Now can properly use my Va'ruun weaponry without dealing with my companion grunting after running into the energy balls that was being left behind, or gods forbid firing them around anyone else without racking up a bounty.
I found the root reason why it does this: a perk that applies those effects. It goes by the name "Mod_Weapon_ParticleWeapons" and has the FormID of 0007E95E. It seems it is intentionally set up to make the Annihilator hazard appear on crit kills even without Annihilator Rounds modded on, and on any kills when it is modded on.
Basically, the first set that is applying the Annihilator effect even without the mod applies it when 1: the hit on the target actor was not melee (to exclude bashes), 2: the hit on target actor was a crit hit, 3: the hit on target actor was a kill hit and 4: the shooter's weapon did not have the Annihilator Round keyword.
The second set removes the crit hit requirement and makes it so it does require the mod keyword.
Though this mod doesn't go after the root cause, it did help me find the root cause via the "referenced by" function in xEdit. The takeaway: This behavior is intentional by the devs. And clearly not liked by players, because we all specifically abstained from installing the Annihilator Rounds weapmod to avoid this effect.
Wait... so is it tied to the Particle Beams perks in skill tree or is this some other "perk"? It's not mentioned in any of the Particle Beams perk descriptions, so it could only be a random hidden effect...
Makes me wonder why Annihilator Rounds modification is even a thing in the crafting menu if all particle weapons are meant to have it by default. Either it was like planned to be seperate and forgot to remove that, or someone messed up.
Anyways, its a nice find you did with the reference. When i have time and willpower, i see if i can do some experiments on making a propper fix.
It should be easy enough: remove the effect entry that doesn't require the weapmod keyword but does it only on critical hit kills, and leave the one that requires the weapmod keyword.
Oh snap. It never occurred to me that those dumb particle hazards were the Annihilator effect... companions always walk into those things which was annoying but was basically never enough to bring them down. It was only ever a serious problem when I was in combat in areas with civilian NPCs, so I mostly ignored it. It would be nicer if we could just limit the effect to being spawned by weapons that actually have the Annihilator Rounds modification but I suppose I'd rather have the effect removed than have it spawned by all particle weapons like it is right now. Thanks for figuring this out.
EDIT: On a side note, was anyone else hoping the Annihilator Rounds would have Fallout-style disintegration effect? Seems kind of disappointing that none of the Starfield weapons do anything like that.
Thats why i made the mod ofcorse. If i can figure out how this bug truly ticks, i could update the mod so that normal rounds and Annihilator rounds truly seperate and let players decide on the rounds. For now this is the best i could come up with.
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Basically, the first set that is applying the Annihilator effect even without the mod applies it when 1: the hit on the target actor was not melee (to exclude bashes), 2: the hit on target actor was a crit hit, 3: the hit on target actor was a kill hit and 4: the shooter's weapon did not have the Annihilator Round keyword.
The second set removes the crit hit requirement and makes it so it does require the mod keyword.
Though this mod doesn't go after the root cause, it did help me find the root cause via the "referenced by" function in xEdit. The takeaway: This behavior is intentional by the devs. And clearly not liked by players, because we all specifically abstained from installing the Annihilator Rounds weapmod to avoid this effect.
Anyways, its a nice find you did with the reference. When i have time and willpower, i see if i can do some experiments on making a propper fix.
EDIT: On a side note, was anyone else hoping the Annihilator Rounds would have Fallout-style disintegration effect? Seems kind of disappointing that none of the Starfield weapons do anything like that.