while playing the game. It lead to an oversupply of aid consumables. It left the pharmaceutical lab nearly without use. To change this the chances of obtaining an affliction or injury have been doubled or tripled in some cases. The least severe injuries have been tripled and those injuries that have more serious effects have had their chances doubled. Sprain has actually quadrupled in chance.
Reduced Resistances on Armor
The resistances on armor have been cut in half across the board. This is still a bit confusing how these affect the related injuries, but along with the increase in chance of an injury the resistances should further increase the chance or effect of injury.
Again, like everything else, this also needs testing and further adjustments.
Suit Protection
The suit protection has been doubled in length. It should now last about 1 minute and 40 seconds. Previously it was about 50 seconds when one envrionmental effect was applied. There is also a new mod that can be crafted on spacesuits in slot 4 (it requires spacesuit mods 2 to be researched). This will double the spacesuit protection duration so it should last about 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
For reference, it took about 2 minutes to run to a point of interest about 1,000m away. This means you should have just enough time to get to shelter when exploring planets or moons with extreme conditions before getting an affliction. With the mod on the spacesuit it should be pretty comfortable to run that distance and fight off some NPCs before getting into shelter (or fast traveling back to your ship).
The idea is to make you estimate distance and weigh your decision on running to a POI. You may need to bring some extra supplies to make the trip. You may need to upgrade your spacesuit before making the trip. So you can only reach closer POIs without damage until you upgrade things.
This one will need the most testing and tuning. This is one of the most important mechanics available as it limits your range and what you can and can't get to. If fighting NPCs outside in a hostile environment it also limits how long you can afford to do so. This makes things a bit of a race and timing challenge.
Medical Aid Weight
All aid consumables such as bandages, antibiotics, heal paste, etc. have been doubled in weight (0.10 to 0.20 in most cases). Note that med packs weighed nothing to begin with and have remained the same. None of these items ever weighed a lot and they still don't, but it is yet another way to really make you pick and choose what goes into your inventory. You probably don't really need 20 bottles of CQB-X or to be carrying around a bunch of neurajack at all times just in case.
TBD/Future: Probably doubling or 1.5x the duration of aid effects. So while they weigh more, they last longer. Currently they don't really last that long. Some may get individual duration bonuses. What's the point of extra carry weight for 2 or 5 minutes for example? To stuff your inventory and fast travel? You should be able to carry more temporarily, but have it so that most of your trip is covered. You shouldn't need to be popping pills or injecting stuff every two minutes just to walk around. Sure, you want to be forced to use consumables more, but some of the durations are just silly.
Food Adjustments
Food weighs more and heals you more, but you're still better off healing yourself with a med pack or trauma kit or something. The goal is to make food like a top off. The duration for effects have been tripled and XP bonuses doubled.
Starvation
Is a new affliction that ultimately works like bleeding or shock in that it will slowly drain your health. You will need to eat. This isn't a micromanagement kind of thing. Don't expect to need to eat every few minutes. It's designed to be a slow drain on food supplies and give you more of a reason to eat. Currently you need to eat something every one real world hour. This is checked for every half an hour (in game time), so you can go slightly longer than a real world hour depending on when you eat. If you get hit with the hunger, eat, and you'll be ok for the next hour or so. This is just a start and will be adjusted over time. Probably will add different degrees of starvation and debuffs.
Don't want to play with the starvation mechanic? No problem, just don't put the SML_HungerQuestScript.pex into your Scripts directory.
Equipment Weight
Spacesuits, helmets, and packs have all doubled in weight across the board. Weapons have base weight scaling now based on quality and overall are much heavier. The lower quality tiers will weight less than the higher tiers like advanced weapons. This is to help ensure lower level characters who can't carry as much aren't at a disadvantage.
The rationale here is that you shouldn't be packing a bunch of spacesuits and weapons. Realism aside (since we aren't talking simulator game here), the arsenal you can take with you is still pretty unreasonable. You should have to make difficult decisions about which equipment you bring with you when you leave your ship. Your armory and ship storage should be used.
Grenades and mines have all had their weights slightly increased. Damage adjustments will come in a separate combat mod that will handle all combat balancing. All weapons would weigh more if all of them supported weight adjustments, so in the future this will be adjusted as it becomes available from the hardworking folks maintaining xedit (and many thanks to them).
You should expect to carry with you about 2-3 weapons. This is assuming you have leveled up your perk to carry more and have a good supply of aid consumables, and you are saving some room for things you pick up on your excursions. You can easily carry more weapons, but you're going to be forced to give something else up. The random equipment bonuses that reduce weight and any craftable mods that reduce weight are going to be something you now take into greater consideration.
Expect to use your ship cargo or outpost storage more as a resupply area and think about what you pack for your excursions.
---
This mod is intended to be an overhaul of the game difficulty and survival mechanics. The goal is to make you plan and think more when playing the game, but not in a rage quite kind of way.
Please note that this is a work in progress. Things will be tweaked to further balance things based on play testing and your feedback. Yes your feedback! I can't promise every specific request will be implemented or that I'll agree with everything everyone says, but I am looking for a consensus of the sorts. In most cases the popular opinion will prevail here. What initially exists here is just a starting point.
Why did I make this mod?
Well, I wanted to introduce more of a challenge into the game and to be quite frank, I was confused about why the environmental hazards even existed in the game. I was also confused why food existed. I never found myself using food, crafting food, crafting aid items, nor worrying about the environment. That's a bit strange, no? So I wanted to see if I could pull out some of these finer details in the game.
I have other mods planned (combat, economy, missions, etc.), but I wanted to start here because it taught me about modifying and adding new spells, magic effects, craftable objects, and so on. It also taught me how to use Papyrus to introduce completely new mechanics. It touched a lot of surface area for my first mod and it gives me confidence that I can "fix" Starfield so to speak. By that I just mean re-tune it and balance it a bit.
