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About this mod
Spices up docking encounters with surprise boarding, occasional hazards, and cut pirate dialogue!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
- Russian
- Changelogs
This mod improves Starfield's Boarding Encounter quests - specifically docking encounters (not "dropship" or "surface" encounters).
When docking to hostile enemy ships, there is a chance for a hazard to be on board, and/or the enemy crew may decide to board your ship.
In the presence of a hazard, the chance of the enemy boarding your ship is increased.
This mod was inspired by Hazardous Ship Boarding - an early mod (pre-Creation Kit) that replaced the vanilla BEScript. The aim was to simply force the existing hazard and enemy boarding logic to run, because the ships in the base game were never actually configured to use it. However after many updates to the base game, the modified script stopped working properly, and also prevented some other vanilla bug fixes/features (such as critical hits) from working.
The objective of this mod is exactly the same as the previous. But this time I have ported the necessary logic to a separate set of scripts, and refactored/fixed/improved it. Now only human enemies can board (no turrets!), and they will be forced into a combat state, which prevents enemies from running back to their ship. In addition, any corpses left on your ship will be removed as soon as your ship travels to a new location - so there is no longer a need for a trip to the ship builder to clean all the blood stains off the upholstery.
As a bonus, this mod reveals some cut enemy dialogue - pirates may complement you on your ship, and assert that it now belongs to them!
Hazard and Boarding chances
The default probabilities for a "better" boarding encounter are:
- Hazard on enemy ship: 50%
- Enemy boarding: 25%
- Enemy boarding multiplier: 2.4x (this gives a 60% chance of enemies boarding whenever a hazard is present)
These can be changed via the following global variables:
BBE_Global_HazardChance
BBE_Global_BoardingChance
BBE_Global_BoardingChanceMult
If you use RTFP, an example RTFP patch is included so you can easily modify these values. Just un-comment the desired lines, and insert the value you want (use a value between 0 and 1 for the percentages)
Alternatively, you can set the included gameplay option to "ALWAYS" - which will apply a 100% chance for both a hazard and for enemies to board - mainly just for testing purposes for myself, but I've left the option there for those that want it.
Good to know
Better Boarding Encounters (BBE) does not modify any vanilla records or replace any vanilla scripts. It does not require any script extenders - just the base game.
It has been tested with v1.14.x and the latest 1.15.x update, and should be compatible with (hopefully) all future updates.
It does not tread on, or break, any existing functionality - it ensures certain properties on the vanilla quest (BEQuest.ShipHazard and BEQuest.ShouldBoardPlayersShip) are none/false before doing either of those things. So if you dock with a ship that was actually configured to use that original code (highly unlikely in the case of boarding, but I assume it's possible in the case of hazards), then this mod will step back and let the original code do it's thing instead.
You can disable the mod in the Gameplay options, allowing you to uninstall it safely at any time.
Known issues
A few things I'd like to iron out:
- If Vasco is on your crew, on rare occasions he will appear inside the ship and join in the fight. Not yet sure how to avoid this.
- The enemy ship captain will become a "Security Captain" when they board. They still appear as a pirate/spacer/ecliptic/whatever, just with a different name, and harder to kill. This appears to be baked in to how faction information is inherited by NPCs based on their location. I am not sure if this one is fixable.
- Your companion may scold you for firing stray bullets inside the ship, just as combat comes to an end (although they will not become angry).
I'm not very experienced with NPC stuff - if anyone has the particular knowledge required, and knows the correct way to fix these issues, please let me know!
Thoughts and future plans
Presumably, the hazard/boarding elements were cut from the base game because they didn't feel "finished" - which I think is a fair assertion to make. And/or Bethesda decided it would be unfair to allow combat to occur inside the player's ship, to avoid upsetting those who enjoy carefully decorating them with loose junk (which is obviously going to go flying when a bunch of pirates storm your sanctuary in the sky!).
For this mod, I wanted to focus solely on re-implementing these cut features, in a way that more or less replicates the vanilla code and the intent of the Hazardous Ship Boarding mod (with some fixes applied).
I do have plans for a much more enhanced version, which will introduce some genuinely new game-play mechanics. I am currently working on a prototype...it could be a while, but stay tuned!
