How does FO3 calculate the value of items?

[Freakydemon]

Hi, I'm new to the GECK and modding with it and now I'm asking for some help here. One of the first things I tried to change are the values of weapons, armour and items in general. I wanted the items to be as expensive and "hard to get" as they were back in fallout 1 and fallout 2.

I searched the Nexus and didn't find anything I liked so from one thing came the other. But now my issue:

I'm wondering how does FO3 calculate how much your item is worth? And I don't mean the basic value in GECK, I mean how does it calculate (example =>) that an Enclave Helmet is worth 400 caps with 50% condition (let's say 50% of 80hp = 40hp) and 5 AR?

Instead of guessing and gambling what good values would be I'd rather use some mathematical formula to help me out.

Any ideas?

[spammster]

how bout you base it on something like this:

 

(500/Itemcount)*(condition/100)*basevalue = newvalue

 

the condition is rather obvious ranging from 0.01 to 1

basevalue = what the item is worth @ 100% defined by the game

Itemcount you can read out in the Geck (you can see how many of each item are spread within the game) so the fewer there are the higher X should get.

 

lets say basic raider armor, there's like 250 in the game (this is totally guessed), lets say its 100% and its worth 100 caps @ 100 barter skill so that would be

 

500/250*100/100*100 = 200 (would double the price)

 

now for something like the T-51b (i have no clue what its actually worth, never tried to sell it, though i think on some wiki it was mentioned that an "ad" for it listed it @ 35.000) so lets say its worth 4000 (in the game)

 

that would be a value of 2 million caps so you prolly would have to adjust the 500 to maybe a max value of 10.

 

I don't think the value gets actually calculated, since at least weapons have the value typed in by the programmers, so the basevalue is something someone pulled out of his a*s which only depends on condition and barterskill (basevalue = salevalue if barterskill = 100 and if condition = 100%)

 

though, the problem you create here is that in F3 you find way more stuff than in F1&F2, so if you increase the value of weapons and armor, you would stockpile caps even earlier than you do now.

 

after about 2-3 hours in the game you should already have like 10k with original pricing so if you make it more expensive, you get way more money for it and since most people only want specific weapons they buy much less than they sell.

[Freakydemon]

Yeah, after some sleep I kinda realised that I was totaly over-thinking this thing xD. But thanks for the advice so far :).

About the stockpiling issue, most people start with barter at 40 MAX, so it would still be around 40% of original value, and knowing that the vendors overprice their items it would result in more of gathering lots of armour to sell to get enough for something better and also the vendors only sell quality armour when you get to a high enough level, which means no-one could get metal armour or some decent leather at the beginning of the game. And to further prevent a gigantic starting capital, I'm thinking about making the Vault 101 armour pretty cheap. So I guess it would balance itself out in the end. I can't change the values of scavenged items though or it would result in a little of f*ck up :P.

So I'm goibng to try it out and tests will show if this will work or not. I hope it does because 1000 caps for some PA is just ridiculous...

To calculate my new values (instead of guessing and comparing with FO2 item-tables) I kinda tried a new formula for the base value here: Item's HP x 5,5 + AR x 275 = New Base value

The item's HP is something quite important so I taught including this in the formula, it creates a nice equation between durability and protection. Although I would have to raise the PA price again, not sure. Any other suggestions btw?

 

The calculated results:

Combat armour = 11000

helmet = 1650

Enclave armour = 22100

helmet = 4000

Leather = 7425

Metal = 12350

helmet = 1650

 

Edit: Maybe I could also calculate the bonuses armours give to raise the prices some more and giving PA a higher price without disbanding my formula. Something like +1 CHR = +300 caps, same for -1 CHR = -300 caps. And to further dim down the massive profit I'll keep raider armour cheap, like 500 caps. They are worth more according to my formula, etc... but it's scraps of armour and leather, this isn't worth a lot in my opinion. I'm thinking there's hope for this mod after all.