Hatch-22 - Simple Ship Doors

"That’s some catch, that Catch-22," [Yossarian] observed. "It’s the best there is," Doc Daneeka replied.

DESCRIPTION

For years, Starfield shipbuilders have been trapped in the impenetrable logic of the game’s door placement algorithm. You want a door; the game wants a maze. Existing mod solutions can offer more control, but they often come with extra dependencies, compatibility concerns, and a growing stack of patches. It can be a lot.

Hatch-22 offers another option. It adds a lightweight set of placeable markers so you can specify where doors and ladders appear inside your ship. Instead of replacing the vanilla connection system, this mod works with Starfield’s existing door placement algorithm. Place the hatches you care about, and let the game do the rest.

Hatch-22 does not give complete control over every connection, but it gives you options that are better than vanilla while staying lightweight and easy to maintain. It's a solution, but honestly there is no perfect solution. That's the catch.

MAIN FEATURES

Four Types of Placeable Markers

• Fore/Aft End Hatch: Generates standard round vanilla hatches, with 8 options: Open passage (no door), sliding doors, folding doors, shutter doors, fore/aft opening pressure doors, and fore/aft opening Nova pressure doors
• Port/Starboard Side Hatch: Supports side connections between habs, also with 8 options: Open passage, sliding doors, folding doors, shutter doors, port/starboard opening pressure doors, and port/starboard opening Nova pressure doors
• Up/Down Ladder Hatch: Generates ladder connections between decks. Includes a standard open version and one with a door in case you're prone to falling down hatches.
• Ladder Hatch Blocker: Prevents the game from generating a ladder hatch where it's placed.

All hatch markers:

• Appear at the top of the Habs menu
• Include custom shipbuilder icons
• Are designed for easy placement and handling, with vertical tabs so they can be seen and grabbed from between adjacent habs
• Are fully paintable
• Blend naturally into vanilla aesthetics

Why use Hatch-22?

• Simple: Just four hatch markers, easy to find, place, move, and paint.
• Effective: Once you place the hatches you want, the game will use that layout and just connect any unconnected habs.
• No Patches*: Hatch-22 does not require compatibility patches for other hab mods like Falkland, Lambent, Stroud Premium, and (my favorite) Graf's. *Although mod patches are not required, some mods may work better if they've made some compatibility adjustments to work well with Hatch-22. A patch is necessary to make Hatch-22 work with the new double-decker habs added by Terran Armada.
• Lightweight: Hatch-22 is a Light Master. It only adds four types of markers. It works in tandem with the base game’s algorithm, not instead of it.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Install it.
2. Open the Shipbuilder and navigate to the Habs category.
3. Hover over the Hatch marker at the top of the list.
4. Snap the marker to any valid hab connection point (it will automatically choose a marker of the appropriate type).
5. Continue to place all the markers you want to specify.
6. Paint to match your ship's exterior.
7. Enjoy an interior layout that actually makes sense!

FINE PRINT (THE REAL CATCH)

Even with the best tools, the "whimsical" nature of the shipbuilder remains. Please keep these safety protocols in mind:

1. Only place hatches between habs. It's possible with my markers to open a hatch on an exterior wall if you place it that way. Don't do this. Since your spaceship interior is defined by the game as an interior cell, the outside world doesn't include some essential things - like ground collision. You'll fall forever.
2. The shipbuilder's door placement algorithm can be hard-headed. Sometimes, it will place a redundant hatch somewhere you didn't want one. You can usually coax it into removing that hatch by moving your habs and/or hatches around a bit.
3. Some mods and DLCs that add habs may not play well with Hatch-22 if they aren't configured for it, causing a "void interior" that can corrupt your ship. If you get one of these void interiors, try the build again but don't put any Hatch-22 markers on the fore/aft ends of those modded habs. And save before you start the build, just in case.
4. As described in #3, the Terran Armada DLC requires a patch to allow Hatch-22 markers to be attached to the end hatches of its double-decker habs. The patch is published, titled "Hatch-22 Terran Armada Patch". It's not strictly necessary except for those habs. If you don't want to use it, just don't connect end hatch markers to those double-decker habs. Side and ladder markers are okay.
5. The empty habs Bethesda added in SFBGS006 were set up to spawn a hatch at every possible connection point to another hab. I've edited every one of those habs and removed all the keywords that told the game to do that. They should now obey the hatch markers you place just like other vanilla habs (i.e., most of the time).
6. Each hatch marker counts as a ship module. I've upgraded the ship module build limit from 130 to 200 to compensate for the extra hatch modules. If you want more, there are other mods for that. Just put them lower (after) in your load order.
7. Some habs may not connect automatically (vanilla pathing) once you put a ladder blocker on them. The solution is to also connect a hatch marker so the game knows where you want the door.
8. NPCs will climb ladders right through the new ladder hatch doors without opening them (you can too). This can be disconcerting, but is functionally fine. The doors have collision - you can walk on them..

COMPATIBILITY

Most mods should be natively compatible with Hatch-22.

• Place Doors Yourself, the reigning giant of hatch placement, is actually compatible, but much of its functionality is redundant. Hopefully, Hatch-22 makes PDY and its patches unnecessary for most users.
• Doorway Placeholders, the current fallback hatch placer, is compatible, but redundant. Some of its hatch markers work similarly to Hatch-22.
• Other mods that use Shipbuilder Hab Menu Priority Order slot #5 will either overwrite or be overwritten by Hatch-22, depending on your load order. If you don't see my hatch markers in your Habs menu, that's probably the issue.

SHOUT OUT

I want to give a massive salute to JimSoon for his original research into shipbuilder logic. His early work paved the way for the community's understanding of how these systems function. While Hatch-22 was built entirely from scratch with original Blender assets and Creation Kit work, it stands on the shoulders of the foundational knowledge JimSoon provided the community.