ammo based dmg rebalance

[necropasia]

With all the wonderful weapon mods available for fo3, there's one thing majorly aggravating me. Dmg inconsistency, especially when you bring mods like fwe into the picture. For example, einherjrars wonderfull 19/20th cent mod adds a great variety to the game, but when played alongside fwe, most of the weapons are too weak to matter, particularly when compared to their couterparts.

 

My point is this, it's the round used that determines the dmg, not the gun itself. for example, a .556 round has the same stopping power fired from an m16 as it does when fired from a rem. 700. The difference between the 2, is in acc, rof, etc... but not raw damage. The velocity, bullet weight, and hole size are identical.

 

So, what I'm asking for, is a mod that would re balance the dmg of all guns in the game, both vanilla and mod added, based off the round it uses.

[sortitus]

Well, the damage for the guns aren't identical, as the muzzle velocity is different between the two. An example of the same cartridge doing different damage based on the gun it comes from is the 10mm pistol VS the 10mm lever rifle. A rifle will have better trajectory and speed, increasing its range and accuracy, as well as the damage it does to the target.

 

That said, yes, I think that caliber should be a big factor in damage.

 

It might be possible to give a flat damage bonus to all guns of a certain caliber (by putting them all in a list and then having an invisible perk that calls IsInList), which would be more compatible with other mods than changing weapon stats directly.

[necropasia]

True, that would work. But, in order to use a list method like that, you'd need to know all the weapons, in all the mods that are active. I was thinking more along the line of a mod, loaded at the end of the load order (or at least after any mods having anything to do with weapons), that would alter every weapon present in the game, based off of their ammo. That way, it would effect any mod added weapons present, and there would be no need for any patches, or optional files for every possible mod configuration. I could see a script easily doing this for the pc's weapons, but idk how hard it would be to effect the npc weapons as well.

 

Also, while we're talking details, in order to make this work as intended, the mod would also have to check the weapon for the presence of a surpresser and reduce the dmg accordingly, due to the greatly reduced velocity.

 

And while you're right about the effect of barrel length, I don't see how it would be possible to factor in, w/out using a list, since there's nothing programmed into the weapons files detailing that. About the only thing I could think of, would be to differentiate between 1 and 2 handed weapons.

[sortitus]

With silenced weapons, you might be able to check the loudness of the gun, so any silent gun does less damage. I don't know how to check that with scripts, however.

 

True, differentiating between the weapons using the number of hands is probably as close as we could get to checking barrel length. We'd also want a tag that said it only applied to small or big guns, since you don't want plasma and lasers to do the same damage as each other.

[necropasia]

Yeah, checking for a surpressor shouldn't be a problem, there's a flag in the file for sound level. All silenced weapons are set to VNAM Sound Level - Silent.

 

But, yeah... I've got no idea how to work with scripts either, (or anything in geck for that matter, I've never touched it). So hopefully, someone with the knowledge decides to pick up this idea, and make it happen.

[sortitus]

Well, I have some scripting and GECK knowledge, but it's not enough to know how to make a script check different stats of a weapon. I suppose I'll see what I can find out the next few days.

 

I was thinking about this at work today, and thought that this would be a good solution for damage calculations: (total DMG=caliber DMG+hands DMG+loudness DMG) Basically, have flat damage for the caliber and add/subtract damage based on weapon type and silencedness.

 

If the script is checking the loudness though, we could have it give a bonus for loud guns. AFAIK, the louder guns are those that are supposed to do more damage, but I'm not entirely sure about that. I'd have to open the GECK and check. Not that I think that a loud weapon would do more damage, as pistols are usually louder than rifles, but the option is there if we want to use it.

 

Can you think of any other factors that we could use to affect the damage?

 

Maybe we could do a spread rework as well. It has always bugged me that using an assault rifle single shot is so inaccurate...

[necropasia]

The only other things I can see using to effect the dmg, would be skill and *possibly* rate of fire. I'm not sure exactly where in the code your skill level is calculated into the weapons dmg, so it may have to be accounted for. And rof due to a single shot not losing any velocity from the blowback to operate the bolt. Also, in regards to the loudness increase, iirc most of the guns flagged as loud, are flagged that way due to large caliber, so I don't think the bonus would be applicable.

