Combat mods: Horizon / Better Locational Damage vs a simple damage multiplier?

[lazloarcadia]

So I'm looking at mods that speed up combat. Specifically Horizon & Better Locational Damage. Now I understand that these mods effect much more than just combat however I'm looking specifically at them from a combat overhaul perspective for right now, and my question is how are they really all that different from using a damage multiplier & perhaps a healing mod like Agony?

 

 

Everything I hear about Horizon / BLD (and similar combat overhauls) is they get rid of "bullet sponges" and (usually) allow for better headshots, etc. But a x3 - x5 damage multiplier applied both ways would do the same thing and be a much more light weight with fewer scripts. More over, it would have dramatically fewer mod conflicts with quest mods, weapon mods, etc without the constant need for patching.

 

Bare in mind that I'm not looking at the OTHER things these mods do like loot rebalance, settlement building, etc etc. i'm just looking at combat for now. Would love to hear thoughts on this one.

 

 

[geala]

I don't use Horizon (tried it only for a short time) because for me it focuses too much to settlements and civilized development while I'm running a primitive and wild Commonwealth, so I cannot say much to it. Horizon is a really big overhaul with a much a broader change to vanilla than Better Locational Damage (BLD) btw.

 

BLD I'm using since long as my basic combat mod, together with Fallout Loot Overhaul, Better Explosives, Pack Attack and Knockout Framework. BLD at the core changes the vanilla health of NPCs and player and combines it with a consistent damage system. Headshot scripts etc. are nice but just additions.

 

The difference to a mere damage multiplier is big because the latter only works on one of the combat factors, you know, damage. You still get a hp monster player, extremely weak hp humans, extremely strong hp humans, little critters with more hp than supermutants, plus magical perk point multipliers with huge effects which only benefit the player, all the RPG stuff from vanilla. You still have a big imbalance between means of the player and NPCs. A problem of damage multipliers for combat corrections also is that the balance between mobs can be touched: if you want high damage to battle the later small mob spawns (like humans) with gigantic hp, you partly trivialize big mobs like deathclaws, sentry bots or behemoths cause their health is low in relation.

 

If you like RPG-like play, killing one human with one bullet to the toe while having to fire two clips into the head of a second before he/she drops (seldomly seen in reality), the vanilla system and a damage multiplier might be ok. BLD tries to make it more like a shooter. It still has (too many for my taste) RPG aspects but it is hugely better than vanilla or other damage multiplier mods.

[lazloarcadia]

@Geala Thank you for the excellent review of BLD's combat system. It gives me something to consider.

[StormWolf01]

Heyas Gaela! Quick question on this subject. With the amount of scripting that BLD has... with the general rule of not loading most of our mods till after we leave the vault;

how well do you feel that BLD sits with that? Meaning, sometimes when I'm making characters, I forget to switch to my low mod build when I go into the CC.

I was also just looking at it, and it's got it's own dismemberment system. Do you know how it compares to live dismemberment?

[geala]

I have to admit that, despite numerous game starts (three the last four days, I'm trying out new stuff), it's years since I played the game as sole survivor (btw I never completed the main quest). I haven't seen the vault for long as I always utilize Start Me Up. I use several mods with scripts, besides Pack Attack and Knockout Framework (with deferred player death as death alternative system) also Endless Warfare and NPCs Travel, Dodge'Em, CWSS, and a lot more from which I don't know the script strain. I have about 210 mods installed, including some fat texture mods, don't know wether that's average or few. I never had problems with BLD except in one case when I installed a new version of F4SE with a mod manager which of course you never should do.

 

What can happen is sometimes a slight delay when headshotting NPCs before reaction, because of script strain presumably. I know it's not intended but for me that's even more realistic because quite often in reality hits do not lead to immediate reactions of the person hit.

 

I never used Live Dismemberment mod and don't have gun dismemberment from BLD enabled because real shotguns do not or pulsed lasers would not dismember a human. I don't like overdone stuff. A .50 BMG maybe could dismember under certain circumstances but that's not in the options. So I only get dismemberment from long sharp melee weapons and that works ok, to the rest I cannot say anything, sorry.

