NEWS

SCO version 1.2.0 has been released!
Revised changes to weapons balance. Tweaks in Sustenance settings and healing items. Also added new downloadable PDF file with all weapon and ammo stats! See changelog for details.
Full list of all changes made by SCO can be seen below in the mod description.


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Table of contents:
1. Introduction
2. Detailed mod changes
- Health scaling
- Weapons
- Ammo
- Modifications
- Legendary effects
- Healing
- Armor
- Traits
- Skills
- Magazines
- Sustenance
- Miscellaneous
3. Recommended Gameplay Settings
4. Installation
5. Known issues



1. Introduction

The Problem:
Health and damage scaling in vanilla Starfield is bonkers at later levels. Player and NPC health increases rapidly with each level. With multiple skills and weapon modifications that increase damage multiplicatively, the weapon damage can go up to absurd amounts. Grenades and explosives become useless very early. This results in a gameplay loop where at a certain point, hardly anything can seriously harm the player, making combat stale and boring.

The Solution:
Redone health scaling. Health ranges for player and NPCs have been adjusted to make more sense. No more human beings that have 10x more health than others. Rebalanced ranged and melee weapons to be deadly across ALL levels. Rebalanced combat-related skills to be more useful or less overpowered, where necessary. Reworked weapon modifications to go in line with the new damage thresholds. The maximum combined damage boost from skills, weapon tiers and weapon mods go more or less in line the maximum health increase of enemies. The damage/health increase is not as drastic as in vanilla, roughly 2 times the starting amount at higher levels.

The Result:
Combat became fast, deadly and fun. Gameplay rewards tactical approach towards fighting and good use of resources. The world becomes harsher and more immersive. Enemies are a threat regardless of their level. Groups of low level NPCs can still be a danger to a high level player. If you run in guns blazing into a room full of enemies armed with automatic weapons... you WILL die. Cover, stealth, range, grenades, mines, consumables are necessary for survival. Intimidation and persuasion is now a compelling choice to get out of a bad situation. Social skills now have more meaningful combat applications.



2. Detailed mod changes

Health Scaling:

• Removed additional health gained from levels for both Player and NPCs. No more bullet sponges. Levelling up will no longer make you or your enemies more resistant by default.
• Player starts with base Health of 200. You can increase it via the Wellness skill and also temporarily by using consumables. Wellness skill effectiveness has been increased to follow the health progression established by the mod.
• Enemies have had their health adjusted. Human enemies have a similar health range, depending on their combat experience. Higher level enemies will still be stronger and more resilient, but not up to absurd levels of durability. Also NPCs associated with military training will have naturally more health. So expected Spacer to be less resilient than an Ecliptic mercenary at the same level.
• With SCO, both you and human enemies have similar durability and deal similar damage with weapons. "Normal" Player Damage and Enemy Damage difficulty settings are recommended to ensure fair fights.
• Non-human enemies are also affected, but you should still expect dangerous species to be quite durable. Fighting a Terrormorph should be a memorable experience.
• Armor matters more. With lower health pools for all enemies, armor is your best defense against enemy fire.
  

Weapons:

• Melee weapons adjusted to be more deadly. DO NOT ignore enemies with melee weapons charging at you. Changed swing speed for several weapons to make them more unique. Now heavier weapons (Rescue Axe, Cutlass) with higher damage will swing slower, while very small weapons (Ripshank, Combat Knife) will swing very fast.
• Increased base damage for unarmed attacks and increased swing speed. Makes unarmed builds more viable.   
• Ranged weapons damage adjusted to make more sense based on caliber used.
• Ranged weapons have had their fire rate adjusted to make them more varied.
• Removed the fake fire rate adjustments done through receivers. Now rate of fire is determined by the weapon itself and NOT the receiver type (auto, semi, burst). This makes it a reasonable choice to use semi-auto weapons instead of always going full-auto, since they can produce similar DPS.
• Weapon tiers have been normalized. Now each new weapon tier increases the damage dealt by 10%. Advanced/Quantum-edged weapons will deal 30% more damage than their regular counterparts. This makes low level weapons still very deadly in the hands on NPCs. No more players face-tanking rifle shots at level 100.
• Recoil increased for all guns. Makes recoil-adjusting mods much more important, especially for full-auto weapons. No more pray-and-spray.
• Particle Beam weapons now deal equal physical and energy damage.
• Reload speed lowered for all guns by 20%. Now it might actually be a good idea to take out a backup weapon once your magazine runs empty.
• "DiminishSpringForce" parameter is now set to 0 for all guns. What this means is that the gun reticle will not reset to the initial position after a shot. Manual aim adjustment is necessary. This makes using full-auto weapons harder, but makes shooting feel much more realistic.
• Increased damage of grenades and mines to make them a viable option at any level.
• Kraken: Changed caliber to .27. A pistol should not be able to hold intermediate rifle rounds in a magazine as small as this.
• AA-99: Changed caliber to 6.5mm. This was done to give the 6.5mm caliber a bit more presence. Also, the size of both guns and their magazines are similar, so the new caliber makes sense. 
• Microgun: Changed caliber to 6.5mm. Real life XM214 Microgun uses 5.56 NATO rounds. I assumed in 24th century the 6.5mm round is the replacement for 5.56mm as a new standard intermediate caliber, so it makes sense that the futuristic equivalent of the XM214 should also be chambered in 6.5mm.
• Magsniper: Changed caliber to .50 MI Array.
• Va'ruun Inflictor: Name changed to Inflictor.
• Va'ruun Starshard: Name changed to Starshard.
• Va'ruun Painblade: Name changed to Painblade.
• Eon: Added Advanced tier.
• Equinox: Added Advanced tier.
• Rattler: Added Advanced tier.
• Sidestar: Added Advanced tier.
  

Ammo:

• Lowered the amount of ammo found in the world by roughly half. Since weapons are more deadly, less ammo is used to dispatch with enemies. This makes it also more logical to carry a sidearm in case you are running low on ammo for your main weapon. 
• Ammo price increased for (almost) all types of ammo. It will be much more economically efficient to use smaller caliber guns for weaker enemies... or simply take out that knife and start cutting.
• Ammo weight increased for most ammo types. Smaller rounds weight more or less the same as in vanilla game. Bigger rounds have their weight increased to make logical sense. There will be NO MORE rifle rounds that weight less than a pistol round.
  

Modifications:

• Receivers: Removed damage penalties from all full-auto and burst fire modes. 
• Adjusted damage modifiers for all modifications to go in line with the new damage thresholds for weapons. This means most mods will offer smaller bonuses compared to vanilla game.
• Internals / Amplifier: Reduced damage bonus from 15% to 10%.
• Internals / High Powered: Reduced damage bonus from 15% to 10%.
• Internals / Hair Trigger: Fire rate left unchanged at 20%. This means that High Powered is more ammo efficient, while Hair Trigger is the best option for pure DPS.
• Magazines / Armor Piercing Rounds: Removed damage bonus. Lowered armor penetration from 25% to 20%. Description now shows the bonus 50% critical damage that was present in the vanilla game, but never mentioned in the description.
• Magazines / Depleted Uranium Rounds: Removed damage bonus. Armor penetration stays at 40% (same as vanilla). Bonus range is no longer always a fixed value, instead weapon range is increased by 20%.
• Magazines / Flechette: Lowered damage bonus from 20% to 5%.
• Magazines / Gun Buster: Removed damage bonus. Area damage behind target left unchanged.
• Magazines / Ignition Beams: Lowered damage bonus from 20% to 5%.
• Magazines / Penetrator Rounds: Removed damage bonus. Penetration effect left unchanged.
• Magazines / Slug Shots: Removed damage bonus. Accuracy and range boosts left unchanged.
• Magazines / Explosive Rounds: Lowered damage bonus from 20% to 5%.
• Barrels / Magnetic Rails: Lowered damage bonus from 15% to 5%.
• Muzzle / Focus Nozzle: Lowered damage bonus from 10% to 5%.
  