In the meantime, please enjoy :)
Please check out my other mods:
When docking to hostile enemy ships, there is a chance for a hazard to be on board, and/or the enemy crew may decide to board your ship.
In the presence of a hazard, the chance of the enemy boarding your ship is increased.
This mod was inspired by Hazardous Ship Boarding - an early mod (pre-Creation Kit) that replaced the vanilla BEScript. The aim was to simply force the existing hazard and enemy boarding logic to run, because the ships in the base game were never actually configured to use it. However after many updates to the base game, the modified script stopped working properly, and also prevented some other vanilla bug fixes/features (such as critical hits) from working.
The objective of this mod is exactly the same as the previous. But this time I have ported the necessary logic to a separate set of scripts, and refactored/fixed/improved it. Now only human enemies can board (no turrets!), and they will be forced into a combat state, which prevents enemies from running back to their ship. In addition, any corpses left on your ship will be removed as soon as your ship travels to a new location - so there is no longer a need for a trip to the ship builder to clean all the blood stains off the upholstery.
As a bonus, this mod reveals some cut enemy dialogue - pirates may complement you on your ship, and assert that it now belongs to them!
Hazard and Boarding chances
The default probabilities for a "better" boarding encounter are:
- Hazard on enemy ship: 50%
- Enemy boarding: 25%
- Enemy boarding multiplier: 2.4x (this gives a 60% chance of enemies boarding whenever a hazard is present)
These can be changed via the following global variables:
BBE_Global_HazardChance
BBE_Global_BoardingChance
BBE_Global_BoardingChanceMult
If you use RTFP, an example RTFP patch is included so you can easily modify these values. Just un-comment the desired lines, and insert the value you want (use a value between 0 and 1 for the percentages)
Alternatively, you can set the included gameplay option to "ALWAYS" - which will apply a 100% chance for both a hazard and for enemies to board - mainly just for testing purposes for myself, but I've left the option there for those that want it.
Good to know
Better Boarding Encounters (BBE) does not modify any vanilla records or replace any vanilla scripts. It does not require any script extenders - just the base game.
It has been tested with v1.14.x and the latest 1.15.x update, and should be compatible with (hopefully) all future updates.
It does not tread on, or break, any existing functionality - it ensures certain properties on the vanilla quest (BEQuest.ShipHazard and BEQuest.ShouldBoardPlayersShip) are none/false before doing either of those things. So if you dock with a ship that was actually configured to use that original code (highly unlikely in the case of boarding, but I assume it's possible in the case of hazards), then this mod will step back and let the original code do it's thing instead.
You can disable the mod in the Gameplay options, allowing you to uninstall it safely at any time.
Known issues
A few things I'd like to iron out:
- If Vasco is on your crew, on rare occasions he will appear inside the ship and join in the fight. Not yet sure how to avoid this.
- The enemy ship captain will become a "Security Captain" when they board. They still appear as a pirate/spacer/ecliptic/whatever, just with a different name, and harder to kill. This appears to be baked in to how faction information is inherited by NPCs based on their location. I am not sure if this one is fixable.
- Your companion may scold you for firing stray bullets inside the ship, just as combat comes to an end (although they will not become angry).
I'm not very experienced with NPC stuff - if anyone has the particular knowledge required, and knows the correct way to fix these issues, please let me know!
Thoughts and future plans
Presumably, the hazard/boarding elements were cut from the base game because they didn't feel "finished" - which I think is a fair assertion to make. And/or Bethesda decided it would be unfair to allow combat to occur inside the player's ship, to avoid upsetting those who enjoy carefully decorating them with loose junk (which is obviously going to go flying when a bunch of pirates storm your sanctuary in the sky!).
For this mod, I wanted to focus solely on re-implementing these cut features, in a way that more or less replicates the vanilla code and the intent of the Hazardous Ship Boarding mod (with some fixes applied).
I do have plans for a much more enhanced version, which will introduce some genuinely new game-play mechanics. I am currently working on a prototype...it could be a while, but stay tuned!
In the meantime, please enjoy :)
Please check out my other mods: