[help] adding new attachments to weapons

[turtlep]

I made a suggestion on the request forum, but I'd like to make an attempt at it myself then to just wait around, hoping it would happen.

 

I've been looking around through FO4Edit, and before I end up breaking something, is it possible and how do I add additional attachments to weapons?

[Moraelin]

Additional as in "a different suppressor" (same category, extra option) or aditional as in, "add a suppressor slot to a sledgehammer" (new category)?

 

The former is pretty trivial, the latter, maybe less so, if the new category is visible.

 

For the former, well, basically you can just download my Silver Submachinegun Receiver and have a look at what I did. Basically it boils down to

 

- copying and editing an existing record,

 

- making (also by copy and edit) a Misc object for it. That's the boxed mod when you take it off the weapon.

 

- making a constructible object record for it, so the game knows that you can build it at the weapons workbench.

 

That's really all there is to it.

 

The mod I mentioned above also shows a material swap being used, to turn the whole SMG into shiny silver. You can use that for stuff like black blades like Pickman's Blade, and stuff like that.

[turtlep]

Thanks for the response. I don't quite get it yet, but I'll give it a try.

 

Is it possible to make a weapon fire completely differently? I posted it here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3597155-shotgun-style-barrel-mods-for-broadsider/ and I basically would like to give the Broadsider a new barrel (or two) that changes it into a giant shotgun.

[Moraelin]

Depends how differently, but shotgun fire... basically it's easy enough. You can take the laser beam splitter or the two-shot legendary effect as an example of how to do it.

 

Essentially shotguns, just like in FO3 and NV, just have a property that says how many projectiles they shoot. The damage value gets divided among those, and then they're shot at random angles within the spread cone, which actually is just like for single-projectile weapons. Hence, you also want to affect their spread.

 

Again, damage is already divided by the number of projectiles, so you don't have to do that by hand. E.g., if a weapon does 70 damage and it shoots 7 pellets, then each pellet does 10 points of damage. So just set the total damage.

 

But anyway, potentially interesting properties for your purpose include:

 

- number of projectiles

- the several aim cone values

- projectile, unless you want it to shoot a bunch of cannonballs. Grape shot would probably be smaller balls.

- weight, if that barrel is heavier or lighter

- damage modifier (realistically a bunch of smaller balls if they all hit, i.e., at point blank range, would do more damage than a single bigger one)

- 3d model if you want to actually model a different barrel, but it's not NEEDED. A lot of mods in Beth's own game have no visual difference. E.g., a .50 receiver looks no different from a 5.56mm receiver.

- material swap, if you want to paint a different texture for it. Again, that's not really needed. Other than armour materials and PA paint jobs (which are actually the same as materials, technically), and rare cases like the black Stealth Blade on a combat knife, Beth itself doesn't change the weapon texture just because it's a different mod

[turtlep]

Thanks again for the reply.

 

I'll put some information down here, both to aid me in understanding this, and to aid anyone else new to this who wish to take a crack at modding weapons.

 

Using Moraelin's Silver Submachine Gun Receiver mod as an example as it adds a bit of everything towards a singular item: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6557/?

 

Starting from top to bottom as it showed up in FO4Edit:

• Constructable Object

contains info on required materials/perks needed to construct object.

• Object Effect

Basically Legendary/Hidden effects info.

• Misc. Item

Item info when not attached to a weapon.

• Object Modification

Contains most of the info for the attachment. All modifiers to the base weapon are stored here it seems.

Don't quite get all of it, but I think I understand the important bits in here.

 

Hope I didn't miss anything, and though super simplified, hope it helps someone understand it a little better.

[Moraelin]

Yep, that's how it works. You obviously only need an object effect if you want your own magic effect on the weapon, such as bleeding or stagger. (I'd imagine being hit by grapeshot would stagger anyone;)) If you don't, or use one of the existing effects from the vanilla game, then you don't need that.

 

Note though that basically changing any actor effect can be a magic effect that you can have in an Object Effect, and you can add conditions to it too there. So it doesn't just have to be legendary stuff. You can have stuff like +1% crit chance only when sneaking, or +25% accuracy if you wear power armor, or send the enemies flying if they're not crouched, or really a lot of other stuff. So you can get creative there if you want. Or not. Up to you. You have the power, and as I keep saying, with great power comes great responsibility... to abuse it ;)

 

What probably isn't obvious in the object modification, is that it's not a full list of properties of the object, like the Data record was in NV. It's just a list of the properties that were added or changed, compared to the base item. You can add or remove properties to the list as you need. If you need one more property than is in there, well, just add one more.

