looking to do some basic work to completely overhaul balance for a few different preferences

[tartarsauce2]

note: if it seems like I'm complaining about a mod, possibly, but I have the utmost respect for anything I've mentioned, if I'm complaining, it's more about the situation of modding itself having such a kludge factor in getting mods to work together (FO4CK might solve this, but even so it'll take some edits to various parts to get things to where I'd want it and some of this isn't even functionally existent from what I've seen so far in any mods and I'd like to see about changing that)
btw there's a real life precedent for even damage thresh-holds failing sometimes called spall or spalling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjIy-500j00

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looking to know two things before I can really try implementing this stuff, note that the best I can do skillwise atm is edit static values in FO4edit, but I'm willing to do them for rebalancing, but I need a few answers first

1- does DT work based on total character DT or locational DT (head hands torso etc)
2 - does DR work based on total character DR or locational DR (head, hands, torso etc)
3- does DT affect energy or other types of damage or just physical (or just physical and energy but not the others)


Damage thresh-hold is a useful system, and it's really neat, unfortunately I noticed it doesn't work with vanilla or mods if I want to reduce my own damage and rely on "realistic damgae thresh-holds and headshot damage" - note that some of these changes are beyond me atm, but some of these aren't and I'll be tweaking them a bit in the future - note also that a lot of this involves other people's mods, I have no idea if it's bad form to tweak like that, but my interest here is to tweak things so that with a certain set of mods, you get a certain sort of feel)

I also want it to be able to scale to level, a lot of things need to scale better to level, the mod a new dawn attempts to do this a bit, and I like it, so I was thinking of damage thresh-hold and thinking maybe it could too but this is contingent on knowing more about how it actually operates, because if not then I could do a ghetto version of what I'm aiming for but it just wouldn't be quite as cool and scaling

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now, the germs of this idea had been banging around my head for a bit already, but what made ti really set off was that I learned how to use FO4Edit in a moment of insomniac lucid desperation (went productively crazy - as I'm usually quite sanely lazy) when I got over my natural ADHD and learned how to use it even after poking at it annoyed me the first time, I guess when everything's a struggle, a struggle like that isn't much and it turns out that when your mind is close to dreamland but still awake it can ingest new info easily (not talking groggy here either)
anyways
I tend to think of ways to alter stuff a fair bit, so this isn't new, I've DL'd like 220 mods in the last 18 days I've had FO4, and logged 170 hours
so, damage thresh-holds and DR - while this seems dry, I feel there's a lot of room for tweaking stuff so that some of that unique F1 flavour really really really comes out from this)

I think leather should have an okay DT, in the original fallout, DT and dodging were both stat based (and both only dictated whether the attack was calculated at all, a 13 hit would count as 13 damage if the DT was 12, or no hit at all if the damage was 12), in this fallout it's a lot harder to have a naturally dodging character, and at higher difficulties with automatic weapon carrying enemies it really doesn't matter, whereas in F1 recognizing when an enemy had an automatic and using a higher DT/phys resist armour was important, in this game there's a different way to things, the combat system is a lot more FPS'ish, I'm not complaining
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1)Baseline, and then addons
A) raider armour should have the highest DT relative to its DR, and it should have some okay DR and ER, in fact it should have unreasonably high DT for its DR, so that it outdoes metal armour's DT
but there should be a system in place where DT can just be bypassed sort of like a lucky hit - like a mini-crit, this would allow smaller bullets the chance to do damage a bit against things with huge DT, and smoothen the system while keeping that "oh god why won't these bullets hurt this metal monster" feeling, and raider armour should have the highest chance of this happening as well, if you look at their armour it's very heavy metallically, but it's also got a lot of holes in it, a bullet's bound to find its way through

metal armour should be better DR a bit, and have some okay DT, but it should have a DT failure rate half that of raider's armour basically, the idea is that while it's less overtly potent for blocking with DT, it's better made and more resilient, it can handle the big stuff better, like explosives or single shot big guns (raider armour is a low level anti-physical predominantly item that also emphasizes reducing lots of little hits the most but is also a bit hit and miss with it giving off a raider feel to using it in combat) - this would work with raider overhaul's dreadnaught armour making it a viable endgame solution to raider armour *sucking* the way shadowing works for leather for sneaking (leather is like the lightest so it's got a natural advantage to help sneaking which is always helpful even at high levels)

combat armour should be a mix of course, but it should have only a lower DT and DR than metal armour, while having better ER and slightly lower DT failure rate (it's more reliable)

