Realistic Survival MOD requested

[Zaosss]

Greetings,

I really wanted to make this request so I actually went out of my way to become a member of Nexus, which is something I normally wouldn't do. I was wondering if I could actually make a request and seeing there's even a specific place for these requests pleasantly surprised me. Asking for more realism in a game filled with Ghouls and Super Mutants seems to be a bit strange, but I just love the concept of the game and the only thing missing are the means to fully immerse myself into this post apocalyptic wasteland. Some of these suggestions and perhaps all of them have already been made. I managed to find only some of them, so please forgive me if what I type has already been said. Anyway, without further delay, I will continue this post with what should be altered according to my standards and hopefully somebody will reply.

Carry Weight

To me it makes no sense that you can carry around equipment that exceeds far beyond the point of being encumbered and yet you still manage to walk. You can loot a dozens of microscopes and telephones and somehow it all disappears into nothingness, yet you still have it on you. I would recommend that you visually carry a backpack with you, perhaps even different sizes of backpacks (which can be bought or found). Not only does weight limit play a role, but the amount of room inside the backpack as well. Maybe your backpack can only hold 3 microscope, or 6 telephones. Make it reasonable.

So how will you drag your glorious loot across the wasteland if you're confined to what seems a more realistic approach to what you can take with you? Well, to me it would be more logical, much like the traders and provisioners, to have a Brahmin follow you around, which you can also command to stay or follow and trade with. This Brahmin would be able to carry up to x amount of weight, whatever seems realistic.

When the Brahmin is within x range, whatever you take and exceeds your weight or backpack capacity, should automatically be stored in either your followers backpack or the Brahmins backpack. Speaking of which, whenever you kill a trader or Brahmin, I've noticed that they do not have the same inventory as when they would be selling to you. Note that I did not kill every trader I came across, so maybe this is just a bug. Also, Dog Meat shouldn't be able to carry stuff unless you provide the dog (visually!) with a backpack. Same goes for other followers. That being said, how much is in your inventory should play a role in how fast and how sneaky you are.

I would also like to add to this that it would be nice to have a script which tells the followers to loot whatever is lootable or perhaps that they will only loot guns, or only armor, or only junk which has the magnify glass next to it. These are all suggestions for convenience, not perse realism.

Guns & Ammo

Continuing on the inventory subject, let's talk about ammo. You can carry arround thousands of different types of ammo without this even contributing to your makes amount of carry-able weight. You also seem to be able to carry around dozens of weapons and swap them on the fly without these being visually represented on the model. I instantly think of games such as say, Gears Of War (but there are probably plenty of examples here) where the "hero" visually carries around weapons and has no more weapons than those which are visually seen. GoW allows you to have one slot for grenades, one slot for a pistol and two slots for rifle type weapons.

So basically I'd say, one slot for throwing weapons (might also be a mine), one slot for close ranged weapons, one slot for mid ranged weapons and one slot for long ranged weapons. These should all be visually represented on the model and in some cases, you really should wonder how logical it would be for you to realistically carry around a Fat Man, a Mini Gun and a Flamer while also having all these weapons visually represented on the model, considering you are also carrying around a backpack. So perhaps a maximum of two weapons would even be more logical. This is obviously open for debate, but the focus of my mod request is realism. Also, two weapons might be more logical since you also would need to carry around the ammo which should in reality also contribute to the weight factor. Perhaps you decide to not carry around a backpack in favor of more weapons or place a pistol in your backpack, which can never be on a speed button.

Inventory

Opening your inventory should always be real time. The only way to "pause" the game, would be by pressing the Esc button.

Healing & Bullet Sponges (Armor Improvement)

I would like to see a lot more realism in this department. Broken limbs can heal in a matter of seconds because of a stimpack? Cool story bro. No seriously though, it makes no sense from a realism point of view. Simply getting shot, regardless of limb damage, should not be able to heal by eating food or drinking beverages or by injecting your self with a stimpack.

