The Perfect Planet: Ultimate Fauna & Flora Experience

[moquitomods]

Hello Starfield Modding Community,

First, I want to express my admiration for the amazing work you all do to enhance the Starfield universe. I am particularly excited about all the new mods on the way through the Creation Engine. I have an idea for a mod that I believe would greatly enrich the experience for many players.

Detailed Description:
Objective: Create a mod that transforms a barren planet or moon into a richly detailed paradise with all fauna, flora, resources & traits.

Features:
- Type: Rock
- Gravity: Any
- Temperature: Temperate
- Atmosphere: Standard O2
- Magnetosphere: Strong
- Fauna: As many species as feasible
- Flora: As many species as feasible
- Water: Safe
- Resources: As many species as feasible
- Traits: As many as feasible
- Day Length: Any
- Planetary Habitation: No skill required
- Weather: As many species as feasible
- Biome: Heavily wooded coniferous forest & rivers (like Riverwood in Skyrim)
- Level: 75

Visuals: Reference mods like “Earth Restored” to visualize the possibilities. https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/6024

Benefits and Appeal:
This mod aims to create a planet that offers a Skyrim-like experience of endless wandering and discovery within a richly populated environment. For players seeking the perfect location to explore and establish a base, this mod provides a diverse and engaging setting. By bringing together a variety of fauna, flora, resources and traits, it offers both a visually stunning and functionally rewarding destination. Just note how many Reddit posts & Youtube videos are “I found the perfect planet in starfield”, this is clearly something the community wants.

Feasibility and Resources:
I understand this is a significant undertaking and, as I am not a modder, I am willing to assist in any way possible, whether through research or gathering resources if needed.

Engagement:
I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea and how you would refine and realize this vision. Please feel free to reach out to discuss. I feel like this could be an ongoing project, where the planet is continually improved for the benefit of the community.

Thank you for considering my request!

[aurreth]

On 6/26/2024 at 5:55 PM, moquitomods said:

Features:

- Type: Rock
- Gravity: Any
- Temperature: Temperate
- Atmosphere: Standard O2
- Magnetosphere: Strong
- Water: Safe
- Traits: As many as feasible

These are simple keyword changes to the PNDT record.  Quick and easy, especially with the CK.

On 6/26/2024 at 5:55 PM, moquitomods said:

Features:

- Fauna: As many species as feasible

- Level: 75

A more complicated, but doable, change to the PNDT record.  Animal life is controlled by Planet Data and Form Lists.

Level is set in the system's Location records, along with Faction, space encounter frequency, etc.

On 6/26/2024 at 5:55 PM, moquitomods said:

Features:

- Flora: As many species as feasible
- Weather: As many species as feasible
- Biome: Heavily wooded coniferous forest & rivers (like Riverwood in Skyrim)

Now we start hitting problems.  Biomes and Weather are shared across multiple planets.  You can't change one planet without changing a lot of others at the same time.  There are a few exceptions that have dedicated BIOM records, which is why early terraforming mods used Venus.  You can make changes there without affecting the rest of the universe.

Further complicating this is that BIOM distribution on a planet is handled by an external file, for example venus.biom.  BIOM records must correspond to this file or they will be ignored in favor of the original.  You can manipulate this to a certain extent by copying and renaming the external file, say jemmison.biom to venus.biom, effectively cloning one planet to another.

The CK appears to allow editing of BIOM blocks, but if there's a way to edit the external biom file, which controls distribution of those blocks, I've been unable to find it.

On 6/26/2024 at 5:55 PM, moquitomods said:

Features:

- Resources: As many species as feasible
- Day Length: Any

Resources appear to be editable in the Galaxy View window of the CK.

I have yet to figure out how the game determines day length.  I want a tidally locked planet, but the setting that is supposed to do that doesn't seem to do anything.

 

So, some of what you want is possible, honestly things I've been doing for a long time.  A custom biom file does not seem to be possible; it looks like the CK is designed to force you to use existing worlds rather than making new ones from scratch.

Edited Friday at 12:15 AM by aurreth

[smr1957]

Nice explanation of things, Aurreth! 

[aurreth]

I went and made a new system (ok, I cloned Arcturus rather than start from scratch), and while I was able to jump there none of the planets had material swaps (they didn't carry over, probably fixable), and again I couldn't land on any planets.  I could find no way in the CK to generate new *.biom files, and without those the BIOM records do not map to the planet surface.  The surface tiles fall back to the default, which is "gas giant", so no landing.  I did once change that so I could land on a gas giant, but in practice you really don't want to do that (it affects every gas giant in the game).

