FWE + 20th Century Weapons mod - adjusting weapon damage values

[lolek32]

Hey there,

 

I'm running Fallout GOTY Edition with the latest (1.07 ?) patch, and I've added the FWE Wanderers Edition, which I think is truly marvelous and amazing, and everything works excellent thus far. On top of that I've added the 19th and 20th century weapons mod, because it contains fantastic additions to the already present weapons. The problem I have right now is, that the weapon damage values of the 19th and 20th century weapons are not modified according to the FWE damage values, which are tripled or quadrupled when compared to the original Fallout. The 19th and 20th century weapon damage values are ridiculously low now. For example the .32 Pistol has 50 Damage points in Fallout FWE while many of the 19th and 20th century weapon handguns have 6-8 points of damage.

 

Now to my question: What is the best way to adjust the weapons damage values ? I already found the according entries in the ESM file and changed them with the tool contained in FOMM, but it had apparently no effect upon the already present weapons after loading my save game. Is there maybe someone who has a better way of adjusting the damage values or has someone already modified the 19th / 20th century weapons addon to match the FWE damage values ?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated since I feel I'm just a milimeter away from my FO3-dream-setup.

[Necromancist]

I've edited a lot of custom weapons to fit in with FWE, and in my opinion there's a few things you should keep in mind:

 

• DON'T make custom weapons much more powerful than their FWE counterparts. Variety is nice, but having an overpowered weapon kind of breaks the mood for me at least.
  
• Damage isn't everything. Other things you should take into account when balancing weapons is fire rate, ammo capacity, ammo type (and availability), item hitpoints and spread.
  
• Make comparisons between the existing FWE weapons when adjusting custom ones. For example, if you add a semi-auto sniper rifle you can base it off the regular .308 sniper rifle, but have more ammo capacity and higher fire rate in exchange for less damage and more bullet spread.
  

 

As far as damage goes, I tend to model my custom weapon edits after this:

 

• Pistols: 20-50 damage, depending on caliber. For example, a 9mm pistol would do maybe 20-22 damage per shot while a big-ass revolver would do 40-50. The balancing factor being that the 9mm has more ammo capacity and a higher fire rate.
  
• SMG's: 16-22 damage, depending on firing rate.
  
• Assault Rifles: 20-28 damage, again depending on firing rate but also on caliber. Consider increasing bullet spread and/or lowering item HP of higher-caliber rifles for the sake of balance.
  
• Sniper Rifles: 60-100 damage, depending on caliber. Semi-auto rifles should have more spread and less damage but more ammo, bolt-action rifles the opposite. An exception is high-caliber semi-autos (like anti-materiel rifles) who should have low ammo, firing rate and (optionally) item HP, but high damage.
  

 

Hope this helps! I'm not an expert on Big Guns, so I can't offer any assistance there. But I did what I could :)

[lolek32]

Thanks for the reply, it'll give me a rough direction. Looks like I have to edit a whole lot of values manually then I guess.

 

As far as your proposed values go, I'd like to know why you give a 9mm SMG a lower damage value than let's say a 9mm pistol. Given the slightly longer barrel and the resulting higher muzzle velocity of the projectile it should be even higher ? Of course I try to compare my values to the existing FWE ones, but I try to use caliber and barrel length as a base for the damage values.

[fap6000]

I use a base weapon rate. This is the 10mm pistol, which is basicly .40 cal, however because 9mm is so close I treat them the same. Your vanilla setting for this is like 7 damage, once you set the difficulty on max, plus add in MMM an even Point lookout, 7 damage is a bb gun. So most modders use rates for the base weapon .40 or 9mm of 30-40 damage, more recently I just use whatever size bullet it is. .40 cal is 40 damage, nice an simple. .45 ACP yay 45 damage... .50 cal pistol 50 damage, .38 special woo hoo 38 damage, and such

 

Certianly there are some reasons a weapon would have more punch, for example Nato rounds are miltary cases, which are thicker brass, thus a little more punch. Same thing goes for high velocity rounds such as found in many rifles. Different loads might factor into it, but mostly the mass an velocity of the projectile. Which would add a bit to the base rate. Like 7.62, yah it's smaller than the 9mm but has a lot more velocity.

