SKK Combat Stalkers

[ Hostiles are stalking you ]

… anxiety intensifies …

Wandering the wasteland for an hour without any action from the same old encounter zones or cleared areas is rather dull. Messing with game setting respawn timers is tedious, as are spawning mod induced CTDs.

SKK Combat Stalkers spawns small groups of hostiles at totally random points with no fixed locations around you, configurable lockouts for settlements and interiors. This avoids the inconvenience of being attacked when you are building, in dialogue, sleeping, or already in combat. Configurable notifications let you know stalkers are active if you do start any of those activities.

TO BE CLEAR Fallout 4 is mostly a passive world in which you wander around to find hostiles and initiate engagements. With this mod THE HOSTILES HUNT AND ENGAGE YOU. If you do not enjoy anxiety then enable hostile map markers for comfort and assurance, but lets be super clear that if you want a predictable player never dies RPG storybook experience, don’t use this UNCERTAINTY, FEAR and EXCITEMENT combat mod.

Install this mod at any point in any game and the player is automatically given an [ .SKK Combat Stalkers  Holotape ] in MISC inventory after Vault 111 exit. The mod starts with settings disabled, so you must actively enable them to bring the fear:

>  Hostile stalkers [enabled – *disabled ]
>  Hostile patrols [ enabled – *disabled ]
>  Vertibird hostile overwatch [ enabled – *disabled ]
>  Hostile difficulty level indexed to player level [ 50%, 75%, *100%. 125%, 150% ]
>  Number of hostiles [ *1-2, 2-4, 3-6, 8, Random ]
>  Min & max real time spawn interval minutes [ 1-2, *5-10, 10-20, 20-40, 30-60 ]
>  Hostile notification [ silent, *warning, number & direction, map markers ]
>  Enable Stalker attacks in settlements & interiors [ enabled – *disabled ]
>  Spawn only after player movement  [ *enabled – disabled ]
>  Protect innocent neutral actors from stalker attacks [ *enabled – disabled ]
>  Headshot kills only for stalkers & patrols [ enabled – *disabled ]

Features  and product specs (RTFM)

Spawn difficulty and numbers are balanced to be survivable starting with a fresh new player at vault 111 exit and scales with level. At 100% player difficulty in survival, you should be able to manage 2 or 3 hostiles with care. If you want the vanity volumes and are not playing OP, reduce the difficulty. The random option spawns 2 to 8 plus one per follower.

By default spawns don’t pop until both the timer dings and the player moves between two locations that are not interiors or marked as settlements (options to change that). The spawn location is totally random and dynamic, it doesn’t use any external fixed points for maximum surprise, unlike rocking up to the same old fixed markers and random encounter points for the thousandth time.

To avoid loading the game engine with stacked CTD inducing spawns, only one hostile spawn is active (stalker + patrol). The spawn timer does not reset until the current active spawn can clean itself up because:

a) all the existing hostiles are killed, or

b) you run far enough away that all live hostiles 3d unloads, or

c) you fast travel, or

d) you use the Holotape to reset.

A Spawn Patrol can be generated alone or with Stalkers. Whilst stalkers are drawn to the player, the patrol provides hostile area cover around the player for the traditional engage or avoid options. When you leave the patrol area they don’t follow, but disband for the next spawn.

Vertibird hostile overwatch will join if enabled, the player difficulty adjusted level is above 10 and a vertibird capable faction ground force spawns. Put on Psy-War-Op. Make It Loud. The vertibird team is health levelled and hardened to the player. Once all ground forces are killed or unloaded, if it is not in combat the vertibird will depart. If you run short spawn cycles, the next ground force may spawn without air support before the active vertibird has left the map.

Protect innocent neutral actors from being attacked by Stalkers setting will ensure that spawned hostiles do not trash any base game settlement like DC, Bunker, GoodN or Covenant whilst you are shopping there, or attack vendor NPCs to preserve your supply.  If you are running mods that multiply spawns or mess with actor factions and find that stalkers are fighting themselves, disable the innocent protection setting and accept that those indiscriminate mods are putting the innocent at risk.

This mod tunes the Stalker pre-combat movement packages to be more real world, they speed up when falling behind and slow down to sneak when closing in. At hard and v.hard difficulty when one Stalker is in combat, the whole team will run to engage. Sounds minor, but can make mob engagements really hard, much like feral ghoul packs.

The pre-combat hostile ambush, sneak, walk, run dynamic has worked well with the in-combat PackAttack NPC edition behaviors which modify many of the base game leveled NPCs this mod uses.

Compatibility

This solution has no dependencies on extenders or DLCs and does not change any existing base game scripts, assets or objects. It is 100% pure new Creation Kit forms and scripts which means that it works on PC , Xbox and GamePass. As it does not touch any other stuff in your save-game, there should be no load order issues or mod conflicts.

Unless you run stuff that modifies base game scrips/assets or tries to mess with the product of this mod, I have zero patience for that sort of stuff.

This works with any other SKK mod including combat spawning solutions.

TL;DR: This mod will not initiate conflict with any other mods as it doesn’t change any existing stuff in the game, and it won’t CTD because it cleans up spawns as it goes.

Known Issues

(1) Spawn times are real-time to allow for the range of different game Timescales that players are configuring from the default 20:1. This means that the timer does not tick for player wait or sleep durations.

(2) When Stalkers are configured to spawn in interiors “Spawn only after player movement”  is automatically DISABLED as many interiors are not big enough to trigger the movement distance check.

(3) Recommend you install SKK Dynamic Workshop Time (even if you leave time at default) which notifies this mod if the player is building or crafting so any active hostiles are put on hold whilst you can’t take action.

(4) If the player sprints off or spawned hostiles become stuck and fall so far behind the player that their 3D unloads (around 15,000 game units managed by your Fallout4Prefs.ini uGridsToLoad setting), the spawn is cleaned up and reset. If messages are enabled you will see a [ Hostile stalkers no longer a threat ] message, or map markers disappear, even though you didn’t kill any.

(5) If you use spawn multipliers or extenders, the extra spawns will likely attack Combat Stalkers and innocent neutral actors as the full scripted actor configuration is unlikely to be duplicated. Try changing the [ Protect Innocents ] holotape setting which they will know nothing about. If you have made the choice to use spawn multipliers and have problems they can not be “fixed”.

PC FAQ

(1) What about an ESL version ? SKK mods will not be published in ESL format because life contains sufficient hassle.

(2) What about MCM ? No, because 90% of SKK mod users shoot stuff on Xbox. If MCM is vital to your long life and happiness, you can write an MCM json thing using the settings thoughtfully published in the SKK Combat Stalkers Console Configuration article.

(3) Can I change the spawned actor selection ? Yes you can add and remove actors following this article SKK Combat Stalkers add and remove hostiles.

PC manual download installation

Unpack the downloaded ZIP archive, copy SKKCombatStalkers.esp and  SKKCombatStalkers – Main.BA2 to your…\Fallout 4\Data directory, then enable in the Bethesda mod menu, Plugins.txt, mod manger or whatever.

The mod can be disabled if a spawn is not active, best to run the Holotape, set [ Spawn Hostiles Disabled >>> Submit ] to clear any active stuff. Only remove mods if you are happy to accept potential conflicts from load order changes in a save game.