Bethesda Modding Diary - 29 June 2022
Entry posted by gregaaz in Modding Diary - June 2022
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Hi folks, hard to believe we're already at the end of June! Since this is Pride Month and we're wrapping up, I figured I'd revisit a few LGBT themed mods that have been on my to-do list for a while so they can get some exposure. I think I've mentioned in the past that while I'm a fairly boring cis/hetero guy, I think it's important for immersive world building to reflect a diverse world, and since this is a NSFW setup that includes sexual orientation and gender expression. That, and I won't lie that sometimes its amusing to find the Dragonborn getting roped into unexpected romantic scenario, especially if the writing is good.
Our Fallout 4 mod count didn't change last time, but here's where we're starting on Skyrim mods:
- Mods installed: 1726
- Plugins active: 1673
- Final load order index: E9
Number Games
So what's today's Star Trek trivia for the mod counts?
NCC-1726 -- U.S.S. Krieger
This vessel was the 15th of the 16 ships authorized for the Bon Homme Richard subclass of the Class 1 heavy cruisers, and had a number of improvements over the original Constitution class. We don't know her exact capabilities, but it's safe to say that, at a minimum, she had better propulsion systems and probably also the phaser refit. It's possible that the BHR configuration is actually the swept-wing design we see in Discovery and Strange New Worlds, but there isn't a lot of data on this currently. Ships of the Star Fleet, which of course predates those shows by 30-40 years, naturally doesn't reflect this.
Unlike some of the other cruisers we've talked about in this series, Krieger did not have the Command Cruiser package and was closer on capabilities to Constitution than to Excalibur. There's no indication of whether or not she received the rear phaser batteries that some Constitution family ships got, as records of these refits are somewhat fragmentary. Krieger launched in 2251, commissioning the following year. She completed four five-year missions before receiving a major refit in 2271 as part of the Enterprise refit program. Krieger returned to service 2273, at which point things get a little squirrely.
FASA Trek describes NCC-1726 as U.S.S. Graf Zeppelin, which launched on Stardate (2/)1910. By one conversion method, this equates to May of 2279, but that conversion metric seems to frequently provide dates that are several years too late, evidenced by events in the Four Year War, which should be in the range of 2250-2253 instead spitting out dates in the mid 2250s. Still, even with the most generous downward adjustment, GZ's launch date seems to occur after Krieger's refit. We don't really know anything about Krieger's service history - she's mentioned in passing in one TOS novel, but otherwise the lore is silent.
Further muddying the water is the existence of U.S.S. Zeppelin (NCC-362), an escort carrier that entered service some time around 2278-2280. Based on the naming convention of her subclass, this Zep is almost certainly referencing the same ship that GZ draws her name from. Unfortunately, Module MO3 is silent about this ship's service history, so we don't have a good grasp about her activity or her fate. It's possible that this is just a case of two ships drawing similar inspiration, but I'm kind of inclined to ignore FASA's naming altogether, let 362 be the Zep, and retain Krieger for 1726 over the rest of her service life.
The FASA records are pretty sparse on 1726 but they do pick up where her Enterprise refit leaves off. Again, dates are a little dicey until I can get a more reliable conversion metric for Spaceflight Chronology dates, but what we can infer is that after the Enterprise refit, Krieger did another five year mission, after which she received a smaller-scale refit (from Enterprise mk. II to mk. III). 9 years (and presumedly, two more FYMs) later, she refitted to the mk. IV configuration. Note that Enterprise mk. II (CA+ with minor improvements) is not the same as Enterprise (II) (NCC-1701-A CX configuration) and is still generally congruent with the heavy cruiser performance we see in the first three movies. As an Enterprise mk. IV, Krieger remained in service for another 22 years before finally going to the scrapyard. By stardate (2/)5511 - a few years before 2318 - she would have been badly obsolete and probably had already been reassigned as a training ship or a rear area support ship, rather than doing five-year missions over this entire timeframe.