 

Full Auto fire is factored differently. The reason you would give a 10mm SMG a lower damage rate than a 10mm pistol is pretty much balance. If a 10mm SMG had 40 damage, plus it's full auto fire rate, you end up with God like instant death when fighting with the weapon, hence you bring those numbers down about half. So a 10mm SMG with 20 damage will not be such a instant death when used. Give or take depending on the quality of the weapon an projecitle. Also in cases where weapons are added to NPC's such as with 20th century alive, the high settings for fire rates (basicly higher than the minigun) 22, 24, 26, 28 are a performance issue FPS wise if not all weapons with settings above 12-14 shots per second, so when used with mods like MMM those rates would need to be lowered closer to the 8 to 12 range.

 

Barrel length factors into spread more than anything else. Longer the barrel, the less spread you end up with. Sniper rifles would have almost zero spread, then geez a full auto glock 18 would have more spread than even the vanilla assault rifle. Same for a mac 10, geez the military quit using it because they had to add supressors or they couldn't hit anything with it. Even the wildest spread settings on full auto weapons come back into play once the charicter has some skill from leveling up. A lot of people just null the spread, which ruins the game if you ask me.

 

The impact force also factors into these base rates, for that I use the .32 hunting rifle projectile which uses impact force of 16 or so, this being a very high velocity impact, 9mm might only be half that amount, then shotguns you would have to factor in how many projectiles, like if it shot out 16 at a time then a impact force of 1 for each, an most of the time you won't fly NPC's off into the distant LOD from the impact. It's Important to have some impact force otherwise they just fall right over when shot, rather than fall back, depending on how hard they got hit.

 

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http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o294/eiffU/ScreenShot19.jpg

 

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[lolek32]

Thank you fap for your input, it's very much appreciated.

 

When it comes to virtual weapons I am a realism freak - since the day Operation Flashpoint came out. So that's my main goal, to make weapon effects as close to reality as it gets. You have mentioned some facts that I have not been familiar with so far, like the impact force, and there are also some things I simply didn't take into account yet, such as the spread.

 

Seeing as this starts to look like a full week of value editing by hand in order to adjust the 20th century weapons for FWE a question pops to my mind. Is there a way to export a list of the values from the .esm file and alter certain variables programmatically ? Then I could simply write a small script to alter the values using some sort of multiplier for the damage and do some more things ?

 

Or if that's not an option, is there any chance there's a version of the 20th century weapon packs already adjusted for FWE for me to download ?

 

How about the FOIP guys ? Heh.

[EARACHE42]

Seems that this monumental task falls to you lolek32. Any many, many are anxiously awaiting your patch.

 

My advice is to start with the weapons that overlap between the mods and compare their value. From there you can determine rules of thumb to scale values for other weapons. Einherjrar has spent considerable time balancing out the full spectrum of weapon specs, so look to scale his values rather than replace them wholesale. For the purpose of leveling between the mods, I'd leave spread values alone.

 

Impact force is part of the projectile data rather than the weapons so I'd leave it be as well.

 

Nobody has mentioned the semi-automatic fire delay which is a critically important setting for non-automatic weapons. This setting controls how quickly the weapon responds to your trigger finger. The tricky part is that this is the only weapon setting that does not update the composite damage/sec in real-time while editing. It looks like it has no effect while you are editing, but if you close and re-open the weapon, you will see dramatic changes.

 

Good luck to you and looking forward to your mod.

[lolek32]

Since the task to edit multiple hundreds of values for the 20th century weapons alone appears a tad too monumental for me as of now, I started with Frederics Tactical Weapons, since it's a lot below 100 entries, and thusfar I've made good progress. I took, as adviced the 10 mm Pistol as a base ( it has 40 damage points in FWE ), but I took other factors into consideration as well, such as barrel length and its guessed impact upon muzzle velocity. My damage model will be based upon kinetic impact energy mostly, meaning the same caliber can have more damage when fired from a rifle instead of a pistol ( roughly said ). Furthermore I have given the same damage values when the weapon is the same with added equipment, such as ACOG sights or a scope. Neither has any influence whatsoever upon the kinetic energy, except for the sound suppressors ( I reduced damage about 10-20% for suppressed weapons, according to the manufacturer to add some diversity )

 

However, I'm still having difficulties with two things: The first one is the Critical damage, I noticed sometimes it's not present, sometimes it's double the base damage and up to four times the base damage, depending upon the weapon. What is this based upon ? I fail to recognize a scheme. I've taken twice the base damage for now just to have something to work with. Any input would be appreciated. The second thing are the shotgun type weapons, how do I go about these ? They're the only ones with multiple projectiles, so is the base damage for each single projectile ?

