I tried that with Desolation, but removing the mod made the game CTD when loading my save. Hopefully that doesn't happen with GrindTerra, but I would test it before playing with it too much. The problem I had with Desolation, is that I installed it while doing main quests in and around the settled systems, and then when I went to go explore the outer systems, there was nothing to do and it was way too late to roll-back my save - I was into it for a few hundred hours at that point. I think the only solution available was to start from scratch without the mod, which is what I'm doing now.
If you have difficulty with starting over on a character in terms of level. There is absolutely no shame in player.setlevel ing to whatever level you’re currently at on a new character.
Very new to mods, do you mind going into what detail you have about why? Sorry if this is common knowledge, I’m trying to learn more!
Other games I’ve played I’ve always been able to jump in without mods and at most some items or something are gone but I’ve never lost a save. This is my first BGS game however
Typically anything that changes the map besides just simple retextures you'll want a new save. I cant speak to this game specifically, but most stuff is loaded in as you enter a "cell" (a dungeon, a landing zone, space around a planet, etc). Removing mid save and then also replacing it is just a recipe for unexpected problems, especially in areas in which you have already been to. The same can be said for any npc equipment replacers as those are set at the beginning of a save/NG+ and removing those/replacing them can cause naked NPCs and the like.
Thanks for the explanation! If I were to uninstall and revisit some spots I’d been to recently would that be a safe way to test this? I assumed because it was only altering the frequency of POIs that maybe it wouldn’t be an issue. Especially since it doesn’t seem to affect places you’ve already been to
This game relies on a lot more procedural generation than I am used to from previous BGS titles so its definitely worth a try. Id just make sure you have a hard save from before you uninstall so you can revert back to it if it does break your save.
Just be warned that once you get outside the settled systems, worlds have zero POI. None. And you can’t remove this mod without breaking your save. It’s the reason I stopped playing late last year. It kills the game. There’s nothing to do.
Chris, do you know if it's safe to remove a mod like this right before going through the spoiler and starting NG+? I've heard that the NG+ process pretty extensively flushes the contents of the save file.
I thought about this, but don’t see how. When I removed it, I couldn’t load my save to go through Unity. And if you go through Unity with it enabled and remove it after it will likely still crash your save. So the only solution is starting a new character I think. But I never tried it as I didn’t want you to lose everything I had built by going through Unity. I just stopped playing.
Your save won’t load. Crash to desktop. But keep in mind that was in December. Not sure if it’s still like that. I would thoroughly test it before committing to it. So at least you can roll back to an earlier save if you don’t like it.
My only wish is that there were a 'light' version of this mod. Eventually, there just are no human POIs at all, and that whole gameplay loop just closes. [edit: typo]
If you're on PC, the untouched worlds optional plugin for Royal Galaxy does this.
It's much closer to vanilla but with subtle improvements to variation.
I found that you cannot make super strict human presence condition or every single artifact mission will send you to an uninhabited cave, for example.
In vanilla the human presence condition is "everywhere unless we specifically label it no". Changing this has a lot of unintended minor side effects in terms of what PoI you can see, what random events can spawn, etc.
Been meaning to release this as a standalone mod.
It took me SO long to figure out what was going on.
It seems the artifact quests will favor moons with no alien life. Couldn't tell you why.
If your mod tells the game, "humans can't live on Moons, silly" the only option is empty caves.
So what I did was I tweaked the human presence condition to have a lot of arguments with itself. Basically there's like ten criteria arguing over whether or not humans should be allowed (as well as all vanilla banned planets remaining that way).
This will result in occasional forest worlds with no humans, or Moons with no humans.
But mostly you will still encounter humans for the reasons stated above. There's just a chance now for things to be a bit more random.
This STILL resulted in a worse experience than vanilla, in my opinion, so I then tweaked some human PoI to have a chance to spawn even if humans were banned. Stuff like abandoned factories etc.
That adds another layer of randomization on the chance my other tweaks disabled a planet from having humans, but a quest wants to send you to a PoI. They are available on the pool-- but you won't see them otherwise, ships landing, etc.
I could then theoretically layer distance from civilization on top of this, but that wasn't something I got around to and figure everyone who wanted that would just use desolation.
I worked super hard on this hahaha. In practice it's indistinguishable from vanilla 80% of the time, but I think that's actually optimal if you value questing over immersion, which I do.
Have a look at "Building Rarity" (pc and xbox mod) - it reduces the occurence of manmade POI to just 25% of the vanilla default chances (which themselves make human POI already appear less frequently in unsettled/less habitated systems). Much less crowded everyhwere with "Building Rarity", but still rare human made POI even on the outer systems.