B) this would enable combat armour to be the go-to, while raider and metal would retain a sort of niche value usefulness as a thing to use when you wanna go toe to toe with hardcore physically powerful enemies opposed to its underwhelming, leather as the lightest armour altogether, has a natural advantage in providing or not inhibiting sneak bonuses (goes well with anti-sneak mods gives it flavour) and raider armour is the thing you use if you're just power tripping

leather armour is also good against energy, so that's a thing I guess, by keeping it below combat but above everything else for resist, then it can be for sneaking and good against "techy weapons" which is important because I also was thinking of making lasers a sort of "semi-fast firing but harder hitting than usual" kind of weapon
this is because I find the gattling gun and gattling laser to be already attempting that, but with only DR it just kind of looks like a visual thing and so on, DT allows for an overhaul that re-imagines their place in the world and enables automatic lasers to do more damage (think of these as relative to other automatics the way the combat rifle's semi-auto is - noticeably slower and more solid on the hit)

C) this makes lasers good against DT somewhat, which means it's great against raider armour, decent against metal armour, okay against leather, and not so great against combat
this frees up the minigun to be a shredder, and with the occasional DT failure chance, it can do what it's supposed to, look cool like it should, and not have insanely high damage for such a fast firing weapon (this is the contemptible issue revolving around DT that has got me doing this now) that would almost, cheatingly be good against low DT things while being terrible against higher DT things (someone mentioned a static reduction of 40 armour as opposed to 40%, but I think it's fine as is in vanilla if this system can be put into place and this also allows for easier scaling)

2) scaling, DT included
A) the best way for DT to scale I feel is to change the perk system slightly to incorporate 1-5 DT from adamantium frame perhaps, and .4% hp gain every 10 seconds or so for lifegiver, then to change the system (if possible) so that armours based on type give a level based increase to DT and damage increase to enemies based on level (like 0.1 per level for one armour, 0.085 for another etc) and the attachments could then be done so that some give more DT per level, or some give more DR per level, this would be how you get metal armour to be the special anti-physical piece and the dreadnaught gear (from raider's overhaul) to be like a ghetto walking fortress (with high DT, high failure rate, etc) and make addons to armours matter, not just the base armour, so that if I want a type of armour that's naturally higher in DT, fine, all the pieces will have it, but some will have more, or less and it's a real tradeoff)

now since lasers would trend towards "slightly slower slightly heavier punch automatics" - the beam spreader shotgun effect would have an equalizing effect if DT affects energy, it spreads its damage into more shots, if ER affects it it keeps the damage up against incredibly resistant enemies, but lowers it against less resistant enemies because of how resistance works (if I recall correctly) - but because it's a spread it enables that "at least I'll hit something" chance of things, so that it can be useful against both fast enemies that are annoying, and heavy enemies that are resistant (especially considering the DT failure rate again - more hits = more predictable damage) - the idea behind lasers is sort of like the idea behind auto-cannons, they hit hard they're automatic but they're noticeably slower than others and if DT doesn't affect them then the way ER works will keep it relevant given that physical damage would be so easy to negate making DT/DR focused stuff way more tempting)

B) fusion cells should be less available than before, there's way too many period, unless one starts getting into making the gattling laser use it and be available more readily slightly

.50 cal bullets, are monsters, I feel that these should add to the gattling gun the effect of almost being a cheat weapon, but by extension they should be difficult to get, when you use them, they should add like 20% armour penetration innately, add that to the 40% minigun penetration and the enemy's left with 40% of the armour they once had but you also are chewing through money to get the effect, they should also do pretty good damage, alternatively sniper rifles and other one shot heavy damage type stuff should implement them kind of as-is

this allows people to get their thing on without feeling like the *entire* game is too easy, 5mm is nice but it's a bit, common and with "ammo tweaks" suvival mode gets less survival based and more farming/grinding based unless I start making it so everyone one-shot kills each other or something even with less "loot and ammo" mod - and frankly I'd like to see the game a bit more arcadey with its hardcore survival aspects, but better refined so as to make it a challenge not just through starvation of resources or "did I get the drop on them or did they get it on me" but also through the intelligent application of available tools to the task at hand, as the situation is going

