Soupstorm

Apologies for the double post. Does anyone know how I can change how the base values of player skills are calculated?

Everything is up in the air right now. I only just started learning the GECK tonight, it's going to be a few days before this mod looks like it makes sense. The encumbrance model is going to be reconstructed. Depending on your strength, 34-61 pounds is when your belongings start to interfere with your movement and combat effectiveness. Firearms, ammo, food, water, repair items, and caps are going to be much less common. Combined with the new encumbrance and needs models, choosing between a gecko on a stick and a grenade will actually matter. No more piling twenty Brahmin steaks in your backpack and still managing to have room for a dozen handguns. Weapons, projectile weapons in particular, and energy weapons especially, are going to see a major overhaul. Energy weapons will handle their ammo in a somewhat clip-like manner, among other things. As ammo is scarce, and accordingly more expensive, firing your weapon will be a much more meaningful action. Missing one shot, in dire situations, could mean the difference between scavenging for food and getting a Radscorpion stinger through the chest. Enemies will also be more careful and measured in their shots, and will deplete their own ammo. I hope, at some point, to have some sort of economy simulator that helps manage the supply and demand of ammunition and other expendable items. [edit] Changelog so far: Max Level: 61 Tag skill bonus: 20 XP per level: 800+100x Skill Points per level: 15 Levels per Perk: 1 Carry weight: 30 + 5*STR Base dehydration: 75sec/tick (~3.5days before death w/ timescale) Base starvation: 150sec/tick (~7 days before death w/ timescale) Cone of Fire: 0.8-0.0075(GUNS)

As of about an hour ago, I'm finally getting around to starting this mod! So far I have done this: -----special/stats - Carry weight changed to 30 + 3*STR - Set levels per perk to 1 - Set health bonus per level, endurance to 0 (PC and NPC) - Set skill points per level to 10 - Set all base skills to 0 - Set all SPECIAL skill bonuses to 0 - Set tag bonus to 10 -----rates - Set base dehydration from 10 to 75sec/tick (~3.5days before death) - Set base starvation from 25 to 150sec/tick (~7 days before death) I'm trying to figure out how to collapse the base number of starting skill points to 80, and change the game timescale to 6 hours per day, but I don't know where to look. I know the first has something to do with the core SPECIAL stats but I can't figure out which of the dozens of settings they'd be. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

@franklee: I feel that weapons in NV should degrade at a far higher rate than modern weapons. Any gun in the NV universe is either five centuries old or manufactured without any real industry guiding the process. Guns will degrade slowly overall, but repair items and pristine weapons are accordingly rare and very expensive. I'm planning on either incorporating the Ambient Temperatures mod or scripting my own simplified version of it, to guide Wasteland effects like you mentioned. Exerting yourself during the day causes increased H2O/FOD/SLP depletion and item damage, while making the same journey at night offers lowered H2O/FOD rates (though a higher SLP rate) and little to no item damage, weather and radiation pockets permitting. @RZ: Jamming is also a planned inclusion. A hugely increased rate during stormy weather, a moderately-increasing rate with progressive deterioration, and 0 base jamming after a certain level of item health (say, 90% for now). The rate will also be increased depending on the types of damage the player receives. Taking melee, explosive, or certain environmental damage will severely degrade weapons and items, and might also provide a huge temporary boost in the victim's jam rate for about 1 second. On top of many other things, it'll help give melee combat a reason to be used once my damage model is implemented.

It is here that I announce Wasteland Soup (tentative title), a mod aiming to bring full-scale wasteland simulation to New Vegas, from faction battles to biological systems. The planned changes for this mod are vast and deep, but for the first release, they will be constrained to the following: Malevolent Wasteland The Mojave Desert will now be more than just an ugly face. Environmental damage effects will now be applied to all NPCs not in Shelter. When you are not in Shelter, your equipped weapons and apparel are damaged by the wasteland environment. Among other things, it also affects your Sleep; resting anywhere but a nice bed sheltered indoors will decrease the maximum SLP that can be attained. SPECIAL Changes To better reflect your potential for growth and change as a human being, the SPECIAL system will see the following settings: - Level Cap: 60 - New Character skill points: 100 On Level Up: - Reassign 1 SPECIAL (odd levels) - Reassign 5 Skill Points (odd levels) - Add Skill Points: 15 - Add Perk (even levels) in that order. In addition, the SPECIAL effects on stats and vice-versa will undergo an overhaul. I am upgrading my computer later today, after which I will reinstall FNV and start working on this.

