Just FYI all, a patch for zone79 armors and melee weapons is available. Works pretty well, dodge effective and everything, balance kept for every common things with ascension (in a simplistic way, but sufficient imho, with a little boost to Mantis armor though, and some weight tweaks to make the dodge feature significant for the lightest armors of the pack). Tried a melee chameleon ninja technomonk playthrough and it is good but you need a decent level to get the best gear (leveling kept to make things simple mostly, lvl 40 unlocks the max gear). (and without npc detection heightener mods of course) Enjoy!
I like a lot of what this mod does, but I think there's one thing that needs to be changed. This mod dramatically affects enemy accuracy. To the point that enemies will charge into a room, and instantly snipe you behind cover from across it often before you even visually see them looking at you. The experience is kind of like fighting against an aimbot sniper in a TF2 server.
I managed to play through almost all of the freestar ranger campaign before giving up unfortunately. Robots are basically unbeatable with their accuracy and toughness.
I think if the enemy accuracy could be toned back down, this mod would be the best overhaul experience on the Nexus.
Hahaa man, this new dodge feature gives a lot of new options when balancing things :) Really really nice. You will see an application very soon with the little patch I double-cooked for the occasion (if it works of course, I'm going to try all that now and let it loose if it works well).
I dont have much complaints, but I will agree that this makes the mission where you're hunting Maya Cruz complete nonsense lol. I always dread doing it. Things are slightly better if you invest in the rifles and robotics skills, and if you use armor with very high energy defense. If you have the starborn power that creates a sort of bullet shield by that point it also helps a ton.
Is it ok for any patch agd ? The formula etc. ? Do you allow me ? It will stay in limbo until then. Do you want to publish it in your mod page and I send it to you in DM ?
I have tested this mod out over the course of its publication on the Creations platform and I have nothing but good things to say about it.
I tried tweaking the settings in some playthroughs to reduce the combat difficulty, making me slightly tougher and enemies' hp slightly nerfed, but for my current character I decided to strap the seatbelts and go for the author's intended experience, which is only made more intense by adding starvival into the mix (of course, disabling the conflicting configurations to let Ascension take precedence). I have had memorable experiences of fighting groups of eccliptic against impossible odds, huge alien creatures, fleeing from a robot dog while throwing mines on the ground to stall it, not to mention the hunter's terrorist attack in the well and in the starport, which was really momentous.
Once again, this mod really shines alongside Starvival, which requires tons of prep work (and credstiks) to face the challenges the game poses, specially after the middle point of the main quest. There's something to be said about juggling creds to pay for ship improvements, ship ammo, fuel, batteries, repairs, o2 cannisters, medicine, food and beverages, all made more intense after the Starborn sets their eyes upon you. In the vanilla game events unfold kind of casually, more to provide the necessary narrative beats. Ascension + Starvival make you actually FEEL the consequences and struggle to stay on top of the situation. This is also made better by adding Revelation into the mix, so the first time you face the Hunter you're already kind of a padawan level character (the powers you amassed up to that point dont do that much to him, but it's cool to have a face off that highlights the differences in power level).
What's your Ascension & Starvival load order, if you don't mind sharing? I used to play with Starvival before starting a new save with Ascension (+ agd25's Revelation, Take Your Time, and Vitality). I was trying TN's Oxygen Meter but its reliance on the watch HUD isn't ideal (I prefer no HUD), and I miss the Starvival Ammunition module and Ship Fuel.
How are you faring against turrets? I have the same setup and am enjoying it but fighting turrets just isn't a fun experience.
Turrets take forever to kill and also seem to do very little damage. I emptied about 2 clips from my drumbeat and a grenade to take one down. I was also standing in front and able to take tons of hits.
Not OP, but I followed a reddit post's advice - https://www.reddit.com/r/StarfieldModsXbox/comments/1diak17/how_to_make_ascension_and_starvival_work_together/.
No major issues and it works well, except for turrets - see my comment below.
I was also the op on that reddit post lol. That post was made in the very early days these mods were ported to Creations. My impressions are still valid, but I have adapted a few things here and there, nothing major. Turrets are a pain to take down, but I have realized the best way to take destroy them are with ballistic rifles (grendel, beowulf) or laser rifles (equinox). The DPS is what counts, and if you invested in robotics and automatic rifles it makes things slightly easier.
