no caps modding: implementation suggestions

[dk07]

I've been in the process of making a no caps/reduced caps mod in order to create a trade and barter-based economy.

 

Removing caps from leveled lists and such is easy enough, but the bigger problem is quest rewards. Some quests are nice and refer to leveled lists, but many others seem to have rewards written right into the scripts.

 

I've been editing dialogue and scripts by hand so far, but considering there are thousands of script and fragment files, this is going to be very painful. Doing it manually, I'd have to do a text search for instances of "caps" and edit or remove them.

 

Caps001 can't be removed since it's a default object, so the only other potential solution I can think of is to somehow intercept caps or quest interactions, which in theory seems like it'd be more "elegant" and would have better inter-mod compatibility.

 

Anyone know if such a thing is even possible? If you've got any other ideas, I'd like to hear them. Thanks.

[jkruse05]

Change the caps object (Caps001) into a different type of item, like junk.

[dk07]

Thanks for the suggestion, but maybe I'm doing something wrong or misunderstanding since I can't seem to get that idea to work.

 

The base Caps001 (0000000F) object is a "default object" and can't be removed. I can change its editor ID but its FormID stays the same, so changing its name or value to something else changes nothing in-game since I assume everything points to the FormID anyways.

 

Unless someone else has some other suggestions or guidance, I'm thinking it might be a better compromise to just leave the quest rewards untouched, as they are arguably a lesser source of income anyways, and enough people talk about caps that removing them entirely would create a discordance. Not quite what I was hoping for, but I guess it'd be the least immersion-breaking.