I want to start modding and hopefully collaborate with some of you. I just don't know where to begin with the GECK and NVSE. It's really intimidating. The first thing I want to do is change how SPECIAL affects skill values. What would be the first thing I do?

I can think of a few different ways to handle mod weapons. I'd probably have a damage archetype for each attack type, i.e. 9mm, laser bolt, explosion, and then weight the weapon's new damages based on its given damage amount compared to other weapons (e.g. a rifle that does 400DPS will do a lot of normal/blunt damage) I have more of my design doc hammered out now... how do I go about getting this mod started? Let's say I just want to change how Barter's base value is calculated.

I'm just getting started with the GECK today, my first large goal being a total overhaul of the game's damage model. I have a three-page design document ready to go, but I have no idea where to start because of the complexity of my changes. I can't seem to get a solid answer from the modding resources I've looked at as to whether any of this design is possible. This is a synopsis of my idea: Tentative title: Wasteland Soup - A New Vegas Combat Overhaul Goal: To provide New Vegas with a richer and more strategically-involved combat model, giving the player's choice of weapon and armor more weight within the world. The basic premise: Iconicism and a reduced need for overt stats display are encouraged by making the underlying damage model more complex. The damage given and taken by the various players in the game world is no longer measured on a single dimension of "damage" and "more damage". This new combat model introduces a great deal of measured complexity. There are now seven types of damage: Normal - Basic physical damage not generally attributed to one weapon type. Blunt - Attacks with a large surface area. Baseball bats, explosive bursts. Concussive - Special damage that affects the player's balance. Heavy melee attacks, explosive bursts. Sharp - Piercing attacks. Knives, lasers, AP rounds. Thermal - Heat damage. Fire, plasma, the wasteland. Affects H2O. Burn - Chemical/flesh damage. Fire, plasma, hollow-point rounds, etc. Fatigue - Special damage that affects the player's consciousness. Boxing gloves, heavy melee attacks. Affects SLP, H2O. Each type of armor has a different resistance and degradation rate for each damage type, and each weapon produces multiple types of damage. For example: Metal Armor DT: 30 (DT is the Normal Damage resistance calculation method for now) Blunt: 90% Resistance, +150% Degradation Sharp: 50% Resistance, +100% Degradation Thermal: -100% Resistance, -75% Degradation Burn: 90% Resistance, +200% Degradation This armor protects extremely well against Blunt attacks, but these same attacks (while possibly knocking the enemy off-balance or unconscious) will slowly break the armor into disrepair - even when wearing heavy armor, there's always something for you to watch out for. This is the Wasteland, after all. There is also a Thermal vulnerability, which would be the metal heating up in flames or plasma attacks and cooking the person inside. Burn damage, being actual chemical change, is essentially flames or plasma eating away at the armor, which repels the damage but falls apart fairly quickly. And some example weapon damages: Baseball Bat Blunt: 35 Concussive: 35 Knife Sharp: 20 9mm Pistol Normal: 30 Sharp: 15 9mm Pistol (hollow-point rounds) Normal: 10 Burn: 35 Plasma Pistol Normal: 15 Burn: 40 Flamethrower Thermal: 30 Burn: 10 Is this beyond the capabilities of the editing tools? I don't want to know if you think I'm capable of getting it done :P

I've got a design doc hammered out for a total revamp of the FNV damage model, but it might require impossible scripts. And so, I come to you, forum people who know more than I do, for answers to some of my burning questions. Is it possible to do any of the following with GECK or NVSE: - Add a second "health bar" independent of the default one, which is invisible to the player? - Add new damage types? - Make weapons deal multiple types of damage in differing amounts? I don't actually have any experience with the GECK, but I've got a lot of time on my hands so that won't be a problem :P