Starfield's weapons are woefully unbalanced, especially for automatic rifles.

While remaining close to Vanilla+ balance, this mod makes all weapons viable, add missing tiers, and makes full-auto and burst-fire weapons competitive.

This also increases enemy lethality.

Requirements

This mod does not have any known dependencies other than the base game.

Mods requiring this file

Mod name	Notes
Royal Weapon Balance - Revised Patch	Must use Weapon Balance or Combat Overhaul
Royal Weapon Balance - Simplified Chinese Translation

Permissions and credits

Author's instructions

This includes work by other mod authors.

File credits

grpgrpgrp

For Early Weapons Empowered and More Weapons Have Tiers. Without these two amazing mods I would have had so much less fun playing Starfield when I first got it and probably never would have even considered that the weaker weapons could be fixed.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/5701?tab=posts
Awesome change to the AK-47

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Translations Mandarin

Translations available on the Nexus

Language	Name
Mandarin Author:SLO1998	Royal Weapon Balance - Simplified Chinese Translation

Changelogs

Version 3.25
- Latest updates ported from Royal Galaxy.
Version 3.12
- Removed tweaks to Maelstrom Iron Sight Aim. For some reason it behaves differently than other Iron Sights.
Version 3.11
- Improved viability of Reflex and Iron Sights via minor stat tweaks like faster reload. They look nice--definitely nicer than the scope overlays-- so I wanted them to play nice.
  
  Buffed tier 4 damage of Russian Assault Rifle.
  
  Slightly buffed Arc Wielder and Auto Rivet.
  
  Improved leveled lists for more variety while leveling.
  
  Whitehot Rounds now deal a small amount of energy damage to help automatic weapons like the AK-47 be viable against Physical damage-resistant targets.
  
  Magnetic Rounds replace Small Magazine for Equinox, Drumbeat, and Orion - the small magazines were awful and useless. These slightly slow combatants and offer 10 more rounds.
  
  Included more accurate, but unmodded, descriptions for some vanilla perks.
Version 3.10
- -Weapon: Hard Target, damage increased by 3x the vanilla increase per quality tier. Much smaller than it sounds. Had been left out of previous buffs and was weaker than other snipers by a large margin. Left base damage at vanilla.
  
  -Tombstone, similar to the above. As a starting point, increased damage by 2x of the default increase per quality tier. Left base damage at vanilla.
Version 3.0
- Small 1.12.30 Cohesion Patch (Royal Mods do not need updates to be compatible with every Bethesda patch).
  
  If you are returning to update and haven't already, please endorse =)
  
  1) Temporarily removed ALL changes to melee weapons (other than the perks) to give Bethesda's implementation and new tiers time to cook.
  2) Refined leveled lists so that a greater variety of weapons drop at all levels.
  3) Minor tweaks to ensure enemy and player damage is relatively balanced across most weapons in the game.
  
  The damage values in this mod are much closer to vanilla than other rebalances posted on Nexus, while still making the changes necessary to allow all weapons to be viable. I have also maintained any unique flavor that Bethesda intended; for example, the Drumbeat has a really powerful burst-fire multiplier. I have maintained that.
  
  While all guns should be viable in Royal Weapon Balance, they are not monstrously different than vanilla, nor have they lost their unique bonuses and flavor.
Version 2.91
- Royal Weapons Balance: Reverted any changes to Particle Beams Rank 4 to vanilla. This will use vanilla/SFCP now.
Version 2.9
- Royal Combat: Minor tweaks and targeting improvements. Could use feedback on Shrapnel Grenades. High risk/reward? Good?
  
  Soon to be merged with Royal Space Magic and released on a separate page as:
  
  Starborn Knight - Royal Combat and Magic Overhaul
Version 2.8
- Minor tweaks and improvements to both plugins, forward from Royal Galaxy. Resaved in latest version of xEdit.
Version 2.7
- Royal Combat Overhaul:
  
  Improved balance of what level weapons drop at to increase variety.
  
  Arc Welder now scales with particle beam perks as well as laser to allow late game semi-viability. Auto-Rivet now scales with shotgun perks.
Version 2.6
- Royal Combat and Royal Weapons:
  Finalized proper implementation of Early Game Weapons Empowered and More Weapons Have Tiers. Some level 1 weapons now have increased damage, rather than the tier 2+ variants.
  
