CaCAO – Companion and Crew Advanced Overhaul V1.02

Extends functionality of companions and crew, adding new crew skills, various quality of life improvements and improved stat/skill levels for high-level gameplay. Rebuilt and expanded with the creation kit.

General Changes
More Crew – Increases the default number of crew assignable to ships by 5.
Stronger Crew – Increases crew and companion health and carry weight.
Better Ship Command – Modifies the Ship Command perk to allow for 5 additional ship crew per level.
Better Ship Modules – Doubles the crew allotment provided by most ship modules providing crew stations.
Better Crew Stations – Increases the number of crew allowed by crew stations to 5 per station.
Give Crew Orders – Similar to manipulation, crew members can be ordered to do various tasks. The hotkey will vary based on settings but can be seen when looking at a crew member. Skills like botany can increase harvested resources.
Settings Menu – Displays the stats of the current follower such as current health, affinity, carry, etc. Tweak and disable/enable various aspects of the mod. Items marked with * can be tweaked as described. The menu can be accessed with the displayed hotkey while a crew member is in a command state.
Send Crew Home – Housing decorators have been upgraded to allow you to assign crew and companions to the interior of player owned homes.
Leadership Changes – Leadership will now allow you to recruit a ship crew to follow you off ship. Each rank allows an additional crew member to join you.
Leadership Fix – Since I had to edit the leadership perk, I carried over a fix I’m sure was in the community patch that fixes affinity gain at higher levels.
Stealthy Crew – For people who play as stealth builds, companions and crew all have the “Do not effect stealth meter” flag ticked, as well as having other stealth bonuses, such as ignoring noise while running in sneak, avoiding mines and traps, opening door silently, and more.
Quiet Flying – Ship crew members won’t try to greet you while you are flying.

Companion and Elite Crew Changes
Inventory Quick Access – Activating a follower with your weapon drawn will allow you to quickly access companion inventory without going through dialogue.
Companion Previews – Viewing a companion’s inventory through dialogue or quick access will show their appearance in the menu rather than the players.
Better Gifts – Expands the leveled lists of gifts to give more/better gifts at higher levels.
*Better Gift Delivery – In the follower settings menu you can select whether to add gifts to the follower’s inventory or your own, instead of repeating “I have something for you” until you finally talk to them. Set to follower inventory by default
Enhance! Support – Taking a follower to an Enhance! location will give them a new dialogue option, allowing you to alter their appearance to your liking.
Enhance! Presets – Companions and elite crew have had their default faces added to the chargen menu to allow for quick reset should you wish.
Additional Skills – Companions and Elite crew with less than 4 perks will have a chance for additional perks.
Leveled Skills – When loading a new game, each companions’ skills will be randomly leveled up to rank 4.
Leveling Skills – Magazines have been added that can add or level a crew’s particular skill. They can be found at anywhere you can buy books. Each magazine can also provide an hour-long buff to the player.
Improving skills – Companions and hired crew members have a 5% chance to level a skill every week. After this timer, they must wait 3 days before they can use a skill magazine, leaving a 4-day window to level skills manually.
Inventory Control – Makes all weapons, clothing, and spacesuits removeable by the player.
*Outfit Mirroring – When the players suit and/or helmet are visible, the current followers will be as well. Can also set to always wear a suit or to vanilla settings.
NG+ Improvements – Grants access to the followers that typically become unavailable when skipping the main story: Heller, Lin, Moara, and Rafael.
Starborn Teacher – After entering unity for the first time you can teach a companion Starborn powers at the cost of quantum essence and experience. You can teach as many abilities as times you have entered unity. Teaching the same skill will grant the perk ranks that improve that power.
*Less Chatter – Can alter the rate at which followers will randomly comment on your actions.
Height Variation – Companions will be randomly assigned a new height when loaded.

Generic Crew Changes
More Crew – Crew will have a higher chance of spawning additional recruitable crew in each location, and the timer to respawn them has been reduced to 2 of the planet’s days.
Recruit Crew – Taking the leadership perk now grants you the ability to recruit 1 basic crew member perk rank.
More Locations – Crew now spawn in additional locations, such as auto-generated civilian outposts, a couple of space stations, additional settlements, and additional places in cities.
Inventory Control – Crew inventories can be accessed, and armor/weapons equipped using quick access or the dialogue option.
More Skill Variety – Potential list of crew members have been expanded, with higher level crews having stronger and/or more perks.
More Appearance Variety – Potential faces, body types, heights, and other aesthetics have been expanded to allow for 9000+ unique appearances.
Named Crew – Crew members are assigned random names. To help differentiate from elite crew in the menu, they only have a first name. There are 800+ potential names.
More Skills – Crew members will now have up to 3 additional perks, randomly assigned for each crew member. The higher a player’s level and number of NG+’s increase the chance for additional perks.
Less Generic Outfits – Crew members have been given better fashion sense and should now wear a wider variety of clothes.
Weapon Variety – Crew can spawn with alternate weapons, rather than an across-the-board pistol.
Higher Levels – Crew now level up past level 5. Generic crew are roughly 75% of the players level and have improved health.
*Better AI – Modified crew AI so that they will help in combat now, notably at outposts. The AI is set so that they should attack when the player or other crew is attacked and flee if their health is low.
*Improved Behavior – Alters follow distance, changes how followers behave while in stealth.
*Essential Crew – Crew can be set to essential, protected, or non-essential.

