VEGA Extended

[Nearox]

VEGA Extended: Vanilla Enhanced Gameplay Alternative Extended version for STEP:Core

 

WIP: In alpha stage of development... Don't use.

 

All the VEGA:Core mods + a large selection of additional gameplay mods. Some of the mods are also currently in STEP:Extended. 

 

See VEGA Extended Wiki for mod table.

 

Project will take some time to develop and test, please be patient.

Not even sure if such a mod combination can possibly be stable... Lots of trial and error required.

 

Suggestions are welcome.

[EssArrBee]

So, I've put in quite a bit of time with CWO lately and there are a few bugs. Most aren't game breaking bugs, but they will need a reload so saving often is a must.

 

Do not go to dawnstar without the courier's armor on, the quest will not spawn any stormcloaks. If you loose a battle sometimes the quest will not forward. Either reload or wait for someone to kill you. Map markers get messed up from time to time. While taking the Rift, map marker moved spontaneously from Rift to Whiterun.

 

As for the Civil War Repairs, it worked the way it was supposed to except for this one thing in Whiterun where there was a huge artifact over by the Hall of the Dead. Just this huge purple and yellow triangle sticking up through a house. Not sure how that would even happen, but maybe something is messed up when the city gets repaired. I thought the mod would take longer to repair the city, but it pretty much happens if you leave for like one day.

 

Hope that helps.

[EssArrBee]

Just a follow up, I played some more last night and finished a civil war quest.

 

One other bug I found was faction relations getting a bit screwy if you don't follow orders pretty strictly. If you fast travel to a location where you are supposed to meet up with troops for an attack and get spotted by the other side before getting to your troops then this can cause that part of the quest to fail and your side will become hostile. The only way to get around it, is to reload or win the battle and your side will stop attacking you after a minute or so.

 

The one thing that was really nice is that I had zero crashes, freezes, or ILS while playing through the civil war questline. On my test run I just started as a an Imperial Soldier using Alternate Start and played on novice so I could go as fast as possible and not have to worry about dying or loosing. On higher difficulty the first Whiterun battle is pretty tough on the legion side, and I think there should be at least one more set of barricades to defend on the way before the gate, or maybe be able to drop back to Dragonsreach and have to defend the doors or something. On Expert or higher you really need good weapons and potions and poisons to beat everyone without them getting to the drawbridge because the first barricade will fall almost immediately. Being able to loose though is really nice since you actually feel like it is a war.

 

The weird artifact issue in Whiterun disappeared after restarting the game. Not sure what the deal with that was, but it doesn't seem to be a recurring issue with Civil War Repairs. Every city that gets damaged will be returned to it's original state a day later.

[Nearox]

Thank you EssArrBee! Much appreciated :)

 

It seems like CWO doesn't have gamebreaking / savegamebreaking bugs as far as I can tell from your response and what I read @ nexus. I'm still not sure though whether I should include in the pack or not... Would prefer mods to be 100% stable. 

 

Sounds like a pretty big artifact to me by the way about Civil War Repairs! I like the concept of that mod, but since it hasn't been updated in a long time I think I'll exclude that for the moment being. Especially since the repairs happen in a day... If it would have time functionality similar to Gildergreen Regrown that'd would have been preferrable. 

 

Thanks again for the info :D

 

Edit: Just saw I posted this right after your followup. Will read that in a bit!

[deathneko11]

Apollodown knows what he's doing

[EssArrBee]

Apollodown knows what he's doing

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he has worked with Beth or Obsidian and knows how to work with the engine from a professional standpoint. If he adds in some good radiant quests and rewards (I got a steel shield for taking Riften :( ) for the Civil War questline then it will actually be worth the time investment to play through it. The vanilla CW is basically 3 hours if you rush through it, and CWO is probably 6 hours.

 

I wouldn't exclude Civil War repair though, the artifact may have been on my end and I can't reproduce it.

[deathneko11]

I think he's blowing smoke up our exhaust pipes telling us he's a teenager living with mom

[EssArrBee]

A lot of his... uhh... words are clearly sarcasm. No teenager I've ever met had that grasp of humor, especially none of the teens born in the 90s, with their brains stuck in cell phone mode.

 

@Nearox, one other I didn't mention is that I had no ENBoost, or anything else other than STEP: Core and the mods I had mentioned a few days ago that I'm testing for the pack I'm putting together.

