Crew and Companion Overhaul
Extends functionality of companions and crew, adding quality of life improvements and improved stat/skill levels for high-level gameplay.
General Changes
More Crew – Increases the default number of crew assignable to ships by 5.
Better Ship Command – Modifies the Ship Command perk to allow for 5 additional ship crew per level.
Better Crew Stations – Increases the number of crew allowed by crew stations to 5 per station.
Companion and Elite Crew Changes
Inventory Quick Access – Activating a follower with your weapon drawn will allow you to quickly access companion inventory without going through dialogue.
Companion Previews – Viewing a companions inventory through dialogue or quick access will show their appearance in the menu rather than the players.
Better Gifts – Expands the leveled lists of gifts to give more/better gifts at higher levels.
Better Gift System – Rather than repeat “I have something for you.” dozens of times until you break down and talk to them, the companion will say the dialogue once and add the item to their inventory, restarting the gift timer.
Enhance! Support – Taking a follower to an Enhance! location will give them a new dialogue option, allowing you to alter their appearance to your liking.
Additional Skills – Companions and Elite crew with less than 4 perks will have a chance for additional perks.
Leveled Skills – When loading a new game, each companions skills will be randomly leveled up to rank 4.
Improving skills – Companions and hired crew members have a 5% chance to level a skill every week.
Improved Outfits – Makes companions default outfits usable by the player and allows them to be removed from the companion.
Outfit Mirroring – When the players suit and/or helmet are visible, the current followers will be as well.
NG+ Improvements – Grants access to the followers that typically become unavailable when skipping the main story: Heller, Lin, Moara, and Rafael.
Generic Crew Changes
More Crew – Crew will have a higher chance of spawning additional recruitable crew in each location, and the timer to respawn them has been reduced to 2 of the planets days.
More Locations – Crew now spawn in additional locations, such as auto-generated civilian outposts.
Inventory Control – Crew inventories can be accessed and armor/weapons equipped using quick access or the dialogue option.
More Skill Variety – Potential list of crew members has been expanded, with higher level crews having stronger and/or more perks.
More Appearance Variety – Potential faces has been expanded to allow for more unique appearances.
Named Crew – Crew members are assigned random names. To help differentiate from elite crew in the menu, they only have a first name.
More Skills – Crew members will now have up to 3 additional perks, randomly assigned for each crew member. The higher a players level and number of NG+’s increase the chance for additional perks.
Less Generic Outfits – Crew members have been given better fashion sense, and should now wear a wider variety of clothes.
Weapon Variety – Crew can spawn with alternate weapons, rather than an across the board pistol.
Higher Levels – Crew now level up past level 5. Generic crew are roughly 75% of the players level and have improved health.
Better AI – Modified crew AI so that they will help in combat now, notably at outposts. The AI is set so that they should attack when the player or other crew is attacked, and flee if their health is low.
**Added Perks**
These are perks that are new to crew and companions in general. There is a least one generic crew that can spawn with each, elite crew and companions have a chance to gain one or more of these skills based on their vanilla loadout.
– Armor Penetration – Attacks ignore 15% of enemy armor per rank.
– Automated Weapons – Automated ship weapons do 5% more damage and reduce all targeting mode costs by 5% per rank.
– Commerce – Improves buying and selling by 3% per rank.
– Crippling – Increases chance of enemy entering bleedout state by 10% and increases damage against enemies in bleedout by 25% per rank.
– Dueling – Increases melee damage 25% and reduces damage taken 10% while weilding melee per rank.
– Engine Systems – Increases ship boost fuel by 5% and ship boost fuel recharge rate by 10% per rank.
– Gymnastics – Reduces fall damage by 10% per rank, also increases jump height and speed by 10% per rank.
– Heavy Weapons – Heavy weapons do +10% damage per rank.
– Incapacitation – EM weapons do 5% more damage per rank.
– Rapid Reloading – Companion reloads 25% faster per rank.
– Rejuvenation – Companion restore 0.5 health per second per rank in or out of combat.
– Research Methods – Increases all outpost production 2% per rank.
– Scanning – Increases planet scan range by 4 light years per rank.
– Ship Command – Functions the same as the leadership perk.
– Special Projects – Increases production of exotic and unique resources by 10% per rank.
– Starship Design – Improves ship efficiency +3% per rank (Repair Rate, Grav Jump Calculation Time, Weapon Recharge, Boost Recharge)
– Targeting – Improves weapon accuracy and range by 5% per rank.
– Targeting Control Systems – Increases chance for critical hit while locked onto a target by 3% per rank.
– Zoology – Increases organic outpost production 10% per rank.
**Expanded Perks**
Unlike most companion mods I’ve seen that modify companion perk levels, this mod adds additional effects for the levels, rather than just changing the number. The following crew perks have been edited to have 4 ranks each, following the levelling pattern set in place by the original levels.
– Aneutronic Fusion
– Demolitions
– Energy Weapon Dissipation
– Incapacitation
– Marksmanship
– Outpost Engineering
– Outpost Management
– Pain Tolerance
– Pistol Certification
– Ballistic Weapon Systems
– EM Weapon Systems
– Missile Weapon Systems
– Shotgun Certification
– Sniper Certification
– Xenosociology
– Weight Lifting – Increases carry bonus to +25 per rank.
– Wellness – Increases health bonus to +20 per rank.
**Better Perks**
These perks “control” the gifts a companion give you when following you, originally they had no actual effects, they have been improved to expand their usefulness. Higher levels of the perk will also give additional/better gifts.
– Botany – Increases organic outpost production 10% per rank.
– Chemistry – Increases gas/liquid outpost production 10% per rank.
– Geology – Increases solid outpost production 10% per rank.
– Scavenging – Increases all outpost production 1% per rank.
– Medicine – Increases aid items magnitude for player 10% for rank.
Compatibility
Since I had to add a similar function for quick access, Proper Companion Previews is incorporated into the mod.
Will conflict with other mods editing directly editing crew and companion records.
If using Generic Crew Enhanced – Outfit Modifier, that mod is no longer required.
Is compatible with mods that alter timers and number of companions such as The Gangs All Here.
Installation
1. Use mod manager to install normally or manually extract the plugin to your mod directory
2. Add “*ImprovedCompanions.esm” without quotes to your plugins.txt
Known Issues
When modifying follower appearances at Enhance!, there is a bit of script trickery in play, the only issue is that I cannot prevent the rename option from appearing to exit the appearance menu. Changing the companions name actually changes the player name, not the follower being edited, so just re-enter your player name when the prompt appears.
If anyone knows of a way to get the players name via script, it should be an easy fix if I can store the players name temporarily.
Future Plans:
Most of this will be added once the CK is released.
Add some sort of method to manually add and level crew skills. Maybe training manuals of Elder Scrolls style trainers. Not sure yet.
Allow crew to be followers.
Create my own system for allowing additional followers, but a bit more restricted then The Gangs All Here.
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