A complete polish pass over the Mothership Zeta DLC, improving interactions, crafting, post-dlc content, cross wasteland capability, bugfixes, and other tweaks.
Note that the changes below aren’t exhaustive, some things I may have forgot to document. There’s a lot here.
Starting the DLC
- The crashed ufo before you start the DLC will no longer forcefully teleport you to the ship, instead requiring the ship to be activated and a confirmation upon reading a message, like New Vegas DLCs. This allows the crash site to be explored and looted without starting the dlc, as was in Fallout 3’s base game.
- Alien-related TTW challenges now only start upon starting the dlc or collecting related items, limiting exposure to alien stuff if you choose to never start the DLC.
- An ini option has been added to allow you to disable the crashed alien spacecraft if you don’t have Wild Wasteland, making the Mothership Zeta DLC exclusive to the Wild Wasteland trait, if that is how you prefer it to work.
Starting from Mojave Wasteland
- Mothership Zeta can now be started from the Mojave Wasteland. Upon entering the Mojave Wasteland for the first time, a message will display about it, and an objective will be added to your pip-boy pointing to the location in the Mojave. Can be delayed using the Delay DLC patch in the files tab, and starting from the mojave can be disabled entirely with an ini option if desired.
- The Wild Wasteland encounter north of the Horowitz farmstead has been altered, and will trigger regardless of if you have Wild Wasteland or not. Can be reverted to be Wild Wasteland only via an ini option.
- The encounter’s mercenaries will initially spawn, however if you approach them the alien ship will crash to the ground instead of floating in the air and will spawn the aliens.
- The aliens will fight with the mercs and use alien weapons. The captain uses alien captain model from the DLC to differentiate it from the other aliens and uses a nerfed alien blaster to fight you and the mercs. Looting this alien will still reward you with the default alien blaster.
- The crashed ship works just like the Capital Wasteland one, with the alterations introduced by Mothership Zeta Rehaul. The crashed ship has to be activated and a confirmation upon reading a message to start the DLC, just like New Vegas DLCs.
- If you start the DLC from the Mojave Wasteland, the Rivet City Security and dead Enclave Officer will be replaced with an NCR Trooper and a dead Legion Explorer. With the initial sight of familiar factions to Fallout 3 replaced with those found in New Vegas, this should help the transition from the Mojave to Mothership Zeta feel less out of place.
Balance changes
- Any alien equipment on you when starting the dlc will be fully repaired but moved to the weapons lab, just a few levels before the bridge battle. This includes the Alien Blaster you may have picked up.
- Alien ammunition now has the typical energy ammo DT bypass. This is more for consistency, it doesn’t significantly alter gameplay that much.
Tweaks
- The Rivet City Security in the Holding Cells no longer is associated with any factions. This means you can now kill her without consequences.
- Consistency pass over names of items and creatures, mostly adding “Alien” to the names.
- The humans aboard mothership zeta have some of their dialog enabled more globally where fitting.
- Alien worm food and squid food now have a value of 1 instead of 0.
- Alien Epoxy and Biogel now display their effects in the pip-boy. (“Repairs Current Weapon” & “Biochemical Anomaly”)
- The cryo explosives you unlock from Zeta have been tweaked to differentiate it more from TTW’s craftable ones - given different names (“Adapted Cryo Grenade”) and deal slightly more damage.
Loot & Crafting
- Alien Power Cells can now be found in addition to power modules in Mothership Zeta loot tables.
- Added drained alien cells - you have a small chance to get these when firing alien power cells and alien power modules.
- Added Improvised Alien Cells, weaker home made power cells crafted with energy ammo and drained alien cells.
- Added Over Charge, Max Charge, and Optimized versions of Alien Cells which can be crafted with high science skill.
- Various props around the ship can now be picked up as Misc Items. These are balanced around vanilla game misc items. They can be found in alien loot tables where fitting. Lots of crafting has been added for these:
- Alien Repair Kits can be crafted with alien tools and can be used to prevent overcharged healing arches from burning out and can repair burnt out ones. It also has a few unique interactions around the ship, such as in the Robot Assembly level.
- Drained alien cells can be restored into genuine power cells and power modules when crafted with an alien battery.
- Upon unlocking zeta’s cryo explosives, you will be given recipes for them which uses some cooling-related items.
- Some of these items, like Alien Clipboards, can be broken down at The Sink.
Mechanics
- TTW’s Space Gourmet challenge now only increases with food items, but completes when consuming 50 instead of 100.
- Added Biogenic Anomaly challenge, consume 50 biogels.
- Added Bio-Mimetic perk, unlocks when completing Biogenic Anomaly challenge. Removes negative side effects from biogel.
- Added repeatable biogel challenge Biobsessed! that unlocks after completing Biogenic Anomaly.
- Killing alien workers no longer incurs karma loss. An ini option (Gameplay:bWorkerMurderKarmaLoss) has been added to reenable karma loss if desired.
- Added challenge “Friend of the Stars” which is completed if you beat the DLC without killing any alien workers.
- Completing the Friend of the Stars challenge will make alien workers become passive and no longer run away from you.
Levels
- Complete polish pass over the navmesh of most levels in the DLC, updating them to layout changes and fixing a few issues. No deletions.
- Added and adjusted quest objectives to help prevent confusion and to make the dlc flow a little better.
- Added a Hot Plate to the Engineering Core and made the beds grant Well Rested bonus.
- Upon completing the Maintenance levels, it will remain unlocked and can be explored. More teleporter links between these levels, the room at the end was extended, and some hallways were added to achieve this.
- Added a teleporter link between the sections in Cargo Hold to make backtracking easier.
- Added two hallways to Steamworks to make backtracking easier.
- Added a hallway to Living Quarters to make backtracking easier. The starting room of this level was made bigger to achieve this.
- The Bridge has undergone a complete overhaul:
- You enter this level into a long hallway leading to the bridge.
- The two rooms have been replaced with a dedicated Teleporter room and Captain’s quarters. They can be entered after the final battle.
Post-DLC
- Upon completing the final battle, the entire ship remains unlocked, and dialogue referencing the ship getting blocked off has been removed.
- Most containers in Monthership Zeta will now respawn. The ones that don’t are in the Bridge and Engineering Core, and a few other select containers.
- Added a button next to the inner-ship teleporter on The Bridge which allows you to change where the teleporter leads to after the final battle. You can key it to bring you to Biological Research, Living Quarters, Engineering Core, or Holding Cells.
- Added an Alien Fabricator Device, a crafting station which works like Dead Money’s vending machines. Uses alien crystals as currency, you can use it to recharge alien power cells, buy weapons and equipment, return then, and upgrade the captain’s quarters.
- Of the upgrades you can buy at the captain’s quarters, there are unique “Declutter” and “Biomass Cleaner” terminals which can be used to clear the ship of corpses and customize the level of clutter in Engineering Core.
- You can buy a specialized Jukebox upgrade which can play many desired radio stations from both wastelands, if travel to them is enabled.
- From the bridge teleporter room you can change where the teleporter goes once you unlock them through various quests. Initially after the battle, it’s just the wasteland you started the dlc from. (Capital Wasteland or Mojave Wasteland)
- Another quest will start should you enter the other wasteland after the final battle, leading you to the other crashed UFO. Upon discovering it, it unlocks that wasteland as a teleport point.
- Added a post-dlc quest which starts if you completed Old World Blues. It walks you through salvaging components from the ship and the big mt transportalponder and using them to build a teleporter in The Sink, unlocking it as a location to teleport to from the bridge, and upgrades your Transportalponder to link it with the bridge’s teleporter.
- Added a post-dlc quest which starts if you’re holding Euclid’s C-Finder. It walks you through repairing the death ray and links it with the C-Finder, allowing you to fire it as directed by the C-Finder once per day.
- Added a quest which points to all unobtained alien holotapes, started at the Alien Scanner on the bridge.
- You can scan biogel and cryo items on zeta’s bridge to unlock their recipes after the final battle if you missed them.
- You can have Elliott Tercorien follow you around the ship after the final battle. This can help when going back to areas you never entered, allows for unlocking adapted cryo weapons if you missed it the first time, and allows you to find some of his unique dialog should you have missed the chance before hand.
- A container in the bridge teleporter room will now be populated with the uniques carried by the human crew upon your first revisit to the ship, as long as they’re still alive.
- Somah will move to Canterbury Commons and Paulson will move to Goodsprings after returning to the wasteland. Their post-move dialog has been tweaked to fit better in their new location.
- If you failed to do it during the DLC, you can play the maintenance levels post-dlc, specific edits were required to make this possible.
- You can backtrack through the decompression areas post-dlc freely, in either direction. Specific edits were required to make this possible.
Configuration
This mod can be configured by editing Data/Config/MothershipZetaRehaul.ini.
bDisableDLCWithoutWW
Default: 0
If set to 1, disables the crashed alien spacecraft encounters from appearing in the wastelands, making the Mothership Zeta DLC inaccessable without the Wild Wasteland trait.
bWorkerMurderKarmaLoss
Default: 0
If set to 1, restores the vanilla behavior where killing an alien worker would make you lose 50 karma.
bDisallowStartingFromMojave
Default: 0
If set to 1, Mothership Zeta will not be able to be started from the Mojave wasteland. The messages wont appear, and the crashed ship wont be able to be activated.
bRevertTeleportRecipe
Default: 0
If set to 1, enables a recipe in the Alien Fabricator to revert the Modified Transportalponder to the Big Mountain Transportalponder. Use if you’re using a mod that significantly alters the item and want to be able to get it back. Just know that this isn’t “““canon””” (three air quotes) with the mod in my opinion.
FAQ
Q: What is a Fallout 3 mod doing in the New Vegas section?
This is a mod for Tale of Two Wastelands. Tale of Two Wastelands implements all of Fallout 3 into New Vegas using files you have locally on your pc (that means you have to legally own fallout 3!). Any mod you see on NexusMods with the acronym “TTW” in the title is a Tale of Two Wastelands mod.
Q: Does this work in an existing save file?
