House Rules

An F4SE plugin that exposes high-impact vanilla Fallout 4 settings through a single MCM menu. The goal is to give players the tools they need to tune vanilla mechanics so they fit a modded playthrough - not to add new gameplay.

Status

v1.1.0 - adds the Keep Exit Save unlock + an AV-cache refresh so formula sliders take effect immediately. Self-test (HRVERIFY) reports 381 GMST targets PASS, 0 failed / 0 skipped across 12 modules.

Compatibility

Validated on all three main Fallout 4 runtimes:

• OG 1.10.163 (pre-NG)
• NG 1.10.984
• AE 1.11.x (1.11.191 tested)

Requires F4SE and Address Library for F4SE. Mod Configuration Menu (MCM) is required for the settings UI.

Features

The full per-slider reference (defaults, units, behavior notes) lives in docs/FEATURES.md.

• Survival Unlocks - opt-in toggles for console, manual / auto saves, fast travel, compass enemies / locations, chem / ammo weight, carry weight, god mode, re-entering Survival, and keeping the exit save on load.
• Survival - kill-switches for the four Hardcore subsystems (Hunger/Thirst, Sleep, Diseases, Adrenaline) plus ~38 tuning sliders that write Hardcore:HC_ManagerScript Papyrus properties.
• Magnitudes - stimpak / limb repair / RadAway / Rad-X / food healing and hunger / thirst / sleep penalty severity.
• Difficulty I - per-tier incoming / outgoing damage, XP base + Intelligence bonus, legendary chance / rarity.
• Difficulty II - per-tier effect duration and effect magnitude.
• Character - AP pool, sprint cost, carry capacity, max-health scaling, AP / passive / combat health regen.
• Damage Formulas - radiation, physical, and energy damage factor + armor exponent.
• Power Armor & Jetpack - jetpack drain / thrust, fusion-core drain, player / NPC PA durability.
• Economy - barter min / max floors, buy / sell multiplier caps.
• Progression - cooking / workbench / workshop XP, lockpick rewards, mine disarm XP.
• VATS - max engage distance, target-select time scale, player damage mult.
• Skills - pickpocket, hacking, lockpicking.
• Sneak - sneak attack multipliers, exterior / light / max detection.
• Combat Perks - disarm / stagger / knockdown / paralyze chances and Light / Heavy Armor perk-tier multipliers.
• Settlements - workshop build / repair / wire timers, settler population cap, placement-radius constraints.
• Companions Affinity - the nine vanilla TESGlobals that drive per-reaction affinity deltas and event cooldowns.

Two caveats to know about:

• Carry-weight unlock and the Survival kill-switches require a save reload after toggling for immediate effect; otherwise they apply on the script's next tick (a few in-game minutes).
• Sliders take effect when the pause menu closes; some Magnitude changes wait for the next consumable use.

Design Principles

• Vanilla-first. No new mechanics; only exposes existing ones.
• Yield to conflicts. Other mods editing the same records win; House Rules is a floor, not a ceiling.
• Right tool per feature. Some settings are runtime hooks in the DLL (byte patches, composable MCM sliders), others are direct GMST / ActorValue / TESGlobal writes. The DLL is used when a setting must live-toggle, compose, or reach a target only accessible from native code.
• Minimum dependencies. F4SE + Address Library + MCM. No script extenders beyond F4SE core; no hard-required companion mods.

Validation

A built-in self-test verifies every GMST target. Set bValidationAudit=1 (and optionally sValidationAuditMode=Full) under [Diagnostic] in Data/MCM/Config/HouseRules/settings.ini, open and close the pause menu in-game, then run:

python tools/validate_house_rules_log.py

v1.1.0 ships with 0 failed / 0 skipped across 12 GMST modules (381 targets) on OG / NG / AE. Companions Affinity uses vanilla TESGlobal writes, so it doesn't show up in HRVERIFY; grep the plugin log for Globals: wrote FormID ... to verify those.

Installation

1. Download the latest zip from the Releases page.
2. Install through your mod manager (MO2, Vortex) or unzip into <Fallout 4>/Data/.
3. Configure in-game under Settings > Mod Configuration Menu > House Rules.

Build

Requires xmake 2.9.4+ on Windows with MSVC. CommonLibF4 is a git submodule.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/northaxosky/HouseRules.git
cd HouseRules
xmake config -m releasedbg
xmake build

Set COMMONLIBF4_PATH to reuse an existing CommonLibF4 checkout instead of initialising the submodule.

License

MIT - see LICENSE.