How do you lower the spawn rate of weapons mods in FO4 safely?

[kplusa]

 

How can I edit the spawn/carry rates of various weapon mods so that, for example, only 1 or 2 raiders in a 5 raider gang are carrying the weapon instead of 3-5? Or the odds of it being carried by an NPC or appearing in a container/vendor stock is equal to other weapon mods of the same level?

Lastly, does the approach to changing this depend on whether or not the weapon mod has an LL injection?

This is basically all I want to accomplish since post sections for mods such as the M249 SAW and RPG 7 observe that too many enemy NPCs carry the same weapons even in the same area.

Should I use this Robco template (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/70186)?

PS: I apologize for any confusion caused by my request since a lot of the jargon I've encountered in modding like LL injection is overwhelming and has quite the learning curve.

[fraquar]

I think you have to consider that LL injection of weapons that come with the weapon may not be what you want to begin with.

Then you are thinking of adding 50-100 different weapons (or more)?    Ughhh.

At the end of the day only you know what you want in terms of LL dispersion.   The Robco template might be what you'd want to use, but you'd need to know how fine grain controlled you want certain weapons or certain classes of enemies to be.

[kplusa]

Yeah, that's why I want to edit the spawn rate. Do you know how I can do it on FO4edit?

[geala]

Currently I use only one custom weapon mod, an anti-materiel rifle (AX50), cause otherwise the vanilla weapons cover any kind of wepons. But also in ealier times, when I had installed several custom weapons, I never used quest injection. It does take control from you.

Instead I made LL lists in FO4Edit if not offered by the mod, and changed the appropiate LLI lists with it. I have custom LLI lists quite different from vanilla for any group in the game. Better and different weapons spawn quite early, usually at lvl 5. That is all quite easy in FO4Edit. There is a simple way to deal with the percentage of spawned weapons. If you want gunners with automatics with 66% combat rifles and 33% handmade rifles, you put in 2 combat rifles LL and 1 handmade rifle LL into the gunners auto LLI list.

[kplusa]

How do I do that on FO4Edit? 

Sorry, I'm a beginner. I've only begun to learn how to make simple override patches so far. I haven't learned how to edit or customize LL

[geala]

That is quite difficult to explain abstractly, without having FO4Edit open and seeing the files. You should watch for tutorials, on Youtube maybe. I myself are a bloody amateur with xEdit (called FO4Edit for the Fallout 4 version) or modding as a whole. If I can manage it, anybody can. It's so much easier than dealing with the vanilla Creation KIt, it's incredible.

Important to know is that there is a cascade of interdependent files which distribute items to the actors in the game. Fundamentally items, here weapons, are bundled in leveled lists which at the lowest levels contain the single weapon which appears on the NPC. The actors are listed under "Non Player Actors" (also the player char btw). You can see what weapons or clothes lists an actor has attributed. Weapons are a bit easier to understand than clothes because you only have leveled lists and not outfits as intermediate level.

There are several levels of leveled lists. You have to detect the leveled lists you need because there are a lot used in the game with different purposes. You see the huge number under the "Leveled List" topic in FO4Edit. Thankfully for weapons it's quite easy, at least in most cases. Normally weapons for groups used in the game are described by LLI lists (while for example LLD lists normally contain loot of dead NPCs). The LLI lists contain LL lists which at the end contain the weapon (btw you can also put LLI lists into a LLI list). You can simply define the percentage of weapons used by a group (for example raiders with automatic weapons) by adding or removing LL lists from the LLI list. You can also give half of the NPCs in the game a minigun and the other half a fatman if you like.

[fraquar]

Leveled Lists are like following the rabbit hole.    Until you do you probably aren't going to understand how the game gets X item into the game.

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The good news is FO4Edit does two things to allow you to explore that rabbit hole:

a) It doesn't let you edit directly the base game records - so you can't break the game.   In other words it protects you from yourself, and unlike playing the game where you really don't need mods that do that - in this case you absolutely do.   

b) It has a Referenced By tab at the bottom - which will show you what records are referencing the current record you are looking at.

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In some ways, Leveled Lists are like reading the opening lines of Genesis.   The whole begat saga.   It's mind-numbing until you give it context and follow the trees.

Edited 20 minutes ago by fraquar