Early on, avoiding fleets for safely, Watchtower appears at basically ALL in-space quests, blocking progress.

[erlkonig]

(Obviously this is one player's impression, and player opinions differ. That's fine. But I can't be alone in what I say below, right?)

TL;DR: Starfield is solid at giving players agency of what they want to do (unless you piss off SysDef, that's a one-way door). Watchtower, not so much, and it would be cool if that could be improved.

Essentially, for players that don't have a solid ship, aren't ready to fight Watchtower ships or crew, and whose character roleplay notably avoid fleets for safety, Watchtower (on normal) can block literally all in-orbit quest lines, Almost everywhere I go in orbit outside of hub systems, Watchtower appears. Sure, I know that they're going release me in that first encounter, but my character doesn't know that, and evasion is obviously the right choice (and you can evade if you bring up the navmap fast enough - at least on PC). Which means I can't do quests in orbit, because Watchtower encounters are far too invasive, interfering with quests and violating its own lore (see below).

This is a fresh, never-seen-the-Unity character, with six powers (not used all the much yet). The lore says that special individuals are generally only observed at a distance until they interfere with something important, which is decidedly both not what I'm doing, and far from being followed by the actual game encounter frequency. I've been avoiding the Watchtower fleet for a while, starting a while ago (lower level) and before actually having any powers (IIRC). Which means that apparently they went mad to capture me for the simple act of touching the Artifacts, which just doesn't fit what you're told in the game. I've mentioned elsewhere that there should be some mention of a danger of attracting attention, but currently the mod doesn't do that, going for that initial shock-and-awe thing first, all to get stunned in the only encounter where the Watchtower ships actually use stun. It is nonsensical that Watchtower arrives in virtually every orbit I reach. I'm forced to assume that KC didn't realize a quick player can jump away, and was intending to force that first encounter, defying the mod's own lore at the same time. Grr.

The problem here is one other players have posted about: Watchtower ignores its own lore and massively derails the game, arrogating to itself the core mission for everything (because it's impact is fricken' everywhere), and frequently blocking normal play. Now, I like the Watchtower mod quite a bit, but it grabby nature and commandeering of gameplay feels rather intrusive (Watchtower fleets and landing ships are everywhere, consumnately defying the idea of being some secret force).

One solution should be to provide an in-game way for players to know enough to stay under the radar until they're interested in engaging with Watchtower. Ideally there'd even be a way to know their current level of interest. Rather than having to unload the mod entirely, which would be a shame. Like any one of these: (1) Don't use powers where Watchtower might see, (2) Don't use power too often, (3) Don't get caught by polic for killing someone with powers, (4) Don't use powers other people can see until you kill them, i.e. Sense Star Stuff, fine; Supernova in New Atlantis, bad, or (5) Don't use powers in front of Watchtower agents - and your scanner has info on who they are (which might have gameplay around capturing the informant list). Using powers might have some kind of halflife for Watchtower interest. Who knows? But it would allow for more ways to interact with Watchtower, and remove the galaxy-spanning staff of millions of Watchtower minions attacking you in every single damn non-core system orbit, planet, and moon, especially since it spawns so many ship landings that normal ground capture opportunities for other ships nearly disappear.

Another would be to have Watchtower not jump in when the orbit contains only a non-Watchtower quest target. That would solve so much all by itself.

Another would be if the fleet left that system for a while after being evaded (although I suspect said evasion wasn't thought to be possible by KC to begin with).

Another might be if there's an SSNN story running about some crazy person with mysterious powers, Watchtower is going to jump you. After the story passes (a day?) your watch level drops.

My favorite way to avoid getting captured would be to defeat the guys that board your ship, which I've done a couple of times, but apparently killing one invokes the you-are-captured scene. It seems like the fleet should hesitate before using the beam on your ship while their boarding party is inside, you being conscious should surprise them, and kililng them should give you a change to undock and grav jump (until next time). But noooo.... And why is it I can't capture a ship with this weapon on it, hmm?

- - -

P.S. Additional context for my current run which makes Watchtower even more problematic than normal:
(I've played several characters through Watchtower in more normal games than this current one which is...)
My (newest) character is pre-NG (currently level 22), on a Nude Unity run at XP+73% (to allow env damage recovery in Vectera), avoiding all of { healing kits, ammo, vendors other than my outpost landing pad and LIST and Vlad }, which leaves me with blades/cutter/powers/fists/grenades/mines only, healing only by levelling and abusing malnutrition (gets you to about 40% or so), and no mods that make gameplay easier - other than Sit to Add Ship because the vanilla version, while playable, is nuts (why would my own ship undock at the wrong time? stupid...). This amounts to the Survivalist Nude Ninja (Hippie) Swordmage build, and what with a bunch of quests involving running around starkers in vacuum, freezing and sunburning while asphyxiating, it's a rough gig, and pretty much demands getting Rejuvenation early at the cost of a bunch of other things, which guts ship readiness, credits (can't sell anything but ships), and long-range combat skills. My character would definitely want to avoid fighting fleets of unknown ships, and while I can bring up the navmap before Watchtower fleet arrival blocks Fast Travel over 95% of the time, something should have given the player some agency in how to stay out of Watchtower's high interest category. Given how much difficulty I've already given myself as The Plan, if the mod has managed to be more annoying that all the other crazy stuff I'm dealing with, that's saying something.

Clearly, I'm going to be forced to let my character get captured. As the player I know that's fine. But why would my character make that choice? Why would Watchtower even be chasing me so soon. It's just madness. Poor Zenith, I'll at least have to get her stoned out of her mind first or something.

 

[RandomWanderer]

(Obviously this is one player's impression, and player opinions differ. That's fine. But I can't be alone in what I say below, right?)

TL;DR: Starfield is solid at giving players agency of what they want to do (unless you piss off SysDef, that's a one-way door). Watchtower, not so much, and it would be cool if that could be improved.

Essentially, for players that don't have a solid ship, aren't ready to fight Watchtower ships or crew, and whose character roleplay notably avoid fleets for safety, Watchtower (on normal) can block literally all in-orbit quest lines, Everywhere I go in orbit outside of hub systems, Watchtower appears. Sure, I know that they're going release me in that first encounter, but my character doesn't know that, and evasion is obviously the right choice (and you can evade if you bring up the navmap fast enough - at least on PC). Which means I can't do quests in orbit, because Watchtower encounters are far too invasive, interfering with quests and violating its own lore (see below).

This is a fresh, never-seen-the-Unity character, with six powers (not used all the much yet). The lore says that special individuals are generally only observed at a distance until they interfere with something important, which is decidedly both not what I'm doing, and far from being followed by the actual game encounter frequency. I've mentioned elsewhere that there should be some mention of a danger of attracting attention, but currently the mod doesn't do that, going for that initial shock-and-awe thing first, all to get stunned in the only encounter where the Watchtower ships actually use stun. It is nonsensical that Watchtower arrives in virtually every orbit I reach. I'm forced to assume that KC didn't realize a quick player can jump away, and was intending to force that first encounter, defying the mod's own lore at the same time. Grr.

The problem here is one other players have posted about: Watchtower ignores its own lore and massively derails normal game play, arrogating to itself the core mission for everything (because it's impact is fricken' everywhere), and frequently blocking normal play. Now, I like the Watchtower mod quite a bit, but it grabby nature and commandeering of gameplay feels rather intrusive (Watchtower fleets and landing ships are everywhere, consumnately defying the idea of being some secret force).