In the past I've tried just grabbing a biom file and renaming it, but there has to be a link between the new planet and the renamed file, and I can't find it.  The CK does not let you say "use myplanetname.biom", and there's no obvious link either in the CK or xEdit.  Until we sort that out true custom planets aren't possible.

[aurreth]

I was able to correct the missing material swaps using xEdit.  As soon as I opened up the system in CK it stripped them back off.  I am really beginning to think that Bethesda does not want custom star systems.

In any case the CK doesn't really support them right now. 

[moquitomods]

Wow, Aurreth, that's an incredible breakdown. Thank you! I really appreciate the tiers of complexity involved.

20 hours ago, aurreth said:

it looks like the CK is designed to force you to use existing worlds rather than making new ones from scratch.

This is a really good take away. Based on that, it seems a better approach would be to find a planet that meets the more challenging criteria and then work with the simpler ones.

For example:

1. Start in a level 75 system since the planet level is set by the system.
2. Considering that BIOM and weather are the most challenging and shared across planets, identify a visually appealing planet that aligns with the forest aesthetic.
3. Begin with the simpler criteria: rock, gravity, temperature, atmosphere, magnetosphere, etc.
4. Focus on the more complex step of adding diverse fauna.
5. 'Potentially' update the resources to enhance the planet’s richness.
6. Acknowledge that adding all flora might be outside the scope due to the constraints.

Does this sound like the simplest and most feasible approach to you? Additionally, is there any particular planet you would recommend starting with? I am thinking of looking for level 75 lush forests through https://inara.cz/starfield/starsystems-list/

Thank you again.

[aurreth]

You don't have to start in a level 75 system.  Changing the system level is trivial, it's a minor edit to the star's Location record.

Similarly any planet record can be edited in a couple of minutes for things like gravity, temperature and atmosphere.  These are controlled by keywords in the Planet Data record.

Let me give an example.  I like the Ophion system, which has a star, a gas giant, and a moon orbiting the gas giant.  If you place your outpost in the right spot on the moon you get a spectacular sky with the huge gas giant hanging on the horizon (gives a lot of ambient light too).

• I moved the system by editing the star data record, shifting it to the southwest corner of the map.
• I edited the moon's Planet Data record:  I changed the keywords to give it a breathable atmosphere, livable temperature, a strong magnetosphere, etc.  All the things needed to walk around without a spacesuit with no environmental damage.  I also changed the gravity, because Ophion I-a was a bit weak for what I wanted.
• I changed the BIOM in the Planet Data record to use the ocean biome from Volii Alpha (Neon).  I actually removed the fauna here, since I wanted a lifeless world.
• I found a location on the surface that gave me the sky I liked, and built an extremely tall large landing pad using the Foundation Engineering mod.  This sets up the next step.
• I extracted voliialpha.biom from the game BA2 archive and renamed it to ophion i-a.biom.  This covered the moon in water.
• I landed at my outpost.  The only thing showing above the ocean is that tall landing pad.  I then adjusted heights, etc, so my outpost buildings appear to be floating on the ocean's surface.

There are some other changes I made to fit my concept for the system, a forgotten, dead system on the edge of known space, such as no space encounters, but you get the idea.  Oh, and I renamed the star, planet and moon using locations from Babylon 5.

So, for what you want, I recommend starting as follows:

1. Pick a system with a single planet, preferably one a distance from the core systems.  People tend not to use these worlds, which means you reduce the chance of a conflict with another mod or quest.
2. Make sure that planet has NO Worldspace assigned to it.  Worldspaces are hard to remove, and even if you think they are gone the game/CK may force them back in.  You want a planet that isn't used for anything else.
3. Bannoc Secundus meets both of those requirements.  As far as I can tell it isn't used for anything other than forcing an extra click to get to Bannoc IV during the Crimson Fleet quest line.
4. Move the system to someplace else.  There are a fair number of "empty" spots on the south side of the star map.
5. Pick an existing world you want to use as a template for your world.  Any world will do, you are only concerned with how it looks from space, what the surface is like, etc.  I tend to use Jemmison, because Bethesda did a better job on that planet than any other.  But habitability doesn't matter, that's an easy fix.
6. Clone the world from the previous step onto your personal world, and adjust keywords to give it the air, water, etc. that you want.

It's much easier to do the initial setup in xEdit, then switch to the CK for editing flora, fauna and resources.