Considering Krieger's long service life, it's unfortunate that we don't know more about her - I bet she has a lot of stories to tell. Or perhaps she's just one of those lucky ships that managed to avoid weekly crises and just got to carry out missions of exploration and discovery.
NCC-1673 -- U.S.S. Toronto
The Chicago class "heavy" cruisers were an attempt to boost heavy cruiser production by bulking out a light cruiser hull and adding more capabilities. This approach had actually worked well with the frigate branch of the Miranda superclass, but implementing the same approach on the Kearsarge class light cruiser design proved more complicated. The ships that came out of this program had many throwback characteristics to ships before the Class 1 starship program, including reduced endurance and a higher maintenance requirement, but they did allow the Federation to quickly increase Starfleet's heavy cruiser complement in the short term.
In an exercise of runaway optimism, the Federation Council hoped that the Chicago hull could also make up for shortfalls in Command Cruiser numbers, and a total of nine "New Command Cruisers" were created by adding the Bon Homme Richard Command Cruiser package to a Chicago class hull. Toronto (and Berlin, which we previously covered) were part of this subclass. Unfortunately, they never lived up to their promised command and control capabilities and instead operated just a slightly more capable cruisers (or rarely as leaders for task forces of lighter ships). Toronto launched some time in the 2280s, though the exact date is unknown.
We don't have any service history on Toronto. It appears that she was likely intended as a replacement for the earlier U.S.S. Toronto, NCC-2771, which was a Loknar class frigate. Considering that her launch date roughly corresponds with the last of the Knox class frigates (part of the Miranda superclass), its possible that Toronto was originally authorized as a frigate to directly replace 2771 before getting sucked up into the Clausewitz-Los Angeles New Command Cruiser program. Like the rest of the Chicago class and the rest of its variants, if this ship survived the 2280s, then its likely she met one of three fates:
- Retired in the 2290s following the Khitomer Accords
- Destroyed some time prior to 2312 in the Andromedan crisis
- Retired in the 2310s after the successful completion of Operation Unity and because of the spaceframe reaching end of life
The "new heavy cruisers" in general don't offer much insight into their adventures, with few of them having even the most basic service histories. Unfortunately, this is true for Toronto as well. Beyond knowing that she existed, the rest of her life is a mystery.
Alpha and Azura: Preparations
If you've been reading for a while, you'll recall that I planned to revisit The Children of Azura to set up a SPID for distributing the Azura necklace to appropriate NPCs. However, to do this I need to hard code the relevant factions onto those actors rather than letting it distribute randomly through SOS. This is because the SPID otherwise might run before that NPC receives their SOS faction (fun fact: longer term I may want to use SPID to distribute SOS factions in general so that this doesn't have to run in real time and contribute to system load). I also need to distribute Futanari faction membership in preparation for eventually integrating Alpha (the mod formerly known as Skyrim's Shrouded Secret)... at least, if the author ever stops adding content! So what we'll do today is go through the Alpha lovers list and add them all to the Futanari faction appropriate for their race. This is a fairly long list of actors (see spoiler box below):
-Adelaisa Vendicci - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Adrianne Avenicci - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Aela the Huntress - Complete Glory of the Dead
-Ahkari - Complete The Runaway Spouse-Can have sex with 1 Khajiit them every 3 hours
-Ahlam - Complete The Collapse of Virtue
-Angeline Morrard - Complete No News is Good News
-Annekke Crag-Jumper - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Alfhild Battle-Born - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Aphia Velothi - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Aranea Ienith - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Arivanya - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Arob - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Atahbah - Complete The Runaway Spouse-Can have sex with 1 Khajiit them every 3 hours
-Beitild - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Beleval - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Bergritte Battle-Born - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Betrid Silver-Blood - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Borgakh the Steel Heart - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Boti - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Brelyna Maryon - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Bujold the Unworthy - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Camilla - Complete The Golden Claw
-Carlotta - Complete Journals of Whiterun
-Cindiri Arano - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Curwe - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Danica - Complete Vows of Debauchery
-Dinya - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Dravynea the Stoneweaver - Bring her Frost Salts
-Drifa - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Elisif - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (In her chambers at night)
-EnchFemaleVampires (All 24 of them) - Complete The Bloodstone Chalice
-Eola - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Fanari Strong-voice - Complete Freedom Isn't Free (Can sleep with 1 Skaal female per 6 hours)