I had some strange things occuring like getting killed sort of randomly when critting an ennemy (ennemy doesn't shoot at all). When it happens you ragdoll with a "wellness added" message that pops up. It's not systematic but somewhat frequent and consistent. (If it's linked to a legendary reflect damage effect (I can't know that since I die), there's some multiplier somewhere that makes it lethal, vanilla setup for everything else)
Ascension alone in the LO prevents the vanilla survival needs to take place normally, and creates these events consistently (but i don't know if it does that with a 'pure' save). This bug and the global difficulty locked me on some ecliptic POI, if they didn't headinstakill me the 'bug' made me die and retry when I magged one really good or headsniped one, many many times. So I checked the records to tweak some minor QoL things and see if I could de-radicalize the headshot punishment somewhat for my game with a simple tweak, and I saw that there were some need-mod related 'derelict records' in the lot that could cause some of these issues ('PEO_xxx', ... etc.) ? Deactivating ascension has also an 'instakill on load' consequence on some saves, (starving & dehydrated messages popping up) perhaps somewhat due to this ?
For the headshot radicality, since the player is submitted to the same common constraints of the human race, I now understand why it is so complicated to specialize things for the player or the ennemy, everything is locked everywhere in the same common records.
( Concretely, to keep the mod's dynamism and add a little survival chance, i wanted to try tweaking : head body part damage = 1.0 (useless I think because of the weapon/armor&helmet balance, I saw that afterwards, and it makes ecliptic guys survive 2 consecutive headshots, not good for your life), removing thereceived sneak shot bonus if it exists, and 66% chance of non happening for headshots perhaps. (it was a test, come on) (but all this just for the player of course, which is tough with a common set of human race records :P ) ).
Do you think it is technically possible to create a proper 'player race', by linking everything about the player to a new ad-hoc race with all necessary associated renamed record duplicates just tweaked at the right spots to balance the challenge ? Or some handy conditional forks at the right spots to avoid adding a whole standalone player race system with all its potential satellite records in the game ? That could give you a lot of freedom ? Very naive, but who knows perhaps the game records design allows that?
(The 'balancing point' I was trying to achieve is to lose 90-95% health most of the time with a headshot and a good helmet (with variations going from 80% to instakill) : with 1.0 head damage multiplier and get immune to sneak shot bonuses if they ever exist (if there is indeed a sneak shot received by the player condition, that could explain a lot of 'unfair' deaths that can happen. Same race records so who knows) It could let you still one-shot some ennemies that have a 2.0 damage multiplier for head part and suffer a sneak shot bonus) )
So, basically 2 things : - Do unused needs records have to be purged? - Is it possible to implement and specialize a 'player race' ?
Thanks for the feedback. I will remove those old records, in case they are breaking anything.
I don't think the player takes headshots, I think enemies aim at your chest, it's just that you die so quickly that it feels like headshots. The next version will add a dodge mechanic, where the lower your armor weight, the less often you are hit, down to 50% at no armor. This should make the game less brutal at early levels.
Another effect I had perhaps in link with these survival remnants is to get instakilled on fast travel, same effect with disabled vanilla survival, whether ascension is alone or associated with vitality, full vanilla setup. Disabling ascension prevents you from dying on fast travel, and if you re-enable it afterwards you instadie on load.
So there's no headshot mechanism for the player, are you sure ? perhaps there's some kind of lottery for NPC shots, and when it comes to your head it's lethal (since head has 2.0, body has 1.0 and limbs have 0.5) ? I get instakilled with a ballistic shot with an ecliptic 800+ armor, and I can get shot several times and not die too, so it involves for sure some variability and the headshot lottery could be a simple explanation (and therefore the sneak multiplier too if it exists)? so boosting the dodge perk (really nice idea!) for head parts could micromanage that even more ? (These are just a logical inputs depending on what I experience, i don't know how everything works at all)
Sorry to come back with this troubleshooting : I saw that in my save 4 hunger, 4 thirst, 4 wellness effects are cumulated in the status effects hud. This could be the reason of the instadie on an ennemy kill popping with a 'Wellness added', making HP negative somehow, who knows.
