Project Viper - Covenant

Project Viper – Covenant Version 2.0.1

Wish to report bugs or want to give suggestion and feedback? access Project Viper Discord Server: https://discord.gg/sGexaVcQGA

Project Viper – Covenant introduces an entirely new paramilitary faction, unique weapons, random encounters, handcrafted points of interest (POIs), space encounters and ships scattered across the galaxy. These new locations and ambushes spawn dynamically, making exploration more unpredictable than ever.

FEATURES:

New Faction – Covenant Inc., a mysterious Va’ruun-based paramilitary agency 3 Custom Weapons – Voidlance (sniper rifle), VoidShiver (silenced particle pistol) and Voidgaze (Automatic Rifle) Dynamic Random Encounters across multiple biomes Handcrafted POIs with full enemy patrols and loot Faction Hierarchy, Units, and Mechanical Guards New Upgrades for the Covenant Weapons and suits 5 New Ships and their Variants Space and Boarding encounters fully implemented 6 new habs and 2 Stroud bridges Variants Va'ruun themed that can be built at the Outpost Ship Vendor

THE AGENCY:

Covenant Inc. is a secretive paramilitary organization originating from Va’ruun’Kai. Operating mainly out of Va’ruun territory, their motives are unclear: profit, prophecy, or power? Rumors claim the Covenant serves the will of the Great Serpent—others say they are just mercenaries in holy disguise.

VOIDTECH:

Scattered around Covenant bases are documentations that was wrote by the Covenant Paincrafters, in these documents there are instructions on how to build Void modifications as they call it for Covenant weapons and suits, these modifications can be as simple as to increase the damage of the weapon while applying poison or maybe something powerful as to scatter the shot while applying electricity on the projectiles.

SPACE AND BOARDING ENCOUNTERS:

 After a long marathon studying Creation Kit I learned how to implement fully functional Space and Boarding encounters. In Starfield there are two encounters system that exists while in space, space encounters are the markers (Sensor contact, Ship, Hostile Activity and etc...) and the boarding encounters start when you board another ship then the system will populate the interior with NPCs from the Ship's Faction both are fully implemented. There are 11 encounters in total, they are controlled by a percentage system, it will calculate the chance to spawn a space encounter every time you grav jump into a star system, these encounters has max 7% and min 2% chance of appearing (believe me these numbers are relatively high, they will spawn at a certain frequency if you jump a lot) look for "Hostile Activity" markers to find them, but if you feel confident in your pilot skills and your ship is up to the task you can travel to a fixed location in Serpentis VI where there are three Covenant Squadrons waiting to tear you ship apart, you will find almost all the base ships there with exception of the ship "Sacrament" (See the ships descriptions below). The random encounters have at max four ships and when they occur, differently from the POIs and land encounters, space encounters can spawn anywhere in the galaxy, Covenant.Inc has shady interests in space, sometimes you will stumble a boss ship, be careful they have an very powerful shield and are followed by other ships, however if you manage to disable the boss and take his/her ship you will possess one of the strongest vessels in the game. Bosses are easily identified by their unique ship names that don't follow the Starfield standard convention, they are variants from the base ships and have different colours, set of weapons and structures. Don't wait to be welcomed inside a Covenant ship as you are inside Crimson Fleet, Ecliptic or Spacers, Covenant Navy Units are aggressive and have the nasty habit of open all ship's doors when they are boarded, so save you game before boarding and when the game loads run for a cover before is too late (specially inside boss ships). The Covenant ships are fully customised, it means that forget that blind white that you usually see inside ships, Covenant habs are black with low lighting only the doors wall are white, you can build these habs, a Covenant Stroud Viking and a Covenant Stroud Kon-Tiki 300 at the get go, just visit your Ship Vendor panel at your outposts if you want to build them into your Ship. If you have any mod that increases the speed of the Ships (I'm particularly enjoy to play with the "Ship Combat Overhaul" with only the engines module installed) the Covenant ships have custom AI, the ships are more aggressive and will not run away so often creating that pesky stalemate that the four engines+ ships is used to do, at the beginning of the game making the fights more enjoyable, however Covenant ships have an absurd manoeuvrability and they will fly in circles around you if you go unprepared to fight then. Is recommended to hunt Covenant ships after the level 35, but it really depends of your pilot skill and vessel, Covenant Psalters are the most weak ships but they are fast and can pack a very painful punch if you ship is weak.