List of Changes
Injuries Hurt More
Generally speaking, all of the (Severe) injuries have had their effects doubled in magnitude. Some have added either bleeding or shock effects which will slowly drain health. The frostbite and radition (Acute) injuries also have shock and bleeding effects applied respectively. These should be the only (Acute) injuries that drain health (unless lacerations or something else did by default in the game).
The health damage to shock has been doubled. Internal bleeding has also nearly doubled. There is a range for oxygen damage due to pain and the maximum has increased by 60%. Nausea has an effect on reducing the effectiveness of food and this has been doubled. Before you think food is useless anyway, read below for adjustments to how food works.
When you are unbalanced, there's an effect on aim stability and melee damage.These have been doubled. All other affliction damage penalties have remained the same for now.
Increased Chance of Injury
I didn't see injuries enough while playing the game. It lead to an oversupply of aid consumables. It left the pharmaceutical lab nearly without use. To change this the chances of obtaining an affliction or injury have been doubled or tripled in some cases. The least severe injuries have been tripled and those injuries that have more serious effects have had their chances doubled. Sprain has actually quadrupled in chance.
Reduced Resistances on Armor
The resistances on armor have been cut in half across the board. This is still a bit confusing how these affect the related injuries, but along with the increase in chance of an injury the resistances should further increase the chance or effect of injury.
Again, like everything else, this also needs testing and further adjustments.
Suit Protection
The suit protection has been doubled in length. It should now last about 1 minute and 40 seconds. Previously it was about 50 seconds when one envrionmental effect was applied. There is also a new mod that can be crafted on spacesuits in slot 4 (it requires spacesuit mods 2 to be researched). This will double the spacesuit protection duration so it should last about 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
For reference, it took about 2 minutes to run to a point of interest about 1,000m away. This means you should have just enough time to get to shelter when exploring planets or moons with extreme conditions before getting an affliction. With the mod on the spacesuit it should be pretty comfortable to run that distance and fight off some NPCs before getting into shelter (or fast traveling back to your ship).
The idea is to make you estimate distance and weigh your decision on running to a POI. You may need to bring some extra supplies to make the trip. You may need to upgrade your spacesuit before making the trip. So you can only reach closer POIs without damage until you upgrade things.
This one will need the most testing and tuning. This is one of the most important mechanics available as it limits your range and what you can and can't get to. If fighting NPCs outside in a hostile environment it also limits how long you can afford to do so. This makes things a bit of a race and timing challenge.
Medical Aid Weight
All aid consumables such as bandages, antibiotics, heal paste, etc. have been doubled in weight (0.10 to 0.20 in most cases). Note that med packs weighed nothing to begin with and have remained the same. None of these items ever weighed a lot and they still don't, but it is yet another way to really make you pick and choose what goes into your inventory. You probably don't really need 20 bottles of CQB-X or to be carrying around a bunch of neurajack at all times just in case.
TBD/Future: Probably doubling or 1.5x the duration of aid effects. So while they weigh more, they last longer. Currently they don't really last that long. Some may get individual duration bonuses. What's the point of extra carry weight for 2 or 5 minutes for example? To stuff your inventory and fast travel? You should be able to carry more temporarily, but have it so that most of your trip is covered. You shouldn't need to be popping pills or injecting stuff every two minutes just to walk around. Sure, you want to be forced to use consumables more, but some of the durations are just silly.
Food Adjustments
Food weighs more and heals you more, but you're still better off healing yourself with a med pack or trauma kit or something. The goal is to make food like a top off. The duration for effects have been tripled and XP bonuses doubled.
Starvation
Is a new affliction that ultimately works like bleeding or shock in that it will slowly drain your health. You will need to eat. This isn't a micromanagement kind of thing. Don't expect to need to eat every few minutes. It's designed to be a slow drain on food supplies and give you more of a reason to eat. Currently you need to eat something every one real world hour. This is checked for every half an hour (in game time), so you can go slightly longer than a real world hour depending on when you eat. If you get hit with the hunger, eat, and you'll be ok for the next hour or so. This is just a start and will be adjusted over time. Probably will add different degrees of starvation and debuffs.
Don't want to play with the starvation mechanic? No problem, just don't put the SML_HungerQuestScript.pex into your Scripts directory.
Equipment Weight
Spacesuits, helmets, and packs have all doubled in weight across the board. Weapons have base weight scaling now based on quality and overall are much heavier. The lower quality tiers will weight less than the higher tiers like advanced weapons. This is to help ensure lower level characters who can't carry as much aren't at a disadvantage.
The rationale here is that you shouldn't be packing a bunch of spacesuits and weapons. Realism aside (since we aren't talking simulator game here), the arsenal you can take with you is still pretty unreasonable. You should have to make difficult decisions about which equipment you bring with you when you leave your ship. Your armory and ship storage should be used.
Grenades and mines have all had their weights slightly increased. Damage adjustments will come in a separate combat mod that will handle all combat balancing. All weapons would weigh more if all of them supported weight adjustments, so in the future this will be adjusted as it becomes available from the hardworking folks maintaining xedit (and many thanks to them).
You should expect to carry with you about 2-3 weapons. This is assuming you have leveled up your perk to carry more and have a good supply of aid consumables, and you are saving some room for things you pick up on your excursions. You can easily carry more weapons, but you're going to be forced to give something else up. The random equipment bonuses that reduce weight and any craftable mods that reduce weight are going to be something you now take into greater consideration.
Expect to use your ship cargo or outpost storage more as a resupply area and think about what you pack for your excursions.