Do you perhaps have a workaround to remove all these effects and reactivate them afterwards ? (it could be useful for other users having the same phenomenon in their save, especially if it fixes the thing ? I'll give feedback if it does)
In case it's useful, the Wellness skill formid is0x002CE2E1 For the wellness, the hunger and thirst what could be some simple console workaround ? (i.e. 14.modav XXXXX Y or something like that ?)
These 'wellness' death issues seem to be mainly save related, something that cumulated in it. It's a very unstable save that I used with a lot of mod compositions, a game update included, so not reliable test material. So I went back to a previous save (lvl 2 with ship), activated Vitality with Ascension, the 4x effects do show up for hunger thirst and wellness in the status hud, but it doesn't have the instadie consequence from some kills that made wellness pop with the problematic save (but I don't have mag weapons or snipers on this save, so the power of each shot is not great on ecliptic, and could hide things). Not using Vitality is just because the in game survival features are sufficient and well integrated enough in my tastes, It would be nice to be able to play Ascension with just the vanilla need system.
I tried to play without Ascension, trying other mods, but i just can't, it's just the mod I need, it unlocks the right things to be dynamic from the start, doesn't add useless mechanics and goes only for the essential with a full unleveling with weapons that hurt and ennemies that are dangerous, experience talks everywhere in this mod.
The only thing could be : The tankiness/brutality of ecliptic when you don't have a magsprayer or a good snipe. We need this kind of tough ennemies but they are practically everywhere (and that's the only problem, no real need to nerf them, you just need the right gear). Perhaps it is due to Bedlam though (random thought) ? I saw a spacer POI replaced fully by ecliptic during the same game session, progressively as I was retrying the same POI. I had some ecliptic in the lot at first, and full ecliptic roster after the 10th retry (I usually go marathon with manual saves in my ship, so I retry POIs a lot)). It was on the abandoned mine POI next to Cydonia. Edit : It only happened outside the POI, once inside every ennemy was a spacer without exception, for every retry.
In early game boostpack recharge rate is very very weak, I have to spend my very first 3 skill points of each playthrough on it to get a decently functional boostpack mobility, and you just need it. Perhaps a little additional boostpack recharge rate increase could do some good ? (e.g. at level 1 you can't take the cydonia tracker agent mission to place a device in the tower, very frustrating to wait 10 seconds to do a little jump and don't even reach the next floor, i'm exaggerating but it's what it feels like, so perhaps just a little global boost on recharge rate could help)
The dodge feature will be a major thing touching many aspects if you manage to implement it, and I'm really eager to test it when you'll figure that out :)
Confirming that for my setup, the vanilla needs system seems to be interacting badly when a save keeps traces of vitality.esm. Only the previous saves from activating vitality work for me. Afterwards, whether it is active or not, subsequent saves get 'corrupted' at some point (they do load, but you just die on load).
Having activated Vitality once produce the persistent cumulated 4 times sustenance effect. (Once you activate vanilla sustenance after vitality and save your game your playthrough is compromised, with or without vitality)
Ascension alone doesn't seem to give such problems with or without vanilla needs, it just gives problems with vitality (in my experience and my setup, of course).
I can't give feedback on an experience with vitality and without ascension though (because what's the point of playing at all without ascension? :P), so it can be perfectly independent.
Have you disabled vanilla sustenance? That might be causing your issues. I don't have them while using both mods. Also check if you are using the latest Vitality, as that bug was one I saw early on and fixed.
Yes i have used Vitality 1.2.1 (very recent playthrough)(not sure in fact), and it's indeed the fact that i cumulated vitality + vanilla sustenance at a certain point in my save that messed things up. The thing is that when this mess happens you can't go back and disable vanilla needs, you just die and lose your X saves :D I will try on a totally fresh playthrough and tell you what happened, if I have still these 4 cumulated needs etc. Perhaps it's just some random mess with mods and game updates. I'll give a proper feedback with sure things when I can. Cheers!