-Finna - Complete Freedom Isn't Free (Can sleep with 1 Skaal female per 6 hours)
-Frabbi - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (Can sleep with one Kleppr family member per day)
-Fralia Gray-Mane - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Frea - Complete Freedom Isn't Free (every 8 hours)
-Freir - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Fridrika - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Fura Bloodmouth - Complete The Bloodstone Chalice
-Galesse Barkwing - Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Gerdur - Complete Journals of Whiterun
-Gharol - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Grelka - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (Can sleep with one member every 2 hours in Bunkhouse)
-Haelga - Complete The Collapse of Virtue
-Hafjorg - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Haran - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Hert - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Hestla - Complete Adversary Allure
-Hillevi Cruel-Sea - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Hroki - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (Can sleep with one Kleppr family member per day)
-Iddra - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Idgrod the Younger - Deliver her letter
-Idgrod Ravencrone - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Illia - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Indara Caerellia - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Ingjard - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Ingun - Complete The Collapse of Virtue
-Iona - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Irileth - Complete Journals of Whiterun
-Jenassa - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Jora - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Jordis the Sword-Maiden - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Karliah - Complete Trinity Restored
-Katla - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Keerava - Complete Sealing the Deal
-Kerah - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Khayla - Complete The Runaway Spouse-Can have sex with 1 Khajiit them every 3 hours
-Laila - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (In her chambers)
-Leonara Arius - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Lillith Maiden-Loom - Complete The Collapse of Virtue
-Lisbet - Complete Lisbet's Missing Shipment
-Lydia - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Maven - Complete The Collapse of Virtue
-Margret - Save Her, Speak to her in Silver Blood Inn
-Mena - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Michel Lylvieve - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Milore Ienth - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Mjoll the Lioness - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Modha - Complete Adversary Allure
-Morwen - Complete Freedom Isn't Free (Can sleep with 1 Skaal female per 6 hours)
-Muiri - Complete Mourning Never Comes - Inside Silver Blood Inn
-Niluva - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (Can sleep with one member every 2 hours in Bunkhouse)
-Nivenor - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Njada Stonearm - Complete Glory of the Dead
-Nura Snow-Shod - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Olda - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Ra'zhinda - Complete The Runaway Spouse-Can have sex with 1 Khajiit them every 3 hours
-Rayya - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Rhiada - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Ria - As Follower after Complete Trenching Loved Ones
-Reldith - Complete Journals of Whiterun
-Saadia - Complete In My Time of Need
-Saffir - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Sayma - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Senna - Complete Vows of Debauchery
-Serana - Complete Matriarchal Machination
-Seren - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Shel - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Shuftharz - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Sigrid - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Sorine Jurard - Complete A Daughters Solace
-Sorli the Builder - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Sosia Tremellia - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Synda Llanith - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Tekla - Complete Dark Ancestor
-Temba Wide-Arm - Complete Grin and Bear It
-Thaena - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Tilde - Complete A Daughters Solace
-Tonilia - Complete Blindsighted
-Tova Shatter-Shield - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Uthgerd the Unbroken - Complete Journals of Whiterun
-Valerica - Complete Vows of Debauchery
-Vex - Complete Blindsighted
-Vigdis Salvius - Complete The Baron of Cuckoldry-Can have sex with anothers spouse every 12 hours
-Viola Giordano - Complete Blood on the Ice (Exonerated Wuunferth)
-Vivienne Onis - Complete No News is Good News (Inside Winking Skeever)
-Vori - Complete A Daughters Solace
-Wujeeta - Complete The Collapse of Virtue (Can sleep with one member every 2 hours in Bunkhouse)
-Yrsa - Complete Freedom Isn't Free (Can sleep with 1 Skaal female per 6 hours)
-Ysolda - Complete Journals of Whiterun
-Zaynabi - Complete The Runaway Spouse-Can have sex with 1 Khajiit them every 3 hours
Getting Started
Fortunately, the edit isn't very onerous. We have four factions we are potentially adding:
- Bad Dog Female Anthro (humans and elves)
- Bad Dog Sheath (khajiit)
- Bad Dog Slit (argonians)
- Bad Dog Orc Female (orcs)
These factions each have 20 ranks that informs the size of the organ, and we'll generally be doing a random value using the dice roller on random.org to give us a value from 2-12.
