Xeno Master is a rather different creature companion mod that provides you a way to tame the various different faunas/creatures within the Settled Systems. Your captured alien pets will behave more like real companions rather then being mind controlled or reanimated drones.
NOTICE: Xeno Master is currently in BETA.
Xeno Master allows you to capture creatures through the use of an item called the Creature Cooperation Device (or C.C.D. for short) and manage them with a portable computer called the Xenobox.
– The C.C.D. is your main method of capturing creatures. They are thrown similar to that of Impact grenades, except with a few major key differences. The CCD does not deal any meaningful damage, instead when the CCD gets a direct hit on any creature, it will attempt to contain them into the Xenobox. The CCD follows a catch formula that will be listed later here.
– The Xenobox is your main method of managing your alien pets, this will allow you to send a xeno pet out to accompany you in your travels and behave as a real companion. This also serves as the storage for your pets, you can have up to 300 pets at a time!
– Have a companion not from Xeno Master? No problem! Xeno Master uses its own follower framework which means you can bring a companion (ex: Vasco, Andreja, Barrett, Adoring Fan, etc) and a xeno pet with you!
– Caught a beautiful blue creature in a frozen biome? They will have that look everywhere! No more “chameleon” color swapping! Which means you can bring your newly caught blue creature to a Volcanic or Forest biome and they will still keep that look, no matter what.
– Special Xeno pets that have their own “backstory” and a unique way of obtaining them. Each of them having their own special ability granted to you once you have reached max friendship (or affinity) with them. (This feature is not present in beta)
– Give your pet a unique name from the 190 (and counting) different names to choose from!
– Friendship system! Think of it as the affinity system for human companions. Your alien pet will react on how you treat them. Keep them happy by treating them well, and benefits ensure.
– Check their stats! You can check in with your pet to see their current friendship, hunger level, power level, health power level, what level you caught them as, what slot they are in the Xenobox, and legendary status.
– Change their current range attack or even grant them one! You can feed your alien pet special treats that can give them fire breathing, explosive spit, electric breath, etc.
– Beef up your pets! You can feed them special power upgrading meals to permanently enhance their combat capabilities or even make them legendary! Higher level met pets can be found semi pre-beefed up or even legendary.
– Relocate them or recall (dismiss) them anytime and anywhere! You can dismiss your pet by telling them in dialogue or from the Xenobox! Lost pet? No problem! Just dispense a Filled C.C.D. (and/or reselect the creature) from the Xenobox and then throw it! Your pets will always be there for you!
– Just like the vanilla game, all of your pets are essential! So you don’t have to worry about them dying! They will only enter a kneel down state when they have taken too much damage, in which you can heal them with a medpack to get them back up!
Since the Xenobox is your main method of accessing about 95% of this mod’s features and functionality, you will be given a Xenobox (and five CCDs) shortly after you have completed (or skipped if are in NG+) the “One Small Step” Quest. This is usually when the game gives you the lodge key and stuff.
Once you have obtained the Xenobox, you can now go into any planet with life and start catching aliens!
If you ever need more info you can go into the [Instructions] menu in the Xenobox.
The C.C.D. has five different tier levels that can all be crafted at the Industrial Workbench with each tier having better base catching odds and with the last tier
allowing you to capture the most dominant species in the Settled Systems. All tiers (except the lowest tier) require you to have security and zoology spec’d and researched before you can create them.
The meals and treats can be created from any cooking station, they are prefixed as “Xeno pet”. Special pet meals/treats require you to have spec’d into Gastronomy and researched before you can create them.
Most of the creatures/aliens can be caught with a few exceptions. You cannot catch sea creatures, alien roaches, creatures owned by someone else, and most flying creatures, but you can catch “birdie” like creatures. However, I may allow catching alien roaches and other flying creatures in the future.
Creature Cooperation Device catching formula:
C.C.D. : Base catch chance = 5%
C.C.D MK II. : Base catch chance = 10%
C.C.D MK III. : Base catch chance = 15%
C.C.D MK IV. : Base catch chance = 20%
C.C.D MK V. : Base catch chance = 25%
Ways to improve odds:
– The lower the creature’s health is, the easier it is to catch them. So make sure to weaken them.
– Being spec’d into Xenosociology, the higher the rank, the better.
– The creature being Frozen/Paralyzed. Sunless Space will be useful here.
– Fully Incapacitated by electromagnetic. Novablast disrupters (or any weapon that can inflict EM Damage) will be very useful for catching creatures.