Added Perks
With the exception of 4 perks, all perks the player can take can now be found on crew members. These are perks that are new to crew and companions in general. There is a least one generic crew that can spawn with each, elite crew and companions have a chance to gain one or more of these skills based on their vanilla loadout. Each has a dialogue response to “What’s your specialty?” albeit unvoiced.

Armor Penetration – Attacks ignore 15% of enemy armor per rank.
Automated Weapons – Automated ship weapons do 5% more damage and reduce all targeting mode costs by 5% per rank.
Boost Assault Training – Will light nearby enemies on fire when using boost pack. 5 damage per second per rank.
Boostpack Training – If active follower: Decreases players boost pack fuel use 5% per rank.
Boxing – +50% damage and +4% chance to knockdown target when unarmed per rank.
Cellular Regeneration – Regenerate 0.25 health per second in combat per rank, outside of combat regeneration triples.
Commerce – Improves buying and selling by 3% per rank.
Crippling – Increases chance of enemy entering bleedout state by 10% and increases damage against enemies in bleedout by 25% per rank.
Dueling – Increases melee damage 25% and reduces damage taken 10% while weilding melee per rank.
Engine Systems – Increases ship boost fuel by 5% and ship boost fuel recharge rate by 10% per rank.
Fitness – +10 Health, +10 Carryweight, +5% Speed per rank.
Gymnastics – Reduces fall damage by 10% per rank, also increases jump height and speed by 10% per rank.
Heavy Weapons – Heavy weapons do +10% damage per rank.
Incapacitation – EM weapons do 5% more damage per rank.
Instigation – If active follower:Increases the maximum target level of Instigation by 5 per rank.
Intimidation – If active follower:Increases the maximum target level of Intimidation by 5 per rank.
Manipulation – If active follower:Increases the maximum target level of Manipulation by 5 per rank.
Martial Arts – Unarmed/Melee attacks have +10% critical hit chance and do +10% critical damage per rank.
Negotiation – If active follower: decreases bribe amounts by 5% per rank.
Neurostrikes – Unarmed attacks do 5 EM damage per strike and have a 5% chance to stun enemies per rank.
Nutrition – +10 Health, +15 Carryweight per rank.
Persuasion – If active follower: increases player persuasion chances by 5% per rank.
Planetary Habitation – 15% cheaper workshop build costs per rank.
Rapid Reloading – Companion reloads 25% faster per rank.
Rejuvenation – Companion restore 0.5 health per second per rank in or out of combat.
Research Methods – Increases all outpost production 2% per rank.
Scanning – Increases planet scan range by 4 light years per rank.
Security – If active follower: increases players auto-hack chances by 10% per rank.
Ship Command – Functions the same as the leadership perk.
Spacesuit Design: New gift giving class, can give various apparel and armor.
Special Projects – Increases production of exotic and unique resources by 10% per rank.
Starship Design – Improves ship efficiency +3% per rank (Repair Rate, Grav Jump Calculation Time, Weapon Recharge, Boost Recharge)
Surveying – 15% outpost common resource production. Each rank expands the tier affected by the boost (uncommon, rare, exotic)
Targeting – Improves weapon accuracy and range by 5% per rank.
Targeting Control Systems – Increases chance for critical hit while locked onto a target by 3% per rank.
Weapon Engineering: New gift giving class, gives various weapons and ammo.
Zoology – Increases organic outpost production 10% per rank.

Expanded Perks

Unlike most companion mods I’ve seen that modify companion perk levels, this mod adds additional effects for the levels, rather than just changing the number. The following crew perks have been edited to have 4 ranks each, following the levelling pattern set in place by the original levels.

Aneutronic Fusion
Demolitions
Energy Weapon Dissipation
Incapacitation
Marksmanship
Outpost Engineering
Outpost Management
Pain Tolerance
Pistol Certification
Ballistic Weapon Systems
EM Weapon Systems
Missile Weapon Systems
Shotgun Certification
Sniper Certification
Xenosociology
Weightlifting – Increases carry bonus to +25 per rank.
Wellness – Increases health bonus to +20 per rank.

Better Perks

These perks control the gifts a companion give you when following you, originally, they had no actual effects, they have been improved to expand their usefulness. Higher levels of the perk will also give additional/better gifts.

Botany – Increases organic outpost production 10% per rank.
Chemistry – Increases gas/liquid outpost production 10% per rank.
Geology – Increases solid outpost production 10% per rank.
Scavenging – Increases all outpost production 1% per rank.
Medicine – Increases aid items magnitude for player 10% for rank.
Theft – Increases players pickpocket chance 5% perk rank.

Compatibility

Since I had to add a similar function for quick access, Proper Companion Previews is incorporated into the mod.
Will conflict with other mods editing directly editing crew and companion records.
If using Generic Crew Enhanced – Outfit Modifier, that mod is no longer required.

Installation

1. Use mod manager to install normally or manually extract the plugin to your mod directory
New Game or NG+ is recommended to install. At the very least, waiting for several days when installing is required.

Known Issues
These are the only issues to my knowledge with the mod, and should eventually be resolved with SFSE functionality. Please report bugs to the bugs section, not the comments.
When modifying follower appearances at Enhance!, there is a bit of script trickery in play, the only issue is that I cannot prevent the rename option from appearing to exit the appearance menu. Changing the companions name actually changes the player name, not the follower being edited, so just re-enter your player name when the prompt appears.
If anyone knows of a way to get the players name via script, it should be an easy fix if I can store the players name temporarily.
When using a skill magazine on the player, it visually remains in your inventory till the inventory is refreshed manually.

Credits:

SenterPat