Guns, balances, gameplay, mods, chaos oh my (trying to go for a comprehensive fallout 1-2-tactics feel of balance)

[tartarsauce2]

Rationalization - skip if boring
let me start with the fact that I'm running about 260 mods at once in my load order list, I'm grabbing everything almost with a few (temporary I hope) exceptions like the anti-tank rifle (I just don't know how to incorporate them as I haven't finished the game even yet and I wish to do this before getting truly serious in this) - I'm aware of realistic location damages, armour DT and so on, I've been through almost every mod file in search of the ultimate modding setup for a fallout 1-2 feel (even getting classic power armour balancing in tandem with unbreakable PA and reduction of fusion core usage etc after trying out a few health pool enlargement options)

sometimes the enemies feel like they're all made of playdough, putty, plasticine, they don't have huge differences, I want to fix this through perks, weapon/ammo changes, health and Damage Resist/Damage Threshold changes, I have to admit I'm pretty overwhelmed by all the new weapons mods and it's pretty inspiring

the main thing I notice is that there's not necessarily a comprehensive balance to it all and I feel like this makes it unnatural feeling when adding a weapon in and it just OP destroys everything, and a little disappointment, when it's a 1-2 damage boost with different skin and ammo usage (M9 vs pipe pistol, I want them to both be in game and both relevant in their own way)
this list is by no means exhaustive and merely a starting point - I still need to finish the game to get a proper view of the full balance but I've been tweaking things to work and feel balanced as I go along so it's been slow
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synths should have higher DT but lower limb health and damage resist so that they fall apart to physical force easily enough from big shots (tough but brittle) whereas ghouls should have a spongy sort of low limb health situation higher damage resist but lower damage thresh-hold (zombies and skeletons)

I have pretty much all the new weapons in mind, including LAEP, crecy, celtic, survival knife, and the guns as well from weapons overhaul, USP, M-14, the real guns etc etc etc in mind in mind with this, also damage thresh-hold, and adapting different weapons and armours to actually incorporate different damage resistance types, and making enemies more... particular in their weaknesses/strengths

the idea isn't for "realism" or one headshot kills, but a sort of situation where armoured targets are much stronger, but even automatics can do a little damage against them unless they're absolutely the worst of the worst unlike the completely unforigivng damage thresh-hold calculations of the original fallout series'
AND I WANT TO DO THIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OCKDEdtWys
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I feel like tweaking values so that damage thresh-hold matters more, upping the health, and upping the damage, higher values allow for more nuance, at 30 damage, 1-6 DT per piece of armor matters, but isn't gamebreakingly annoying like it is with an 18 damage pipe pistol shot, automatics should receive about the damage reduction they receive now when the baselines are at an upped value (30-6 instead of 18-6) and perks should increase damage by say 5% per point with 1-2% armour penetration for rifle, etc etc etc

fist and melee weapons should give some damage resistance on their own, while not realistic per se, it enables a melee character to be a bit more meaningful in its own right, melee weapons can then have a balance of attack speed, damage per hit, and DR, so that you don't just make better weapons by increasing damage into unstoppable one hit kills necessarily
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Pipeguns, Pipe Revolvers, Pipe Bolt-actions all use .38 - all pipe guns are worse than a similar proper gun counterpart, keeps pipe guns around as a stand-by you can always rely on to an extent,by making .38 the currency of the realm you also don't unfairly disadvantage automatic pipeguns because you'll be carrying the bullets around anyways probably (we all know how bolt action becomes preferable when low on ammo) - by keeping bottle caps as a form of low weight/no weight semi "credit card" you allow usage of said cheap currency without overly penalizing yourself as well, but it does harm your attempts to get just plain better guns - it's a tradeoff

all ammunition gains weight .38 is at 0.05?

standard bullet weight is 0.08

heavy bullets are 0.1

rockets are 0.8

greandes are 0.6

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put bottlecaps as misc, allow for drops off various sensible NPC mobs, .38 becomes standard currency in a sense, keeps the ability to shoot but all guns that use .38 are somewhat weaker, but always okay for a standby

armour penetration more ubiquitous, but low amounts, AP notes for ammo are starting point for consideration

ammo types (other games standin for fallout 1-2-tactics)

[light]

.38 (low armour penetration) 10% AP 70% dam 2-5 seconds of poison at 1-3 DPS (no idea what actual amount for balance)

5mm (standin for 5.56mm in other games) 30% AP 60% Dam - design pretty much to almost exclusively be used in automatics to offset low damage, high AP offsets unfair DT amounts

.45 (has no armour penetration) 100% dam (standard)
2mm ECM (40% AP) 150% dam (rare, light, the holy grail of ammo)

[normal]

