Doedel

I've been thinking about making a mod for FO4 as I'm somewhat unhappy with the way weapons have been handled in the game, particularly in terms of abundance of customization options for Pipe weapons, plus some other minor details. For the most part it's a simple enough mod I can do myself, but I would like to gauge interest and get feedback on the idea. The basic principles of the mod can be seperated into two phases: Rebalancing existing guns, and adding/expanding Gun selection. The first phase will involve primarily reducing the amount of gun conversion possible, by removing the ability to swap between different calibers/ammo types, as well as the ability to interchange between bolt-action/revolver, semi-auto and automatic receivers. It will also include rejigging overall gun availability and balancing to something you'd expect more from a post-apocalypse society's capability, and also some other minor tweaks. These changes affect mostly Pipe weapons, and will involve creating several different non-interchangeable pipe weapons depending on caliber and receiver type, with more advanced receivers (semi-auto and full-auto) being much more rare compared to more basic types (bolt-action and revolver). The second phase will involve adding completely new weapons, based mainly on the Fallout universe, and filling some niches I feel are somewhat lacking in vanilla Fallout. Phase One - Rebalance A more detailed "changelog" for the first phase would be as follows (for our purposes the term 'pistol' will refer to semi-auto, magazine-fed pistols, differentiated from 'revolver'): - Remove ability of all weapons to swap between different caliber/ammo types; - Remove ability of most weapons to swap between single-shot, semi-auto and full-auto receiver types (exceptions being the Combat Rifle and possibly Assault Shotgun); - Remove the ability/distinction of Rifles using Pistol ammo and vice versa; - Add the following Pipe Pistol weapons to replace the current, single 'Pipe Pistol': .38 Pipe Revolver.38 Pipe Pistol10mm Pipe Revolver10mm Pipe Pistol.44 Pipe Revolver.44 Pipe Pistol.45 Pipe Revolver.45 Pile Pistol- Add the following Pipe Rifle weapons to replace the current, single 'Pipe Rifle': 5.56mm Bolt-Action Pipe Rifle (aka .22 Varmint Rifle)5.56mm Semi-Auto Pipe Rifle5.56mm Auto Pipe Rifle.308 Bolt-Action Pipe Rifle.308 Semi-Auto Pipe Rifle.50 Bolt-Action Pipe Rifle- Change Combat Rifle to use .308 Ammo by default and increase spawnrates/reduce cost of .308 ammo; - Remove semi-auto receivers from Assault Rifle to make it full-auto only; Phase Two - Additions Phase Two is much more ambitious undertaking and involves adding entirely new weapons, with new models and textures, to fill in some gaps and add more variety. Most, but not all, of these weapon ideas come from the Fallout universe, particularly Fallout New Vegas. These include: - Possibly adding a "Musket"-type, bottom-level tier for Pipe Rifles to populate extreme low tiers of levelled spawn lists. They would be single shot weapons that need to be reloaded after every shot. Realistically these should be the most common type of weapon in a world like Fallout, but I'm not sure how much this actually "adds" to the overall gaming experience. - 40mm Grenade Launchers in the form of a basic single-shot Pipe version as well as Pump-Action(a la FNV)/Revolver-style semi-auto version. These would fill a niche for medium-weight explosive weapons to bridge the gap between thrown grenades and the Missile Launcher. - The following weapons from FO1/FO2/FNV: .38 Police/Magnum Revolver.44 'Desert Eagle'-style Pistol.45 'Colt'-style Pistol.50 Anti-Material Rifle*14mm/.50 Pistol**10mm SMG***.45 Greasegun****Gauss Pistol*The .50 Cal Anti-Material Rifle will replace .50 conversions of the Hunting Rifle, which will no longer be possible. **In Fallout and Fallout 2, the SIG-Sauer was a popular pre-war 14mm pistol. For FNV they changed it to .50 as I guess they didn't want to have a whole ammo type for just one gun. I don't really want to do this either. ***The 10mm SMG will basically replace full-auto conversions of the 10mm Pistol. ****The .45 Greasegun will basically be identical in performance to the current Tommygun, but offer an aesthetic alternative. Phase 3 - The Future! And other potential ideas. All that said, there are some other ideas or alternatives to the above I'm considering. I'm thinking if I wanted to go "crazy realistic" then I could drastically "nerf" Pipe weapons by having only revolver and bolt-action receivers available for them. These are, afterall, much more primitive and easily manufactured. Modern semi-auto receivers and their spring-loaded magazines able to efficiently load cartridges into chambers at a rapid pace required quite advanced machining, something that drugged-out Raiders probably wouldn't be able to build. So it would be plausible to remove all semi-auto Pipe Rifles and Pistols, and have single-shot bolt-action and revolver weapons heavily dominate early levels of the game, with only the pre-war weapons being advanced enough for semi-auto and full-auto function. Levelled spawn lists would be changed to reflect this, with non-pipe weapons being much more rare. And as mentioned above, Musket-style Pipe weapons could be the very bottom level of this system. They would load only one bullet at a time and thus have the lowest sustained damage output of all weapons. Other ideas concern adding new ammo types into the world, such as 9mm, which would add some new options for Beretta and Luger-style pistols and H&K-style SMGs. One last idea I had was to remove the damage nerfs for full-auto weapons, and instead have full-auto receivers have much greater recoil/less accuracy. I get why Bethesda decided to do it their way, but I'd prefer full-auto weapons do the same damage as single-shot counterparts, and use recoil and accuracy as the main balancing factor instead. This probably wouldn't apply to energy weapons as they operate in a completely different way. So, thoughts? I mean, the first part is pretty easy to do, and involves only configuring GECK assets and attributes. The second part, involving new art assets and importing them into the game, are things I can probably do as I have 3d modelling and texturing experience (but the last time I tried to do such a thing was for Oblivion). There are also some details I need to iron out, like how far I should go in rebalancing Pipe weapons (ie whether or not semi and full-auto should be available), and whether I want to try and tackle a full-on weapon behavioural rebalance (full-auto damage amounts). So any feedback is appreciated.