Legendary effects:

• Anti-Ballistic: Ballistic damage reduction lowered from 15% to 10%.
• Ablative: Energy damage reduction lowered from 15% to 10%.
• Beast Hunter: Alien enemy damage reduction increased from 15% to 20%.
• Combat Veteran: Human enemy damage reduction lowered from 15% to 10%.
• Sturdy: Melee damage reduction lowered increased from 15% to 20%.
• Technician: Robot enemy damage reduction increased from 15% to 20%.
• Sentinel: Damage reduction while standing still lowered from 50% to 25%.
• Armor-Plated: Physical, Energy and EM damage reduction lowered from 10% to 5%.
• Titanium Build: Weapon weight reduction lowered from 95% to 50%.
• Instigating: Deals 50% more damage (down from 100%) to targets at full health.
• Cornered: Lowered maximum available damage from 50% to 25%. Changed damage thresholds from 5% per every 10% missing health, to 5% per every 20% missing health. This means you will receive a maximum damage boost of 25% when below 20% health.
• Furious: Lowered maximum available damage from 30% to 25%. Maximum damage is achieved after hitting the target 5 times.
• Berserker: Lowered maximum available damage from 50% to 30%. Maximum damage is achieved when below 50 DR. No bonus damage when above 300 DR.
• Space-Adept: Lowered damage bonus in space from 30% to 20%. Lowered damage penalty on planet from 15% to 10%.
• Crippling: Lowered bonus damage to limbs from 30% to 20%. Changed description to match reality.
• Hitman: Lowered bonus damage while aiming from 15% to 10%.
• Incendiary: Increased chance to catch fire from 9% t0 10%. Slightly lowered damage done against robots.
• Lacerate: Increased chance to cause bleeding from 8% to 10%. Lowered bleed duration from 12 sec to 10 sec.
• Poison: Increased chance to apply poison from 13% to 15%. Poison duration extended from 10 sec to 20 sec. Lowered poison damage from 0.2 to 01. Slow effect extended. Now poison applies the same damage over a longer period of time, but also slows targets for longer.
• Radioactive: Lowered chance to apply radioactive damage from 11% to 10%. Damage and demoralize effect duration lowered from 6 sec to 5 sec.
• Corrosive: Lowered chance to apply corrosive effect from 15% to 10%. Damage magnitude lowered from 0.15 to 0.05. Resistance reduction lowered from 35% to 25%. Resistance reduction duration extended from 10 sec to 20 sec.
• Rapid: Attack speed bonus lowered from 25% to 15%.
• Handloading: Completely reworked. Instead of applying random damage modifiers, it now provides a 10% damage increase, but lowers gun accuracy by 20%.
• Staggering: Stagger chance increased from 8% to 10%.
• Demoralizing: Demoralize effect duration lowered from 15 sec to 10 sec.
• One Inch Punch: Bonus damage lowered from 100% to 50%. Fire rate penalty lowered from -35% to -20%. Range is no longer always set to the same value, but calculated as 75% of the original weapons range.
• Shattering: Removed bonus damage. Armor penetration lowered from 30% to 25%.
  

Healing:

• Healing items have been rebalanced with their intended usage in mind. Mend Packs are "general use" healing items, offering biggest healing, but at a very slow rate. They are best used at the end of combat, when its safe. Trauma Packs are a compromise: they work faster, but don't heal as much. Emergency Kits heal very quickly, but the least amount. They are ideal for a quick burst of health during a fight.
• Med Pack: Restores 4% Health for 10 sec (40% health total). Value increased from 525 to 600.
• Trauma Pack: Restores 8% Health for 4 sec (32% health total). Value increased from 595 to 700.
• Emergency Kit: Restores 12% Health for 2 sec (24% health total). Value increased from 665 to 800.
• Medicine Skill will increase amount of health restored up to 100%, but will not affect healing speed.
• IMPORTANT: When the "Medical Item Healing" difficulty setting is set to "Slowly", medical items will be healing 4 times slower, but restore the same amount of health over time. Due to an engine bug, the descriptions do not show decimal points. So sometimes, you will see strange descriptions like "Heals 0% per second for 40 seconds". This is only a visual bug and the items still heal the correct amount.
• Weight increased for all from 0.1 to 0.2. Does not have effect currently, but will be an important fact, when at some point we get a new gameplay difficulty slider for medical item weight (like we did with ammo).
  

Armor:

• Adjusted crimson fleet armor tiers to follow the same upgrade path as other armors. Now they are no longer severely underperforming.
  

