Description:

I decided that I would like to be able to have hidden helmets in my game, but I couldn't find something out there that was quite to my tastes, so I created HelmCaliber. The goal of this mod is to provide hidden versions of various headgear in the game (both armor and clothing type) in as immersive/lore friendly/balanced of a way as I could come up with.

HelmCaliber adds standalone versions of many headgear items, which have the same stats and modding capabilities of their originals, including ballistic weave. The only difference is that they do not show when equipped, allowing your character's head and hair to remain visible.

Power armor helmets of all major types are also included. All of the headgear will appear as normal in your inventory view and when dropped onto the ground in the world. However, when you equip them, they will be hidden. For power armor, the power armor helmets appear on the frame when you are not inside, however once you are in and the suit becomes "equipped" the helmet will hide.

These hidden headpieces are NOT available as loot or in any chests, they must be crafted at the Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource (AWKCR) provided armorsmithing bench using the vanilla version of the item and one stealth boy.

All hidden helmets attach only to the headband (46) slot so they should not cause any disappearing of your modded hair or most other head related items.

Important note about 0.2 update:
Thanks to a bug report, it was discovered that the hidden power armor helmets, though they functioned mostly normally, were not acting as a true part of the power armor set. As a result they did not appear in the HUD as equipped, did not take any damage, and most likely did not allow for full set mod bonuses like when painting all the parts.

It turns out that the game will not consider a helmet as true power armor unless it fills the Eyes slot. Version 0.2 adds the Eye slot to power armor helmets to address these issues. Unfortunately it also removes the ability to now wear glasses with power armor helmets. I understand that might be an important feature to some (and it's in the main picture which I made before discovering this issue). As such, I am leaving 0.1 available under old versions. The only difference between them is the power armor helmets using the eye slot. Given the tradeoffs, you can decide which version better suits your needs.


HelmCaliber??
Just a play on words related to the method I used to make the helmets hidden.

Huge Thank You!
A big thank you to Valdacil and Gambit77 for providing AWKCR which is a requirement for this mod. That resource made many of the things this mod does possible.
Also special recognition to Armorsmith Extended by Gambit77.


Requirements:

This mod requires that Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource (AWKCR) be installed first and come before this mod in your load order.
If you use the optional DLC version which contains additional items from Automatron and Far Harbor, you must have both DLCs installed. Otherwise, use the base version which does not require any of the DLCs.


How To Get The Items:

In order to convert your standard headgear into the version that hides when you wear it, you must craft your new helmet at the armorsmithing workbench provided by AWKCR. You should be able to find this workbench under the crafting section of your workshop menu once you have AWKCR installed.

You must have the required items. It will take one standard version of the item you want to convert and one stealthboy. Also, all of the headpieces require the Armorer level 1 perk to craft.

Once you are ready, open up the workbench and you should find a category called Headgear - Helmets. Everything is located in there, including the power armor helmets. I considered splitting it up so each item goes in a more related category (like the combat armor helmet going under combat armor) but I decided to keep all HelmCaliber related items in one place for ease of finding them.

The Easy Way:
If this is all a bit too much work and immersion for you, and you just want the helmets, you can always just add them to yourself with the console. All of the items provided have the same name as their original just with Hidden in front of it, so they should be pretty easy to look up.

Known Issues:

The new helmets that you craft can potentially show up with random mods on them. This is particularly an issue when it comes to power armor helmets.

Power armor helmets have proven to be a very fussy thing in many ways. The don't seem to retain the Hidden in front of their name. I'm not totally sure why though it probably has to do with the way they can be customized. Also, the light cast by your power armor headlamp will appear going off to the side when viewed in 3rd person.

The hidden versions have the same armor rating as their vanilla counterparts. However, in some cases where the vanilla helmet covers multiple areas of the face, the armor rating is multiplied when calculating limb (head) specific damage resistance. For the hidden version, this does not happen causing some of the hidden helmets to have less limb specific damage resistance than the vanilla version. I would love to find a way to resolve this, but I'm not sure how I might do that without running the risk of your invisible helmet mistakenly hiding things it shouldn't, like parts of your hair or beard.

When initially testing the Mechanist's Helmet, there were some issues when trying to craft it out of the vanilla version. To get around this, I removed the legendary status from the hidden version. I tried to recreate the stats to be as close as possible to the vanilla but I wasn't able to recreate the same perk. So, the hidden version has the same stats but gives you INT and PER instead of INT and CHA. Sorry about that. Maybe think of it as since the helmet is invisible it allows you better peripheral vision, but since it is invisible, others can't see how awesome you look in it. Unfortunately it also suffers from the limb specific damage resistance issue mentioned above.

Compatibility:

HelmCaliber provides all stand alone items and new crafting recipes. That, combined with it leveraging AWKCR should mean that it will probably play nice alongside most other mods. It also means that it has support for Valdacil's Item Sorting out of the box. That mod is not required but I do highly recommend it!

There are some compatibility issues that you should keep in mind. If you are using a mod that alters the stats of your vanilla helmets, you should be able to make hidden versions of them but the hidden version will have vanilla stats, not the modified. 

Armorsmith Extended Compatibility:
Armorsmith Extended is a great mod which I use in my own game and definitely recommend. Due to the way HelmCaliber hides your helmets without removing any of your hair, etc, an issue can arise if you are also using Armorsmith Extended where you will be allowed to equip both the hidden version of a helmet and the standard version at the same time in many cases, and the protection will stack.

I have provided a completely optional patch for those who use Armorsmith Extended that does two things.

First, it removes the ability to stack the normal version and the hidden version of all of the provided helmets (Far Harbor helmets not included in the compatibility patch at this time). With it, equipping one will automatically un-equip the other. All hidden helmets will un-equip their own standard version, and each other. Some combinations of headgear included in this mod with headgear not included are still possible. It is a bit of a fine line to walk, trying to remove the ability to stack combinations that clearly should not be stacked, but allowing some other sensible combinations. Please let me know if you find things combining or not combining in a way that doesn't seem to make sense and this can be tweaked in the future.

Second, it carries through to the hidden helmets the additional armor mod options that Armorsmith Extended allows to the vanilla helmets which aren't otherwise possible. For example, ballistic weave or add on modifications to standard helmets.

Please be aware there is a trade off to using this patch. In order to prevent the hidden and standard helmets from being able to stack with one another, a bit of flexibility for using face gear at the same time with head gear was sacrificed. As such, using the patch is a bit of a personal choice. If you change your mind as to if you like it or not, it should be very safe to add or remove at any time.

If you run across a compatibility problem that I haven't noticed, please do let me know! I am also pretty open to suggestions for compatibility patches if I can make it work.
 
Future Plans:

I am planning to add in some DLC headgear very soon.  Added!
After that my plan is to expand the selection of headgear. I am very open to requests for items to add and am actively working on this mod so I should be able to add things in pretty quickly. Please do post any items you feel would be important to add, I just ask that the requests are kept to items on and about the head area.


Installation/Uninstallation:

You can install using NMM or manually by copying the included .esp to your Fallout4/Data folder. Please install AWKCR first, followed by this mod. HelmCaliber must come below AWKCR in your load order.

If you are using the Armorsmith Extended compatibility fix, that must come below Armorsmith Extended and HelmCaliber in your load order.

To Uninstall, use NMM or remove the .esp from your Fallout4/Data folder. I did my best to keep the edits simple and clean to minimize any risks.


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