Weapon damage randomly alternating

[jetflightgirl]

I'm using Tale of Two Wastelands and grabbed the Zhu-Rong pistol. Figured it's a cool enough weapon but, as we all know, the vanilla version if it is basically a joke weapon. I fired up Geck and edited it, increasing the damage and crit damage (and made it a bit more accurate because why not).

 

Problem is, once booting back up, these modifications are... Well best way I can describe it is that the mod seems to turn itself on and off. Sometimes it does the full, new, modified damage (same as Maria, 20 damage), ie actually kills things, but then randomly, without me doing anything differently, it seems to revert back to the vanilla love taps (4 damage) that take about a magazine and a half to kill one feral ghoul (more if I don't run around to let the fire debuff kill it). It occasionally also lost the accuracy, at first, but that seems to have gone away now. And it's more likely to revert (ie, not do any noteworthy damage) in VATS than just free-firing. I have checked and I have double-checked and I cannot see anything in the GECK that could cause this behavior, and at this point I'm kind of at my wits end. Going around, rolling dice on whether my gun kills an enemy or if the bullet bounces off is not fun.

 

Any idea as to what the hell is going on and how to fix this?

 

EDIT: After some testing, crits seem to work fine. It seems only the regular hits are subject to this random fluctuation.

Edited May 18, 2021 by jetflightgirl

[dubiousintent]

Did you toggle "ArchiveInvalidation" after installing your mod into your testing game? The "random reversions" sounds like the problem where a file exists in more than one BSA, which the game engine is not able to deal with intelligently and randomly grabs from one or the other. "ArchiveInvalidation" tells it to use the "loose file" version instead of any BSA version.

 

-Dubious-

[jetflightgirl]

Yup. Still seems to vary wildly, though it's not a huge problem any more outside of VATS.

 

Still gonna get me a Shotgun Surgeon perk and go to town, though...

[GamerRick]

Supposedly, in VATS the game cannot calculate critical hits at all if the spread ends up being 0. Make sure the spread is something above 0, even with perks, the chem Steady, and item mods that lower the spread.

 

Maybe related to your issue?

 

Other than that, the damage is a calculation that involves random chance too. Think of how dice rolls would determine the damage when playing the pre-computer D&D.

 

I also see see wide fluctuations using the .308 Hunting Rifle in VATS. Like one head shot will just wing them and the next will do serious damage or even kill them. And I can't see anything that would cause this. The spread never drops to 0. So, I think this is just how the game works to some extent. :mellow: