Hatch-22 - Simple Ship Doors

"That’s some catch, that Catch-22," [Yossarian] observed. "It’s the best there is," Doc Daneeka replied.

DESCRIPTION

For years, Starfield shipbuilders have been trapped in the circular logic of the game’s door placement algorithm. You want a door; the game wants a maze. You place a companionway; the game gives you a ladder in the middle of your mess hall. You install PDY, remove its outdated dependencies, and then have to install patches for all of your hab mods. It can be a lot.

Hatch-22 offers another option. It adds a lightweight set of placeable markers so you can specify where doors and ladders appear inside your ship. Instead of replacing the vanilla connection system, this mod works with Starfield’s existing door placement algorithm. Place the hatches you definitely want, and let the game do the rest.

Hatch-22 does not give you the precise and complete control that PDY does, but it gives you options that are better than vanilla yet less difficult to maintain than PDY. It's another solution, but honestly there is no perfect solution. That's the catch.

MAIN FEATURES

Four Types of Placeable Markers

• Fore/Aft End Hatch: Generates standard round vanilla hatches, with 8 options: Open passage (no door), sliding doors, folding doors, shutter doors, fore/aft opening pressure doors, and fore/aft opening Nova pressure doors
• Port/Starboard Side Hatch: Supports side connections between habs, also with 8 options: Open passage, sliding doors, folding doors, shutter doors, port/starboard opening pressure doors, and port/starboard opening Nova pressure doors
• Up/Down Ladder Hatch: Generates ladder connections between decks. Includes a standard open version and one with a door in case you're prone to falling down hatches.
• Ladder Hatch Blocker: Prevents the game from generating a ladder hatch where it's placed.

All hatch markers:

• Appear at the top of the Habs menu
• Include custom shipbuilder icons
• Are designed for easy placement and handling, with vertical tabs so they can be seen and grabbed from between adjacent habs
• Are fully paintable
• Blend naturally into vanilla ship aesthetics

Why use Hatch-22?

• Simple: Just three hatch markers, easy to find, place, move, and paint.
• Effective: Once you place the hatches you want, the game will use that layout and just connect any unconnected habs.
• No Patches: Hatch-22 does not require compatibility patches for other hab mods like Falkland, Lambent, Stroud Premium, and (my favorite) Graf's.
• Lightweight: Hatch-22 is a Light Master. It only adds four types of markers. It works in tandem with the base game’s algorithm, not instead of it.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Install it.
2. Open the Shipbuilder and navigate to the Habs category.
3. Hover over the Hatch marker at the top of the list.
4. Snap the marker to any valid hab connection point (it will automatically choose a marker of the appropriate type).
5. Continue to place all the markers you want to specify.
6. Paint to match your ship's exterior.
7. Enjoy an interior layout that actually makes sense!

FINE PRINT (THE REAL CATCH)

Even with the best tools, the "whimsical" nature of the shipbuilder remains. Please keep these safety protocols in mind:

1. Only place hatches between habs. It's possible with my markers to open a hatch on an exterior wall if you place it that way. Don't do this. Since your spaceship interior is defined by the game as an interior cell, the outside world doesn't include some essential things - like ground collision. You'll fall forever.
2. The shipbuilder's door placement algorithm is erratic and it views hatch markers as suggestions. Sometimes, it will place redundant hatches right beside the ones you've placed. Sometimes, it will place two doors in one hatch. You can just remove that hatch marker or place an Open marker there.
3. It's totally possible to make racetrack loops inside your ship with this mod. Rarely, though, if you place too many hatches or two hatch markers in the same place, or occasionally just on a whim, the game may fail to generate a ship interior at all, resulting in an infinite fall when you enter your ship. This has been reported to happen with some double-decker habs. Be careful placing Hatch-22 markers on those habs. Save first.
4. Each hatch marker counts as a ship module. I've upgraded the ship module build limit from 130 to 200 to compensate for the extra hatch modules. If you want more, there are other mods for that. Just put them lower (after) in your load order.
5. The new ladder hatch blockers work, but some habs may not connect automatically (vanilla pathing) once you put a ladder blocker on them. The solution is to also connect a hatch marker to them.
6. NPCs will climb ladders right through the new ladder hatch doors without opening them (you can too). This can be disconcerting, but is functionally fine. The doors have collision - you can walk on them.
7. The empty habs added by SFBGS006 still spawn vanilla doors on every hatch - this is how they were were made. Just expect that if you use an empty hab, it will probably come with vanilla doors.

COMPATIBILITY

Most mods should be natively compatible with Hatch-22.

• Place Doors Yourself, the reigning giant of hatch placement, is actually compatible, but much of its functionality is redundant. Hopefully, Hatch-22 makes PDY and its patches unnecessary for most users.
• Doorway Placeholders, the current fallback hatch placer, is compatible, but redundant. Some of its hatch markers work similarly to Hatch-22.
• Other mods that use Shipbuilder Hab Menu Priority Order slot #5 will either overwrite or be overwritten by Hatch-22, depending on your load order. If you don't see my hatch markers in your Habs menu, that's probably the issue.

SHOUT OUT

I want to give a massive salute to JimSoon for his original research into shipbuilder logic. His early work paved the way for the community's understanding of how these systems function. While Hatch-22 was built entirely from scratch with original Blender assets and Creation Kit work, it stands on the shoulders of the foundational knowledge JimSoon provided the community.