To do this, we'll start by putting all the actors into a working file, then go through them one at a time to apply the relevant factions.
Now let's go through and populate the factions. Now, one thing we see right away is a potential issue - the BBW race from Uncommon Races of Skyrim.
This race isn't currently supported by the Anthro Female parts, so we need to add them. Basically, we just need to put them on the relevant form lists and add the corresponding global values. We also need to go into the Armor Addon record for the Female Anthro and add BBWRace as a supported race there too.
Now let's test this in game to make sure it works.
That'll do!
Faction Assignment
With Angeline fixed, the next thing to do is work through the characters and add the appropriate factions for their race. While we're at it, we're going to be looking for two possible problems:
- Lingering Bijin NPC body replacers
- Custom races
In the first case, for now we'll just dump those. We'll eventually revisit those in a future project, but that's on hold until I get a few supporting assets installed first. On the second, we'll repeat the process we used for Angeline to get them properly equipped.
Once we've processed all the faction updates and general fixes, we'll be forwarding these edits to my conflict resolution patches, but initially I'll be doing the edits in a working file so we can test them for compatibility if required.
Here's an example below of Bijin body armor being present in the override record:
Let's see how this actor looks when we spawn her with the armor still active.
See the difference in skin tone between her head and neck and the rest of her body? One of the neat things that Bijin does is give each actress a custom skin tone. However, to use it with more modern overhauls I need to edit their facegen nifs to use the custom textures. That's kind of a project in its own right, and there's a second component to it (need to install and build the BHUNP bodyslides for the custom body meshes) which I don't have time for today. Eventually we'll go back and restore the Bijin skin content because it's a neat feature. For now though, we'll remove the body armor record so she doesn't look like she was sunbathing with a bag over her head.
Mjoll on the other hand can keep her custom body texture because it's from the same mod that's providing her head facegen. This means the custom texture should already be on the head nif.
Oops, we've got another custom race. Let's get this one set up.
I ran into some unexpected behavior with this NPC - in particular, she wasn't automatically equipping her SOS part even though it was getting added to her inventory correctly. Also, as you can kind of see in the first illustration, her body physics are messed up. I believe both of these issues relate to Project JKJ and not to SOS, so they're out of scope for today's work. I'll keep working separately on a solution but for now I think she's as good as she's going to get.
After the Project JKJ shenanigans we didn't have any further issues, so those faction tags are all integrated now!
Distributing Necklaces
I mentioned above that I was originally planning to use SPID to distribute the Azura necklaces. However, on further consideration I've decided to distribute these manually. I'm going to create three leveled lists that add a chance for the necklace to equip:
- A 75% list for Khajiit and Dark Elves
- A 40% list for most characters on a Futanari faction
- A 10% list for non-Dunmer characters on the Windhelm, Winterhold, and Dawnstar crimefactions (boooooo racism)
I'll also manually assign the necklace to a few specific Dark Elf characters via their custom outfits, notably Aranea. A few other characters won't have them (mostly characters who already have other jewelry). I'll also be skipping characters with the BBW custom race because I don't feel like modifying the necklace mesh just to support one or two characters.
Let's take a quick visit to Riften and see how the necklace looks in action.
Necklaces are working right, and I see Aranea has some peek-a-boo action going on with her dress.
