pack VEGA Core: Vanilla Enhanced Gameplay Alternative (by Nearox)

[Nearox]

Pack is abandoned by me and no longer supported.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please open VEGA's Guide at the Wiki This forum thread is here for support. The Wiki has the full install instructions and information.

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Update 21-1-2014:

 

I recently came back to modding. However at the moment there is just too much excitement with regards to the new memory patch.

 

Before I update the VEGA Core pack again, I'll explore the new possibilities opened up by the patch ánd I will wait for step 2.2.8 regardless.

 

Just a note that may be helpful to you:

 

- The author of SIC has built in RotE compatibility since version 6.51.

- The author of SIC has made it carry over the functionality of HLE. See this link https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24913/?tab=4&&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fcomments%2F%3Fmod_id%3D24913%26page%3D1%26sort%3DDESC%26pid%3D0%26thread_id%3D1338389&pUp=1

 

What this means is that you can simply disable SkyRe enemy scaling and not use my (outdated anyways) patch for now. 90% of the patch was related to SkyRe-RotE. STEP now has a core patch which has largely similar patching contents compared to my old patch, and then the step team added some more.

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VEGA Vanilla Enhanced Gameplay Alternative Pack for STEP:Core

[*]Skyrim Redone

[*]Autosave Manager

[*]Convenient Horses

[*]Deadly Dragons

[*]Enemy AI OverHaul - Revenge Of the Enemies

[*]Extensible Follower Framework

[*]High Level Enemies

[*]Skyrim Immersive Creatures

[*]Unofficial Skyrim Redone

VEGA DESCRIPTION

 

Vanilla Skyrim the way it was meant to be played. New and different enemies are added by SIC, as well as random outdoor patrols and encounters. The combat system, player & enemy perks, potions and magick spells are defined by SkyRe. Bosses and special NPCs are provided by Enemy AI Overhaul. Riding horses is fun and immersive. Your followers are smart and you can have multiple. You will need to bring 1 or 2 followers (and some potions) in order to succeed at bosses, especially at low levels. Dragons are more difficult than city guards. Skyrim is now both challenging and rewarding, but it is not a hardcore experience. VEGA complements STEP:Core, and they work flawless together.

[*]No extenstive TES5Edit compatibility patching required from you.

[*]My compatibility patch is available for easy download and easy installation.

[*]Hundreds of NPCs have been patched manually. 

[*]All NPCs edited by Revenge of the Enemies follow the level scaling and related health, magicka, stamina and skill points from SkyRe Enemy Scaling because Revenge of the Enemies is static instead of dynamic. The SIC extra added spawns are excluded from this because SIC has its own dynamic scaling system.

[*]All bosses, leaders and special NPCs use the combined spells ánd the abilities from both SkyRe and Revenge of the Enemies. Some bosses have more than 15 different attack moves/spells now, which make for very interesting fights. They scale according to SkyRe plus the added boss health from Revenge of the Enemies. Get ready for epic dragon priests and master vampires. The way it was meant to be. Although not all the bosses use all assigned spells (not sure why), they do use more and are more diverse - especially dragon priests. 

[*]All 'standard' NPCs (e.g. a regular skeleton) have the perks from SkyRe and no or few perks from Revenge of the Enemies. The latter adds too much stuff to regular mobs, which can make normal fights last too long, too complex and too tedious.

[*]Removed many of the lore-unfriendly non-sensical racial powers that were added by Revenge of the Enemies to regular NPCs. They just don't fit the Skyrim setting like that at all. I did this to the best of my knowledge, but I'm sure there are still many left. If you see a regular mob using a very powerful thu'um, that's Revenge of the Enemies at work.

[*]Re-tweaked the Community Uncapper.ini. Normally, levelling above level 30 suddenly slows down a lot, even with SkyRe. But because SkyRe and HLE really encourage high-level play, I increased the speed at which skills contibute to levelling up. Starting from level 30, the leveling speed is increased by approximately 20% for every 10 levels. From level 81 onwards (the old vanilla limit) you will level at 2.5x speed of the Skyrim Redone Uncapper. Don't worry, you won't become overpowered quick. It still takes ages to get to the next level. But this keeps the game interesting to play, giving you more of the excellent SkyRe perk choices. Unless you want to finish all quests and all expacs at level 60, not having had the fun of some of the most interesting SkyRe perks? Enemies still scale with you no matter what, and some enemies become more difficult at higher level.