LAND ENCOUNTERS:

Project Viper - Covenant introduces two encounter types: • Organic Encounters – appear dynamically anywhere in the world. • POI-Bound Encounters – spawn within ~400 m of specific POIs. Encounters can include structures, caves, and patrols. The organic encounters spawn on: Forests (any) • Wetlands • Mountains • Hills • Sandy Deserts • Rocky Deserts • Savannas • Volcanic • Snowfields Encounters are tuned for variety and limited repetition; many can spawn only once per worldspace. Some exploration is required to discover them all – sorry, Crimson :(

PERFORMANCE NOTES:

Depending on your hardware, too many encounters can cause minor stutters. Bethesda likely avoided mid-journey encounters for this reason. You can safely use Project Viper alongside mods like Encounters- a GRiNDTerraverse PPG Stand-Alone Expansion; they sometimes interact in fun ways with each other, small price to pay for chaos.

POINTS OF INTEREST:

POIs remain separated by biome but support multi-biome spawning, there is now a level requirement for the POIs and encounters to spawn, only planets with the required conditions and level 35+ , if you are low level maybe you can go to Jaffa II and try your luck against the Covenant there, advice: scopes and long range usually is your friend when you are outleveled. Covenant Logistics Centre & Encounters – Spawn in Mountains, Volcanic, Icefields, Glacier, Snowfields and Hills. It took a lot of time to build this one, it is the biggest level I have designed so far and I sincerely hope that you enjoy exploring and fighting through it as I enjoyed building! Va’ruun Encampments & Encounters – spawn in Forests (any), Wetlands, Mountains, and Hills. Va’ruun Paramilitary Camps & Encounters – spawn in Sandy Deserts, Rocky Deserts, Savannas, and Hills.

Go to Serpentis IV and Serpentis II if you want to play the POIs at the get go, there are fixed versions of the existing ones there!

FUTURE PLANS:

I will implement very soon custom Covenant Landings on planet side to expand the ever increasing land encounters system, the star station will be added as well but this is practically another POI so it will take a time to make, as I go forward updating this mod I will add more ships, more habs and more units, I create new habs as I need them to build the ships, let me know what habs are you interested in see with a new Covenant paint. Another thing I want to learn is how to retexture and maybe even create new armour pieces, so I can get rid of those clippings on the Covenant suits, the Covenant Navy Apparel will be added at the next version.

IF UPDATING:

If you are in the fixed Covenant POIs in Serpentis II or at it's worldspace go to space save the game, update then land or Serpentis II again. If upgrading from the 1.8 version , then the whole weapon ditch thing must be done again.

!!!WARNINGS!!! !!All Star systems that are level 35+ have the "LocType35plus" Keyword, that is a requirement for the content to appear, in blunt terms, if a mod changes dramatically any Star System the system will be incapable of spawning any encounter or POI for this mod same for any completely new Star System mod like Pytheas from Starfield Eclipse , let me know if you want a patch for any new systems out there! !!Download the addon: PV - Covenant - No Star System Requirement if you have any mod that changes the levels of the Star Systems.

!!Covenant 2.0 injects NPC's inside the vanilla "BECrew" lists, in other words if another mod edit these lists the Covenant boarding encounters will be broken and only generic crew will spawn inside the ship, Watchtower is an exception since the Kinggath team made a very sophisticated system to exclude their ships from the vanilla BECrew system. I will gladly patch any mod that does that as I sincerely wish that more custom factions with custom ships and boarding encounters be made by the community, let me know if I can help you if that is the case, it's always a pleasure to help another fellow modder, send me a message!

!!The Spacesuits and Clothes were made inside the Creation Kit uses meshes and textures from the game, any retexture mod will apply on the custom suits as for example there is a suit that contains the Padded Paudrons from the UC Xeno Spacesuit, if it is retextured the item from this mod will be as well, I personally use Authority Apparel and UC Military overhaul and they fits very well.