Portable Scan Boosters V1.1

Vladimir has been tinkering around with scanning tech up on the Eye, and managed to make a stunning technological breakthrough. Instead of dropping down an outpost beacon and lugging around the resources for a decent scan booster and power supply – and coming back to tidy up when you’re done – just grab a portable booster and go!

Which is the main reason I made this. I wanted an easier/”more fun” way to scan further that didn’t feel too drastic or out of place. There are already mods that just extend scanner range permanently and a lot further if you want that solution.

There are two devices:
A standard booster that increases range by 100m for three minutes, and can be constructed at an industrial workbench with common minerals and Tier-1 components
An even-more-miniaturised advanced booster that increases range by 200m for five minutes, but requires rarer materials and Tier-2 components

Sorry, but you can’t stack range from multiple boosters. It’s also workbench-only, there’s no automated construction options. I might add that later if it seems easy.

Anyway. Construction is the main source, but a few are waiting in the Lodge basement to get you started. A bit of lateral thinking might lead you to a few more beyond the Lodge (that might respawn?). After that you’re on your own. But if you’re a big fan of bartering, there’s an optional ESM that allows them to show up in some vendor inventories – outfitters, general stores, scientist POIs, that sort of place. You won’t get many advanced boosters that way though. Both are small master plugins; the vendor one needs the main one. I want to have a gameplay option that just switches it on and off with the one esm, to avoid wasting a slot on an incredibly tiny mod, but I couldn’t get that working and decided to get the rest working first.

If you’re curious what’s needed to make them in-game:

Standard: 1x Aluminium (for the casing), 1x Copper (wiring), 1x Uranium (power source – no wonder Vladimir’s previous prototype was dangerous!), 2x Reactive Gauges, 1x Isocentered Magnet.
Advanced: 1x Aluminium, 2x Gold, 1x Nuclear Fuel Rod, 1x Paramagnon Conductor, 1x Supercooled Magnet

This is a mod mostly for me; it’s nice to put a bit more effort into it and make it feel worth sharing. But most of the numbers and choices are arbitrary ones that seemed nice to me at the time so they might not be perfectly balanced.

Mod conflicts & (un)installation
The potential for conflict seems extremely small. I didn’t overwrite any vanilla items (my work is prefixed with bhu_ if you wish to meddle internally). If you have another mod that already changes your scanner range, this effect will stack on top politely. The biggest risk is that another modder put something on the same conveniently-empty shelf… but the physics system will sort that out soon enough.

Install the normal way, they’re just ESMs with no extra files. They should also be okay to disable later, as long as you didn’t save while the effect was active. (It might be safe! Or you might be stuck with the longer range.) And obviously don’t put anything important in the new containers before turning off the mod and deleting them.

Credits:

bhurnie