Extremophile - Environmental Gameplay

Extremophile is a lightweight, Vanilla+ overhaul to Environmental Damage and Hazards in Starfield.

FEEDBACK

If you encounter any issues, please let me know. You may join the Spacefarer Discord at https://discord.gg/YQHjkGd89x or via the QR code. I can also be reached in the official BGS Discord as S1nderion.

SUIT PROTECTION

To restore Suit Protection, you can build and utilize a Decontamination Station aboard your ship or at an outpost. This Station will rapidly restore your Protection up to maximum. Installing the Hazard Protection Pack Mod enables Protection Regeneration in safe areas.

ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE

Injectors must now be used to enable natural healing of Enviro-Damage over time while resting or waiting. Boosted Injectors will heal around 30% of Enviro-Damage, but offer a shorter window of natural healing afterwards. Alternatively, reaching Rejuvenation Rank 3 will allow passive healing, with a new associated Skill Challenge.

Being cured of Afflictions by a Doctor will also remove all accumulated Enviro-Damage instantly, should you prefer.

THRESHOLD DAMAGE

In Extremophile, extreme Weather or Planetary Conditions can trigger Environmental Damage even while Suit Protection is still active. This is referred to as Threshold Damage, and typically begins once 25% of Suit Protection has been depleted.

Threshold Damage can be totally nullified by reaching a flat value of 75 for the appropriate Resistance. For example, to explore Deep Freeze planets indefinitely, you would need 75+ Thermal Resist. There are some other mitigations; such as Solar Radiation only applying outdoors, allowing you to take shelter realistically.

Careful preparation, skill choice, and suit selection are now required for safe exploration.

THRESHOLD RESIST

A new Derived Attribute, referred to as Threshold Resist, is calculated based off of the sum of all Resistances. This new Resistance value determines how much Threshold Damage you take. Threshold Resist makes optimizing gear and skills more rewarding in more diverse gameplay scenarios.

If you have 50 of each Resistance, your Threshold Resist would be 200 / 400, providing a 50% reduction to all Threshold Damage. Threshold Resist scales smoothly from 15% to 85%.

Raising any resistance can now contribute to your survival in hostile planetary environments.

AFFLICTION CHANGES

The chance to prevent Affliction gain from Conditions (like Heatstroke from Ambient Heat) scales based on your current Environmental Damage. By default, there is an 80% added chance to resist Afflictions at 20% or lower Enviro Damage. This buff drops to 0% once you have taken 50% Enviro Damage.

Injuries, such as falling or taking damage in combat, can still be gained at any time.

REBALANCE

A variety of values and mechanics around the vanilla system have been rebalanced.

If you take off your helmet where you're not supposed to, you will probably die. Your Maximum Suit Protection is raised from 100 to 150. Taking Environmental Conditioning 2 will raise your Maximum Protection to 250. Some Environmental Resistance is added to all Packs according to Quality Tier. The Pack Mod: Hazard Protection has 10 Thermal and Airborne resistance, up from 5. Suit Protection is lost more quickly in inclement weather. Protection Loss scales less strongly on the number of active weather conditions. Direct Environmental Damage from Hazards (Gas Vents, etc) is slightly increased.

FIXES & Q.O.L.

Many of these will be familiar from other mods.

Weather environmental damage is accurately resisted by your Resist Values. Watch beeping is silenced. A simple watch notification is triggered when Suit Protection is nearly depleted. Threshold Damage starting is also indicated by a watch notification.

COMPATIBILITY

Recommendations Excursion - Zero Atmosphere Survival is compatible and works great alongside Extremophile. Real O2 is compatible as well. Suit Up will make avoiding Threshold Damage easier with some spacesuit types. You can reach the required resist values without Suit Up, so it is by no means required.

Load Order Load this mod after other major overhauls (Starvival, etc.) to ensure its record changes take priority. There are relatively few record changes in Extremophile, but all of them are required for the system to work properly.

Incompatible Mods Deadly Hazards or other comprehensive Hazard overhauls are generally incompatible.

CONFIGURATION

[LIGHTWEIGHT] disables auxiliary systems (Threshold Damage, Regen Limits, etc.) and resets some vanilla exposure values. [IMMERSIVE] is the default experience, with all systems enabled but less aggressive damage. [DEADLY] significantly increases values relating to constant and burst environmental damage and protection loss.

Please note that Lightweight is not the same as "Disabled". Some intrinsic features will still be present due to the largely non-scripted implementation of new features.

All vanilla options for Afflictions are expected to be set all the way to the right. You can try using the mod with any combination of vanilla settings, but they may not always be respected by the mod.

MIRRORS AND CONTACT

This mod is also hosted on Nexus mods at https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/15601 As of version 0.25 the uploaded files are identical between versions. The .esp plugin and script source are available at the above link.

CREDITS

Thanks to OpheliaComplex for this guide on using Blender to generate collisions. The files to mute watch beeping sounds were borrowed from Deadly Hazards.