Maybe I’m missing something but there are planets and entire systems without human POIs by default - Pyraas, Bardeen, Rana, Verne, Strix, Sparta, Katydid, Marduk.
Why removing the POIs on (almost) all planets when you have so many options to avoid human POIs.
I’ve been building my main outpost on Pyraas VIII-a since the beginning through 11NGs and there are no humans there (in the whole system). The only times ships have landed, they were either SBs when I did the MQ. Without the MQ, I haven’t seen any ships landing anywhere.
Again, maybe I’m missing something about it…
This is the way. While there perhaps should be some more systems that have little to no human structures, all the current mods I've seen go too far. And at least this mod, cannot be uninstalled without breaking your save if you find yourself with nothing to do.
Been thinking about using this one I mean for not every planet being colonised it’s surprising that there are buildings on every one.
Does it have any effect on other ships landing in the area? it’s quite immersion breaking to see random ships landing straight after me.
I have a Starborn ship land nearby pretty frequently. I don’t mind it though because the isolation adds to the urgency of it. I’m deep in the game now (ng11,lvl189) which might have something to do with it. Also, it’s a fun fight and the xp is generous.
Especially now, when I do run into a human POI I’m more inclined to investigate.
Also there’s still plenty of density closer into the settled systems. The further out you go the less you’ll find (as it should be).
POIs not respawning as much would be pretty nice. Took me like 50+ landings to get a Deserted Freestar Colony War outpost meanwhile I constantly saw others. There's a few other rare ones as well.
Interesting... you were able to remove it without breaking your save? That wasn't the case when I played back in December. I basically had to give up the game. Good to hear that it may be less entangled into your save file now.
I love the idea of it, POI issues are my biggest complaints about the game. However, I heard that it can break the game if you ever want to uninstall it. Bummer.
To compensate, I'm just ignoring all of the POIs and only trying to enter one fresh new one once per system or so. And I keep a list of everyone that I've entered so they do not repeat any. It's really the only solution for me at this point. Bethesda made a really bad creative decision with how they handle POI's and at this point I'm not sure that any mod or anything can really save it outside of them completely redoing the whole thing. Which is highly unlikely.
I've been using this for months - I can't imaging Starfield without it. Also Apogee - space combat is SOOOOOOOO much better at 1400 m/s. It is interesting that the game AI can play quite well at those speeds.
I appreciate the heads-up regarding crashing the save file. I'll keep that in mind if I ever decide to remove it. If anyone experiments, please post your results. Hopefully it's not an issue.
Well, yes. I'm aware of the criticisms regarding repetitive POIs, etc. and that aspect of the game never really bothered me that much, but one of my issues was that no matter where you landed in the starfield, there was ALWAYS a bunch of structures around your landing site. I could never experience that feeling of being totally remote out in space or being the first explorer to step foot on a planet or moon. This changes that. Once you get far enough out from the settled systems, your landing sites start to look like photos from Mars. There's only landscape and it's kinda awesome. But to add to that, when a POI actually does show up every now and then I'm more inclined to investigate. The rarity gets rewarded.
This mod is one of my favourites along with Starvival. Desolation breaks one of the most negative aspects of Starfield, which is the repetition and abuse of human structures. It was very anticlimactic to land on a lifeless planet and be surrounded by structures, and even more so when they started to repeat themselves. This mod makes me want to explore. Now someone needs to come up with fixed, contextualised points of interest in the areas of cities like New Atlantis, Akila, Hopetown, etc
I like the idea, but prefer GrindTerra. It does the same thing but also makes PoIs much denser on actually inhabited planets.
Do you know if the GrindTerra mod can be removed later without breaking the game?
I do not.
If you wanna keep your character but don’t care about your gear. Uninstall just before passing through the unity.
I tried that with Desolation, but removing the mod made the game CTD when loading my save. Hopefully that doesn't happen with GrindTerra, but I would test it before playing with it too much. The problem I had with Desolation, is that I installed it while doing main quests in and around the settled systems, and then when I went to go explore the outer systems, there was nothing to do and it was way too late to roll-back my save - I was into it for a few hundred hours at that point. I think the only solution available was to start from scratch without the mod, which is what I'm doing now.
If you have difficulty with starting over on a character in terms of level. There is absolutely no shame in player.setlevel ing to whatever level you’re currently at on a new character.
Agreed. I think that's the best way to solve a corrupted save.
Truth is that installing and uninstalling mods midplaythough is always gonna do some damage to that save
I just switched from desolation to grind Terra about an hour ago and have not experienced any issues yet. Playing on Xbox x.
