As of December 3rd, 2024, I no longer have plans to actively mod Starfield.

This mod is unlikely to receive further updates.

Bethesda has recently allowed paid mods to be tagged as Achievement Friendly on the Creations platform, with no plans to make accommodations for free mods. They are also allowing mod authors to re-upload free mods as paid mods to get the Achievement Friendly tag, at the request of console mod users.

This effectively disincentivizes free mods from being published, as it will push console users to stick with purely paid load orders in order to continue earning achievements. This was the final nail in the coffin for my interest in Starfield, and I no longer wish to support the money-first modding ecosystem that Bethesda is attempting to create.

Thank you to everyone who has used my work. I am happy to have been able to share things which have improved the game for so many people.

Personally, I found the Gravity Wave power to be in need of improvement. It does not properly ragdoll enemies, and the ONLY thing that improves between level 1 and level 10 is the slowdown effect on NPCs after they stand up.

This mod aims to fix all of that, while still feeling fair and balanced with the rest of the powers and their progression.

Features

• No more knockdown animations. Just pure, proper ragdoll physics. This is a change across the entire game, but you will notice it the most with this power. • Magnitude and cost now scale with the power’s level. It will be significantly more powerful, and cheaper to cast, at higher levels. This is balanced with other vanilla powers. • Increases fall damage for NPCs while they are ragdolled by this power specifically, so that it is actually possible to kill them by blasting them off of a high enough surface. • Small improvements and fixes to the existing aspects of the power.

Ragdoll Knockdowns

The most important thing this mod does is disable the knockdown animations on humans, robots, and aliens. This allows for them to simply be ragdolled when they are knocked down. Not only does this look better, but it allows this power to actually “force push” an enemy away.

This is a sweeping change across the entire game, but don’t worry. I have checked other sources of knockdowns, such as fuel tank explosions, and they look fine without any adjustments.

The vanilla animations also only had "fall forwards" and "fall backwards" versions, which means that hits from the side looked entirely wrong.

Magnitude and Cost

At level 1, this power will feel equivalent to vanilla. You will be able to knock enemies down, and might knock them off a nearby ledge, but you won’t be sending them flying.

Magnitude will very slowly increase with each level, with a noticeable increase at level 5. Then another slow crawl up to levels 9 and 10, where it once again becomes noticeably more powerful.

At level 10, it will be as powerful as a full Unrelenting Force shout from Skyrim. No really, I’m actually using the same magnitude value of 15 used by that shout. On a 1.0 G world, it looks pretty much the same as it did in that game. On lower G worlds, well… use it responsibly.

Cost will start at the baseline vanilla value of 25, and quickly decrease over the first several levels as you progress. Only small improvements come at later levels. At level 10, the power will cost 15 points to cast, which lets you fire it 4 times in a row.

Fall Damage

Vanilla fall damage is very weak. Almost to the point of being irrelevant. You could blast someone off of a 4-story watch tower... and down the cliff beside it... on a 1.34 G planet... and they’ll only lose 3/4 of their health. Ask me how I know.

I can’t just increase fall damage globally though. So with this mod, while an NPC is ragdolled by the Gravity Wave power specifically, fall damage is 1250% higher than default.

Yes, I know that sounds insane. In practice though, it really isn’t. It’s balanced out so that blasting enemies off of high ledges is just about as lethal as it was in Skyrim, in a 1.0 G environment. They still have to hit the ground pretty hard to die from the impact though, so don’t worry about it being overpowered.

Fall damage is NOT increased in any other case. Again, it is ONLY increased for NPCs while they are being ragdolled by this power specifically.

Smaller Things

This mod fixes an oversight which caused NPCs who are supposed to be immune from this power (such as Sam and Sarah) to still receive the slowdown and yell out in pain when hit by it. They will now fully resist the power, as they are supposed to. The slowdown itself has not been touched, and still works the same as it originally did on NPCs who don’t resist the power.

This mod also adds a "casting effect" to this power, which looks like a white flash from your palm. Makes it look a bit more intense. Additionally, the sound becomes a bit more intense when the power is at level 5 or higher, to signify the increasing magnitude of the power.

Installing

Can be installed mid-save and should work immediately after loading. No special steps required.

For load order, this mod will need to be below any other mods which touch this power if you want it to work.

Uninstalling

Should be safe to uninstall as long as no NPC is currently in a ragdoll state caused by the Gravity Wave power. There is a script attached to them while they are ragdolled, related to the increased fall damage.

If in doubt, simply go through a load door or wait 15 seconds from the last time you fired off the power. No NPCs should have the script running on them anymore if you do either of those things, meaning you can save your game and uninstall.

Compatibility

Load this mod after anything that touches the Gravity Wave power. This mod edits basically every record related to this power, so there shouldn’t be any cases of incompatibilities caused by mismatched data. In theory, anyway…

Known Issues

• Vanilla issue: If you are in combat, this power will not affect non-hostile NPCs. This is vanilla behavior, and may be intentional design by Bethesda. I have no idea why it happens though, and I would disable it if I could. If I find a way, I'll disable this behavior in an update.

• Vanilla issue: If you enter an interior cell while an NPC is in a ragdoll state, they will be visually frozen in place if you come back out. This will fix itself if you save and reload, or leave the area and return. This bug happens with any ragdolled NPC from any source, and is NOT caused by this mod or power.

• Vanilla issue: Ragdoll physics will last for a maximum of 15 seconds after the spell hits. If you yeet someone into orbit on a low gravity planet, they will "stand up" in midair and fall back to the ground after a bit. This timer resets if you hit them with the power again, so you can still push someone all the way across New Atlantis if you really want to. This one can also happen with any ragdolled NPC. Might be an intentional limit on Bethesda's part.

Just some vanilla quirkiness in some edge cases then, basically. Other than those things, this mod has NO known issues of its own. "It just works!"