​Disclaimer: I tried to make the compatibility patch as complete as possible but I am sure I missed quite a few things because of the sheer number of edits that had to be made. I cannot guarantee that 100% of mobs are patched correctly, but you should not run into any game-breaking issues if you encounter any mob that hasn't been patched. At worst, the mob is overpowered or underpowerd. I will bring out updates to the compatibility patch in the near future. You can already start playing as you can simply replace the old with the new patch later.

For VEGA install instructions, go to the Guide at the Wiki

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VEGA Troubleshooting & FAQ

 

Requirements

[*]STEP:Core 2.2.7 mods as indicated by the green color bar next to the mod name. No other STEP mods, other than the ones in the VEGA pack.

[*]STEP:Core 2.2.7 mods installed following either STEP baseline or performance instructions to the letter.

[*]STEP:Core 2.2.7 INI tweaks. Shadows 2048 or less.

[*]BOSS 

[*]BOSS Userlist Manager

[*]Mod Organizer 1.x (I do not use Wrye Bash for organizing my mods so I can’t extend support to that but the install should also work with WB).

[*]Wrye Bash (used for the bashed patch)

[*]TES5Edit 3.0.31.

Miscallenous Information

Stability Tests done

- Played a Character up till level 15. No CTD. No Freeze. No ILS.

- The Aiyen/rootsrat test" (forgot who's it is, please remind me): Main menu --> coc riverwood --> player.setav speedmult 500 --> tgm. Run to all the major cities in a clock-wise circle. Amount of times succesfuly completed: 2x. No CTD. No Freeze. No ILS.

- The "Vurt" test: Open save game (from my regular character for this setup) --> player.setav speedmult 1500 --> tgm -->tcl. Fly around for 10 minutes without crashing. Amount of times done: 2x. No CTD. No Freeze. No ILS.

 

Performance results from my system (see signature)

- Max VRAM observed during gameplay: 1985 MB

- Min FPS observed during gameplay: 35 FPS (The Rift)

- Average FPS during gameplay: 60FPS in 80% of outdoor areas. Only big drops appear in the Rift/Falkreath area, which are more related to STEP:Core than to this pack.

- Script Latency Test: Most outdoor areas it is at 38 ms average (high 55ms, low 25ms). Some areas like Rift/Falkreath it is at 50ms average (high 72ms, low 28 ms). I've seen a rare spike to 90-100 ms (high, not average). A value between 50 and 100ms is regarded as safe. 

 

Known issues

- None

 

Conditions for Support and Assistance

- Latest NVIDIA or AMD drivers (no beta).

- No ENBs, ENBoost, SweetFX or any other post-processing software.

- No INI tweaks other than the STEP tweaks.

- No other mods, this also means no other STEP mods.

- No overclocked GPU or CPU (if you still do this, be aware that freezes/ctds may be caused by overclocked hardware) (GPU overclocks tend to be more unstable than CPU).

- No RadeonPro.

- No STEP Extreme (too high texture mods cause instability when combined with this pack).

- Your Skyrim is stable on your system running STEP:Core.

- If you use BETA 2.0 versions of the Unofficial Skyrim Patches, I will not be able to support them (yet).

 

 If you must use ENB/ENBoost/SweetFX, only enable the tool after your game has been found stable. Of course, your game may and probably will still run well if you use these tools, but I can only support any instability issues you may have by excluding them. I will not be able to support deviations from this, sorry.

 

On a final note, I did not DDSopt anything at all. Skyrim's engine can handle STEP:Core + VEGA well. I have used VEGA on much heavier setups (SR + SR:LE) without problems. If you have issues they are related to your install or to your system. Please post your questions here and I will try to help as best as I can. 

 

Credits

Mod authors

STEP Community

STEP Team

Neovalen for the SR guide

Iroha for the SR+ASIS+SkyRe guide

 

Changelog

22-10: Updated Compatibility Patch. See link in the Wiki.

03-11: Decided that Apocalypse Spell package will be included once the author finishes SkyRe compatibility.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Nearox

[z929669]

Why are you creating this here?

