Should artifacts have unlimited charges?

[FrankFamily]

Since i've made a few artifacts i'm wondering if artifacts should have unlimited charges. I'm fine with normal weapons having charges, it's a bit of a pain at times but may be to overpowered to have unlimited charges for everything... But artifacts are supposed to be better so maybe unlimited charges makes sense, not only lore-wise but from a a player perspective.

 

So should i make future artifacts with unlimited charges and/or update old ones? or keep making them with charge so that it's not overpowered and stays closer to the original skyrim experience?

 

I'd like to hear some opinions on the matter.

[Boombro]

Recharge over time is the best in term of op and balance.

[FrankFamily]

Thanks Boombro, it certainly sonds fair and less painful.

[Sdesser]

What I've done with my custom weapons is that I've just made the enchantments on them last forever. I'm never out of Soul Gems anyway, so the recharging process feels like more of an inconvenience than a way to balance them out.

 

That said, how would you implement self-recharging over time? Also, can you change the item requirement for the recharge? Disabling Soul Gem recharge while having them regenerate charges over time could be a nice way to allow my custom weapons to be more powerful without making them game breaking.

[BigBizkit]

You can't change the soul gem requirement. However, you can set the enchantment cost to an insane amount where recharging with soulgems would be technically possible but completely pointless. Pair that with script recharge.

[FrankFamily]

Self-recharge over time would be done from script, what i had thought is pretty much what i think BigBizKit means, making the enchantment at another scale. According to elderscrolls.wikia.com grand soul gem charge is 3000, then the artifact could have a charge 3 million so that it's practcally imposible to fill it and then a script updates every 5 or 10 seconds and restores some charge, a big amount as it's 3 million but proportionally small, so that it takes time to fill or maybe longer update period. And of course the enchantment cost would be insane too.

Would be better to be able to disable soul gem recharging for that specific item but i don't think it's posible.

 

Other method i've though of that could be fun to use (but not for all artifacts, just for the ones that it fit better with their lore) is recharge with kills + slow recharge over time; or recharge with kills + discharge over time + OP enchantment, so that it's normally off but when you kill a guy or two it recharges and gets kind of in "rage mode" or "kill streak" or whatever, as the enchantment is really powerfull but only last a minute or so, unless you keep killing. Not sure if any weapon from previous tes games fits into that though.

Edited May 13, 2015 by FrankFamily

[Sdesser]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't scripts that fire off constantly quite heavy on the engine? I'd like to keep my mod as light as possible. Even though one mod doesn't "cost" that much on the script engine, having about a hundred of them will make things... slightly unstable.

[FrankFamily]

True, to keep it from hurting performance much it could only run while equipped but then it would not charge while not equipped, maybe saving the time when you unequip it and then checking upon equipping and adding the appropiate amount of charge or something to account for the non-equipped time, or something like that, i'd have to think about it.

Anyway as long as the function that runs repeatedly is short (just adding the charge), it doesnt run very frequenly, but instead once every 10 seconds or so and only runs when it's needed (when it's equipped checks, then updates every 10 secs or until unequipped) it shouldn't hurt performance much.