C) with the above in mind, the relative resistance of things as you progress in levels should start to diverge a bit, at the beginning everything should be in fact, a little bit on the "samey" side of things compared to later where the various things take on different stats like higher health gains, more physical armour, etc etc
the idea here is simple, as you gain more experience playing the game, you become better able to deal with the different variations, this dynamic not only rewards you by giving it, but it does it smoothly, level by level, guiding you to the assertion through an evolution of your enemies - I want super mutants to be beasts I can shotgun their face with and they'll not be feeling too good, but if I try to shotgun their armour it won't do very well, but if I go with generic automatics with armour penetration, they'll still be resistant, while energy weapons will be difficult to use well on these guys

3) relations
A) not interpersonal, but rather ammo and gun based, if there's 3 tiers of enemies, 3 tiers of armour, and 3 tiers of bullets essentially, then what I want to see is this, when a tier matches to another tier defense and offensive wise, the goal is to have that situation feel difficult, but kind of normalish and it'd be wise although not totally necessary to switch ammo based on situation, when a tier is lower than the other, it should feel like a real struggle, if it's TWO tiers below, just... naw bro you're plinking at them, but okay if you're patient you can do it, and if it's higher it should feel like a cakewalk and if it's TWO tiers higher then it should feel like you're just wasting your time to an extent (.50 cal gattling gun vs molerats should feel ridiculous and stupid while 5mm against molerats should feel like a power trip) - plinking is still viable but prepare to spend ammo, another goal here is to have lower power bullets take on a "just throw more at the enemy and hope they die" effect to it, equal footing should feel like you want to make sure you're using the proper type of ammo (armour pierce, hollow point) to get maximum effect, and higher tiers relative to target should just be "eh I'll just shoot and kill it"

light, sturdy, heavy seem to be the basic 3 methods of dictating how good an armour is, it's a good way to keep that type of resource in the game, was thinking maybe the lighter versions could be slightly better for certain kinds of tasks as well, and heavier ones for other kinds of tasks, so that when levelling there's a native DR and DT to the heavier armours so you might not care or notice, but then later in the game you start thinking to yourself "I want those bonuses from that kind of armour" and suddenly that light synth armour becomes more appealing than the heavy synth armour, or combat armour

B) perks can be reworked to provide better bonuses so that underwhelming ones are more interesting, I was thinking about things like, having picking a talent in one abillity reduce your SPECIAL of a different place by a certain amount, but allowing your character to pick it up to 10, making picking SPECIAL stats important even after you've gotten them up a bit, to keep levelling and planning ahead a little more important for longer than it takes to get the bare minimum to get the abilities you want, now there's tradeoffs (awareness could just give 1 perception instead of taking anything away because it's a bit underwhelming as is and VANS could give 1 perception as well) since int is so good and perception is underwhelming might as well make it easier to get in light of this)

relevant things to the task
+DAMAGE THRESH-HOLD
+LEVEL BONUSES - health, damage resist, energy resist, well just any resist really
+HEALTH
+DAMAGE DONE
+BULLETS AVAILABLE (ammo tweaks style, I'm talking about distribution of chance they'll be using better quality variations of the same calibre required to fire their weapon (aka high quality .38's) if he implements low mid and higher quality bullets as well or someone else does, then it'll be interesting to see what happens)

some of these, in fact a lot of this requires mods to even seem to be feasible and functional, like mods that act as framework
also, I was thinking what if ghouls could throw stuff, they're feral, they're vicious, I've been in a fight or two in real life though where someone's been snarling viciously as they throw something and then engage in a fistfight, that's pretty feral, so why not make ghouls slightly more variable? Edited April 1, 2016 by tartarsauce2

[tartarsauce2]

other things, such as magnesium 2mm ECM that MIRV's into flaming projectiles (I don't know how MIRV works, is it possible to implement a sort of situation where after a certain point the shot fragments but instead of scattering like an umbrella the pieces keep most of their momentum and turn into projectiles like a grenade might but damage like bullets do)
the idea is that as a special ammo, it can shoot more or less like a regular 2mm ECM with less damage but an incendiary but at a certain point it fragments into flaming peices that do some incendiary damage too (it becomes more of a fire hazard and loses it's armour piercing capabilities aside from fire)