There is a helmet, unique as far as I know, called the Helm of Yngol (I think) that is IIRC the same as the Draugr Death Lord's helm, or at least very very similar. Go find it.

That's 5 months old, unfortunately. There's been very little activity from MERP for the past little while.

There was actually a similar project for Oblivion called "Middle Earth Role-Playing Project" (MERP, silly name but w/e). They actually got quite far along with it, created an amazing world map, a full-scale replica of Minas Tirith (you could even walk all the way up each of the levels), awesome model of Sauron's Tower and Minas Morgul, etc etc etc. Anyway, a few months ago they announced that they'll try to port their efforts into Skyrim, however there's been no word that I know from them since then (back in June). I really like what they were doing and helped them out a bit, but had a little bit of a disagreement with their philosophy, ie they wanted to have the player choose one of the Fellowship and basically replay the movies in the form of a quest line. Which sounds OK, except any attempt to "re-imagine" the movies, even from an established studio let alone an amateur mod team, would be s*** in comparison, so it'd be better to do some "minor" quest with the whole story of the One Ring taking place as a backdrop. ANYWAY. I'd suggest digging up some info on their project to see if they're still alive. I think Skyrim is the best possible engine currently existing for such an undertaking. The artistic style of buildings, items and weapons in Skyrim matches the LOTR movies much better, so much of the assets can be re-used.

Have you, like me, wondered why your ancient Shield of Ysmir, wielded by one of the most important figures in Skyrim's entire history of which only a single one exists in the entire universe, is worth less than some shitty hide shield with a 10% magicka damage enchantment? Or why the Daedric artifact Mace of Molag Bal, acquirable only through dedicated worship and piety to a notoriously homicidal Daedric Prince, that can suck the souls out of its victims, is worth less than an Iron War Axe with a 10 shock damage enchantment? Or why Azura's Star, another artifact capable of holding innumerable and infinite amounts of souls of any size is worth less than a one-off grand soul gem? Well I'd like to see this changed, and have items throughout the world reasonably and logically prices to reflect both their uniqueness and potentially historical significance. This not only includes weapons and armours but also more generic items, like silver and gold pottery and kitchenware, exotic plants and foods, and so on and so forth. But simply tweaking the cost of items isn't enough. After all, let's say you were rummaging through your grandpa's dusty attic one day and found an intact example of ancient Egyptian pottery. You couldn't just take that to your local pawn shop and expect to get $10,000 for it, could you? No, you'd have to search around and look for a buyer, a specialist who deals in that sort of thing. This was one of the splendors of Morrowind back in the day; there was no shortage of super-expensive stuff and most objects were more or less logically priced; a unique Daedric weapon or historic piece of history could be worth upwards of 10 or 20 thousand gold, but good luck finding any shopkeeper with more than 1000g to barter with. For transactions dealing with these rarities you had to go price hunting, which often meant traveling to Mournhold. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see. For example, the Mage's College in Winterhold seems like the most logical place to sell arcane artifacts and enchanted weapons and armors. Jarls and their noble courts would be most interested in acquiring objects of power and historic reknown. These would be the buyers you'd have to seek out to peddle those rare and unique items. But there's more! I'd also like to see the return of expensive silverware (forks, knives, plates, bowls, pitchers, etc) as well as goldenware, and even ebony and (volcanic) glass pottery for the super-rich (and daring thieves). Dwemer and Daedric items should be removed from the smithing skill -- Dwemer armor is special because it hasn't been produced in thousands of years (and the methods of creation lost), making finding individual pieces and entire sets exceptionally rare and fulfilling; and Daedric armors (even ignoring the fact that according to past lore there's only a single set of Daedric armor in existence) should only be created by the most powerful and arcane sorcery, conjuration and acts of ancient daedric summoning -- perhaps requiring some sort of daedric counterpart to the Lunar and Sky Forge (a SHADOW FORGE!!!!!!!!). Another completely unrelated aspect is that I feel merchants by and large are far too f***ing sketchy. The 500g piece of armor I pick up in a dungeon is suddenly only worth 150g to the merchant I'm trying to sell it to, but once I do suddenly he's selling it for 1000g? I don't bloody well think so you bastard! So I'd like to see more equal prices for items, but also a general decrease in the worth of more generic and numerous stuff. So that's my idea in a nutshell.

"Game" lore is more important to me than "storyline" lore. For instance when I download a mod my main concern is how well it fits in with the rest of the game, whether it breaks "immersion" or whatever, if it breaks gameplay, is a "godmod", whatnot. As long as it fits in with the overall theme of the game, doesn't look obviously out-of-place, then it's fine.