Jump to content

Bethesda Modding Diary - 04 July 2022


gregaaz

352 views

Hi everyone, and happy 4th of July to my readers in the USA! Today I'm going to finish up with my Sanguine related modding and maybe some more stuff too, it time permits. We didn't update our Fallout mod count last time but our starting counts for Skyrim are:

 

  • Mods installed: 1743
  • Plugins active: 1692
  • Final load order index: EC

 

Nerdy Stuff

Spoiler

So, we've got a couple of new hull numbers to look at, and we also have a new source to consider. Specifically, I mean Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual by FASA. I've had this book on my shelf for a long time, but I didn't realize it contained so much good TOS era material. The OM picks up where Federation Ship Recognition Manual leaves off and gives a lot of addition information about the Enterprise and Excelsior classes, including identifying which ships got the Enterprise-A/CX refit and what their ultimate fates were. 

 

NCC-1743 -- U.S.S. Franklin

Spoiler

The Federation Council initially authorized NCC-1743 for U.S.S. Xanthii as part of the large Achernar class appropriation on stardate 5930. As with many ships in this class, as more and more hulls were cancelled she underwent several name changes - first to U.S.S. Panjsher and finally to U.S.S. Franklin. Frankling commissioned in 2266 in the standard Achernar configuration before refitting several years before 2279 to the Constitution (II) specifications. Some time after 2280, she refitted again, this time to the CB heavy command cruiser configuration. There's no indication of whether or not she had the command cruiser package prior to this and she was probably a standard CA in terms of Star Fleet Battles statistics (then a CA+ after her refit). 

 

In 2295 (+/- 5 years) she was refitted again, this time to the Enteprise II (CX / Enterprise mk IV) configuration. She continued to serve in this configuration until 2318 (+/- 5 years), when she was decommissioned and scrapped. Unfortunately, beyond her maintenance history we don't have any records about Franklin so we can't really delve into her adventures.

 

Now, if you recall the discussion of 1742 and know the source material, you might be wondering why I went with the FASA name here and the SFB name for 1742. Honestly, any of the three apocryphal names for either ship could be the real one. However, we have accounts of many ships named U.S.S. Franklin, including one ship that appeared on screen in Star Trek Beyond. This struck me as an indicator that of the three potential names, Franklin was most likely to win out in the political and procurement arena. 

 

NCC-1692 -- U.S.S. Helin

Spoiler

U.S.S. Helin is a bit of an anomaly. The only reference to NCC-1692 in the usual expanded universe sources is to U.S.S. James Edgar Johnson, an NCV type shuttle carrier that would have been a sister ship to U.S.S. Richard Bong. Unlike Bong, the limited information we have at our disposal indicates that she was new construction rather than a refit. However, we have a canonical name for 1692: U.S.S. Helin. It appears on props for Star Trek 6 with mission information but no starship class listed. 

 

There is some out of universe information that suggests Helin was a lightweight Oberth class ship (notably, a commemorative plaque given to Eleanor Helin, the astronomer who the ship is named after), but this information doesn't appear in-universe and seems contextually at odds with the ship's limited history.

 

So here's what we know about her. Helin was built some time after 2280, and would have normally operated in a task force with a light cruiser and a frigate as escorts. As a "true carrier" she would be expected to conduct power projection and humanitarian operations and very likely came info conflict with either Klingon or Romulan forces in the early years of her life. In 2293, she was patrolling the neutral zone when Starfleet proposed assembling a fleet of 18 starships at Starbase 24 to penetrate into Klingon space, secure the orbitals of the Beta Penthe system and then support a ground assault on the prison colony at Rura Penthe. The goal was to evacuate James Kirk, Leonard McCoy, and presumably other Federation citizens held at that facility. Helin (under the command of Captain Rebecca Brookshire) and U.S.S. Scovill (NCC-1598, NVS configuration) would have provided shuttle support for the fleet, and would have been essential for moving ground forces and evacuees through the prison's electronic frontier.

 

Of course, Operation RETRIEVE was never authorized, and Kirk and McCoy ultimately departed Rura Penthe through their own efforts. This was probably for the best, since a major incursion into the interior of the Klingon Empire surely would have prevented the successful conclusion of the Khitomer Accords later that year. 