  Royal Weapon Balance-- I had inadvertently included most of the new perks in Royal Weapon Balance. If you liked these perks, switch to Royal Combat Overhaul.
  
  If not, switching back to Royal Weapon Balance on the Next Update will let you keep the guns you found, but new weapon perks will stop dropping.
  
  Very sorry, released a lot of mods fast.
  
  Royal Combat Only:
  New Perk, replacing Med Theft:
  Seeing my guns named "Med Theft Grendel" felt silly. Now it's "Blessed Grendel".
  Blessed: Automatically use a Med Pack at low life. Defeated humans drop extra Med Packs. Increased range.
Version 2.5
- Removed accidentally included records from both versions.
Version 2.01
- Now that I was able to bundle early game weapons empowered and more weapons have tiers, I can tweak more details to perfection.
  
  With the Grendel buffs making it competitive with other weapons, I raised the level cap for each tier, so that you aren't getting advanced Grendels at super low levels. The tier 1 and 2 Grendel have both been buffed. It will still drop "advanced" earlier than many other guns, as per vanilla, but this should be more balanced.
Version 1.6
- With permission from the incredible grpgrpgrp
  
  Royal Weapon Balance and Combat Overhaul will include Early Game Weapons Empowered and More Weapons Have Tiers by default.
  
  I hope this makes it a lot easier for players to get a full suite of balanced weapons all in one plugin. :) Only thing left to add is TN's weapons afterward if you want weapon mods!
Version 1.5
- Aiming for the feeling of a "Final Version".
  
  Laser Weapons: Accuracy Increased (Slightly reduced recoil further; Fire spread cone decreased).
  
  Removed ITMs and some variables that were only lightly touched to improve compatibility.
  
  Slight damage increase for Grendel, Maelstrom, Inflictor Pistol T4, and Russian Assault Rife based on feedback and playtesting.
  
  AA-99 increased as it seems intended to be an end-game assault rifle that should at least rival the Beowulf.
Version 1.2
- Properly increased Grendel range slightly as intended.
  
  Increased damage of Maelstrom Rank 4 that I had previously reduced out of fear of making Full-Auto too powerful.
  
  Reduced Maelstrom Semi-Auto spread per shot. It was 1.5x higher than the Grendel by default and felt awful.
  
  Reduced Orion recoil and bullet spread. It feels good :)
  
  Buffed Razorback damage for tiers 2-4 by 1.5x from vanilla. Max damage of rank 4 Razorback now 69.
Version 1.1
- 25% damage increase for Lawgiver (over Lesser Weapons Empowered, which already gave it a 3x damage boost, now a 4x damage boost from Vanilla for Tiers 2-4.)
  
  This might make it stronger than other Snipers, but I don't think so.
  
  Buffed gut buster to a 50% damage increase to ensure there is an end-game viable fully automatic assault rifle if you do all your research.
  
  Reduced Orion recoil below vanilla and restored vanilla stability. This is a tough weapon to make feel good.
Version 1.0
- Buffed fully automatic and burst fire weapons to be viable.
  
  Thank you Gfauxpas for playtesting my Royal NPC mods with full auto weapons (and telling me how hard it was) and then testing earlier versions of this mod.

Donations

Straight donations accepted

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💢 The damage values in this mod are much closer to vanilla than other weapon rebalances posted on Nexus, while still making the changes necessary to allow all weapons to be viable.

I have also maintained any unique flavor that Bethesda intended; for example, the Drumbeat has a really powerful burst-fire multiplier. I have maintained that.

While all guns should be viable in Royal Weapon Balance, they are not monstrously different from vanilla, nor have they lost their unique bonuses and flavor.💥

This is used as the baseline for Royal Combat Overhaul and Royal Galaxy, which take things in a less Vanilla direction.

Royal Weapon Balance:

A Simple Balancing Pass of the Weapons in the Game for both the player and NPC. Version 1.0 consists only of buffs. I'll keep any nerfs to an optional file.

Full automatic and burst-fire play-styles are now strong (but not overpowered in the way that setting them to deal the same damage as semi-auto does).

Weaker weapons like a full-auto Grendel or Equinox are now strong, but the strongest, borderline exploitable weapons in Vanilla have not been buffed at all.