Traits:

• Alien DNA: Lowered bonus health from 50% to 25%. Lowered bonus Oxygen from 50% to 25%.
• Terra Firma: Lowered bonus health from 50% to 25%. Lowered bonus Oxygen from 50% to 25%.
• Introvert: Oxygen consumption bonus lowered from 30% to 25%.
• Extrovert: Oxygen consumption bonus lowered from 30% to 25%.
• Wanted: Bonus damage stars working when below 50% health (up from 20% health). Bonus damage lowered from 20% to 10%.
  

Skills:

• Dueling: Ranks 1-3 increase melee weapon damage by 15/30/50%. Increased damage reduction from rank 3 from 15% to 20%. 
• Lasers: Fixed rank 4 to apply only to laser weapons. Particle Beam weapons no longer gain increased damage or ignite effect from rank 4 of this skill.
• Ballistics: Rank 4 now grants 25% bonus crit damage. Bonus range removed.
• Particle Beams: Rank 4 now grants 10% bonus crit chance (up from 5%).
• Incapacitation: Ranks 1-3 grant 10/20/30% EM damage increase. Rank 4 left unchanged.
• Crippling: All ranks now affect all enemy types. Bonus damage to downed enemies at rank 4 has been lowered to 50%. Skill challenge requirements have been lowered.
• Demolitions: Ranks adjusted to match new damage scaling and so that each rank is unique. Rank 4 no longer "doubles everything".
• Rapid Reloading: Ranks 1-3 decrease reload speed by 10/20/30% for ALL weapons. Now it makes sense to take multiple ranks, rather than just the first. Rank 4 grants complete stagger immunity while reloading, not just half the time. Removed the magical 50% reload speed on enemy hit from rank 4.
• Wellness: Each rank increases player health by 25%, up to 100% bonus health at rank 4. This skill is now the main source of extra health for the player, since health is no longer granted on each level up. Skill challenge requirements have been increased.
• Fitness: Each rank increases player oxygen by 25%, up to 100% bonus oxygen at rank 4. Power attack and sprinting bonuses from rank 4 have been lowered to compensate.
• Medicine: Each rank increases health restored by medical items by 25%, up to 100% increased effectiveness at rank 4. Ranks no longer increase healing speed. This makes healing mid-combat a more tactical decision since it will take more time. Skill challenge requirements have been lowered.
• Marksmanship: Rank 1-3 increase critical hit chance for non-automatic weapons by 5/10/15%. Rank 4 left unchanged.
• Sharpshooting: Ranks 1-3 increase critical hit damage by 15/30/50% regardless of hit location. Rank 4 left unchanged.
• Targeting: Removed bonus range from all ranks.
• Sniper Certification: Rank 4 no longer increases damage o scoped weapons while aiming. Instead it increases the headshot crit chance by 50% (up from 25%).
• Pistol certification: Ranks 1-3 now add 15/30/50% increased headshot damage, rather than increased damage for all attacks. Rank 4 left unchanged. This makes up for lower damage of pistols caliber rounds, making them great at short-range one-shot kills.
• Rifle Certification: Removed damage bonuses. Ranks 1-3 provide up 10/20/30% increased range. Rank 4 increases reload speed while standing still by 20% (down from 30%).
• Heavy Weapon Certification: Ranks no longer increase heavy weapons damage. Instead, each rank give increased physical damage resistance when aiming a heavy weapon, up to 25% at rank 4.
• Shotgun Certification: Removed damage bonuses. Ranks 1-3 provide up 10/20/30% lower shotgun spread. Rank 4 left unchanged.
• Environmental Conditioning: Ranks 1-3 increase resistance to ALL environment damage by 5/10/15 points. Rank 4 left unchanged.
• Stealth: Removed sneak attack damage bonuses. At Rank 3 running no longer affects detection chance.
• Concealment: Removed ability to ignore mines. Silent running no longer granted at rank 2 (moved to Stealth rank 3).
• Weight Lifting: Skill challenge requirements have been lowered.
• Crippling: Rank 4 bonus damage to downed enemies lowered from 50% to 25%.
• Armor Penetration: Ranks 1-3 increase armor penetration by 15/20/30%. Rank 4 left unchanged.
• Isolation: Damage and DR bonuses lowered. Now each rank grants 5% damage boost and 10 DR per Spacesuit and Helmet when travelling alone. Rank 4 maxes out at 20% damage and 40 DR, down from the vanilla 40% damage and 60 DR.
  

