Updates

Version 0.9.8: Adds support for Mod Catalogue Framework - as a contributor to SkyUI it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to not support any attempt to organize mods in-game.
Version 0.9.7: Fixes a filename bug on the spikey plant that allowed them to start spawning again in 0.9.5. Thanks to @JMZawodny for reporting the issue so I could get it fixed quickly!
Version 0.9.5: Also removes the horrible gassy cave "plants"!

Also check out No Hazardous Plants 2.0!

Between the time I started looking into this and the time I published it, No Hazardous Plants was revived and extended by Lo2k over at No Hazardous Plants 2.0! Lo2k's approach appears to be similar to cruzdroid's original method but updated for the current version of the game.

The short version:

• WEED-B-GONE removes all hazardous plants everywhere by deliberately breaking their in-game model. This is simple, appears to work with minimal fuss or changes to existing saves, and removed ALL instances of the plants, including those inside abandoned structures, etc. It should only need updating if more hazardous flora are added to the game.
• NHP2 removes hazardous plants by updating the game's XML files. This means that more files need to be changed, but it also means it's not relying on a fallback behavior, which is probably safer. Some hazardous plants may remain in POIs, and this method will need updating if new biomes or POIs are added in future game releases.
  

Both mods do what they say on the label, but our approaches are completely different, so take your pick!

Intro

I... hate the hazardous plants.

They are on my planets, cluttering up the scenery.

They are outside my base walls, hitting me.

They are inside my base.

They are inside my head, and I am crazy.

No more. No more. NO. MORE. PLANTS.

I have eradicated them. The galaxy is finally, finally... clean.

You want oxygen? Go diving for kelp. No water? Well, it's not like it's a habitable planet anyway. Bring your air with you.

Details

Okay, now that that's out my system: this mod completely removes (as far as I can tell) the following entities from the game:

• SporeVent plants (the big green noisy gassy ones that ruin everything, everywhere)
• Tentacle plants (the ones that whip you and hiss through your base walls)
• Flytrap plants (the ones that bite you from under your base floor)
• Spike plants (the newer ones that look kind of like a sundew, which also whip you through your base walls)
• Update: The weird little gassy puffballs that have been inside caves since release (v 0.9.5 and up)
  

They will not spawn anywhere, in any biome, and any that are already present in your save will vanish.

Background

As mentioned above, I'm not a huge fan of the hazardous flora, particularly the green gas "puffers", or the "SporeVent" plants, as the game calls them internally. It's that squeaky, rubbery balloon noise that gets me, and with the recent updates it seems like there's literally nowhere I can escape them. They spawn in groups of 3-4 at a time usually, and they're everywhere, and we HATES them, precious.

Alas, it seems the technique used by cruzdroid's ImmersiveGen to suppress them doesn't really work any longer, so I went digging around and here's what I found:

• All the hazardous plants in the game have multiple paths for spawning.
• The original three plants appear to be fallback possibilities for other kinds of spawns that won't fit in a given area.
• The spore-vent plants appear to have 2 additional methods for appearing, some of which they share with the others, which is why you often get 2-3 of them at a time in clumps.
  

The practical upshot of all this is that (as lots of us have noticed) the hazardous plants are completely out of control, and just editing their own MXML files doesn't seem to be enough to get rid of them anymore. I have to edit three different files in order to get rid of them via EXML settings, and even then, they're written right into the individual Biome data, so I'd have to edit EVERY SINGLE BIOME in order to completely eradicate them.

I did discover ways to reduce the spawn rates (and do other funny things like make them all tiny), but it still involved making changes to key
shared files in ways that might not play nice with other mods.

So I tried just replacing their scene files with invalid copies to see if the game would fail to load them properly and (hopefully) ignore them.

As it turns out, that works great, and means there's basically zero chance of conflicting with or overwriting another mod's changes. This is probably about as clean as it gets.

I tried backing it up one level and exclusively modifying the MXML files for their PLANT entries, but it seems like the game doesn't pay attention to those anymore, or at least has other methods for reading out the vanilla hazards and placing them. Only replacing the SCENE files themselves seems to have the desired effect.

Known Bugs

• NPCs may still give you quests involving Hazardous Flora, but they will be impossible to complete. If you want to re-enable one plant type for doing quests or collecting oxygen, I recommend deleting the "HAZARDPLANTSPIKEY.SCENE.MBIN" file from the mod's folder. The newer spiked-sundew plants seem to have the lowest spawn rate and they're at least quiet when they're not attacking you.
• Since hazardous plants no longer count toward your scan totals, I don't believe this will affect existing flora counts. I've also not observed any issues with other spawns getting moved or changed as a result of using this mod. However, it is possible that some plant or random item placements will be altered.
  

Thanks to

• Cruzdroid for the original No Hazardous Flora and ImmersiveGen, which pointed me at the right files to clear out
• Lo2k for coming up with the updated No Hazardous Plants 2.0 at the same time I decided I was so sick of them I'd learn how to mod the game to get rid of them.
• JMZawodny for letting me know that I broke the spikey plant's filename in an update. Don't update your mods while under the influence, kids!
  

Files modified

MODELS\PLANETS\BIOMES\COMMON\INTERACTIVE\SPOREVENT.SCENE.MBIN
MODELS\PLANETS\BIOMES\COMMON\INTERACTIVEFLORA\HAZARDPLANTSPIKEY.SCENE.MBIN
MODELS\PLANETS\BIOMES\COMMON\INTERACTIVEFLORA\TENTACLEPLANT.SCENE.MBIN
MODELS\PLANETS\BIOMES\COMMON\INTERACTIVEFLORA\VENUSFLYTRAP.SCENE.MBIN
MODELS\PLANETS\BIOMES\COMMON\RARERESOURCE\GROUND\HAZARDSTEAM.SCENE.MBIN (0.9.5+)

These are 0-byte files that are placed in order to keep the game from loading the asset for their respective plants. If you want to restore one of the plants to its vanilla spawn state, DELETE its respective SCENE.MBIN file from the mod's folder.