One solution should be to provide an in-game way for players to know enough to stay under the radar until they're interested in engaging with Watchtower. Ideally there'd even be a way to know their current level of interest. Rather than having to unload the mod entirely, which would be a shame. Like any one of these: (1) Don't use powers where Watchtower might see, (2) Don't use power too often, (3) Don't get caught by polic for killing someone with powers, (4) Don't use powers other people can see until you kill them, i.e. Sense Star Stuff, fine; Supernova in New Atlantis, bad, or (5) Don't use powers in front of Watchtower agents - and your scanner has info on who they are (which might have gameplay around capturing the informant list). Using powers might have some kind of halflife for Watchtower interest. Who knows? But it would allow for more ways to interact with Watchtower, and remove the galaxy-spanning staff of millions of Watchtower minions attacking you in every single damn non-core system orbit, planet, and moon, especially since it spawns so many ship landings that normal ground capture opportunities for other ships nearly disappear.

Another would be to have Watchtower not jump in when the orbit contains only a non-Watchtower quest target. That would solve so much all by itself.

Another would be if the fleet left that system for a while after being evaded (although I suspect said evasion wasn't thought to be possible by KC to begin with).

Another might be if there's an SSNN story running about some crazy person with mysterious powers, Watchtower is going to jump you. After the story passes (a day?) your watch level drops.

My favorite way to avoid getting captured would be to defeat the guys that board your ship, which I've done a couple of times, but apparently killing one invokes the you-are-captured scene. It seems like the fleet should hesitate before using the beam on your ship while their boarding party is inside, you being conscious should surprise them, and kililng them should give you a change to undock and grav jump (until next time). But noooo.... And why is it I can't capture a ship with this weapon on it, hmm?

- - -

P.S. Additional context for my current run which makes Watchtower even more problematic than normal:
(I've played several characters through Watchtower in more normal games than this current one which is...)
My (newest) character is pre-NG (currently level 22), on a Nude Unity run at XP+73% (to allow env damage recovery in Vectera), avoiding all of { healing kits, ammo, vendors other than my outpost landing pad and LIST and Vlad }, which leaves me with blades/cutter/powers/fists/grenades/mines only, healing only by levelling and abusing malnutrition (gets you to about 40% or so), and no mods that make gameplay easier - other than Sit to Add Ship because the vanilla version, while playable, is nuts (why would my own ship undock at the wrong time? stupid...). This amounts to the Survivalist Nude Ninja (Hippie) Swordmage build, and what with a bunch of quests involving running around starkers in vacuum, freezing and sunburning while asphyxiating, it's a rough gig, and pretty much demands getting Rejuvenation early at the cost of a bunch of other things, which guts ship readiness, credits (can't sell anything but ships), and long-range combat skills. My character would definitely want to avoid fighting fleets of unknown ships, and while I can bring up the navmap before Watchtower fleet arrival blocks Fast Travel over 95% of the time, something should have given the player some agency in how to stay out of Watchtower's high interest category. Given how much difficulty I've already given myself as The Plan, if the mod has managed to be more annoying that all the other crazy stuff I'm dealing with, that's saying something.

In settings you can change ambush chance. You can turn it right down.

It might be a good idea though to do something with the default setting. Because nobody knows to go change the settings....

 

[erlkonig]

In settings you can change ambush chance. You can turn it right down.

It might be a good idea though to do something with the default setting. Because nobody knows to go change the settings....

I'm aware (good advice for a number of players, though), but my core complaint is that what's happening in game violates the mod's lore. Which bugs the hell out of me as a player. Although, this running into fleets 90% of the time may calm down after I finally get Zenith high and let her get captured. IIRC, it's after being captured that the Watchtower landings start happening everywhere, mostly squeezing out other ships. Which is part of why I'm trying to finish buying this Artifact with Walter before getting captured, so I can more easily ground-capture a Starborn ship before Watchtower walks all over it (although they may have tuned this recently, I suppose I'll find out).

 

[Bobwalt]

As I understand it, it is insanely tricky to capture a Starborn Guardian on the ground. You have to enter the ship just before the starborn exit. I can see the novelty of capturing one but I question its utility as they seem very weak in combat. Even before I installed Watchtower they were not particularly hard to defeat. Oh they can be tricky but if you’re careful you are OK.

