Highlights
- A new Starfield mod by user NickMillion enhances the game's AI, making enemies smarter in combat and more realistic during stealth.
- The mod also includes tweaks to friendly characters, improving their combat usefulness and reducing tragicomic outcomes in rescue attempts.
- The mod increases weapon damage and reduces character HP bonuses, making combat more unforgiving and preventing bullet sponge scenarios.
A newly released Starfield mod promises to deliver a significant overhaul of the game's AI, making it smarter in combat and more realistic during stealth. The customization adds to the growing selection of great Starfield mods that are already available for download.
While Bethesda's single-player RPGs are largely synonymous with modding, its latest title doesn't yet offer official modding support, which will only arrive with Starfield's upcoming Creation Kit in 2024. Some enthusiasts have still started developing mods as soon as the game reached early access on September 1, but the majority of such customizations that are already out have unsurprisingly limited functionality. Some are even intended as simple jokes, as is the case with the recently debuted mod giving Starfield a Garfield makeover.
One release that doesn't align with that trend comes in the form of Experimental Combat and Stealth AI Overhauls by Nexus Mods user NickMillion, a veteran modding enthusiast best known for authoring several popular Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord mods that boast a combined total of over 300,000 downloads. The developer's latest project introduces dozens of tweaks to the Starfield AI so as to make enemies smarter in combat, allowing them to use cover and employ group tactics in an effort to utilize whatever numerical advantage they have over the player and their companions.
The tweaks also apply to friendly characters, making them more useful in combat and minimizing the likelihood that Starfield NPC rescue attempts have tragicomic outcomes. NickMillion's mod, which is currently on version 1.4, also makes the game's AI more realistic during stealth segments, most notably by giving enemies actual object permanence that prevents them from calling off a search for the player within seconds of eating a non-fatal bullet or witnessing their friends dropping dead around them.
One final category of tweaks included in the mod substantially increases all weapon damage while reducing the HP bonus that the protagonist and all other characters get from leveling. These changes consequently make combat more unforgiving and realistic by preventing the game from turning enemies and the protagonist into bullet sponges at higher levels. Since Starfield only recalculates the main character's health pool upon a level-up, the protagonist-facing side of the HP tweaks will only go into effect once the player advances to the next level with this mod installed. Similarly, reverting the saved changes requires uninstalling the mod and leveling up once again.
As is the case with the majority of the game's existing mod selection, using this modification will stop any achievement progression. However, that's easy enough to fix, as the online community already put out several mods that re-enable Starfield achievements.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: NickMillion / NexusMods