Location Based Armor Protection

[TheCivillian]

Hi, first time poster. I'm in the process of re-tweaking Fallout 3 to my taste to find to be the best balance between realism/enjoyment/"survival feeling", without changing the original game too drastically.

 

Would it be possible to attach a script to an object, for example a helmet, that reduces the amount of head damage received by the wearer when equipped?

 

My logic is this. If you take a Brotherhood Of Steel Knight, remove all his armor and shoot him in the head, he should die like a common settler. Put Power Armor on him, but without a helmet, shoot him in the head and he should die just as easily. See where I'm going?

 

From what I can make out the AR on an armor effects the entire body (or just upper/lower), so wearing body armor with a very high AR will apply the same protection to your head even without a helmet, which bugs me.

 

Any advice? If someone could point me in the direction of a basic starting script for a helmet, I could probably take it from there. Not done much scripting but am willing to learn :-P. Many thanks.

[Nadin]

It's an interesting idea. It's already implemented but in the usual half-assed Bethesda fashion. I suppose you could make an effect that boosted the health for a certain limb, if that's what you mean.

[Trueform]

I think what TheCivillian means is to make, for example, a helmet add damage resistance to just the head rather than to the damage resistance of the whole body :) I agree, though, it is an interesting idea that would add realism and would make equipping armour a bit more strategic in realism mods.

 

Most things are possible with the geck if you know your way around it, but again, I agree with Nadin that it's probably easiest to adjust the health of limbs for each piece of armour rather than trying to re-write the entire gaming system to fit the idea in.

[Daecat]

I've read a post about this before, but I think it got abandoned. If you could at least boost head health on helmet like the others said (good idea btw), that could be a great improvement.

[Nadin]

Got it. All you need to do is reverse the effects for damaging a specific limb. Of course, I have no idea how this will work with armor.

[TheCivillian]

Yeah I thought about that too. Boosting limb health, would work just as well. Can't see a way of doing it without some form of scripting though.

[Trueform]

Hmm, well maybe it would work adding an enchantment to the armour pieces to increase the health? That would raise the health of the body part associated with the item, it would just involve a lot of data-basing.

 

The script-based approach would be to add a script onto each piece of armour, possibly using ForceActorValue to function when the item is being worn. From the geck website:

 

ForceActorValue

From GECK

 

Syntax:

 

[ActorID.]ForceActorValue StatName value

[ActorID.]ForceAV StatName value

 

Example:

 

ForceActorValue Health 50

 

ForceActorValue modifies the current stat to the specified value (not to be confused with SetActorValue, which changes the BASE value of the stat). The equivalent of:

 

Short modParameter

Set modParameter to ( 50 - GetActorValue Health )

ModActorValue Health, modParameter

 

Because the GetActorValue function returns the current state, including all effects, damage, and other ModActorValue numbers, ForceActorValue will produce different ModActorValue results at different times.

 

Note that like ModActorValue, when used in a script this change is permanent. See ModActorValue for discussion of how this works.

Notes

 

* Should never be used on the player, as it will seriously screw up that actor value when combined with other mods or scripts that adjust it or depend on it.

* Instead, use ModAV to adjust the stat to the required value. If several mods make changes to the same value at the same time, and one of them uses ForceAV the stat is likely to end up irrevocably altered. For example:

An actor has a starting Strength of 6.

Mod 1 records 6 as the starting strength, and uses ForceAV Strength 8 to increase their strength by 2.

Mod 2 uses ModAV Strength 2 to further increase their strength by 2, to 10.

Mod 1's effect ends, and it uses ForceAV Strength 6 to return the actor's strength to the recorded starting value of 6.

Mod 2's effect ends, and it uses ModAV Strength -2 to remove the 2 strength it added. This gives a total value of 4.

The actor now has Strength 4, and neither Mod 1 nor Mod 2 will fix it.

 

You'd just need to find the right script to adjust the actor value to change limb health, I think...

Could be wrong, mind you. It's just a thought.

[Nadin]

There's an effect called "Limbcondition" for each limb. This effect boosts the condition of each limb, so that part's done.

The question is, will the helmet add it to the base health--making the limb that much more healthier while the helmet is worn--or work like a stimpack?

Also, is there going to be a cheat where you can dequip and equip again to get the effect again once it's worn off?