 

[erlkonig]

(all comments are from Extreme play, it's possible it's harder to capture ships with Guardians at lower difficulties, just a hypothesis)

Ground capturing a Guardian has become routine for me - I invade them often, primarily on the eastern galactic fringe to pick up a tier IV or VI (haven't seen tier V there yet, odd). They usually have a couple of exotic components inside, and jumping back out to farm the Starborn that missed you going in is the best way to collect Essences.

Mind, I have seen them inside the ship, too, which is a wild ride, but super rare.

As far as flying them, the Guardians excel at some things, namely going anywhere they want, being able to escape almost instantly, and being able to capture lone ships FAR above their own level, thanks to stun torpedoes (I captured a level 64 once after killing the wingman in Serpentis). The problem is when the foe isn't alone. Some mod I'm using - no idea which one - lets me capture ships before the final foe fairly frequently, which makes it possible for a Guardian to chain capture through several enemies in one fight. Otherwise groups are quite difficult for a Guardian. You also need the human skills and game Skills to be successful with them, and relevant crew doesn't hurt either. Success requires very different tactics from anything else I've flown, what with torpedo timing and even hiding behind ships. The best thing about them is that they let you capture one and then just stop spending credits on ship upgrades for a while, flying a Guardian instead, until you can buy better ship parts and skip all the intermediates.

So basically they make you nimble, a nightmare for solo opponents, and give you a better ship than you might have at the time, and give you an option to save for what you'll be able to buy later.

A pretty good deal.

I like farming them too. Camp out on some temperate eastern moon and explore the tile. I typically find nearly a half dozen landing spots, and then when I come back, I can Fast Travel to them, to make reach the wing of the landing Guardian easy. Reliable captures most of the time. Essences everywhere.... which I then usually forget to use, and finish the run with 20 to 150 still unspent. Oops. ;-)

 

[erlkonig]

Just ran into Watchtower interrupting the fight with the Starborn over Neon after buying Artifact Nu. Three tries, and every time, Watchtower butts into the middle of pretty much the biggest reveal in the middle of the normal game. Infuriating. My only option is apparently to grav jump right after the dialogue.

 

[Villager]

There was a free creation mentioned in another thread called "Not Yet Watchtower" which sounds like it would do what you need. Essentially it blocks Watchtower from starting until after a specific quest starts. The default setting (Unity) seems to make sense to me from a lore standpoint, since this starts just after housecleaning from the big dust-up in New Atlantis, which *ought* to attract the attention of Watchtower. It's also late enough that your character can do some faction questlines and get ships set up as a core for their fleet.

May not help for your current run, though, since it does nothing once Watchtower is aware of your character. You would need a save prior to discovery that you could use to revert..

Watchtower is VERY persistent if you evade them. While they aren't that hard to avoid, they do tend to show up everywhere you go after that.

 

[erlkonig]

(reminder: I like the Watchtower mod, it just needs some work to fulfill its own lore - and not break the game's normal quests)

I mostly like the idea of starting from the Unity for Watchtower, although personally I'd prefer that to pay attention to whether or not the player uses Powers in the city (rather then just underground) instead of only running. The most obvious, sometimes inescapable contacts with Starborn and Artifacts - where you aren't alone or everyone else dies - are:

• Lin and Heller, as well as the other miners, certainly would have enough info to blab, but when would they get the chance? Plus, a bunch of them die. And they were being paid to
• Telling SSNN about the Vectera fight could lead SSNN to talk to them. It would make sense that someone in SSNN might talk to Watchtower. I really feel that our sexy Nadia Muffaz would be disturbed by this and tell the character that she'd heard you'd been outed and to try to avoid doing anything weird in public that might make them more interested
• Talking to the Hunter in the bars might be noticed, and he'd also make a good NPC to mention that some organizations like to interfere with those that stand out
• The encounter with the first Starborn Guardian over Neon would logically show up on scanners, and raise Watchtowers interest in the combatants - but afterwards, not with Watchtower appearing seconds after the Guardian does. Seriously (facepalm), that's just in bad taste.
• Picking up the Artifact from Moara. It seems likely he'd talk, notably in some bar, and there's a chance a mole in the Vanguard could read internal docs about rescuing him
• .... I'll stop here, but the idea should be clear