[lolek32]

Okay I've started modifying the 20th and 19th century weapons and I think I'm getting a hang of it. I'll adjust every single weapon in order to achieve a more realistic weapons setup. I'm basing the damage upon the kinetic energy in joule of the projectiles using the according formula. It's a bit slow because I have to look up every singly weapon on the web and guess some data which is not available. I'm discovering a lot of mistakes in terms of realism ( such as the AK74 having more spread than the AK47 while in reality it's the other way round etc ) so that needs a lot of adjusting and tweaking, but I think the results will be pleasing.

 

I'll keep you posted on my progress, and maybe I'll upload it as mod once it's done, but it'll take a day or two.

[Necromancist]

Good to see my reply got you working! To answer your question, I never mentioned any 9mm SMG's. I was just giving examples. I don't know enough about guns to verify the existence of such a low-power SMG to warrant 16 base damage, but there it is. I was thinking more about balance; an SMG with 16 base damage might use easily available ammo and have a very high rate of fire to compensate.

[fap6000]

If it were me I'd use their settings, but anytime I noticed one that was a bit off, I'd go fix them, or fix them in sessions of 20-30 at a time, spread out the workload, seperated by game play. Plus you know it's your system, don't listen to us, but maybe what we say can help you formulate your basic damage table used when you pick settings. I mean personally I developed mine over about 1.5 years messing with an creating weapons, most of that is based off stuff I read at Wiki, but it can't be an exact match for real world because it's fallout it's a game. Using GAU 19 settings an fire rates of 3000-6000 a minute would cause really bad Frame rate drop, same thing for full auto shotguns using over 9 projectiles each shot. Your most important factor for a fire rate is the sound the weapon uses, the fire rate needs to allow the sound to work properly an sound good, which isn't going to be a number that matches the real world fire rates. Changing a weapon without testing it is totally counter productive...

 

To get good semi auto fire rates, most people have to use FO3edit to get it, where the GECK is limited in settings, you can pretty much use whatever you want in FO3edit. Each of the base weapons have the algo for (attack multi = so many shots per second.) An example the 10mm pistol uses 1.0 = 6, so when using the geck keep it on the zero, 1.0=6, 2.0=12, 3.0=18. When you change this the fire rate both in VATS an outside of VATS will increase. Some meshes just won't have performance like other meshes, so your very mild 2.0=12 setting when in NPC's hands will fire 12 times a second (seeming full auto like) but it takes that 2.0=12 setting to get the weapon to fire correctly either in VATS or outside of VATS.

 

This suggests that we need two seperate versions for any one weapon. Which wouldn't be easy to do. One version for the player and another for the NPC's, I'm not sure how it could be done. Most of the mods just add the weapons to leveled items list, which the NPC's use. But you have weapons like charons shotgun, totally custom for that NPC. Maybe those weapons with the wild settings just to get normal like semi-auto double taps need to be flagged player only, thus kicking them off the table when the AI is looking for a better weapon, you know anytime you notice a NPC with the weapon that's getting full auto like fire from a semi-auto weapon.

 

The only difference from using FO3edit to do it is that it might be more easy to edit a bunch of weapons at once, plus if you open a weapon which got it's settings from FO3edit in order to provide more realistic fire rates, with the GECK then the GECK will default it back to the base settings, meaning you just lost the testing the creator did to get that perfect fire rate. This comes into play because sometimes the mesh will not get good performance simply using the GECK's fire rate Algo whatever you call it. 1.0 = 6 shots per second which works well in many pistols, but it could need 1.0 = 12, 1.0 = 12, 1.0 = 18, or even 1.0 = 30 yah some meshes are that dirty. Anything over a 1.0 = 30 you are starting to get into a crash causing situation, primarly caused by the lack of quality inside the mesh when it was made. As I've spent more time with this stuff, anytime I'm about to put a weapon in a mod first thing I paste it into a known good vanilla mesh for the same weapon type it is. Keeping it looking as vanilla as possible in the block list. Most of the time this will allow the mesh to have good performance when using the GECK 1.0 = 6 or 2.0 = 12. You would need to have perfected creating "hacked meshes" with nifscope though in order to do so. After it's done there is no more problems of laggy fire while in combat, thus why I use my own weapons I created most of the time.