Well I think you were right on the fact It was the old version of vitality's bug : I tried to cumulate a series of save with sustenance on/off and I still have the 4 effects from vitality but I don't die anymore on load. And furthermore the needs timers seems totally independent between the 2 systems (so Vitality doesn't seem to be able to have any influence on the vanilla HP loss effect). And I checked my last DL of vitality on Nexus and it is pretty recent in fact (23 aug), doesn't prove anything but definitely goes in the way of a fixed bug scenario. So that's cool, I'll tell you if I have some late cumulative effect or new elements wiht this 100% sure fully updated setup.
I'm not sure if this is a bug but there is a Crimson Fleet Captain enemy that took 7 headshots with the Eon to kill, whereas her co-pilot only took 1-2, my question is if this is normal or if this one enemy was just bugged
Do you plan to tweak this ? (removing multiple healthbars) You already thought of that and It's not possible perhaps ? (When you play without knowing ennemy level or health, some consistency could be nice when you plan a headshot ambush on a group, but it's very personal)
I honestly don't understand the point of this mod. In the description it says that you and the enemy are dangerous to each other, but in fact, I perform at 14 litre against 80, I to kill him, I need to spend a whole 10 rounds of ammunition, he is enough for one shot. I don't know what the point of such a balance is. Head damage amazes me at all, it's like it doesn't multiply at all.
Do Ascension make any UI changes or changes to ship's habs?
I was having a problem with the latest starfield official update. The vehicle wouldnt spawn after I purchased it. I tried disabling 90% of my mods to buy the vehicle and then reactivate, but kept some mods active which I considered foundational, to avoid any lasting problems with my save later on. Ascension was among the few mods I didnt disable. Since I had no sucess, I disabled all my mods and was able to buy the vehicle. So there's a chance above zero that Ascension could be incompatible with the recent vehicle update.
371 comments
Enjoy!
Ascension - ZoNE79 Spacesuit Pack and Melee Madness patches
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/11395
I managed to play through almost all of the freestar ranger campaign before giving up unfortunately. Robots are basically unbeatable with their accuracy and toughness.
I think if the enemy accuracy could be toned back down, this mod would be the best overhaul experience on the Nexus.
You will see an application very soon with the little patch I double-cooked for the occasion (if it works of course, I'm going to try all that now and let it loose if it works well).
Can you help me understand that in DM ?I got it, there will be dodge, no problem ;)
Is it ok for any patch agd ? The formula etc. ? Do you allow me ? It will stay in limbo until then.
Do you want to publish it in your mod page and I send it to you in DM ?
I tried tweaking the settings in some playthroughs to reduce the combat difficulty, making me slightly tougher and enemies' hp slightly nerfed, but for my current character I decided to strap the seatbelts and go for the author's intended experience, which is only made more intense by adding starvival into the mix (of course, disabling the conflicting configurations to let Ascension take precedence). I have had memorable experiences of fighting groups of eccliptic against impossible odds, huge alien creatures, fleeing from a robot dog while throwing mines on the ground to stall it, not to mention the hunter's terrorist attack in the well and in the starport, which was really momentous.
Once again, this mod really shines alongside Starvival, which requires tons of prep work (and credstiks) to face the challenges the game poses, specially after the middle point of the main quest. There's something to be said about juggling creds to pay for ship improvements, ship ammo, fuel, batteries, repairs, o2 cannisters, medicine, food and beverages, all made more intense after the Starborn sets their eyes upon you. In the vanilla game events unfold kind of casually, more to provide the necessary narrative beats. Ascension + Starvival make you actually FEEL the consequences and struggle to stay on top of the situation. This is also made better by adding Revelation into the mix, so the first time you face the Hunter you're already kind of a padawan level character (the powers you amassed up to that point dont do that much to him, but it's cool to have a face off that highlights the differences in power level).
Turrets take forever to kill and also seem to do very little damage. I emptied about 2 clips from my drumbeat and a grenade to take one down. I was also standing in front and able to take tons of hits.
No major issues and it works well, except for turrets - see my comment below.
That post was made in the very early days these mods were ported to Creations. My impressions are still valid, but I have adapted a few things here and there, nothing major.