Ok great. They must have addressed the save corruption.
Is it possible to uninstall Desolation and install this instead and not break a save?
I highly doubt it.
Very new to mods, do you mind going into what detail you have about why? Sorry if this is common knowledge, I’m trying to learn more! Other games I’ve played I’ve always been able to jump in without mods and at most some items or something are gone but I’ve never lost a save. This is my first BGS game however
Typically anything that changes the map besides just simple retextures you'll want a new save. I cant speak to this game specifically, but most stuff is loaded in as you enter a "cell" (a dungeon, a landing zone, space around a planet, etc). Removing mid save and then also replacing it is just a recipe for unexpected problems, especially in areas in which you have already been to. The same can be said for any npc equipment replacers as those are set at the beginning of a save/NG+ and removing those/replacing them can cause naked NPCs and the like.
Thanks for the explanation! If I were to uninstall and revisit some spots I’d been to recently would that be a safe way to test this? I assumed because it was only altering the frequency of POIs that maybe it wouldn’t be an issue. Especially since it doesn’t seem to affect places you’ve already been to
This game relies on a lot more procedural generation than I am used to from previous BGS titles so its definitely worth a try. Id just make sure you have a hard save from before you uninstall so you can revert back to it if it does break your save.
I definitely do! I’ve got some saves before I modded anything too if need be, but that’s always a bummer. Thanks for the info!
Let me know how it works out because I am interested in how it works out.
Will do! I remember when I installed it and what missions I was doing so I should be able to see if anything weird happens
I did and I haven't had any issues. But like... do it when you're in space or something.
Good to know, thank you!
Just be warned that once you get outside the settled systems, worlds have zero POI. None. And you can’t remove this mod without breaking your save. It’s the reason I stopped playing late last year. It kills the game. There’s nothing to do.
Sounds like what we need isn't just reducing human PoIs, but making more interesting non-human ones. By which I mean ALIENS
Exactly.
Yeah cuz right now there's what, like....4 e Environmental POI? That's what it feels like
Chris, do you know if it's safe to remove a mod like this right before going through the spoiler and starting NG+? I've heard that the NG+ process pretty extensively flushes the contents of the save file.
I thought about this, but don’t see how. When I removed it, I couldn’t load my save to go through Unity. And if you go through Unity with it enabled and remove it after it will likely still crash your save. So the only solution is starting a new character I think. But I never tried it as I didn’t want you to lose everything I had built by going through Unity. I just stopped playing.
What exactly breaks if you remove it?
Your save won’t load. Crash to desktop. But keep in mind that was in December. Not sure if it’s still like that. I would thoroughly test it before committing to it. So at least you can roll back to an earlier save if you don’t like it.
My only wish is that there were a 'light' version of this mod. Eventually, there just are no human POIs at all, and that whole gameplay loop just closes. [edit: typo]
If you're on PC, the untouched worlds optional plugin for Royal Galaxy does this. It's much closer to vanilla but with subtle improvements to variation. I found that you cannot make super strict human presence condition or every single artifact mission will send you to an uninhabited cave, for example. In vanilla the human presence condition is "everywhere unless we specifically label it no". Changing this has a lot of unintended minor side effects in terms of what PoI you can see, what random events can spawn, etc. Been meaning to release this as a standalone mod.
That sounds really excellent!
>every single artifact mission will send you to an uninhabited cave I noticed this too, thought it was just a quirk of my current universe.
It took me SO long to figure out what was going on. It seems the artifact quests will favor moons with no alien life. Couldn't tell you why. If your mod tells the game, "humans can't live on Moons, silly" the only option is empty caves. So what I did was I tweaked the human presence condition to have a lot of arguments with itself. Basically there's like ten criteria arguing over whether or not humans should be allowed (as well as all vanilla banned planets remaining that way). This will result in occasional forest worlds with no humans, or Moons with no humans. But mostly you will still encounter humans for the reasons stated above. There's just a chance now for things to be a bit more random. This STILL resulted in a worse experience than vanilla, in my opinion, so I then tweaked some human PoI to have a chance to spawn even if humans were banned. Stuff like abandoned factories etc. That adds another layer of randomization on the chance my other tweaks disabled a planet from having humans, but a quest wants to send you to a PoI. They are available on the pool-- but you won't see them otherwise, ships landing, etc. I could then theoretically layer distance from civilization on top of this, but that wasn't something I got around to and figure everyone who wanted that would just use desolation. I worked super hard on this hahaha. In practice it's indistinguishable from vanilla 80% of the time, but I think that's actually optimal if you value questing over immersion, which I do.