 

Semi-Auto delay, is a min max setting, squishy trigger effect best sums it up. However as far as real world effects that mirror that one, the only thing that comes to mind is the old muskets, muzzle loaderz, you know the old flint locks, basicly there was a delay from when the flint created a spark, which ignited the powder in the trap, leading to the charge. Basicly you pull the trigger, then wait for it to fire. This only would seem useable in the fallout world if we also used missfires, which we don't. So when using modern brand name weapons it's kind of silly. Follow vanilla settings for old stuff like hunting fifles or poor condition weapons, then on the newer stuff I'd use either 0.0000 for both min or max or 0.0100 min 0.1000 max This only comes into play when actually testing weapons the player might end up using.

 

Critical damage, meh I just follow vanilla settings, you can't ever go wrong if you first see what Bethesda set things at. Somehow I took the stance of using whatever the base damage rate is for critical damage, an multiply that by 1, it's different from weapon to weapon. It's important, but if I miss one here or there it's not going to kill meh. Wait a second it might kill meh, zomg... lol

 

Shotguns are a different story, basicly there's no guide for those to tell how much DPS you get, pretty much throwing our normal balance practices out the window. I reckon I use the vanilla settings for shotguns which is around 50. But the key factor with a shotgun as far as how well it's going to work is it's spread settings. For this you need to understand the difference between full choke, half choke, zero choke. On the end of a shotgun barrel you have a plug that screws in, or they have put the barrel in a special clamp, so the very end of the barrel is a smaller partial cone shape. Full Choke pretty much allows the shot to stay together longer before spreading out, so you get a effective range of 40 yards or more, then Zero choke would only be good for 20 yards (half that or less) Wiki it

 

Shotguns (2) So you have to ask yourselfs how can fallout use these chokes. The terible shotgun has the highest choke it's terible alright, at distance that is. Basicly that's your zero choke spread settings, with the vanilla combat shotgun being more of a medium choke or so. It doesn't exactly carry over into our game world in practice. Keep in mind you only need Zero choke (cylinder choke) Medium choke (modified) Full choke ( " " ) For shotguns that are sporting versions, I.E. not sawed off (zero choke) Then it makes since that you could have 3 different versions made instead of just one, this also allows better testing as to which one will be better in the fallout combat. Your first version would be the zero choke basicly the same spread settings as the terible shotgun, second version half the settings for spread so modified choke, Then half those settings again for a full choke version. Give or take a few points as you get combat testing with the weapon in-game.

 

Shotguns (3) The load comes into play too. Shotgun Slug, not much more dangerous than that. I think I took the mesh for the ball, then shrunk it down to the size of the shotgun barrel on a M3-M4, then gave it the stainless steel texture, used the dark part of the texture, an then set the spread to near zero, plus only one projectile, and bam, instant shotgun slug. Also the simple way to do it, same ammo type, and no fancy script in order to do so. The actual shot is a bit smaller than 00 Buckshot if you ask me, so you can scale up the BB mesh a bit, to make a more 00 Buck version. For fallout 3 we only really need 00 Buckshot and Birdshot (basicly BB's) maybe 9 projectiles for buck an 18 or more for bird. There is such a thing as 000 buckshot, so that's on the table if you ask meh... It should be noted that for any shotgun projectile you need to remove the "FX bullet wiz" from the projectile this is because it will play out 9 at a time or 18 at a time depending on how many you set for the weapon, this ruins the game when you shoot the weapon, so a quick edit an bam.

 

 

Uh... I reckon this is the basic matching the projectile to the barrel hole process, ou when I say process it sounds so fancy. Anyhow, a good weapon is going to have great sound, great shell cases, great projectiles, Great settings, and we haven't even got to the base texture, normal map, mesh part yet. It's a very long process just making one weapon. About halfway thru making a new weapon mod, you become so much better at making them that the mod you just made is useless an now you have to start over. But it's worth it because the quality is much better. That might be a better plan to have than making edits to mods already created which have 100's of weapons in them. Making the edit you end up with a different version of the mod which balances your game, but who's to say that mod was any good. Maybe you would be better off being a weapon maker yourself even if it's just making higher quality versions of already created weapons.

 

 

Basicly you copy the branch of the projectile, paste that into the weapon mesh, move it to the right spot, then scale the verts so that it matches the hole, remember the settings you used to scale it, then open the projectile mesh an apply what you learned to scale the verts in that one. I.E. Scaling up the X an Y to 2.345 matched the barrel so I use that, which could take a few times to figure out.

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