joepez

Suggestion for SkyrimNexus, but really applicable to any of the Nexus sites. A lot of mods get abandoned by authors, or are good in concept, but not quite executed right. Since the Nexus family is quite large and pretty active why not take advantage of everyone and do a little crowdsourcing to get alternative mod suggestions and compatibility listing. Alternative mods - The great thing about mods is anyone can create something similar, but finding them is nearly impossible. If users would suggest alternatives and let others vote on the quality of those alternatives that could drive up discoverability of new/not-as-popular mods and alternates when a project is abandoned. Amazon does this really well in help you find alternative suggestions. Alternativeto.net is the best example. Compatibility - Again there are 1000s of testers (aka playesr) out there banging away on Skyrim on a regular basis, so take advantage of that by letting people list (and vote on accuracy) of what versions of Skyrim and possibly extremely popular mods (SKSE). Perfect example: I upgraded to 1.6 and promptly had CTDs. Problem children: SKSE and Death Dance. Upgraded both and no problems. Give me a simple method to surface this and I'd tell the community that XYZ vX.X is not compatible with Skyrim vX.X. Steam doesn't provide either of those two functions and probably never will.

There are certainly differences between FO3 and FONV, but they appear to be largely lifted from mods. I find the majority of the critters behave similar to MMM or other animal behavior mods. I've seen wounded ones run; weaker run when the leader is killed; blind rampage; and outright ignoring. In FO3 vanilla you could wander pretty far, but eventually you did run into something that squashed you into the ground (try being level 1-3 and walking up to a Mutant). So far I've found over 25 locations of which the majority were off the beaten path and I had to run, sneak, and shoot my way in and out of them depending upon the circumstances. It felt good that in some places I had to run and jump off a cliff to escape a pack of stalkers, likewise sneaking up on a group of bloatflies (annoying buggers) and picking them off with a rifle and crits was fun as well. If you're looking for run & gun take on everything w/ the lowest pistol than yeah you're probably going to die. Especially if don't have any skills trained up. Couple of basic tips that have made exploring fun for me: As others have mentioned make sure you have the the right tools for the job (for me it's a 10mm pistol; Cowboy Rifle; and Caravan Shotgun) Apply some basic tactics (higher ground, hide, cover, vats, etc) you can take on 1 or 2 people several levels above you without too much pain. Shoot for the "weapon" in vats. You'll often get crits and if it is anything that can be dropped they usually will end up on the ground. Ensure that you can't be easily flanked. Keep one side against a wall/rock/etc. Make sure you're not taking on 10-20 at a time, that's suicide. If all else fails, run away and come back later.

Think of it as complicated Blackjack. You need a caravan deck with a range of number cards. I use the random selection, because it doesn't seem to really matter. It appears when you do random the computer isn't going to load you up with a load of the same card (ex: 8 4's). Once you start the game you use the arrows to navigate between your hand and the playing field (the 3 spots to the left). You draw cards as you use them up, or you can discard. Use the keyboard commands for to select, cancel, discard, etc. You use all 4 arrows to navigate between your 3 caravan piles (left/right to select and up/down to place the card). You can also use the arrows to play certain cards on your opponent. The basic rules are you can only start a caravan pile with a # card with the exception of an Ace. Likewise you can't play any other card until you've started all 3 caravans. Once you place a card your start card you have 2 basic moves after that. You can lay another card below the starter, or you can play a card next to the starter. Only Face (king, queen, etc) can be placed next to another card. Only # cards can be placed below another card. The goal is to build your caravan up to 21-26 total points. How you build that up depends upon the 1st card you played. After you place your 1st card you have to decide which "way" to build your pile. You can either Ascend or Descend, but you can't do both in a pile. ex: If you place a 10, then the next card below the 10 has to be a 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, or A. It has to be less than the 10 (remember you can't play a Q/K/J below a # card, only next to). Each card you place below adds up vertically for the total caravan score. ex: Card 1 = 10; Card 2 = 9 so Total = 19 (10+9); Card 3 = 6 so Total = 25 (10+9+6). Since the max is 26, you can only place an A below the 6, else you'll bust the caravan. Similarly you could start with an A (=1) and then add higher # cards (2,3,4, etc.) to the A and again sum up to a total between 21-26. You need at least 2 caravans to be >=21 in order to win, or if you opponent busts a caravan. That's the basic strategy that you need. From here it gets a lot more complex and confusing. If you and your opponent both have caravans >=21 than you need to get some higher, though I haven't figured out if all 3 need to be higher or some combination, or if it is a total across all 3 and so long as one you beats the other (think sudden death) then you win. Kinda confusing on that one. The face cards all have various rules which also adds to the complexity. Ks appear to double the value of the card they are placed next to (though I think I've seen a few cases where it only adds a point or two). I have no idea what Qs do (protect maybe?). Jack's are some weird mix up card. If you play a Jack next to any card in a Caravan pile, it will cause that card to discard, and then whatever is "below" the card to reverse in order if possible. So in theory you could simply reverse the order and end up doing not much; put you could also even cause the majority of a pile to disappear. Jokers are some weird cards and according to the rules have all sorts of effects based on how they are played and against what cards (this is the point when I tossed the rules aside and said, yeah right). Another interesting thing you can do with Jacks is play them on an opponent. So you can mess up their caravan. This can be a handy way to take that 26 down to nothing. So far I've found if you treat it like a First Person to >=21 on 2 decks they WIN! game, to be the best way to think about the game. Ignore the face cards, and just play numbers. I've won quite a few times this way. You can experiment with face cards (other than the Ace which is basically a 1) to see that they do. Needless to say this is an overly complex version of blackjack that someone thought was really cool.