Is my mod idea too complex?

[Soupstorm]

I'm just getting started with the GECK today, my first large goal being a total overhaul of the game's damage model. I have a three-page design document ready to go, but I have no idea where to start because of the complexity of my changes. I can't seem to get a solid answer from the modding resources I've looked at as to whether any of this design is possible. This is a synopsis of my idea:

 

 

 

Tentative title: Wasteland Soup - A New Vegas Combat Overhaul

 

Goal: To provide New Vegas with a richer and more strategically-involved combat model, giving the player's choice of weapon and armor more weight within the world.

 

The basic premise: Iconicism and a reduced need for overt stats display are encouraged by making the underlying damage model more complex. The damage given and taken by the various players in the game world is no longer measured on a single dimension of "damage" and "more damage". This new combat model introduces a great deal of measured complexity. There are now seven types of damage:

 

Normal - Basic physical damage not generally attributed to one weapon type.

Blunt - Attacks with a large surface area. Baseball bats, explosive bursts.

Concussive - Special damage that affects the player's balance. Heavy melee attacks, explosive bursts.

Sharp - Piercing attacks. Knives, lasers, AP rounds.

Thermal - Heat damage. Fire, plasma, the wasteland. Affects H2O.

Burn - Chemical/flesh damage. Fire, plasma, hollow-point rounds, etc.

Fatigue - Special damage that affects the player's consciousness. Boxing gloves, heavy melee attacks. Affects SLP, H2O.

 

Each type of armor has a different resistance and degradation rate for each damage type, and each weapon produces multiple types of damage. For example:

 

Metal Armor

DT: 30 (DT is the Normal Damage resistance calculation method for now)

Blunt: 90% Resistance, +150% Degradation

Sharp: 50% Resistance, +100% Degradation

Thermal: -100% Resistance, -75% Degradation

Burn: 90% Resistance, +200% Degradation

 

This armor protects extremely well against Blunt attacks, but these same attacks (while possibly knocking the enemy off-balance or unconscious) will slowly break the armor into disrepair - even when wearing heavy armor, there's always something for you to watch out for. This is the Wasteland, after all. There is also a Thermal vulnerability, which would be the metal heating up in flames or plasma attacks and cooking the person inside. Burn damage, being actual chemical change, is essentially flames or plasma eating away at the armor, which repels the damage but falls apart fairly quickly.

 

And some example weapon damages:

 

Baseball Bat

Blunt: 35

Concussive: 35

 

Knife

Sharp: 20

 

9mm Pistol

Normal: 30

Sharp: 15

 

9mm Pistol (hollow-point rounds)

Normal: 10

Burn: 35

 

Plasma Pistol

Normal: 15

Burn: 40

 

Flamethrower

Thermal: 30

Burn: 10

 

Is this beyond the capabilities of the editing tools? I don't want to know if you think I'm capable of getting it done :P

[Interfer0]

Its possible. You may need to look at a few different ways to go about it.

 

Do you make all weapon damage 0, and control damage with your mod? The problem being you may loose users if you can't figure a way to have mod weapons work that way too.

 

or something else.... which I can't think of right now. but I am sure there are more.

 

 

 

P.S. working correctly, this would be a must have mod.

Edited November 28, 2010 by Interfer0

[Soupstorm]

I can think of a few different ways to handle mod weapons. I'd probably have a damage archetype for each attack type, i.e. 9mm, laser bolt, explosion, and then weight the weapon's new damages based on its given damage amount compared to other weapons (e.g. a rifle that does 400DPS will do a lot of normal/blunt damage)

 

I have more of my design doc hammered out now... how do I go about getting this mod started? Let's say I just want to change how Barter's base value is calculated.

Edited November 29, 2010 by Soupstorm