Perhaps we can fantasize about how the stimpack is some futuristic substance that highly excellerates the regrowth of tissue. I guess that would be the only reasonable way to view this. But as it is now, the concept of having a broken limb is so easily corrected that it holds no value at all. I would love to NEED to go to a doctor and be forced to rest for x amount of time before my limb is healed again.

Now on the subject on bullet sponges, I play on survival and the difficulty factor supposedly lies with my enemies being able to take more bullets than I can. Sure, I guess this is an economically and system friendly solution instead of having the hero being swarmed from all sides (despite this probably being more epic). So I think a good alternative would be to look at real life. Getting a bullet in most parts of your body is never a good thing. I'm not sure how many bullets I would be able to take, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be more than 2 or 3 at the most. We can fantasize about how a higher endurance will allow me to take maybe 4 or 5 bullets, but again, this is open for debate. Instead, I think the bullet sponge concept is reasonable depending on what type of armor your enemy is wearing. If your enemy is wearing something like a metal chest plate, it would be advisable to target the limbs or head, if these are not protected. Walking around without limb or head protection, would be an invitation to having these targetted. This will need to be programmed into the AI.

Wearing a metal chest plate or even power armor would bring back the bullet sponge concept. If you keep firing, eventually a bullet MIGHT go through. Or, perhaps a system could be devised where it sais, armor x will never allow bullet type x to penetrate it. You will need a specific type of bullet (or energy) to be able to have a chance of penetration.

To me, this concept seems way more realistic than simply being able to withstands endless amounts of bullets and quickly healing on the fly. Considering how easy stimpacks are to come by, everybody should be carrying around dozens of them, just to regenerate in the blink of an eye. Either the enemy should be programmed to do so more often, which would make everything probably a bit more challenging, or the healing in combat concept should be changed entirely. I'd probably opt to choose for enemies using stimpacks more often as well, for the sake of mutual combat flow.

Fast Travel

As far as I know, Fast Traveling doesn't reduce the amount of power left in a Fusion Core, but please correct me if I'm wrong. That being said, I never use Fast Travel as this again, reduces the immersion factor. I'd either opt to have it removed in all entirity OR (and this might be a better idea) let the game calculate the fastest route (much like a Navigation system for your car) and then let me experience possible "encounters" on that specific route towards the place I'm fast traveling.

Perhaps there's a trader on my path. Fast Travel stops and asks me if I want to see this trader. Perhaps there are enemies on my path. Fast Travel stops and I must face these enemies. Having a high amount of sneak reduces the chance that you will be spotted by enemies, BUT having a follower without sneak and a Brahmin (which obviously isn't sneaky at all) will completely destroy your chance of not being spotted. Fast Travel stops and you will either be in status "Caution" or "Danger". If you travel alone, you might also get the question to attack if you are sneaky enough and you will enter the map with status "Hidden". Power Armor and whatever you are carrying with you should always play a big role in how sneaky you are. Speaking of sneaking, Id should go without saying that listening to your pip boy radio should alarm nearby enemies, regardless of how skilled in sneaking you are. Also turning on OR off a radio in the environment should also alert the enemies.

Sleep, Eat, Drink repeat

If you don't sleep for days, you should notice a decline in stats. Some are more logical to decline that others. I'd say it seems weird if your luck would go down as this is a completely random factor, but all other stats should go down. Some more than others ofcourse, which again is open to debate as to what is logical. Your followers as well will need to sleep. It could be fun to let them have their own sleeping pattern so that you can consider which follower to take depending on which time it is. That being said, when you go to sleep, perhaps your follower will get some shut eye as well. Not sure about the ideal in this situation, but that they will need to sleep, just as you, to be at full performance seems reasonable. You could say that after one day of not sleeping, stats will go down by -1 or -2 and after two days of not sleeping, by -2 or -4, eventually you will get to the point that everything gets to 1. I think endurance would probably play a very crucial role here, where if you would deprive your character of sleep to the point that you should go past Endurance 1, your character might be starting to lose health or something OR get sick maybe. Something like this.