***

A common critique of this game is bullet sponges and wishing that enemies were more threatening. This helps make most enemies more threatening while buffing your damage when using guns that are weak in Vanilla.

The vanilla multiplier for full auto is 70% less damage than semi-auto, which makes them borderline useless.

Weapon changes affect NPCs and player, so this took extensive playtesting. Enemies using full auto weapons will be significantly more of a threat.

In early versions of playtesting, this + PEAK made NPCs too powerful since so many enemies use the weaker weapons buffed by this mod and full auto, but I got it working all together. =)

If you don't want a difficulty increase, you might want to try PEAK's casual accuracy mode.

Stat Changes (Approximate Values):Fully automatic damage:
Vanilla 0.3x --> Now varies from 0.6ish, with some up to 0.8x due to tiny magazines and other balancing elements.

Burst fire damage: Vanilla 0.4xish --> Now buffed to 0.75xish

These are hand-tweaked per weapon and playtested. I started with logical values like 1.25x stronger, 1.5x stronger, but then tweaked based on playtesting.

This initial release mostly tweaked underpowered early game weapons and fully automatic rifles. Other rifles were also buffed so that they did not become weaker than early game rifles. This mod does not significantly buff the guns that already quite good in Vanilla, but there are minor tweaks.

This mod has plenty of minor tweaks and common-sense changes. In short, I'm pretty satisfied, but I haven't changed every single weapon from vanilla. I am highly open to suggestions and feedback. Like my other mods, this is just # tweaks that require a ton of playtesting.

Tier 1 stats of weapons only gently changed-- the first few hours of Starfield are fine.

Base damage for horrifically underpowered early game automatic weapons doubled for Tiers 2-4.

You might think this would make them overpowered, but it doesn't even come close. Bethesda did not attempt to balance these guns for player enjoyment. They were balanced to be early game weapons you upgrade away from and for NPCs to use without being too damaging.

If Bethesda had any apparent original design intentions, I kept those. For example, the Drumbeat has a very high multiplier for burst-fire damage. Is there any way to figure out that's supposed to be a burst-fire gun in-game? Not that I know of. But I maintained that value.

As I playtested, I found that these buffs, while helpful, didn't quite feel right. I could balance full auto to either be the best no matter what, or they felt terrible. Additionally, since so many NPCs use the weapons I tweaked, specifically set to full auto by default, this mod initially proved to be an insane buff to NPCs, particularly when running something like PEAK hardcore. So I kept working on the weapons to keep them fun when used alongside the best mods available now. :)

The following adjustments help deal with the overpowered NPC issue, but also improve player gunplay and make automatic weapons stand out a bit more:

( -_•)╦̵̵̿╤─ Recoil:
Base stability of all weapons reduced.
Stability when crouched increased.

This helped make weapons more viable for the player without making NPCs insanely strong.
This decreased base stability is not as noticeable as you might think, but crouching and firing feels a lot better.

Minimum bounce per shot (for full auto weapons I buffed) initially multiplied by 1.25x
Maximum bounce per shot multiplied by 1.5x.

Then I playtested and reduced the ones that no longer felt "right" or like themselves. I put many weapons back to or close to vanilla because recoil changes just made them lose identity or feel awful.

Laser weapon recoil reduced but not fully removed.

These are the values I find fun. Simply overwrite this with another recoil mod if you prefer it.

Slight (5-10%ish) buffs to:
Armor-Piercing rounds,
Penetrator Rounds,
Depleted Uranium Rounds
Flechette,
Gut buster

This allowed guns to become stronger in the players hands, with good upgrade choices, without making every NPC insanely strong.

Recommended:
TN's Melee Weapon Improvements:
This adds weapon modifications to melee weapons, making them significantly more interesting and powerful.

Load this after Royal Weapons Balance or Royal Combat Overhaul.

Load Order/Compatibility:
Compatible with anything! Load before any mod you want to overwrite.

1. Load this before perk and recoil overhauls, as it includes (and will add) many common-sense changes like slightly buffing scavenger ammo drops.

2. Load this before setting full auto-damage to 100% via other mods (will be compatible, just slightly OP).

3. Load this before Craftable Quality, you'll still benefit from many of the changes and Craftable Quality will overwrite the differing damage values with Gambit's values. :)

4. Everything is compatible with everything; just load the mod you want more second.

There are other tweaks in here, such as slightly reducing (not removing) the recoil on Equinox and increasing unarmed damage.