[StormWolf01]

Hi Gaela. I can understand where you're coming from. And I'm in respect of your opinion in regards to different types of weapons doing different types of damage to the body, and different types of weapons not doing certain types of damage to the body. For me, since I'm using bodies that don't actually support dismemberment, it adds a more realistic combat style of where I could shoot somebody in the leg, and they'd possibly survive the event.

 

You mentioned a lot of things that I'd like to comment further upon, but some of them might start up some debate or different perspectives, and I don't want to derail Lazlo's thread. (Must...exercise...self....control.... must.... must....)

 

But definitely thank you for the input. Yeah, if the scripts can lag a bit, that might not be a good idea for my game. Let's just say that not all of my hardware is up to spec ;D

[geala]

I don't have problems with different opinions and don't see forums as a medium to convince others, but to get hints to problems, views and solutions. You can play FO4 in different ways and no way is better than the other.

 

To shooting somebody in the leg and the person surviving, what do you mean with this? That would interest me. What is the reaction of such a person with the mods you use?

 

In BLD the damage multipliers of the body parts are different from vanilla. And in my game they are a bit different to BLD, I upped head and torso, diminished limbs and enabled the groin as target area. A hit to arm or leg in my game has the 1x multiplier (in BLD it's 1,75x), as I know from lots of real world shootings (studying, not practising :wink: ) that hits to the arms or legs are seldomly of decisive character.

[StormWolf01]

I don't have problems with different opinions and don't see forums as a medium to convince others, but to get hints to problems, views and solutions. You can play FO4 in different ways and no way is better than the other.

 

To shooting somebody in the leg and the person surviving, what do you mean with this? That would interest me. What is the reaction of such a person with the mods you use?

 

In BLD the damage multipliers of the body parts are different from vanilla. And in my game they are a bit different to BLD, I upped head and torso, diminished limbs and enabled the groin as target area. A hit to arm or leg in my game has the 1x multiplier (in BLD it's 1,75x), as I know from lots of real world shootings (studying, not practising :wink: ) that hits to the arms or legs are seldomly of decisive character.

I would very much love to know how you did that! That would be all kinds of funny!

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16400 I originally used this mod on PS4. Where it's called Realistic Dismemberment. It does change up the combat quite a bit. Especially on targets that are smart enough to hide constantly behind cover.

Obviously, head shots are fatal, assuming you do enough damage to kill. Tho I do believe that it ups the damage for headshots to try to inflict fatalities from headshots.

 

The other body parts, I almost want to say that it "segments" the damage for limbs. No other way for me to really explain it, other than if you do enough points to damage the limb, it dismembers said limb without transferring the damage into killing the NPC. For leg shots, it could be a little better. As human-like targets can't attempt to flee on just one leg. And they won't try to crawl away. But if they choose to keep trying to attack, any NPC that has crawling animations will still attempt to crawl to get to you. Ghouls, robots, deathclaws, etc ("I'll bite your bloody kneecaps off!" [can't remember where that quote comes from]) Or they'll simply keep trying to shoot you. Not sure about the PC version, but the PS4 version if you took off both legs on a human or mutant they'd just sit there on the ground, almost like they were in dispair.

Arms get a bit interesting. Sometimes they'll try to escape, other times they may try to keep fighting if they still have one limb remaining.

Now, one of the very interesting parts of it, is that depending on how you land explosive damage, you can end up crippling characters and still have them survive it. Which is seriously realistic in the case of mines. But if the damage also splashes the torso and/or head... well.... again... realistic they'll die.

 

Same here. The way that I see it as far as gameplay goes... it's a single player game. If it doesn't affect anybody else's gameplay, play the way that makes ya happy :)

[geala]

Ok, it's from the mod Live Dismemberment which does not work with BLD allegedly, so I cannot try it out. A pity. Sounds very interesting in case of your composition, without dismemberment because of a custom skeleton (what is it?). I have to admit that I like a bit (or lot?) of gore, f.e. I use Deadly Mutilation in Skyrim all the time, but I don't want it concentrated on limbs.

 

For the groin area, simply use this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12936?tab=posts or transfer the entries of it to your body parts mod.