Speaking of getting sick, curing an addiction on the fly is, ridiculous. Well maybe, just as with stimpacks, the future has some sort of substance which can, but I'd probably go for a more realistic approach where this substance gives your body the idea that it is getting the drug, so you don't have withdrawel symptoms, but you also don't get the boost. The realism kicks in where you will simply have to go into rehab or just NOT use the drug for a long time and keep on using the alternative substances just to negate the negative effects of being in your withdrawel period. How long this period is is up for debate, but I'm calling it a month at least.

Perhaps lots of sprinting helps you sweat it out a little more and the time needed to get over your addiction is shortened. As for eating and drinking. This should no longer heal the player. Got shot? Here, eat a sandwich. Yeah, makes no sense. So food and drinks should only be there to fuel the body, just as in real life. Keep in mind though, that you actually need to eat A LOT to stay in shape and have enough energy. I do a lot of sports and this means I need to eat a lot and on a regular basis. A hero running around the wasteland with guns and or power armor, yeah this person will be hungry all the time. Obviously your followers, your dog, your Brahmin must eat and drink as well. They should also be able to take drugs. Brahmn on Buffout and alcohol to carry more loot? Yes please. Can a Brahmin get addicted? I would like to think so haha.

Enemy AI

Well, it's not terrible, but it is quite silly at times. I kill a raider and my status turns into "Caution". They search around a little and then all of a sudden its "Yeah the JET will make you jittery, must have been nothing". Lol, come on, I just killed your friend in front of you. They should keep on looking for at least an hour or something. Have them change up their search patterns to go through the entire location. If you run away, they should come after you and not return back to their posts. This is one of those things that really kills it, the immersion that is. You either need a damn good hiding place where they will never find you, but otherwise they should go through their entire territory over and over again. Your status should never go back to hidden, but always stay in "caution" after you have been spotted once. That being said, if you silently kill an enemy, which is part of a group, but none of the group saw it, then you should remain Hidden.

Follower AI

We all get annoyed by it. Can this be improved please? What bothers me the most is when I'm sneaking and my follower decides to either start shooting or just stays there out in the open completely ruining my strategy. I know I can opt to go for the Lone Wanderer perk, but come on, having a follower could add so much strategic layer if done right. I would also like to see a proper menu for my follower. Where I can see how much weight they can carry. What their stats are. What their primary weapon is and that I can either modify or change this. Their primary weapon shouldn't have unlimited ammo.

Well this should be all. Hopefully there's a skilled modder out there that completely agreed with me. I love Fallout 4, but I love the potential it has even more.

Thanks for reading!

[Zaosss]

Just out of curiosity on why there isn't a single reply :P

 

Maybe I'm impatient, but might it be either TOO much text or shitty idea's or have all the idea's been done already in different mods?

[Khormin]

Most of the ideas are spread through the different mods. I'm working on both a 'realism' combat & healing overhaul (Bullet Sponge Ballet) and a 'needs' overhaul (Appetites) at present, I doubt I'm the only one on the latter, and there's plenty of others for the former.

 

For combat overhauls: Re-Ballistic is a popular one, otherwise there's Gehweres Des Todes.

For combat AI: Arbitration should help.

Fast travel: Is a mod, but something <unknown> seems to affect it.

Carry weight: Varied mods.

[Zaosss]

Most of the ideas are spread through the different mods. I'm working on both a 'realism' combat & healing overhaul (Bullet Sponge Ballet) and a 'needs' overhaul (Appetites) at present, I doubt I'm the only one on the latter, and there's plenty of others for the former.

 

For combat overhauls: Re-Ballistic is a popular one, otherwise there's Gehweres Des Todes.

For combat AI: Arbitration should help.

Fast travel: Is a mod, but something <unknown> seems to affect it.

Carry weight: Varied mods.

 

 

 

Interesting, thank you for the reply. I didn't think I'd get one :P

 

I'm going to look through these mods, thank you for the suggestions.

 

Even if they don't fully appeal to me, it's something until we get our hands on the GECK.

 

I'm wondering how difficult it would be for somebody new to working with the GECK to implement such idea's, if needed.