– The higher your level versus the creature’s level, the easier.
– Sneak Capture
Ways to lessen odds:
– The higher the creature’s health, the harder.
– The creature outlevels you.
– The creature’s temperament. Aggressive creatures will give you a somewhat harder time to capture them while Peaceful and Skittish ones not so much.
Situations where the C.C.D. will ALWAYS fail:
– Trying to capture something that isn’t an alien. No, you cannot capture Andreja, I can’t let you do that.
– Xenobox is full. Gotta release some if you want to catch more! I would be surprised if you have managed to hit the 300 cap.
– Quest critical target. I probably did not enforce this, but please refrain from capturing creatures that are required to be killed in quests.
– Creature is already dead. I don’t need to explain this and no reanimated creatures cannot be captured.
– Is a sea creature. Xeno pets need to be able to operate on land.
Situations where the C.C.D. will ALWAYS succeed (NOT PRESENT IN BETA):
– Creature caught using one of the zoology outpost modules. Just simply walk up to one of them and “activate” them to store into the Xenobox. You must have a CCD in your inventory. The CCD use order starts from lowest tier to highest tier.
– Extract the zip contents to your Data folder
– Enable the mod named “G231_XenoMaster.esp” with your plugin manager like MO2 or Vortex
(If you use the in-game mod manager, just go to load order and then make sure my mod is enabled)
For Uninstalling, make sure to dismiss all of your pets first. and then uncheck the mod and finally remove “G231_XenoMaster.esp” and “G231_XenoMaster – Main.ba2”. in your Data folder.
However, with any other heavier content packed mods, make sure you have a clean save! It’s a good habit to have more than one save. This rule applies to all singleplayer BGS games! I will not be held responsible if your game decides to act up.
– Art for the CCD (As of right now, it just uses the Particle grenade as the placeholder)
– Art for the treats and meals (As of right now, they just use meal kit as the placeholder)
– Custom sounds for catching and stuff (They currently use sound effects from the game)
– Special/Unique Xeno Pets (This is a big one. This is what [Special Xeno Pets] menu is for.)
– Dialogue having sounds (They are currently silent at the moment)
– Being able to donate a xeno pet to Cora Coe (Come on, Sam, let your daughter live her dream!)
– Biome Skin Variation fixed
– Being able to change your xeno pet’s combat style
Since this is currently in BETA, there are some issues that I am well aware about:
– Most of the Biome Creature Skins turn black when you go far enough away from them. This only applies to your pets, since I am basically using layered materials. This is one of the higher priority fixes.
– Some of the Creature Biome skins may be inaccurate. The whole process of creating this was very tedious, I wasn’t able to test this completely, so some creatures may end up looking a little different right after you’ve caught them.
– Pet Follower AI may get derpy sometimes and could take a while for them to wake up and start following you again. Also they cannot follow you if you are in the air, this issue also applies to vanilla followers too, and no Xeno Master isn’t the cause of this. So if you want them to follow you correctly, your feet must be on the ground. AI in Starfield is quirky as all heck, even more than Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Hell, even more than Oblivion! If you need them at your location now while they are derping, just dispense a Filled CCD (and make sure they selected) and then throw that.
– Certain Creatures may have janky hitboxes when trying to capture them, sadly there is nothing I can really do about this.
Xeno Master does not make any edits to the base game at all. So Xeno Master should be fine with any load order.
The only time I could think of any compatibility issues is that if a mod were to ever make any big changes with the CCT keywords, spells, and perks. Otherwise, it should be mostly fine, so as long the mod doesn’t delete them or anything.
Q: Why is the plugin file so big?
A: This mod holds FormIDS of the many layered materials for each biome skin variation for each creature species. There was no other way I could do it, sure there was AVWS, but that thing wasn’t my cup of tea and the process behind it was even more tedious. Oh and yeah, the 300 different slots you could have are all separate actors, and having to reference them 2 times because Bethesda doesn’t allow array text replacements.
Just the base game (latest version), nothing else.
Credits:
Ghostrider231
FallenSorrow – name idea for the CCD and some of the name choices
ElminsterAU – SF1Edit (Yes, i did use it to peak at Starfield.esm’s contents while I was making the design doc for Xeno Master)
The people behind the Skyrim and Fallout 4 Creation Kit documentation. (The unofficial mirror version, because as I am writing this, the official documentation by BGS is STILL in maintenance)
hexabit – B.A.E.
Bethesda Game Studios – Creation Kit and Starfield