.44 (20% AP) 110% Dam

5.56mm (standin for 7.62 in other games) 20% AP 100% Dam

.308 (standin for .223 FMJ in other games) 30% AP 120% Dam
10mm (20% AP) 90% Dam

[heavy]

shells 0% AP

.50 cal (40% AP) 130% Dam and potential for 1-2-3 bleed damage for 1-2-3 seconds (1 for 3 seconds or 3 for 3 seconds or anything in between)

fusion core N/A AP

PKVVD uses .44 40% AP lower damage than "that gun" - balance to be slightly less damage compared to "that gun" against robots but little else, faster firing though by a bit

magnum uses .45 20% AP similar damage to PKVVD - slower firing equivalent to "that gun"

"that gun" uses .44

pipe weapons use .38

hunting rifle uses .308

thommygun uses .45

assault rifle uses 5.56mm

combat rifle uses .308

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laser goes from all energy to half-energy half-fire, incendiary lights on fire to boot and reduces direct damage only a little
plasma does a little bit of EMP OR radiation damage on top of doing half-physical half-energy
LAEP is also conceptually included, does more energy with a bit of EMP on top
railgun gets a new magnesium shotgun effect round, very low spread, 40->10% AP, adds say, 5 fire damage per pellet, 5-6 pellets
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I'm thinking generic legendaries should be removed at some point while actual legendaries from named entities with their special effects become more prevalent (the Wow! factor of a thing)
while certain, particularly light (critical hits do 1.3X damage and crit rate increases 5-10% faster) could be available as well as an option
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LOADS and Tweaks ammo mods
dirty, normal/medium, and clean ammo (names not entirely accurate but it's what I got for now)
dirty means incendiary, poison, bleed augmented ammo, good for slower firing weapons like pipe guns to make up the difference (smart peasants use these)

normal means a slight boost to damage but less AP, or more AP and slightly less damage, but nothing drastic (ye average landed gentry)

clean means depleted uranium rounds, things high tech, high level, high shot output weapons could spam, like a .50 cal machinegun (only the best for a king)

details on components, what types of ammo drop off who and how many are beyond me as of yet, this is just a framework conception still

Edited April 21, 2016 by tartarsauce2

[Fenryr3001]

First,we'd actually need a DT System.Bethesda seems to dislike DT,because none of their games have it.

[dainsgames]

First,we'd actually need a DT System.Bethesda seems to dislike DT,because none of their games have it.

 

I was going to link the DT mod I was aware of, but lookie there, there's like three now. So a DT system is definitely available.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/searchresults/?src_order=4&src_sort=0&src_view=2&src_tab=1&src_name=Threshold&src_language=0&src_showadult=1&page=1&pUp=1

[tartarsauce2]

if at all possible, I'd like to see megamasterlist compilations, where all the files from a particular modder that's prevalent are loaded up all together, and then if for some reason a variation exists on a particular weapon, an over-ride file can be found for that exact weapon, for instance if a weapon mod maker has 7 guns, then you get the big list of all 7, but then you get the override mod for the 1 you want, thus instead of 7 files you have 2

damage thresh-hold by talkietoaster (power armour image) adds DT framework(makes DT capability in the game itself at all), DT patcher uses that framework to add DT to various pieces for actual gameplay, toughness enhanced changes the perk similarly
and now I'm actually going to use that perk mod instead of the +40 DR one, but manually edit it to only give .5 DT and 15 DR because reasons - and give adamantium skeleton .5DT each level as well, will let you know how it works out I guess :tongue:

I had to go down a few mods because there's a 256 mod limit with nexus mod manager before it gets so incredibly sketchy and I was finding crashes and things disappearing
so to add to the wishlist, aggregating mods into more singular files if that's possible (I don't know enough to know for sure if this would lower the load on computers for putting weapons into the game)
because having like 50 weapons mods with 50 files increases the load problems I suspect
makes removing broken things easier too though so its a tradeoff

the reason I want to finish the game is because I want to get through and get a feel for balance (as opposed to thinking great thoughts on the matter because that's usually useless) - and then I can experience the story and all that and experiment and restart with wild abandon because I'm gonna get crazy - and start playing with integers I don't understand just to see what happens because I need to learn this way

but I realized there could be issues with aggregations like giving people credit, donations and so on
there's also no community resource for ammo either, the entire way I deal with balancing in my head is dependent on whether LOADS or ammo tweaks is being used


I also was also thinking of an "explosive power" perk replacing demolitions (the name pertains to both thrown power and kaboom) which allows throwing weapons to be thrown like grenades (put similar physics as frag grenades on all the items from that throwing weapons mod) and for pool cues with knives on them to be freely switched between "thrown" and "melee weapon"
as well as making pool cues potentially held like hunting rifles, with the normal attack animation being a stab effect (similar to bayonet gunbash) - needs a leather or two, pool cue, switchblade

Edited April 22, 2016 by tartarsauce2