Turrets are a pain to take down, but I have realized the best way to take destroy them are with ballistic rifles (grendel, beowulf) or laser rifles (equinox). The DPS is what counts, and if you invested in robotics and automatic rifles it makes things slightly easier.
Some input on v.2.2.0:
(If it's linked to a legendary reflect damage effect (I can't know that since I die), there's some multiplier somewhere that makes it lethal, vanilla setup for everything else)
Ascension alone in the LO prevents the vanilla survival needs to take place normally, and creates these events consistently (but i don't know if it does that with a 'pure' save). This bug and the global difficulty locked me on some ecliptic POI, if they didn't headinstakill me the 'bug' made me die and retry when I magged one really good or headsniped one, many many times.
So I checked the records to tweak some minor QoL things and see if I could de-radicalize the headshot punishment somewhat for my game with a simple tweak, and I saw that there were some need-mod related 'derelict records' in the lot that could cause some of these issues ('PEO_xxx', ... etc.) ?
Deactivating ascension has also an 'instakill on load' consequence on some saves, (starving & dehydrated messages popping up) perhaps somewhat due to this ?
For the headshot radicality, since the player is submitted to the same common constraints of the human race, I now understand why it is so complicated to specialize things for the player or the ennemy, everything is locked everywhere in the same common records.
( Concretely, to keep the mod's dynamism and add a little survival chance, i wanted to try tweaking :
head body part damage = 1.0 (useless I think because of the weapon/armor&helmet balance, I saw that afterwards, and it makes ecliptic guys survive 2 consecutive headshots, not good for your life),
removing the received sneak shot bonus if it exists,
and 66% chance of non happening for headshots perhaps. (it was a test, come on)
(but all this just for the player of course, which is tough with a common set of human race records :P ) ).
Do you think it is technically possible to create a proper 'player race', by linking everything about the player to a new ad-hoc race with all necessary associated renamed record duplicates just tweaked at the right spots to balance the challenge ? Or some handy conditional forks at the right spots to avoid adding a whole standalone player race system with all its potential satellite records in the game ? That could give you a lot of freedom ? Very naive, but who knows perhaps the game records design allows that?
(The 'balancing point' I was trying to achieve is to lose 90-95% health most of the time with a headshot and a good helmet (with variations going from 80% to instakill) : with 1.0 head damage multiplier and get immune to sneak shot bonuses if they ever exist (if there is indeed a sneak shot received by the player condition, that could explain a lot of 'unfair' deaths that can happen. Same race records so who knows)
It could let you still one-shot some ennemies that have a 2.0 damage multiplier for head part and suffer a sneak shot bonus) )
So, basically 2 things :
- Do unused needs records have to be purged?
- Is it possible to implement and specialize a 'player race' ?
Cheers!
I don't think the player takes headshots, I think enemies aim at your chest, it's just that you die so quickly that it feels like headshots. The next version will add a dodge mechanic, where the lower your armor weight, the less often you are hit, down to 50% at no armor. This should make the game less brutal at early levels.
So there's no headshot mechanism for the player, are you sure ? perhaps there's some kind of lottery for NPC shots, and when it comes to your head it's lethal (since head has 2.0, body has 1.0 and limbs have 0.5) ? I get instakilled with a ballistic shot with an ecliptic 800+ armor, and I can get shot several times and not die too, so it involves for sure some variability and the headshot lottery could be a simple explanation (and therefore the sneak multiplier too if it exists)? so boosting the dodge perk (really nice idea!) for head parts could micromanage that even more ? (These are just a logical inputs depending on what I experience, i don't know how everything works at all)
I saw that in my save 4 hunger, 4 thirst, 4 wellness effects are cumulated in the status effects hud.
This could be the reason of the instadie on an ennemy kill popping with a 'Wellness added', making HP negative somehow, who knows.
Do you perhaps have a workaround to remove all these effects and reactivate them afterwards ?
(it could be useful for other users having the same phenomenon in their save, especially if it fixes the thing ? I'll give feedback if it does)
In case it's useful, the Wellness skill formid is0x002CE2E1
For the wellness, the hunger and thirst what could be some simple console workaround ?
(i.e. 14.modav XXXXX Y or something like that ?)
