Weapon Mod Value B's - Beam Split's Is a Min Spread Multiplier, But Are There Others?

[th1nk]

I was playing around with a little mod for personal use (might fix some of the balance issues and release it at some point but I'm working on something else right now), a gauss shotgun basically, I added a beam split mod (to simulate 4-0/3-0 Buck ammo in a ballistic shotgun) and noticed all the projectiles the weapon shot were landing in a single location.
Eventually after a while fiddling I figured out that Value B for a Beam Split mod is a spread multiplier. Not sure how I worked it out, as even on the weapons with beam split mods that have spread (eg Laser Rifle, LAER) the Value B is set to 0 - meaning the spread they have drops to 0 if the mod is applied (which on one hand means actors are always hit by both beams at once but on the other hand means the weapon also becomes more accurate - it could perhaps be intentional for the former but I would say only if other parts of the weapon spread formula don't cause the two beams to diverge at all if, say, your arm is injured), IIRC I just put numbers in boxes until I noticed something - trying the weapon's min spread caused a massive spread (the weapon has high spread as it is) and after what I recall being a far greater amount of time than I felt it should have taken, it clicked for me that it was just a flat multiplier, I set it to 1, and hey presto, all is well.


Basically, Beam Split Mod Value B is a multiplier for the Min. Spread. I couldn't find a reference to this anywhere so I'm not sure if it's known (though if so, I still have other reasons to make this thread).

It's very odd that this wasn't used in the DLC (though it's a nice addition, you'd think the value B would be the damage addition or something seeing as beam splitters increase damage) but you can quite easily test it yourself by adding a beam split mod to a shotgun with large spread and shooting at a wall ythe impact decals will show up on - try it at 0, try it at 1, try it at 5, etc etc etc. I'd throw together a little esp to demonstrate it but anyone able to verify that I hadn't tried anything tricky would be able to do it themselves - this is pretty simple stuff.
(I'm also pretty sure the GECK wiki is wrong about Value A being beams added + 1, as the beam splitters in the base game just use 1 (which doesn't fit the (half damage+30% x2) shown in-game for the damage), so I figure Value A is just the number of added projectiles.)


Anyway, I have to wonder if there are perhaps others we don't know about - the 9mm pistol has an increase zoom mod with the second field set to 2 - my guess was spread but playing around with copies of the weapon with min spread set to 2 and the scope mod's value b set to 0.0001, 2, 100, and 0 didn't have a significant effect (though "shooting at a relatively close wall and trying to stop my cheap mouse from jittering around and throwing it off" is hardly scientific procedure, the range of values I used is surely a bit wide to not see any differences in a fairly wide spread pattern) - shame, I was hoping to combine a scope and spread reduction into one mod (as with the odd way weapon mods are implemented I don't think there's even going to be a workaround to make that happen without something like Antistar's trick from F03). The 9mm pistol has value B set for all the mods - even the third mod, which isn't present, has value b = 1 (with value a = 0), it also has a value b for the clip capacity increase set to 3, so perhaps that does something, but then, what would it do?

Basically, I want to see if anyone else has stumbled on any in their time (and also because I didn't see this mentioned and figured it might be useful)? I experimented with the Value B for Regenerate Ammo (Shots) and it didn't affect the regen rate (still 16 shots on a 24 ammo/2 ammo per shot (12 shot) weapon before reload if it's set to 1, 2, or 100, will try decimals next).

Edited April 27, 2014 by th1nk