These are basically gameplay changes that I feel (from extensive time in my personal patch) make the game objectively better. As I playtested this mod, I had to go with my gut on making the guns feel enjoyable to me.

Currently, does not touch headshot or body data, though I recommend using a mod that does that. I play with human headshots set to 2.5x from the default 2.0. I can always roll that into this mod if there is demand/need.

Note that any changes to human body data affect the player as well as NPCs, so will further increase difficulty.

Even with these changes in this mod, semi-automatic seems to get the job done better due to ammo conservation. In my initial releases, I continually try to stay close to vanilla balance for compatibility reasons. I want to help make this the best version of Starfield possible, not some parallel universe where the game is entirely different.

That being said, with certain weapon perks and situations, full automatic rifles now have a CHANCE to be the best choice.

Playing with Fully Automatic Weapons:
With the absolutely tiny magazines in the base game, it's clear that you should not actually be spraying and praying (not even against heatleeches). Even with full auto, pace your shots, use burst shots, and aim for that head.

Use fully automatic weapons the way you would in a multiplayer FPS if you want them to be viable. Don't waste shots. That being said, I did buff scavenger rank 2, so there is more ammo in the world.

Why Make This Mod?
As people played my Royal NPC leveled lists, I got reports from some that the enemies were taking 1000 bullets to kill. My gut reaction was, "yeah, you're using full auto weapons in a game with tiny magazines and that has them set to do 70% less damage per bullet. You're spending most of your time reloading."

I would rather not tell players saying leveled lists are too difficult or bullet-sponges to stop using full auto weapons. I balanced around using better guns like a semi-auto Beowulf, Va'Ruun Inflictor, shotguns, and snipers. So when players were committed to using certain weapons or full-auto rifles, my leveled lists did not feel good.

But I want everything to be fun, and slowly I realized that I was ignoring more than half of the weapons in the game because they were poorly balanced, even with other mods. As I worked, I realized that Automatic weapons have SO many drawbacks. They eat through ammo faster than you can buy. They have to reload constantly. And in exchange, they get-- 70% less damage?

So I did start to come around to the idea that maybe automatic weapons SHOULD be stronger when played perfectly.

I'd love it if we as a community got together and made one overall balance patch. That way, users don't have to hunt down a thousand files. But I think the list of mods I included here pretty much has everything you need.

As of 1/29, with GRPGRPGRP's permission-- this includes his two awesome mods, and I guess this dream has come true =)

I have also run with Early Game Weapons Empowered since I started playing. Without it, so many cool guns wouldn't be viable.

Can you make 1000 optional files?

Sure, let me know what you'd like. In general, once a modder tweak a value, it's easier for them to tweak it again than for someone else to make a new mod.

If people give me really well-thought-out numbers or rationales for specific changes, I am more likely to make those changes. The lack of DPS spreadsheets etc. for Starfield is a bit disappointing, but the vanilla balance is so random that it's barely worth taking too seriously as a starting point.

It's clear that gun balance was mostly intended to keep NPCs from being too overpowered; Bethesda probably should have just given all guns different NPC and player values the same way they did Starborn powers.

I'll make relevant patches and versions that remove features some people might not like upon request. For example, I'll put up a version that only includes the changes to full automatic damage-- but I'd rather get some feedback on the whole suite.

Every plugin increases my workload and takes away time from working on other mods that I find more fun and interesting and playing. I have also started to get wife aggro for the amount of time I spend on this stuff, as well as the same stress and pressure every modder mentions but that I never really imagined until I experienced it.

Created to try to balance out the game so it is more fun, as well as to go with my main listing making hobby.

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Royal Weapon Balance Fixes Vanilla Weapon And Combat Overhaul

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About this mod

This mod does not have any known dependencies other than the base game.

Mods requiring this file

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Translations available on the Nexus

Version 3.25

Version 3.12

Version 3.11

Version 3.10

Version 3.0

Version 2.91

Version 2.9

Version 2.8

Version 2.7

Version 2.6

Version 2.5

Version 2.01

Version 1.6

Version 1.5

Version 1.2

Version 1.1

Version 1.0

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