This tweaks file changes the values for three gamesettings which set the modifiers, bonuses and penalties for sneaking around leveled actors. Fallout 3 used a much simpler formula for its detection system while New Vegas accounts for several more factors including the difference between the level of the player and the levels of the actors they are trying to sneak around.

There is a pernicious myth that sneaking around the Ghost People in Dead Money is impossible because some of their baseform records have a Perception stat of 0 which, the myth goes, results in a bugged result of "infinite perception". In fact, it is actually due to the high level of their spawns causing massive penalties to the player's Sneak skill because of these gamesettings.

The mod DUST Survival Simulator replaces many instances of wildlife in its overhauled wasteland with Tunnelers from Lonesome Road. Because the placed references of the Tunnelers often retain their original levels from the DLC (level 45+), this results in seemingly bugged behavior where a level 1 player can become instantly detected by Tunnelers from far across the map as soon as they start sneaking (resulting in a near constant detection status of CAUTION), even though the Tunnelers would not detect the player for simply moving through the same area without sneaking.

There have been other mods made to fix this but they directly modify the levels of the creatures themselves, resulting in other possibly undesirable balance changes such as affecting their health scaling.

With this tweak enabled, the player will no longer receive hidden penalties or bonuses to their Sneak skill based on the level of the actors they are sneaking past. I think that this results in a much more streamlined and arguably immersive experience when it comes to detection, especially for situations where the player's level greatly differs from that of the spawns they are trying to sneak by.

This file requires lStewieAl's Tweaks and Engine Fixes in order to load custom gamesettings values in the game without a plugin slot. The same thing could be accomplished by loading the GECK and saving the edited values in a personal patch plugin.

Simply install with your mod manager of choice and enable.

If you want to check whether or not the mod is working, bring up the console in-game and enter the following commands:

GetGameSetting iSneakLevelBonus ;result should be 0
GetGameSetting iSneakStartBonus ;result should be 0
GetGameSetting iSneakStartBonusLevelPenatly;result should be 0 (misspelled in the code)


See images for technical details.

Also check out this video by Belthan's Mods where they conduct tests to identify the source of the issue:





LStewieAl for Tweaks
Head Scribe Alison from the FROST/DUST discord, who convinced me that this low-effort mod was worth releasing