Sometimes, They Leave

Do you remember your first time reaching the Unity, talking to yourself, seeing representation of some of your major achievements? Pretty cool moment, to be sure. And then taking those wondrous steps forwards, urging yourself through the Unity, wondering if everyone on your ship was making the same move, heading to their own Universe.

Except, that illusion of wonder got shattered the very first time you decided to turn around and go back to your current Universe and found everyone still there, citing they weren't ready to go yet. Every single one of them. Every single time. As a narrative thread, I could suspend disbelief on the prime universe. But in every single subsequent one? Where any and every variation could be at play? No...

This mod changes that. Now... sometimes, they leave.

How It Works:

This is very much a "fire and forget" type of mod. It sits latent in your load order until you hit MQ305, entered the Unity interior cell, and start talking to your other self. At that time, it does some script magic to determine who among your active crew on your ship, if anyone, decides to go through the Unity.

This is NOT just a "text message" to give you some head canon variability, to have some conclusion to your current universe's narrative! If you opt to back out of the Unity and return to your ship after talking to yourself, you will very much find those crew members are no longer available (until your next Universe).

For clarity, to keep it small in script size and resource requirement, the mod will only handle a maximum of three crew members to go through Unity.

The mod will only fire once per Universe. If you go to Unity and noone else goes through, thats it. If you have some that do go through, but you decide not to at that time, upon your return, this mod will not fire again. If will require reset through NG+ to continue to do what it does.

Seriously, aside from maybe closing off the remaining Constellation member's personal quests, you won't notice the missing crew.

As I said, its largely a mod for RP purposes, to add some actual variability to the whole scenario.

So, who can leave?

Aside from the remaining members of Constellation, all of the base game and DLC named crew members are valid options, with the exception of the Adoring Fan - I mean, do we REALLY want to subject TWO of him to a single Universe? That would be unconscionable! 🤣

What About Mod-Added Companions / Crew?

Mod added companions will not be affected by this, out of the box. But they could be, if the authors of those mods wanted to patch for it. All it takes is creating a faction to apply to the companion in question, that is 100% unique to that companion, and then adding an override to the factions ConditionForm in this mod to add that faction as an OR conditioned GetInFaction; nothing simpler! Mind you, that doesn't shut down any quests that may be active for said mod added companion, but thats not something I can handle on this end and is entirely in their wheelhouse.

Mod Options:

The mod has a few options. Obviously an "enable/disable" toggle, which controls whether crew members can leave or not. It also includes two toggles that allow you to know who left, before you enter yourself, or when you go back to your ship. It also has a toggle that allows your spouse to go through (and yes, this is script handled to remove their representation in the unity, if they are one of the people that leave). Finally, there is a toggle that while the mod may be running and doing its scripted functions, suppresses all output, so what happens is a complete mystery. This is most useful for backing away from the Unity and then having to walk around your ship trying to figure out who is no longer there, for an RP experience.

Script Magic, you say? Overrides or edits?

Everything is scripted. There are no overrides on base game forms. The script itself is a listener and 99% of its functions occur WHILE you are talking to your alter-self in the Unity. You won't even realize its doing its thing, until its already done it all. Because it has no edits on base forms, it can literally go anywhere in your load order.

The only known issue, that cannot be corrected due to the nature of the Follower System, is if you back away from Unity and go back to your ship, and a Constellation member went through the Unity, the message onscreen that normally says a person's name followed by "can no longer be your companion" or something like that, instead it will now say <...> instead of their name, because they are dead and the base game text replacer alias is not set for Allow Dead, so... small thing, but also, it adds to the mystery for those who want it ALL to be a mystery they have to figure out if they back away from Unity. This issue is NOT present if you proceed though the Unity.