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Water Conducts Electricity


WulfenNinja

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I was playing skyrim on the PC next to my roommate who was playing on the Xbox just to show off how much better my game was with a better system and many mods and all kinds of things the other day. He only ever uses dual cast lightning spells with the stagger perk and is completely unkillable in the vanilla game, and so he has a good eye for ways to be even more overpowered. He asked me if anyone had made a mod that made it so that when you use a shock spell on water the effect would affect many targets standing or swimming in the water. I thought this was an excellent idea and to my knowledge there is no mod at this time that produces this effect. I am sure such a mod would likely use scripts, but given the nature of the mod I think script lag would be tolerable. I realize this would be a fairly difficult mod to make but I believe that the benefits would certainly be worth it, and that it would only enhance and never take away from gameplay. It would be Immersive, Lore-friendly, strategic for the roleplayers, and an extra asset for the game-breakers. I think such a mod would fit everyone and so if any skilled modder would like to take a stab at this I would certainly appreciate it!

Edited by WulfenNinja
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Great idea, hope someone makes it. Environmental damage is cool, like the pools of oil that you can ignite with fire.

It would be cool if frost had an effect on water too, like any cold spell could freeze someone solid if they're in the water or wet (could be made compatible with the Wet and Cold mod and Frostfall.) Also just for effect it would be cool if you could make ice patches in the water and walk on them, or float on them in the current of a river.

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a question...considering the fact that water covers about 2/3 of the surface area of Earth, and that lightning strikes happen all the time. Why is it then when a bolt of lightning hits the ocean, a lake, pond, or river that all the fish don't get fried?

 

my question is rhetorical in nature as you pointed out water is a really good conductor, but because of that the current of the electricity would in nature stay in higher concentration along the surface of the body of water. Fish or other lifeforms near the strike point would receive the most of the current of the bolt of lightning, however electricity travels along the path of least resistance, so its easier for the electrical current to travel around say a fish or person in the water then through them. Also because of that a large body of water makes for a pretty decent ground for the electrical current to spread and dissipate and thus the reason why everything doesn't get fried.

 

So if someone was to make the requested effect, it would be a smart idea to take into consideration the nature of electricity in water, so perhaps a diminutive effect the farther the target is away from a strike point perhaps set up on a radius, and then also almost no effect on targets fully submerged other than really close to the strike point.

 

I really like the idea frost spells being able to freeze water surface as well to make paths for people to walk on. Depending on the magnitude of the effect could dictate how thick the ice would be. Perhaps make the ice melt as well after a while, or could be melted faster with fire effects.

 

A lot of work to be done, but it could be really cool.

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I had considered that in large bodies of water the effect should be mostly lost in a real-world scenario, however this electric charge is magical in nature so various differences to reality can be assumed. The examples that got us thinking about the possible mod were the instances of knee-deep water in many dungeons, particularly man-made ones. I also assumed that a modder ambitious enough to tackle this would put in some sort of limit on the size of the effect. I am a big fan of the wet to frozen target idea as this would give each of the three main destruction spell types an environmental/strategic application. As for the frozen water, it sounds cool but perhaps as a separate mod, I can see difficulties in the making and the using of such a mod, and with script lag I think it might look a little odd for chunks of ice to pop up a second after using a spell. Also those with slower PCs might experience heavy framerate loss with that effect, I personally have a powerful laptop but I still take people who are more financially responsible than myself into consideration. And as a final point for making the ice on water effect a separate mod, it would give ice yet another environmental use, this one having use outside of combat as well. This would throw off the balancing of the elements caused by giving shock and frost each one more advantage.

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I was thinking about the frozen water effect, and if someone were to make that mod I argue that the elemental balance could be maintained by adding other environment altering effects into the game. If we can assume that our magic frost is cold enough to flash-freeze moving water (which I believe we should if it can also kill in a matter of seconds), then might we also assume our other magic is extremely hot? For example, the modder may opt to allow lighting to instanty turn static objects and corpses to ash, and fire could possibly burn or melt weapons and armor. I personally would find all three effects to be unnecessary and possibly annoying in my own game but I could see some people wanting to feel truly more powerful than earthly matter and thus the suggestions.

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I always thought fire spells should cause severe burning on any target wearing metal armor kind of like when your cooking but you don't use an oven mitt when taking a pizza pan out of the oven.

 

It would definitely be interesting to see added environmental effects however, I don't have the skills as of now to be able to do it.

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  • 3 years later...

a question...considering the fact that water covers about 2/3 of the surface area of Earth, and that lightning strikes happen all the time. Why is it then when a bolt of lightning hits the ocean, a lake, pond, or river that all the fish don't get fried?

 

my question is rhetorical in nature as you pointed out water is a really good conductor, but because of that the current of the electricity would in nature stay in higher concentration along the surface of the body of water. Fish or other lifeforms near the strike point would receive the most of the current of the bolt of lightning, however electricity travels along the path of least resistance, so its easier for the electrical current to travel around say a fish or person in the water then through them. Also because of that a large body of water makes for a pretty decent ground for the electrical current to spread and dissipate and thus the reason why everything doesn't get fried.

 

So if someone was to make the requested effect, it would be a smart idea to take into consideration the nature of electricity in water, so perhaps a diminutive effect the farther the target is away from a strike point perhaps set up on a radius, and then also almost no effect on targets fully submerged other than really close to the strike point.

 

I really like the idea frost spells being able to freeze water surface as well to make paths for people to walk on. Depending on the magnitude of the effect could dictate how thick the ice would be. Perhaps make the ice melt as well after a while, or could be melted faster with fire effects.

 

A lot of work to be done, but it could be really cool.

Are you seriously asking that? Do you not know how electricity works? Fish aren't grounded. My faith in human intelligence is at an all time low right now.

Edited by Kaelith
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a question...considering the fact that water covers about 2/3 of the surface area of Earth, and that lightning strikes happen all the time. Why is it then when a bolt of lightning hits the ocean, a lake, pond, or river that all the fish don't get fried?

 

my question is rhetorical in nature as you pointed out water is a really good conductor, but because of that the current of the electricity would in nature stay in higher concentration along the surface of the body of water. Fish or other lifeforms near the strike point would receive the most of the current of the bolt of lightning, however electricity travels along the path of least resistance, so its easier for the electrical current to travel around say a fish or person in the water then through them. Also because of that a large body of water makes for a pretty decent ground for the electrical current to spread and dissipate and thus the reason why everything doesn't get fried.

 

So if someone was to make the requested effect, it would be a smart idea to take into consideration the nature of electricity in water, so perhaps a diminutive effect the farther the target is away from a strike point perhaps set up on a radius, and then also almost no effect on targets fully submerged other than really close to the strike point.

 

I really like the idea frost spells being able to freeze water surface as well to make paths for people to walk on. Depending on the magnitude of the effect could dictate how thick the ice would be. Perhaps make the ice melt as well after a while, or could be melted faster with fire effects.

 

A lot of work to be done, but it could be really cool.

Are you seriously asking that? Do you not know how electricity works? Fish aren't grounded. My faith in human intelligence is at an all time low right now.

 

 

He didn't say fish are grounded, in fact he acknowledges dissipation. Calm down.

 

Love this mod idea, little modding knowledge myself but could a smaller script be used to trigger a modified spell cut down on the lag/bloat etc? Just speculating mind.

 

There used to be a mod called Fire and Ice overhaul which did the creating ice paths to walk on type of mechanic. Think it had script issues though.

Edited by BobbyP92
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