Today the Signalscope is one item, and most frequencies are separate items. The OW Ventures frequency "comes for free" with the Signalscope item, which is why Signalscope by itself unlocks some locations. The main downside of this design is that frequency items are useless until you get the Signalscope item. You can already start_inventory: { Signalscope: 1 } if that really bothers you, but of course this reduces the overall randomness of the randomizer.
Theoretically, the ideal solution would be to make the OW Ventures frequency its own item, so you could start with an "empty" Signalscope and then get all of the frequencies in any order. In the past I spent some time trying to do this, but unfortunately concluded that the base game's code assumes "OW Ventures frequency always exists" in too many places for separating them to be feasible.
So another compromise that's been suggested in the past is replacing the frequency items with several "Progressive Signalscope" items. The 1st PS instance would give you the Signalscope itself with OW Ventures frequency, the 2nd instance would then unlock Quantum Fluctuations frequency, the 3rd Distress Beacon frequency, and so on.
I never ended up implementing this because, in exchange for making every signalscope/frequency item valuable, it removes the randomness of what order you unlock the frequencies in. To me that tradeoff always felt like a wash, if not a net negative, especially after I started adding story mods with their own frequency items. But I'd be fine with it as an opt-in feature.
Today the Signalscope is one item, and most frequencies are separate items. The OW Ventures frequency "comes for free" with the Signalscope item, which is why Signalscope by itself unlocks some locations. The main downside of this design is that frequency items are useless until you get the Signalscope item. You can already
start_inventory: { Signalscope: 1 }if that really bothers you, but of course this reduces the overall randomness of the randomizer.Theoretically, the ideal solution would be to make the OW Ventures frequency its own item, so you could start with an "empty" Signalscope and then get all of the frequencies in any order. In the past I spent some time trying to do this, but unfortunately concluded that the base game's code assumes "OW Ventures frequency always exists" in too many places for separating them to be feasible.
So another compromise that's been suggested in the past is replacing the frequency items with several "Progressive Signalscope" items. The 1st PS instance would give you the Signalscope itself with OW Ventures frequency, the 2nd instance would then unlock Quantum Fluctuations frequency, the 3rd Distress Beacon frequency, and so on.
I never ended up implementing this because, in exchange for making every signalscope/frequency item valuable, it removes the randomness of what order you unlock the frequencies in. To me that tradeoff always felt like a wash, if not a net negative, especially after I started adding story mods with their own frequency items. But I'd be fine with it as an opt-in feature.