 

On top of that, an adjustable X factor would have to be included to compensate for overhaul mods. The mod could perfectly re-balance the weapons in a vanilla environment, but be incredibly weak in FWE. So, the formula would end up being: (Total Dmg = (Caliber + Hands + Skill + Suppression + RoF) * X)

 

As far as doing a spread rework, might as well. All the hard part is gonna already be done for the dmg recalc, so re-balancing spread would be a simple matter of changing, and adding to the variables in the formula. Something like: Spread = Caliber + Hands + Skill + Crouch Bonus + RoF + Suppression + Zoom factor.

 

The Zoom variable could be tied to the weapons Sight FOV variable, if I'm understanding it correctly, it controls how far the camera zooms in when RMB is pressed. That would grant better acc with a higher mag scope, and be more detailed than a simple scope check. And the skill/crouch bonuses, as in the dmg formula, might be accounted for independently by the game engine. As I said before, I just don't know where they're factored in.

 

Now, if you really wanna have a more realistic spread re-balance, you could figure out a way to factor bullet drop into the equation. The simplicity of sniping in Fo3 takes all the skill/fun out of it. I know it's possible with the engine, you'd just have to find a way to re-activate how they did arrow flight in oblivion. With all the leftover crap that's still in the code, I find it hard to believe that they took that part of it out. Once it's found, it would be a simple matter of: Drop = Caliber + Distance + Hands + Suppression

[sortitus]

I think that removing auto-aim would re-introduce bullet drop, but I'm not sure. Seeing as how the max range for any round in this game is something like ~143m (and that's for the rail gun in Operation Anchorage), I'm not sure that it's necessary to do that. Then again, time is scaled to 30x speed by default, so maybe everything's scale is supposed to be 30x bigger than displayed. That would put the ranges of weapons in a reasonable-ish area for effective range. To be honest, I wish they had concentrated on a smaller piece of land and made it 1:1, but that's probably just me.

 

One problem that might arise from introducing bullet drop is (I think) that projectiles don't visually follow the course they actually take. I agree that it should be reintroduced if possible though. Even (especially) if auto-aim must be disabled.

 

Here's what I'm thinking for Damage (shamelessly taken from the GECK wiki): Damage = (PerkModifiers((41/40 - 1/40 * RateOfFire) * SuppressorMult * (CaliberDamage + HandsDamage) * DamageMultiplier * GunConditionPenalty * SkillBonus) + (PerkCritMultipliers * ((41/40 - 1/40 * RateOfFire) * SuppressorMult * (CaliberDamage + HandsDamage))))

 

With that, SMGs will only do 75% of the damage of 10mm pistols, but that can be changed in the actual formula to whatever. We'll also have to negate all damage being done in the first place to replace it with this stuff, but that shouldn't be too hard.

 

I just realized that the Chinese Pistol and 10mm pistol are the same caliber. Would we have them do the same damage? In the current equation, they would. Maybe we could work monetary value into this somehow to make similar weapons give you a slight incentive to use the expensive variant. Then again, maybe putting that into the spread equation would be better.

 

Spread = PerkModifiers(FieldOfViewSpread * SuppressorSpread * RateOfFireSpread * (CaliberSpread + HandsSpread) * Crouch Bonus * (ConditionPenalty + SkillBonus) * (WalkPenalty + RunPenalty) + ArmPenalty)

 

These many variables get kinda messy pretty fast. TBH, Spread will probably be more difficult to change than Damage by a significant margin. I'm going to go un-break my head by thinking about flowers or something for a while.

[necropasia]

As far as the chinese pistol vs. 10 mil example goes, the faster reload time on the 10 mil already gives you an incentive to use the more expensive of the 2. And as far as the dmg between the 2 goes, mechanically, they're not that dissimilar, so yeah, I don't see that having the same dmg would be a problem. Adding a value variable would just muck up the system. just my 2 cents though.

 

That being said, at first glance the formulas look like they'll fit the bill perfectly. I don't have the time at the moment to really go through them, but I'll run some numbers on them later tonight. The hard/tedious part now, is gonna be figuring out the stats for each caliber. CALIBR lists 56 different rounds, although several of them I've never seen a gun that uses them in game. (what mod adds something using 20x102 round anyways? that's a damn vulcan cannon round!), so, assuming this gets off the drawing board, we're gonna be in for some long hours of playtesting.

 

I think everything that needs to be factored in, has been addressed. Just need to figure out the how of it, now.

[sortitus]

The Chinese Pistol also has twice the spread of the 10mm Pistol, which is why I think that we need another variable in the spread formula.