[Nearox]

Just a follow up, I played some more last night and finished a civil war quest.

 

One other bug I found was faction relations getting a bit screwy if you don't follow orders pretty strictly. If you fast travel to a location where you are supposed to meet up with troops for an attack and get spotted by the other side before getting to your troops then this can cause that part of the quest to fail and your side will become hostile. The only way to get around it, is to reload or win the battle and your side will stop attacking you after a minute or so.

 

The one thing that was really nice is that I had zero crashes, freezes, or ILS while playing through the civil war questline. On my test run I just started as a an Imperial Soldier using Alternate Start and played on novice so I could go as fast as possible and not have to worry about dying or loosing. On higher difficulty the first Whiterun battle is pretty tough on the legion side, and I think there should be at least one more set of barricades to defend on the way before the gate, or maybe be able to drop back to Dragonsreach and have to defend the doors or something. On Expert or higher you really need good weapons and potions and poisons to beat everyone without them getting to the drawbridge because the first barricade will fall almost immediately. Being able to loose though is really nice since you actually feel like it is a war.

 

The weird artifact issue in Whiterun disappeared after restarting the game. Not sure what the deal with that was, but it doesn't seem to be a recurring issue with Civil War Repairs. Every city that gets damaged will be returned to it's original state a day later.

Well with regards to difficulty, SkyRe will have a large extra impact on that. But fortunately Apollodown said it is fully compatible. Your description of the challenge sounds totally excellent to me. What exactly is it that make it more challenging in CWO? The sheer number of enemies?

 

I'll definitely be including this for testing now. Alternatively, I'll leave it out and simply make a compatibility patch for between our (future) packs. Gonna have to see how things develop in the next few weeks with vega extended. Really wouldn't want to do double work if you are already making a pack :)

---

Apollodown knows what he's doing

Nobody said he doesn't :P

 

We're just testing this for inclusion in our packs and for compatibility with STEP:Core.

[EssArrBee]

Well, at high level difficulty like Master or Legendary you can barely hurt anyone and they can hurt you pretty bad with a couple of swings. The goal of that battle is for the Stormcloaks to bust through the first barricade which is like two or three swings and then try to run past you to get to the drawbridge levers. You quickly burn through stamina and poisons and potions trying to hold guys back but the shear amount and lack damage you do to enemies at that difficulty makes it hard to win that battle. They will send invisible Stormcloak Rogues at you, who run by and up the steps to the drawbridge while you are still fighting the Berserkers and a Giant. There are some really great types of soldiers added to the battles from mages to huge guys in full plate or ebony armor and there are thiefs, rogues, prefects, legates, captains, and bunch others I forget about in the battles.

 

I'd say that it is almost designed for you to lose Whiterun. Also, you can lose the war, just lose battle after battle and don't help your side at all and there is new ending for the civil war that Apollo built. I plan do to test this in my next playthrough.

[Nearox]

I can't wait till I get to advance further with my CWO playthrough! So far (im at stage 4) it is already very well done. I'd really want to include this in the pack.

 

Now that Safety Load mod is seemingly working for the vast majority of commenters , I hold my hopes up that CWO can actually be made compatible with the large gameplay mod selection I picked for extended. 

 

Also the fact that battles can be lost and the entire civil war as well and that apparently most of the CWO assets Apollodown used were already placed in the game by Bethesda but they never completed it... To me that makes it a mod which adds so much depth to the game and player experience that it must be included in either pack :P

[Bundy714]

Really excited about this pack, hope it's still being worked on and all is well.  The warning not to use yet has me waiting for the testing results. 

 

I've been playing Fallout New Vegas waiting on a mature and stable pack that has everything I want in it, and this seems like the best bet.  FNV is really a BIG step back from Skyrim and it's really hard to wait for some of that Skyrim eye candy.

[Nearox]

This project is off the table for a while due to work commitments... I hope to keep the Core pack updated once in a while! :(

[Bundy714]

This project is off the table for a while due to work commitments... I hope to keep the Core pack updated once in a while! :(

Thanks for the update Nearox, I can certainly understand real life commitments interfering.  Adding more mods and making a stable pack can be very time consuming.  I'll have another look at the core pack.    

[xallever]

Hi,

 

Is it possible to add ASIS into this pack, or actually, to the basic VEGA even?

 

With the addition of Apocalypse, I think ASIS would be a great addition.