Since Walter and Issa are deeply involved in Neon, it would be great if there were a quest to talk to Nyx to see if he can give you a way to track whether you're on the radar of organizations interested in the weird. The Ryujin questline brings you to him, and Nyx could volunteer that some organization in the shadows is interested in you.

My feeling is that too many encounters where you (1) touch an Artifact, (2) fight Starborn, (3) use powers, AND where people or systems will detect the event, AND you can't kill all the witnesses, swear them to silence, or bribe them to forget, should hit a threshold, should be where you get captured by Watchtower. Also, who you attack with powers might matter. Watchtower probably doesn't care about Spacers dying, for example, but the death of anyone in SysDef, Vanguard, Rangers, etc, especially if killed with your powers, should really yank their tail. Sneaking through Infinity LTD with Phased Time might do it too (unless you wipe them all out, of course. Bwahahah).

And that you ought to be able to escape the capture if you kill the entire boarding crew AND jump away before the fleet figures out they might as well shoot you again because of it. Currently, killing anyone in the boarding party gets you instantly captured, and that's bullshit.

Then, not only would the mod then fit its own lore, but you'd probably end up facing the stunning weapon multiple times, and defeating (hopefully) multiple boarding parties, which would add a lot of excitement. Especially if the boarding parties get slightly larger each time.

I do feel like the mod should also add the ability to place turrets inside your ship. I mean, come on, we see them in other ships, why can't we have them?

The mod has also missed a great chance to give the player a reason to use stealth during jumps - arrive with your systems unpowered should help avoid Watchtower fleets either jumping in at all, or at least keep them from noticing you until you power something up. Although.... I haven't actually checked to see if it doesn't make a difference. Hmm.. (off to experiment)

 

[Bobwalt]

This may be a dumb suggestion, but couldn’t you just unload Watchtower until you were a higher level and then reenable it when you were ready. Back in the old days circa Morrowwind and fallout 3 time I would occasionally have to do that. I would get the message about content not being available save my game and exit then go back in and it would be fine. I don’t know if this would still work or not.

 

[erlkonig]

That would mean that Watchtower would have failed a basic balance test completely. If you have to unload it to play, then it's balanced wrong. Besides, I don't have to unload it, I'm perfectly able to defeat them a fourth time. The problem is the sheer obnoxiousness of how an otherwise solid mod violates its own story and lore all over the place. It's infuriating. Low level characters should be off the Watchtower radar because they haven't done anything Starborn-y, and it makes sense a character could choose such a path. Why the flip would Watchtower chase a player would isn't even putting Power on his quick bar, and has never used them? Bah!

 

[Bubbleonia]

One suggestion, which won't help much right now, obviously, is to download and install "Not Now Watchtower" from Creations. It gives you the option to delay the WT start until after 4 choices of MSQ. I'm doing a new playthrough stream which includes both WT and Darkstar and I set mine to not activate until I am roughly 70% through the main game. For a new character especially, this just makes sense. For a unity playthrough, probably less, but at least you have options.

 

[dawnroselyn]

Disabling a mod like Watchtower mid-playthrough is a recipe for disaster in a Bethesda game. Tons of scripts in mid-flight that don't get terminated and live forever in your save from that point forward.

I've also struggled with how Watchtower completely overwhelms the gameplay loop. Every single tile I've landed on has at least one watchtower listening post. The watchtower ships seem to crowd out all the others on the ground, and flying around in open space is a constant running space battle with the largest, most powerful fleet you encounter in the game. Even systems in which I used to seek solace from the larger galaxy, like Newton, are suddenly full of watchtower presence, whether the relay is destroyed or not. The fact that I'm now running around with contraband 100% of the time makes me feel locked out of most of the game. I have to stop in Porrima or the Den and basically wash my ship before landing in a civilized system again.