 

We don't know Helin's ultimate fate, but like the Chicago class "heavy" cruisers, the NCV type shuttle carriers weren't designed with long-term sustainment in mind. It's likely that her service life came to a close not long after the conclusion of the Khitomer Accords. Even in the fact of the growing threat of the Andromedan crisis in the 2290s, the cost and diminishing returns of operating an NCV would start to become unmanageable. 


 

Wrapping Up With Sanguine

Spoiler

So we came out of yesterday with a small task and a large task. The small task was pretty simple - I needed to fine tune the magic effects on the sausages. Basically, I needed to remove a YPS hair growth effect that wasn't working the way I wanted it to and added a Sexlab Pheromones effect to one of the dogs. That was a pretty straightforward edit in xEdit.

 

image.png.7da2336dd80bedc3787eaf0f50be2354.png

 

The bigger issue was the other part of the Sanguine Rose integration, which uses Hanging Moss to Climbing Roses. Basically, I want the moss in Solitude to break out in rose blossoms when Sanguine's Rose is on display in the museum. Of course, the mod itself is a straight-up replacer, so "some assembly" is going to be needed to achieve what I want. 

 

We'll start by managing the asset conflicts. The big issue of course is the nif, and we'll just put those in a sub-folder. The other question is the textures. The leaves but not the roses conflict, and after looking at the two textures they are both aligned the same way. What I'm going to do is hide the replacer's conflicting textures, which will have the end effect of the roses blooming off the hanging moss. Of course, that's a bit unnatural, but I think that's consistent with the look of Daedric intervention.

 

image.png.745ffd16cd230de2b7d622dc086fa4a7.png

 

Now let's set up our working file. We'll start by copying all the hanging moss references and then trimming by cell to remove the ones outside the Solitude area. When we're done, we have the records we're going to work with.

 

image.png.dd2fea8271aae40a138ba8d0fc76a008.png

 

Next we need to make sure all patches are forwarded and then we want to remove all records that are supposed to stay disabled (i.e., that were removed from the world for some reason or another). Then we'll add an enable parent for the sanguine rose display with the "set enable state as opposite of parent" for the basic vines. With that in place, we'll clone each reference. Now we need to make the replacement vines. We'll do that by cloning the originals and updating the model path.

 

image.png.46a4ff802dca7cc615a76e460fd36f5e.png

 

Now we have all the parts in place. However, there's one bit of housekeeping we have to wrap up first. We have Better Harvesting and CACO, and they have separate harvest lists for hanging moss. We'll create pre-lists for each type of moss that have a 50/50 chance of using each mod's leveled list.

 

This will ensure that both mods have an equal share of "face time" in my world and will avoid us having to go back and patch this in later.

 

image.png.ac07116e1fcb0a70a7d38fcf70009f08.png

 

Now we're ready to edit the modified references. We'll start by filtering the mod to only show REFR items so we can sort by form ID without having to wade through cell trees. Then we'll use AT Quick Change to update the baseforms for the new entries.

 

image.png.975af01e7aafa91a0b010889c3b4458a.png

 

Once that's done, the last thing to do is to remove the "opposite from player" condition on the enable parent for the new entries (the ones with the roses).

 

image.png.10cefc4d7e9f7804d5bdb39082608e53.png

 

Whew! Now that we've completed all that work, it's time to forward these changes to the conflict resolution patches. I'll keep this working file as a "real" patch since I may want to refer back to it in the future. Another advantage of doing it this way is that I only have to forward a relatively small number of records since so much of the content is self-contained.

 

image.png.2bc4e13d0335a2dee12be4fc503fad41.png

 

OK, let's wrap up and see how it looks in the game!

 

image.png.2b75466318ced0885b36c609467aa55f.png

 

It seems that when his artifact is nearby, Sanguine's reach extends even into the Temple of the Divines!


 

Unfortunately, that actually required a fair amount of wrestling with the xEdit scripts (and I'm not great at script writing yet), so all my time's used up for the day :( See you soon!

 

0 Comments


Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. For more information, see our Privacy Policy & Terms of Use