Of Cocks and Men
Cocksmen Village recently got a fairly significant update. Last time I did any work with this mod was back on my old LE build, but I remember it had a pretty cute story. However, I believe this mod uses space that some other mods also touch, so we'll need to pay the location a visit and look for issues. There's a decent chance we'll find ourselves doing some tidying up in the Creation Kit.
Right off the bat we can see this mod has a bunch of asset conflicts. However, it's nothing that I'm feeling really concerned about - CV is overwriting some common assets that it shares with other mods (so like-for-like replacement) and then losing conflicts to some NPC overhaul mods. I'm content to leave those elements as-is.
While we want to pay attention to any issues that we find in xEdit, we're particularly looking for object reference issues relating to two mods: Civil War Battlefields and Kaidan 2. These two mods already conflict with each other and they exist in an area very close to the village. I won't be deconflicting their issues with one another today, but I will deconflict any problems they cause with Cocksmen. Longer term, I plan to move the house from Kaidan out of its current location and make it part of the village... but probably not tonight.
CV had no errors, but it had a lot of corrupted navmesh edge links that I cleaned with the xEdit script. I did not find any deletions or ITMs, but I believe I've cleaned this in the past so you should still double-check if you install it yourself.
Working through the files, I did find some navmesh grid conflicts with Aemar's Refuge, but these appear to be largely benign and I let Aemar's edits prevail. There was also a hidden pseudo-ITM where CV was reverting changes to the mesh from Dawnstar back to vanilla. Forwarding the updated Dawnguard mesh to my conflict resolution patch fixed the problem.
Delving deeper into the file, I found some more serious conflicts with Kaidan in terms of navmesh, but I decided to hold off on directly working them until I deconflict Kaidan and CWBF. After all, if I'm moving the house, then those door links can stay where they are for the moment - I'll manually patch them when I actually move the house. For the time being, I'm letting whichever mod has door links in a given mesh prevail. So we're not in perfect condition and will need more work later, but everything should at least be functional. Now let's visit the location in the game. We'll walk to the village from Ivarstead, which will take us through the CWBF area and see how it impacts the village.
Here's Kaidan's house with all kinds of civil war garbage strewn across its front port (plus landscape edits from other mods being weird):
The Cocksman shrine has a tent from CWBF sitting on it. We'll want to go in and spread those out so they aren't conflicting so heavily. I also notice that the statue is the vanilla Talos status. There's a replacer out there that we'll want to use for it - I'll get to that later.
Fortunately, the town itself looks fine. I believe that CWBF has some other statics that start the game disabled but become active as the war progresses, so we'll need to look at those in the CK to make sure they are all clear. In general though, this shouldn't be too hard to work with. I seem to recall that earlier versions were more heavily conflicted, so it looks like 1.5 wasn't lying when it said it cleaned up the records a bit.
Whoops, I spoke too soon. There's another conflicting static. I better fly through the buildings in free camera to make sure nothing's hidden.
Fortunately, I didn't find any more hidden objects. We'll move this unfortunate schmuck to a different location. Now, let's create a working file with Cocksmen and CWBF as masters, then hop into the creation kit. First we'll move that bedroll and the gallows.
I did a quick scan for any hidden CWB statics, but I didn't find anything, so now we just have to go back to the CK to clean up our edits and put them in the conflict resolution patch. While we're at it, we'll also grab Grimoas Mighty Talos and port it to SSE (we'll just run it through Cathedral Asset Optimizer). Once that is done, we'll convert this mod from a replacer to a standalone mod using the same methodology we used for the various other statuary mods we've done in the past. Then we'll replace any Talos Statues referenced in this mod with the erect version, and about half of the other ones in the world with the flaccid version.
Now that we've taken care of that, let's go back to the village and make sure everything is running properly. I also need to grab the form IDs for the two statues I specifically need to replace.
LOL something's not quite right here. It turns out, don't run this mod through CAO. It does strange and unnatural things to the nif. After reinstalling and fixing the mod, it looks much better.
I have three more mods that I planned to cover today, but we're out of time so I'll continue on those tomorrow. See you then!
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