These 'wellness' death issues seem to be mainly save related, something that cumulated in it. It's a very unstable save that I used with a lot of mod compositions, a game update included, so not reliable test material.
So I went back to a previous save (lvl 2 with ship), activated Vitality with Ascension, the 4x effects do show up for hunger thirst and wellness in the status hud, but it doesn't have the instadie consequence from some kills that made wellness pop with the problematic save (but I don't have mag weapons or snipers on this save, so the power of each shot is not great on ecliptic, and could hide things).
Not using Vitality is just because the in game survival features are sufficient and well integrated enough in my tastes, It would be nice to be able to play Ascension with just the vanilla need system.
I tried to play without Ascension, trying other mods, but i just can't, it's just the mod I need, it unlocks the right things to be dynamic from the start, doesn't add useless mechanics and goes only for the essential with a full unleveling with weapons that hurt and ennemies that are dangerous, experience talks everywhere in this mod.
The only thing could be :
The tankiness/brutality of ecliptic when you don't have a magsprayer or a good snipe. We need this kind of tough ennemies but they are practically everywhere (and that's the only problem, no real need to nerf them, you just need the right gear). Perhaps it is due to Bedlam though (random thought) ? I saw a spacer POI replaced fully by ecliptic during the same game session, progressively as I was retrying the same POI. I had some ecliptic in the lot at first, and full ecliptic roster after the 10th retry (I usually go marathon with manual saves in my ship, so I retry POIs a lot)). It was on the abandoned mine POI next to Cydonia. Edit : It only happened outside the POI, once inside every ennemy was a spacer without exception, for every retry.
In early game boostpack recharge rate is very very weak, I have to spend my very first 3 skill points of each playthrough on it to get a decently functional boostpack mobility, and you just need it. Perhaps a little additional boostpack recharge rate increase could do some good ? (e.g. at level 1 you can't take the cydonia tracker agent mission to place a device in the tower, very frustrating to wait 10 seconds to do a little jump and don't even reach the next floor, i'm exaggerating but it's what it feels like, so perhaps just a little global boost on recharge rate could help)
The dodge feature will be a major thing touching many aspects if you manage to implement it, and I'm really eager to test it when you'll figure that out :)
Keep that good stuff coming !
Only the previous saves from activating vitality work for me. Afterwards, whether it is active or not, subsequent saves get 'corrupted' at some point (they do load, but you just die on load).
Having activated Vitality once produce the persistent cumulated 4 times sustenance effect. (Once you activate vanilla sustenance after vitality and save your game your playthrough is compromised, with or without vitality)
Ascension alone doesn't seem to give such problems with or without vanilla needs, it just gives problems with vitality (in my experience and my setup, of course).
I can't give feedback on an experience with vitality and without ascension though (because what's the point of playing at all without ascension? :P), so it can be perfectly independent.
So that's what i got on the issue.
Cheers !
1.2.1 (very recent playthrough)(not sure in fact), and it's indeed the fact that i cumulated vitality + vanilla sustenance at a certain point in my save that messed things up. The thing is that when this mess happens you can't go back and disable vanilla needs, you just die and lose your X saves :DI will try on a totally fresh playthrough and tell you what happened, if I have still these 4 cumulated needs etc.
Perhaps it's just some random mess with mods and game updates. I'll give a proper feedback with sure things when I can.
Cheers!
And I checked my last DL of vitality on Nexus and it is pretty recent in fact (23 aug), doesn't prove anything but definitely goes in the way of a fixed bug scenario.
So that's cool, I'll tell you if I have some late cumulative effect or new elements wiht this 100% sure fully updated setup.
You already thought of that and It's not possible perhaps ?
(When you play without knowing ennemy level or health, some consistency could be nice when you plan a headshot ambush on a group, but it's very personal)
I was having a problem with the latest starfield official update. The vehicle wouldnt spawn after I purchased it. I tried disabling 90% of my mods to buy the vehicle and then reactivate, but kept some mods active which I considered foundational, to avoid any lasting problems with my save later on. Ascension was among the few mods I didnt disable. Since I had no sucess, I disabled all my mods and was able to buy the vehicle. So there's a chance above zero that Ascension could be incompatible with the recent vehicle update.