Fallout Combat Mod - Inspired by FO1, FO2 and The Elder Scrolls

[Psychomancy]

In the original Fallout games Action Points have a significant role in combat, yet in the first-person Fallout games AP has a reduced function. AP merely controls how often you can use VATS, whereas before it controlled the entire flow of combat.

 

What I'm suggesting is a mod that changes AP to play a more central role in combat.

 

Here's a rough outline of what I'm proposing:

Action Points would function like Stamina/Fatigue in The Elder Scrolls. Your total AP is determined by your Agility while your rate of AP recovery is determined by your Endurance. Every combat action (firing, striking, swinging, throwing) drains AP. How much AP is drained is determined by the damage output of the attack and your combat skill level. Once your AP is reduced to zero your skill in combat is significantly reduced. Your accuracy with firearms is decreased and your damage output with melee weapons is much lower. This would increase character specialization and therefore role-playing, because using a combat skill you aren't trained in would be very punishing. VATS would still be useful as a targeting tool, though it would drain twice as much AP as normal combat. Chems and recipes that restore AP could be more common to compensate for its increased importance.

What do you think?

 

If anybody is interested but doesn't care to create this mod I'd really appreciate advice on how to get started myself!

[devinpatterson]

This isn't something I'v really examined, but maybe instead of assigning each action a specific AP cost, it might be possible to use a much more blunt tool to create a rough facade.

I think we could have general categories and weapon types that create a AP drain per a second or just the weapon's stated AP ( as listed in it's stats) cost per a second. Then have that supplemented by a recovery of AP per a second. The reason I'm suggesting this is because these aspects are something we can get a "hook" into with the script functions we have.

For example we can get teh info on weapon type (sidearm, long rifle, one or two handed melee etc), weapon weight (or if using the weapons AP only, getWeaponActionPoints) and weather the weapon is actively being swung or fired. These could be your draining factors. Character attributes like strength and endurance could modify those draining factors (easier to swing a heavy blade if your strong, and you get less winded if your have great endurane) and/or affect regeneration rate.

This would be pretty rough, but you would see a difference between fisticuffs and swinging a bumper sword. I wish it could be more granular, but I'm not seeing a easy way to do that, right off the top of my head (although I'm sure there probably are better/more percise options that involve more complicated approaches).

When AP is below zero you would need a penalty, say a "speed modifier" that coud affect combat speed, movement speed, draw speed etc. This could scale at various tiers of negative AP (ie negative 10 AP could mean -10% speed modifier).

Some of the entry points could be used (Equip speed, Modify Attack Speed, Modify run speed, reload speed) to modify speed, and or damage as you have conveyed in your post above.