Complete rebalance of the in-game economy – both to give players bigger carrots to chase, AND to ground the player in a world where wealth doesn’t come easy….
Ever since my first few hours in early access, it has bothered me that ship habs were of equal value of 10 cocktails at a bar. The settled systems is a place where people are stuck in cramped over-populated cities, while the mineral-rich and galactically infamous reap the benefits of end-stage capitalism, or capitalize off of the gaps in the market. Now the player will feel the crushing weight of poverty, and the highs of living comfortably, by the game requiring more time and effort in moving up across the gameworld. This will hopefully add a curve to many of the ingame systems that the profitability of loot collecting in Bethesda RPGs makes easy to avoid. The ultimate goal is to add moral dynamism to created characters by, making players go down paths they might usually avoid for a quick buck.
WHAT THIS MOD DOES:
I designed the economy to make endgame money sinks require MUCH more investment, while also rewarding exploration and outpost building by greatly increasing the value of high-value items found in the gameworld.
COMMERCE SKILL REWORK w/ s.p.e.c.i.a.l. thanks to toastehbro
The first thing players may notice upon an install, is that the commerce perk has had an overhaul. My personal favorite tweak to the skill is one found here: Commerce Perk Increases Vendor Credits
That mod increases the amount of credits vendors have access to across the Setlled Systems as you rank it up. In order to add even more onto the usefulness of this skill, I increased the bonuses to the player’s negotiation skills. In balance, I took some inspiration from games like daggerfall, while also respecting the fact the player character is essentially a wholesaler so now:
At rank 1, players will now be able to sell an item for 20% of its value.
Rank 2 allows players to trade items for 35% of it’s value.
Rank 3 allows players to trade items for 50% of it’s value.
And max rank 4 commerce will give players the ability to negotiate a sale for 75% of its actual value.
If you like the way the vendors are balanced, make sure you go and give the original mod an upvote, and let the guy know how awesome his mod is!
SHIPBUILDING
The Shipbuilder (being the ultimate endgame activity) has had the value of nearly all of its pieces go up. This is the centerpiece of the mod, and without these rebalances, the changes In the rest of the mod (in my opinion) fall apart.
The value of all parts in the STRUCTURE category have been increased x10.
Landing gears are x10 more expensive.
Docking modules are x10 more expensive.
MOST Cockpits are x10 more expensive, but the Brigdes were tweaked to not go too far above 100,000 credits in value.
Scan Jammers are x10 more expensive.
Shielded Cargo modules are about 2x as expensive as their regular counterparts.
Grav Drives are x2 more expensive.
Reactors are x2 more expensive.
Engines are x2 more expensive.
The value of all parts in the HABS category have seen varying increases, with walkways and storerooms seeing a flat x10 increase, and habs themselves being GREATLY increased to match their utility-scalability throughout a playthrough.
I have done this to make players feel more attached to each piece they place on their ship, and feel more reluctant to change their builds up due to the heavy credit sink. Players who begin the game in this new economy will have to start prioritizing the utility pieces of shipbuilding until they become successful in whatever career they choose for themselves. Getting to the point of having a fully equipped ship that’s also a homely work of art will require you to be very focused and economical with your spending, leading to more satisfaction when you get there.
Also as a by-product of these changes, Ships as a whole have MUCH more value when buying them, selling them – and by extension – stealing them. I’ll leave the morality of it all to the citizens of the settled systems.
MINING
Resource collecting, mining, and selling are all more profitable than before, allowing players to fully immerse themselves in the role of a mineral trader. They are typically about x5 more expensive to buy, which can push early-game players to interact with Outpost building instead of relying on traders to gather resources for crafting. This changes the game most fundamentally and actually gives exploring planets more options for creating sustainable wealth. I’m open to changing this up more for some of the less rare materials, but items like Calemite I think are in a VERY good place. During testing, I found myself walking all over a planet with an anomaly to mine resources because I knew it would be worth it in the long run. It also makes finding artifacts passively rewarding as well.
I haven’t changed the value of craftable items, but if the community requests it I’m open to it. If so, for balancing purposes, I’ll likely make them heavier as well.
TREASURES
Starfield features many artifacts from Old Earth that are (at least) 300-400 years old. These items can be found randomly across the settled systems, and I figured it would be a quick and fun way to make exploration more rewarding, while also giving more weight to the earth appreciation in lore, would be to increase the value of these items. Secondly, as someone who likes collecting items and displaying them in player housing in all Bethesda games, I would also enjoy the price point in the Euporium to reflect my exquisite tastes.
The actual Antiques themselves (like the ones rewarded from a certain quest) have been made about x5 more expensive, while other ones called antiques (but with much lower base values) have been jacked up x10. I personally went through the list and picked a few items I thought were undervalued and did some personal tweaking so any ideas you guys have I’m open to listening.
EXTRAS
All player housing has seen a x10 increase, save for the sleep crate on NEON. Broke boys gotta sleep too.
Hotel renting has also seen a x10 increase.
Getting robbed by NPCs also has a heftier payout, in order to really make the player decide if they should risk it all on a fight they might be (especially in the early game with this mod) under-leveled for.
Junk Flush is now worth 35,000 credits, and getting additions removed by the doctor costs 25,000 credits. All other medical help is x10 more expensive.
Ship repairs through the technician are now x10 more expensive.
NOTE: These changes will not be reflected in Dialogue trees. If someone shows me how to do that, I’d love to add it in.
INSTALL GUIDE
MANUAL
Place this .esm file in the “DATA” folder of your actual Starfield installation.
That’s “Steam\steamapps\common\Starfield\Data” for Steam users
Create a “plugins.txt” file in %LocalAppData%\Starfield
add “# This file is used by Starfield to keep track of your downloaded content. (You HAVE to keep a # on the first line here) ” to the top of the file.
Type “*SSEO.esm” into the file under the last line (as written in step 3)
If this isn’t your only plugin, add it to the bottom of the list.
or just use your mod manager of choice….
Credits:
JayDovahkin
Download mod
| File | File size |
|---|---|
Economy overhaul-1-0
|
25 KB |