I tested this on new runs and on saves where I haven’t started mothership zeta yet. I imagine installing this mod mid-way through the DLC or after could lead to some variable desyncs, I wouldn’t recommend it but you can try it and see what happens.
I did script the mod in a way so some post-dlc changes are done via a loop that checks if the quest is completed, so it might work just fine if you load it after.
Q: Does playing with Delay DLC Redux prevent the messages on the Mojave side?
Yes, but the patch is required for this. You’ll get the quest as the ship crashes to the ground rather than when you leave doc mitchel’s house.
Q: Why does the ship still forcefully abduct me when I walk up to it?
You have a mod that is conflicting with this mod’s changes to the starting quest. For best gameplay, load this near the end of your esm files if you suspect that they’re overwriting things. Load the patches late too.
Q: Can I place teleporters anywhere?
No, the teleport locations in this mod are pre-set by the quests. At the end of the game, you’ll be able to teleport to The Sink, Zeta’s Bridge, the Mojave crash site, and the Fallout 3 crash site. As a means to travel between wastelands and to a player home with really good value, I thought this was good enough. I’m fine with people making mods that expand this though.
Q: I really don’t like a change you did.
I tried to make what I could able to be configured, but it’s not easy. Let me know what it is you don’t like, and I’ll try to explain why I added it, or figure out if I can make it optional.
Compatibility
Since this mod modifies many core parts of Mothership Zeta, mods which make edits to this DLC are likely to be incompatible. Because of this, I’ve decided to specifically list some known tested mods here.
Note - from here on Mothership Zeta Rehaul will be referred to as “MZR”
Compatible:
- Essential DLC Enhancements Merged: The enhancements to the Transportalponder are inconsistent with the Modified transportalponder, but both are still perfectly usable.
- TTW Reputations: No conflicts. Zeta doesn’t utilize faction relations at all.
- Sink Sierra Madre Vending Machine Upgrade: Compatible. Adds another Sink CIU blueprint item that is consistent with the concept of the sink CIU blueprint item introduced by MZR.
- Complete Player Home Upgrades: Compatible. Conflicting hot plate which disables itself if MZR is loaded, no patch needed.
- Nuka-Cola Expansion Ultimate: No conflicts. This mod adds a few goodies to the Cargo Hold which fit in perfectly fine with MZR.
- A World of Pain for Fallout 3: MZR’s additions to lists are scripted, so this shouldn’t conflict anymore.
Compatible, but requires a specific load order:
- Sink Recipe Overhaul: Minor (but redundant) script conflicts. MZR automatically adds recipes to its menus, make sure Sink Recipe Overhaul’s esm file loads AFTER MZR’s esm file, this will ensure compatibility and enable MZR’s recipes.
Compatible, but requires a patch:
- Delay DLC Mods: Conflicts with the starting quest and doesn’t delay MZR’s mojave or post-dlc quest. Use Delay DLC Redux and the patch in the files tab. The combined delay dlc and hardcore zeta patch also makes both of those mods compatible with each other.
- Tale of Bi Wastelands: Dialogue conflicts and missing dialog options due to new MZR features. Use the patch in the files tab.
- TTW New Vegas Speech Checks: Dialogue conflicts and missing dialog options due to new MZR features. Use the patch in the files tab.
- Hardcore Zeta: Minor conflicts with the starting quest due to renaming the player container and removing an objective. Use the patch in the files tab. The combined delay dlc and hardcore zeta patch also makes both of those mods compatible with each other.
Has issues:
- ROOG: MZR’s additions to lists are scripted, so this shouldn’t conflict anymore. However, I haven’t tested if the difficulty balance makes sense with ROOG.
- JSawyer/derivatives and other widescale overhauls: Untested by myself, but not a hopeful outlook considering how extensive mods like this can edit stuff. Please let me know of any issues.
- Prerelease Restored: Places a garbage can in the way of where Paulson leans post-dlc. Supposed to be fixed on MZR’s side, but doesn’t work quite right. Will reexamine in the next update.
Redundant or game breaking:
- Mothership Zeta Crash Site Tweaks: Redundant with and included in MZR. Disable this mod.
- MZ No Karma Loss: Redundant with MZR. MZR already removes karma loss from killing alien workers, with an optional ini tweak to bring it back. It also adds a bonus challenge that you can complete if you don’t kill any of them through the course of the DLC.
- Alien ammo crafting mods: Redundant with MZR. MZR already implements ways to craft alien ammo through many methods.
- Zeta post-dlc reward mods: Redundant with MZR. MZR already adds this mechanic - a chest on the bridge will be populated with the crew’s uniques upon returning to the ship.
- Alien captive holotape quest marker mods: Redundant with MZR. MZR adds a quest like this which is started upon using the scanner in the Captain’s Quarters.
- Mothership Zeta Crew: Not compatible especially with the bridge changes. The conversion on Nexusmods is also from 2013 and has an unclear description - probably many more issues.
- Fallout 3 Unique items Overhaul TTW 3.3: Causes a crash upon the unique Captain’s Sidearm loading in. This results in the game crashing the first time you enter the bridge. This is a problem in that mod, unfortunately. I can’t fix it here.