Watchtower also feels like it corners me into a singular ground combat playstyle. The wardens have a seriously OP starborn ability that they spam mercilessly (life forced?) that absolutely wrecks my HP. My choices seem to be either to chug medkits the entire time or counter that with my own starborn power and play the game in bullet time with the phased time ability. While this is occasionally fun and certainly drops the wardens before they can spam me with their starborn nonsense, it gets very irritating to play the entire game in phased time mode.

Watchtower is fun, don't get me wrong. But I also like Starfield. Watchtower feels so pervasive and overwhelming that it seems like I'm forced to choose.

 

[Bobwalt]

I don’t have anywhere near those kinds of issues with Watchtower. Watchtower npcs seem no harder to kill than any others of similar level. In addition, I think I have only seen one Watchtower ship on the ground and that was before I could get into them. Heck, I’ve destroyed all the arrays and I don’t remember Watchtower using any starborn powers. Perhaps, because I try to attack at as long a distance as possible. Anyway, I’d love to catch Watchtower ships on the ground.

 

[erlkonig]

I've captured a fair number of Watchtower ships, and the crew gear is weirdly scaled to be similar to the players, meaning they have the same crap most foes have. This bugs me, since they really should have at least the tier above, but the mod really doesn't fit its own lore that well in some places.

dawnroselyn's post is spot on, although I don't know what difficulty was involved, and certainly in my games on Extreme I'm feeling far less constrained in my options (I almost never use Phased Time, for example). You can always over-equip a follower with some monster gun, and armor from the Oracle starting around level 11. So player responses differ. But the way Watchtower nonsensically commandeers the game in opposition to its own lore (secret society, only monitors starborn that aren't being problems, etc) is infuriating.

I'm currently playing a naked, gunless, no-healing-kit, no vendors (mostly), character (pre-NG) at XP+73%, so I've been yanking up the navmap instantly after every jump to avoid the initial Watchtower encounter, although it's blocking a bunch of in-orbit side quests. I have enough Powers at this point I can probably deal with them now, but I'm going to get my character high first so at least there's a reason she'd let herself get caught. Kinggath's new patch shows they're starting to fix Watchtower ruining key encounters on the main questline, like the one over Oborum III (the Hunter), so I hope they'll keep working on that.

(one problem with the initial Watchtower attack is that if you reload during the audio effects instead of going through with it, it will usually leave your audio trashed, i.e. partly muted, until you restart the entire game)

 

[heylookitsjz]

i gotta agree with what ur saying, its way too invasive for what is a very good story and mod

but it changes WAY too much about base game behavior with the ships in orbit and ships landing on planets. the game becomes Watchtower: Starfield instead of Starfield plus Watchtower

imo the way Not Yet Watchtower does it is perfect in that you should not be pursued until the Neon incident because thats when suddenly starborn become very public. so it could be they were keeping tabs on u cause of whatever tech they have tells them ur potential for being anomalous and then the neon incident is what pushes them to actually pursue you

then i feel it fits the lore of the game way better AND their own lore, as you said

the overall gameplay loop of WT is fantastic but its wayyy too invasive

 

[Villager]

Have the impression myself that Watchtower likely would have access to data from the scanners at New Atlantis and Neon. Watchtower likely identifes your character as "Deviant adjacent" soon after they start carrying Artifacts back and forth through the scanners. Likely your character would not be considered a threat until after the Starborn interception at Neon or the fight in New Atlantis. On that basis, Not Yet Watchtower probably fits in with the Watchtower lore.

Tend to agree that the vanilla start for Watchtower is not ideal. Groundpounder and the Mantis mission both really should be done with low-level characters and are effectively unavailable. Also, the Freestar Ranger and Ryujin questlines are difficult to complete without getting ambushed and sidetracked by Watchtower.