It’s 100% subjective but I find the debris fields and asteroids around planets to be overdone, annoying, and not immersive. Why would starship crews grav jump/travel directly into debris fields? Others have pointed out that that many asteroids sitting in orbit would be a death sentence to planetary inhabitants and biomes. And they seem to be around most planets and moons.
The removal of these hundreds to nearly two thousand rotating objects all around you boosts FPS a small amount while orbiting, for me it’s like 2-3 FPS (32 fps –> 35 fps). YMMV depending on platform. In dogfights, it makes a larger difference and seems to smooth out considerably where I would normally get large temporary fps drops fighting around the asteroids.
The asteroids do provide mining, but I find the reward small, and trying to collect the minerals a little tedious (yes I know there are mods for all that). I wish Bethesda had made actual asteroid belts for mining, perhaps an idea for another mod.
This mod is non-selective, it edits form lists in CELL data, and sets all asteroid/debris MSTT forms to “Initially Disabled” in several lists and probably removes all asteroids and space junk from the game. It should not remove asteroids you can dock and explore.
I have not done a full playthrough with this mod and don’t know what kind of issues it might cause. It may make certain quest scenes less visually appealing if asteroids and junk are supposed to appear (or more appealing depending on your tastes). I’m in NG+ and don’t recall any quests that require planetary asteroids, except the kind you can explore. It’s almost certainly incompatible with other asteroid mods.
I continue to research to see what this mod might affect. Please post if you see anything game breaking or unappealing.
This was created with xEdit and run through xEdit auto cleaning. Not having done a mod like this, some things I am still looking into. As mentioned it uses the “Initially Disabled” flag to get rid of the debris objects. Apparently there are a couple other steps to general best practice when removing objects like this, such as setting the Z value to -30000 (push it way out of view). However I am not sure if this what we should do with objects out in space yet. xEdit did not mention anything in its auto clean. Any experienced modders with an opinion on this, let’s hear it on the posts page.
It’s just an esm with no dependencies other than Starfield.esm.
Place “*Remove Asteroids and Debris In Orbit.esm” (without quotes) in your plugins.txt file after installing with your mod manager (I use Vortex).
I may make versions to allow smaller numbers and/or to selectively enable the debris is specific places.
Credits:
TennesseeTuxedo
Download mod
| File | File size |
|---|---|
Remove Asteroids and Debris In Orbit
|
240 KB |