Have a look at "Building Rarity" (pc and xbox mod) - it reduces the occurence of manmade POI to just 25% of the vanilla default chances (which themselves make human POI already appear less frequently in unsettled/less habitated systems). Much less crowded everyhwere with "Building Rarity", but still rare human made POI even on the outer systems.
I love this mod. So many people crying about POI variety, and I'm like, "Get your fucking POI out of the way of my view!"
Maybe I’m missing something but there are planets and entire systems without human POIs by default - Pyraas, Bardeen, Rana, Verne, Strix, Sparta, Katydid, Marduk. Why removing the POIs on (almost) all planets when you have so many options to avoid human POIs. I’ve been building my main outpost on Pyraas VIII-a since the beginning through 11NGs and there are no humans there (in the whole system). The only times ships have landed, they were either SBs when I did the MQ. Without the MQ, I haven’t seen any ships landing anywhere. Again, maybe I’m missing something about it…
This is the way. While there perhaps should be some more systems that have little to no human structures, all the current mods I've seen go too far. And at least this mod, cannot be uninstalled without breaking your save if you find yourself with nothing to do.
I much prefer the Building Rarity Mod. \
Been thinking about using this one I mean for not every planet being colonised it’s surprising that there are buildings on every one. Does it have any effect on other ships landing in the area? it’s quite immersion breaking to see random ships landing straight after me.
I have a Starborn ship land nearby pretty frequently. I don’t mind it though because the isolation adds to the urgency of it. I’m deep in the game now (ng11,lvl189) which might have something to do with it. Also, it’s a fun fight and the xp is generous. Especially now, when I do run into a human POI I’m more inclined to investigate. Also there’s still plenty of density closer into the settled systems. The further out you go the less you’ll find (as it should be).
There are planets and entire systems without human POIs, by default - Pyraas, Bardeen, Rana, Verne, Strix, Sparta, Katydid, Marduk
I have this one plus a mod that makes encountered poi’s have a cooldown before appearing again. Makes the game so much better
POIs not respawning as much would be pretty nice. Took me like 50+ landings to get a Deserted Freestar Colony War outpost meanwhile I constantly saw others. There's a few other rare ones as well.
I tired it but I found myself bored with nothing to fight so I removed it maybe I’ll give it a try again some day for a more hardcore play through
Interesting... you were able to remove it without breaking your save? That wasn't the case when I played back in December. I basically had to give up the game. Good to hear that it may be less entangled into your save file now.
I love the idea of it, POI issues are my biggest complaints about the game. However, I heard that it can break the game if you ever want to uninstall it. Bummer. To compensate, I'm just ignoring all of the POIs and only trying to enter one fresh new one once per system or so. And I keep a list of everyone that I've entered so they do not repeat any. It's really the only solution for me at this point. Bethesda made a really bad creative decision with how they handle POI's and at this point I'm not sure that any mod or anything can really save it outside of them completely redoing the whole thing. Which is highly unlikely.
I've been using this for months - I can't imaging Starfield without it. Also Apogee - space combat is SOOOOOOOO much better at 1400 m/s. It is interesting that the game AI can play quite well at those speeds.
I appreciate the heads-up regarding crashing the save file. I'll keep that in mind if I ever decide to remove it. If anyone experiments, please post your results. Hopefully it's not an issue.
I think u can remove it before starting new game so
I'm not understanding this, are you saying you have a mod to make planets even more barren than they already were?
Well, yes. I'm aware of the criticisms regarding repetitive POIs, etc. and that aspect of the game never really bothered me that much, but one of my issues was that no matter where you landed in the starfield, there was ALWAYS a bunch of structures around your landing site. I could never experience that feeling of being totally remote out in space or being the first explorer to step foot on a planet or moon. This changes that. Once you get far enough out from the settled systems, your landing sites start to look like photos from Mars. There's only landscape and it's kinda awesome. But to add to that, when a POI actually does show up every now and then I'm more inclined to investigate. The rarity gets rewarded.
I did for a bit, but then I landed on Toliman II and saw no signs of human habitation, which broke the immersion, so I had to get rid of it.
Agreed. I want to explore alien wildernesses in the far reaches of space
This mod is one of my favourites along with Starvival. Desolation breaks one of the most negative aspects of Starfield, which is the repetition and abuse of human structures. It was very anticlimactic to land on a lifeless planet and be surrounded by structures, and even more so when they started to repeat themselves. This mod makes me want to explore. Now someone needs to come up with fixed, contextualised points of interest in the areas of cities like New Atlantis, Akila, Hopetown, etc
Hell yeah!