Energy Weapon Batteries

[vindr20]

I've been looking for a way to make all energy weapons work similarly to the Gatling laser - in that it uses a single cell with multiple charges. To do this, I've spent quite a bit of time fiddling with entries in FO4EDIT, but at last I've managed to figure out what is responsible for the behavior: The "unknown" entry consisting of 'F4 01 00 00.'

 

Unfortunately, I've not been able to figure out any more than that this entry makes the ammunition behave like a battery. Furthermore, the 'capacity' seems locked at 500 shots (haven't tested w/ nuclear physicist or the repair bobblehead, but nuclear physicist seems to point directly to the gatling laser and power armor as the means of extending the charge, just based on looking at the perk effect), regardless of which weapon I use or the normal ammo capacity.

 

Interestingly, the 'Power Armor Battery' Keyword seems unrelated, except in that it allows you to see the percent charge of the ammunition.

 

Anyway, I was hoping someone in the community might be able to give me some insight or advice. Or if someone could tell me conclusively that I would have to wait for the Creation Kit or xEDIT to be developed further to work on this more.

 

So, here's hoping. Thanks for any help.

[PoliteRaider]

I've been looking for a way to make all energy weapons work similarly to the Gatling laser - in that it uses a single cell with multiple charges. To do this, I've spent quite a bit of time fiddling with entries in FO4EDIT, but at last I've managed to figure out what is responsible for the behavior: The "unknown" entry consisting of 'F4 01 00 00.'

 

Unfortunately, I've not been able to figure out any more than that this entry makes the ammunition behave like a battery. Furthermore, the 'capacity' seems locked at 500 shots (haven't tested w/ nuclear physicist or the repair bobblehead, but nuclear physicist seems to point directly to the gatling laser and power armor as the means of extending the charge, just based on looking at the perk effect), regardless of which weapon I use or the normal ammo capacity.

 

Awesome. That's good to know.

 

So I'd assumed this value (of 500) came from the Weapon's DNAM - Magazine Size entry but it's sounding like this isn't right from your experiments.

 

I've tried looking for other likely candidates in FO4Edit but nothing is jumping out at me. I had a look at all Game Effect records for anything with a value of either 5 or 500 and none of them seem like likely candidates. Personally I suspect that we're looking at a script here, rather than a record in FO4Edit. It is theoretically possible that it could be hardcoded into the game, but I seriously doubt that would be the case. That wouldn't really be how I'd expect Bethesda to handle this implementation, it wouldn't match their usual structure at all.

 

I don't think the Creation Kit is necessary, it would just make things a lot simpler. I'm not sure how to find the right script without it.

 

Edit: I haven't actually convinced myself 100% that this is a script, I've been looking through FO4Edit everywhere I can think of though and nothing. I might try a couple of experiments and see if I can get any closer to understanding this.

Edited March 12, 2016 by PoliteRaider

[vTemporalZEROv]

Yeah I've been thinking of a way to add actual ammo magazines into my mod, AAA, for like a month now, but I can't seem to figure it out, what you are talking about is similar to this, but still I guess everyone else is blind with it as well, not just me.

[PoliteRaider]

So I've been testing this on the 10mm pistol and experiencing the exact same thing.

 

I've added the F4 01 00 00 entry to the 10mm ammo, and marked it as a power armor battery and now regardless of the DNAM - Magazine size, it uses up one 10mm round per 500 shots.

 

It still needs to be reloaded and only holds a number of shots equal to the Magazine size, but it only actually uses up ammunition at a 1/500 rate.

[vTemporalZEROv]

Damn, now just if you can find how to modify the 500 rate, cause it is modified to work at only like 100 rate for the gatling laser or something isn't it?

[isathar]

I tried to make energy weapons ammo charge based for one of my mods at one point, and thought I'd share what I found.

 

The value you're editing is the actual number of charges/shots for each ammo item. The relevant part is F4 01. Since the bytes are ordered in reverse, it's actually 01 F4, which is 500 when converted to a number. So, if you want 50 charges, for example, you'd convert 50 to a 2-byte hex value (00 32) and use its reverse (32 00) in this field (also the last two bytes, so it would be 32 00 00 00). (This is a field that hasn't been decoded yet, so be careful with it :D )

 

If you don't want to end up with a bunch of almost depleted ammo items, match the weapon's Ammo Capacity with the number of charges per ammo item. The amount of charge used per shot can be influenced via perk by modifying "Mod Ammo Health Mult" . If you do a little bit of math, you can pretty easily match this with any increases to ammo capacity added to weapons by object mods (but it will require adding a few perks).

 

There is a pretty big issue, though. If you add the isPowerArmorBattery keyword to items other than fusion cores, you won't be able to add fusion cores to power armor frames by pressing E while you have any of the modded ammo type in your inventory. The animation plays, but no fusion core is added. :sad:

Edited March 12, 2016 by isathar

[PoliteRaider]

Thankyou Isathar, that makes everything much clearer. :)

[vindr20]

Okay, wow isathar, way to clear things up. That was literally everything that I needed to start up work.

 

I actually figured out how to alter the number of shots based on weapons using the perk, but altering it on a per-mod basis seems cumbersome. I'll have to experiment, but If anyone has any guesses on how to accomplish that, I'd love any input.

 

And as far as the power-armor battery bit, it's not strictly necessary to make the ammunition function as a battery - just to make it display the percentage - so I'm not terribly worried about that. Considering that you can't actually choose which fusion cell/ammunition you use, I'm not terribly worried about that at this stage, although I have some hope that F4SE or something will come around and fix either or both of these problems.

 

UPDATE:

So far, the way I've found to make this work is to have the weapon mod add a keyword specific to the mod, or at least the ammo modification factor, and add a perk that recognizes that keyword and alters the value accordingly. This also seems super painful to do on a per-mod basis, so please provide any ideas if you have any.

Edited March 13, 2016 by vindr20

[PoliteRaider]

 

I actually figured out how to alter the number of shots based on weapons using the perk, but altering it on a per-mod basis seems cumbersome. I'll have to experiment, but If anyone has any guesses on how to accomplish that, I'd love any input.

 

Just make a perk that automatically applies to the character, and then have conditions that trigger based on the keywords that weapon mods apply.

 

For example if you're using this for a hunting rifle, make a copy of Nuclear Physicist and replace the condition

WornHasKeyword - ma_GatlingLaser [KYWD:001466F0]

with:

WornHasKeyword - dn_HasMag_Large [KYWD:00094637]

Try to avoid using any new keywords though, since that'll impact the keyword cap with your mod.

[vindr20]

 

Just make a perk that automatically applies to the character, and then have conditions that trigger based on the keywords that weapon mods apply.

 

For example if you're using this for a hunting rifle, make a copy of Nuclear Physicist and replace the condition

WornHasKeyword - ma_GatlingLaser [KYWD:001466F0]

with:

WornHasKeyword - dn_HasMag_Large [KYWD:00094637]

Try to avoid using any new keywords though, since that'll impact the keyword cap with your mod.

 

 

There's a keyword cap? That's good to know, since I was in the middle of adding a bunch right now.

 

Any other useful info?

 

Also a way to automatically add the perk would be a great thing for someone to help me with.