 

You should be doing this by creating a Pack by the name of "VEGA"

 

Please port this into that Pack page (I'll give you access to create packs), so please do that and truncate this post ;)

 

EDIT: Looks like you have not ever logged onto the wiki. Time to do so if you want this work to survive!

[Nearox]

It seemed easier to start here as I was still working on the concept and sort of didn't want to immediately learn how to build packs on the Wiki

 

I always intended to make a wiki out of it, but I was making so many changes in the last 2 days that I thought to write it all down first in a format I am comfortable with (i.e. the mybb forum format) and then convert it to wiki... call me crazy :)

 

I'll make the wiki account this evening. Thanks for the access!

[hellanios]

Hey man you seem to know a lot of stuff about SkyRe. Maybe you could continue the work of Iroha by updating his guide for Skyre https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=2252

[Nearox]

Finished the Pack and converted it to the Wiki! Deleted all the mod install nstructions. Left the mod descriptions and some other things in the OP because it may be important for people with issues to read it again there before they start posting.

[Nearox]

hellanios: I wouldn't dare to claim that I know a lot about SkyRe... The real power of the mod is in its scripts and I got absolutely zero technical knowledge about that.

 

Not going to update Iroha's guide... It's made for a different install - SR - and frankly for more advanced users. There are a lot of problems with that guide which I will not address here. Fixing it would be a huge task and I think it would be faster to write a guide oneself. Not to mention that everybody's waiting for SR:LE making an update to the Iroha guide not a viable option future-wise.

[z929669]

Looks good! thanks for doing that!

[Nearox]

I did my best :) 

 

Now here's to hoping someone will actually use VEGA and play with it lol :P

[SamRod]

anyone tried this project?

[Smile44]

Not yet but I do plan to.

 

:)

[SamRod]

I'll try to implement in the course of this week ...

 

The game will be harder than usual? It is always action? and there are moments of pause?

[SamRod]

In your wiki page link mod Skyrim Immersive Creatures is incorrect:

You have: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/37605/? but the correct one is: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/24913//?

[SamRod]

The steps in the installation of the mod Skyre ReProccer Compatibility Patches qotsafan not add up ...

 

I ended up making a manual installation but I'm not sure if it will match the steps on the wiki ...

 

I am using MO 1.0.7

[Nearox]

In your wiki page link mod Skyrim Immersive Creatures is incorrect:

You have: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/37605/? but the correct one is: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/24913//?

Thank you, I'll try to update it from here but it's not easy using the pakc interface on tablet.

The steps in the installation of the mod Skyre ReProccer Compatibility Patches qotsafan not add up ...

 

I ended up making a manual installation but I'm not sure if it will match the steps on the wiki ...

 

I am using MO 1.0.7

Could you be more specific as to what steps do not add up? I went over the installer 3 times when I wrote it to ensure the proper installation instructions. Did you use the installer for MO in optional files? If you use the BAIN installer your options will be different. 

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I'll try to implement in the course of this week ...

 

The game will be harder than usual? It is always action? and there are moments of pause?

I think challenging is a better way to describe it than 'harder'. In vanilla skyrim, you can crank up the difficulty to master - but that'll not change the enemy AI, spells or perk use at all. SkyRe makes combat much more diverse and brings in new dynamics. All the other mods are put in the pack on top of SkyRe as to further enhanced gameplay. SIC adds new monsters which also have unique spells and abilities. Overall your world will be much more diversified and you will need to be on your toes or you'll get killed easily if you don't evade, but enemies are not overpowered. 

 

EDIT: Sorry I couldn't reply sooner, had to go on an unnanounced trip abroad for my boss...

[Smile44]

Just started using this to test it out for myself. All works flawlessly even with an ENB. Combat was easy in Helgen but definitely harder outside, that said I did have Hadvar with me.

 

Anyway as fas as this pack goes you have clearly done a good job but I would like to know about mods like iHud or Frostfall etc.. is there a reason you have not included those other than it is in other packs adding that would require the survival plugin from skyRe.

 

In other words in your opinion would this pack be compatible with the Weather and lighting pack for example? I wouldn't expect you to troubleshoot mods outside of your pack guide but I do wonder about the imposed limitations - just to make things easier to troubleshoot or because the whole thing come crashing down if any more mods are added?

 

:)