Magazines:

• Cyber Runner's Cipher: Rank 4 stealth increased from 1% to 5%. Rank 5 faster Tech skills unlock changed to faster Science skill unlock. Unlock speed increased from 2% to 5%. Fixed additional bankable hacking auto-attempt not working at rank 4 and 5.
• Freestar Captain's Log: Rank 2 unarmed/melee disarm chance increased from 1 % to 5%.
• Gunslinger's Guide: Improved perk descriptions.
• Grunt: Improved perk descriptions.
• Kryx's Journal: Rank 1 buy/sell prices improved from 2% to 5%. Rank 5 faster Social skills unlock increased from 2% to 5%.
• Peak Performance: Rank 4 no-addiction chance improved from 2% to 5%. Rank 5 faster Physical skills unlock increased from 2% to 5%.
• Va'ruun Scripture: Improved perk descriptions.
• Solomon's Adventures: Rank 5 faster Physical skills unlock changed to faster Tech skill unlock. Unlock speed increased from 2% to 5%.
• Tracker's Primers: Rank 5 faster Combat skills unlock increased from 2% to 5%.
• UC Defense Manual: Removed magazine size increase. Increased bashing critical hit chance from 5% to 10% per rank.
  

Sustenance:

• Adjusted the bonuses to make sense according to the new power scale of the player.
• Hydrated: Removed Sneak Damage and Reload Speed bonuses. O2 Regen lowered from 30% to 20%.
• Fed: Removed Health bonus. Melee damage and carry weight bonuses lowered to 10% each.  
• Bonus duration has been doubled from 30 min to 1 hour. Duration can be further increased via taking the Nutrition Skill. Nutrition ranks increase duration by 10/20/30/50%. 
• Malnourished and Dehydrated penalties left unchanged.
  

Miscellaneous:

• Lowered the required amount of damage done to enemy in order to receive XP for the kill. Threshold lowered from 25% to 5%. Kill-stealing by companions and NPCs is now less likely to happen.
• Increased duration of Well Rested and Emotional Security effects to from 24 minutes to 1 hour.
  

3. Recommended Gameplay Settings

The mod can be played at any gameplay settings, but it is highly recommended to use "Normal" Enemy and Player damage. SCOs damage formulas were balanced for a normal 100% modifier for both you and the enemy. "Normal" is plenty difficult, believe me :) For the most balanced, challenging and immersive combat I recommended the following settings:

• Enemy Combat Damage: Normal
• Player Combat Damage: Normal
• Ammo Weight: Weighted Ammo
• Carry Capacity: Reduced
• Medical Item Healing: Slowly
• Food Healing: None
• Sleep Healing: None
• Sustenance: Positive and Negative
• Combat Afflication Gain: Increased
• Afflication Treatment: Improve Only
• Afflication Prognosis: Advanced
• Environmental Damage & Afflication: Advanced
• Environmental Damage Restoration: Limited Resting
  

4. Installation

Via mod Organizer:
Use Vortex or MO2 to install the mod like any other.

Manual:
Extract the zip file and insert it into the Data folder of the game.



5. Known issues

• If installing or uninstalling the mod on an existing game, it is recommended to disable Sustenance gameplay settings first. Disable Sustenance, install/update/uninstall the mod and enable Sustenance again. This is to ensure the bonuses and penalties are calculated correctly. This is true for ANY mod that modifies Sustenance settings.
• The mod can be installed/uninstalled on an existing game. All the changes towards weapons, modifications, skills, items will work fine. But please remember that already spawned NPCs will NOT automatically recalculate their HP according to new formulas. This can be fixed by installing the mod in a closed cell (like a spaceship) and waiting/sleeping for a few in-game days for everything in other cells to respawn. The player will also have a much higher Health pool. This can be fixed by levelling up in order to force a HP recalculation.
• The aim reticle is missing, regardless of Interface settings. There is a Creation Kit bug, that causes any edits to the weapon files to remove the reticle keyword from the weapon record. This will require the Creation Kit to be fixed before I can correctly re-attach the reticle keywords to weapons.
  More info here:  https://www.reddit.com/r/starfieldmods/comments/1di56nd/creation_kit_does_not_safe_reticle_setting/