 

IMPORTANT: Just pay attention to also change the number of properties value accordingly. FO4Edit doesn't seem to do it automatically. So if you add a property, also bump that number up, or it won't even get saved.

 

The easiest way to see which properties you can use is to use the dropdown. It wasn't obvious to me at first, but a lot of the input fields in FO4 edit are actually drop-downs, not just input fields. Just click far right in the field and the down arrow should appear. (Might take a second or two, if there are a lot of entries to populate the list with, in which time FO4Edit will seem frozen. Have patience.)

 

It's somewhat impractical for form IDs, since there are thousands, but for the available properties the list is small AND it's filtered to contain only the properties allowed for your item. Which is actually very useful.

 

One more note which should be obvious soon enough: "multiply", doesn't really mean what a reasonable person means by multiply. It doesn't mean "item_value = item_value * X", but rather "item_value = item_value + base_value * X". So if you see something like "multiply" the max range by -5, it actually means subtract five yards (or whatver the heck unit is used for that) from the max range.

 

I think this pretty much should cover all you need to get started. Do post a link if you make that Broadsider barrel. Sounds like a fun item. I might use it for even greater lulz than the original Broadsider.

[turtlep]

Ok, got something to work ingame.

 

Decided to change the magazine slot instead of barrel. Made more sense to me.

 

Having problems figuring out how attachments affect damage ingame. Copying effects from various other items that increase damage seems to reduce it. Adjusting them affects the values ingame weirdly.

 

I was hoping there was a way to change an item's (like a projectiles) size with the editor. Guess I might have to jump into some .nif files... well nifskope doesn't support FO4 yet, unless there's another way to edit meshes, I guess I'll have to wait.

 

Have a few more ideas, need to see if I can make it consume more then one round per shot.

Edited December 28, 2015 by turtlep

[Genamine]

If the stated effect in FO4Edit says Mod Attack Damage or something along the lines of damage increase, it usually comes with a float value multiplier.

In the weapon mod section, the stated float value adds up to the already existant multiplier.

 

For instance, if the weapon mod says it adds a damage multiplier of 0.5, and the weapon has no other damage multipliers, it will total for 1.0 + 0.5 = 1.5, thus 150% damage.

Alternatively if the weapon mod says it adds a damage multiplier of -0.5, and the weapon has no other damage multipliers, it will total for 1.0 - 0.5 = 0.5, thus 50% damage.

And finally, if the weapon mod says it adds a damage multiplier of 0.5, and the weapon already has multipliers totaling 2.0, then it will result in 2.0 + 0.5 = 2.5, thus 250% damage.

 

The creation engine doesnt like working with percentiles, but instead works with fractional float values, treated as multipliers. It's basically the same thing, but written down in a different way.

But to still achieve the effect of stacking damage boosts, a float multiplier value of 0.5 wont always mean that it it multiplies the actual damage by 0.5, like in the case of weapon mods, it adds a multiplier of 0.5 on top of the already existant multiplier. All damage multipliers have a base value of 1.0 if untouched (100% damage).

For as far as I've experienced, this type of multiplier treatment is unique to weapon mods in FO4Edit. Meaning that in all other cases, a multiplier value of 0.5 will mean that it multiplies the actual damage by 0.5 (Like in perks for instance).

 

I hope that answers your latest question.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Genamine

[turtlep]

Unless I'm missing something, It's not working that way at all.

 

FO4Edit screenshot:

http://imgur.com/D7OucJE

 

And here's the Base Damage vs My Mods Damage:

http://imgur.com/fLBgtve

http://imgur.com/C1tX1na

 

It's cutting the damage almost in half, and can't seem to find out why.

 

Edit: Ok, I can edit meshes... And now the gun is shooting blanks...

Edited December 29, 2015 by turtlep

[Moraelin]

Well, hmm, strange. Do you have any perks that might apply to one configuration, but not to the other?

 

On the other hand, looking at the base weapon record in FO4Edit, the base damage is set to only 33. Which would actually fit the damage you see pretty well. 33x2.5=82.5

 

What accounts for most of the damage displayed as the Broadsider damage with the normal barrels, is actually the explosive value of the projectiles, which is 75. So the question that comes to mind is: did you replace the projectile?