damage type resistances being implemented is another thing I'd be interested in doing, the prefix system is nice and neat and cool and all but is under-used, I would aim to change that, as I mentioned above, perks matter for all of this stuff as well
one of the perks I was thinking of was a thing that adds a 5/10/15/20/25% damage of main shot thing for energy weapons as a different kind of damage - at rank 10 int perk but reduces the experience gain you get by like 1.5% per thing - VANS becomes an option baseline pick whether you want it or not, and nerd rage moves to rank 1 - could use the graphic for VANS for the new perk and call it something like Party V.A.N.S. (very arbitrary negative stuff) because the beams/bolts (I have a mod that changes them into laser bolts) could also have a tinge of hue based on the type of damage that accompanies it (including just more laser, but never physical)

poison should be more useful, introducing an antidote system would be great, essentially the poison system would operate as the opposite of the damage/heal system, poison would degenerate health, and the antidote would instantly remove some of the max potential for that degeneration - the opposite of where a bullet wounds you, then you take a stimpack and it regenerates health slowly over time

better access to things like hub flowers etc, with more complex creation of materials - as much as I love blood pack creation with the cannibal overhaul, it doesn't entirely work with less loot and ammo (in regards to humans I think, although I'm not entirely sure it does work with animals though), a patch on less loot and ammo's side would fix this right up but I've been playing with a few mods that have more taxing/rewarding creation methods, like cleaner water (gives espresso or whatever and uses clean coffee cups I've never been able to find but I did make a dirty nicotonic once!)
ammo tweaks enables some really interesting methods of creating ammo, cheerful butcher enables me to use animals for parts in an intuitive way (finally, some glue!) then there's a mod or two I think that let me craft acids and something else that's a useful component

ALL of this is inspired by having tons of mods, but I just felt that there's potential for a baseline here that works even better with them all
one of the reasons I'm posting this here is because I'm looking to make a "go-to" sort of mod set that "the big one" and is slightly more than a clever collection of disparate mods, a sort of melding of them
but I don't want to steal resources or take credit or whatever
and I don't know how modding etiquette or whatever works around here, or what counts as someone else's work etc (because I could edit the static values and suddenly I've modded a mod, I'm aware the framework stuff is definitely theirs but what do I consider the balancing decisions now? see?)
and some of this stuff kind of crosses the line and then back again, so yeah - just throwing this out there to see if people like it, to see what people think about it in terms of crediting people, and so I have something I can refer to when I forget this long complex thing of what my dream is for an ultimate gameplay experience thingy

note: the main focus for this thread's variation of my idea isn't realism, it's interesting nuanced difficulty and experiences - I also use CSE (commonwealth spawns extended) and more spawns, of which I've loaded the medium and the lite together, on top of CSE, and that mod that makes AI shoot more (arbitration) and harder stealth via longer detection times and distances, and darker nights, etc, etc, etc, extended floodlights, pipboy flashlight, better indoors? (60% darker etc) and that one that has mobs detect you from higher ranges and god help you if you shoot something you will be the center of another world war, the mod
so I'm not averse to certain elements of that frightening realistic-ish experience, esp with ghouls and stuff, if they do pure radiation damage I'm happy (a new dawn or is it DECAY?) but stuff like "headshots only" kills on them isn't my thing, BUT the idea for my stuff is those sorts of changes are obviously mutators, separate small things that are easily changed and can be changed back, and that's that
I'm also not averse to modifying how much damage a thing does based on where it hits, like "better locational damage" but the idea I've got is that somehow this becomes a baseline that others operate from, because it's so easy to make variables on, but it provides the underlying structure required to easily make changes, a mod for modding sort of, but not in load orders, but rather in gameplay)

because the way things are now, if I want that sort of change, because of how mods relate to each other and do or don't work with each other, it's like stringing and unstringing 5 active grenades and tripwire mines
oh also, there's a tendency for mods to make radiation immaterial as a threat
I like the idea that there'd be some lower armour and energy resist, much much higher anti-radiation stuff for combat and stuff, so that maybe the hazmat suit could be pure anti-radiation, but unless you're *reallllly* cranking up the heat on radiation it doesn't make much of a difference with that modded gear, and I've found it's a bit *too* threatening, there's no room for nuance if you do, making drugs like rad-x and rad-away rarer becomes useless because you're playing gearswap all the time instead of relying on consumables so much
again, like "realism" I don't want to make this based around it, but I do want it so that with a few simple mutators it can achieve it

Edited April 1, 2016 by tartarsauce2