[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[nexusguy]

Hey I just saw this mod:

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/69798

Specifically, this part caught my attention:

"(...)For example, you are a mod author and create new ammo types for weapons. With RobCo Patcher, you can easily create one config file to patch them all! No ESP or ESL files. One config with all weapon mods you want to change and done! No incompatibilities no patches! Easy and simple!(...)"

I instantly though of your use case, do you think it would help?

[antistar]

I wondered the same thing when I saw that, but at a glance I don't think it would be suitable for WARS - at least not as it appears to be right now.

 

Ammo types and sub-types in WARS are handled by OMODs, and RobCo Patcher appears to change the ammo type on the weapon record itself - which wouldn't do anything in WARS' case.

 

The main thing I wondered if it might be useful for is automatically handling NPC HP/DR/ER normalisation across all the plugins in a user's load order, but it seems like it works by finding a match (via Race or keyword or whatever) and then setting a flat value. What I'm using for that is an edited version of the FO4Edit Despongifier script (or rather, three edited versions; one each for HP, DR and ER) that - for every NPC - does a calculation based on the original value, and then sets a new value that is relative to that original value.

 

I'll be releasing these scripts (with permission) alongside WARS, so that people can generate a normalised HP/DR/ER patch for their load order - a bit like generating a sorting patch for FallUI. I'm actually halfway through writing the tutorial on how to use it.

 

I think there's a lot of potential there with RobCo Patcher, though.

 

 

On the load time shenanigans:

 

I finished overhauling the loadout levelled lists (LVLIs) for now, and the breakdown for loading that test save in Valentine Detective Agency is like this:

 

Loadout LVLIs completely emptied out: 45s

Before overhaul: 3m30s

After overhaul: 1m30s

 

So the load time (in this case) is twice as long as if almost all the NPCs in the game are set to spawn without weapons, but it was five times as long before this overhaul, so... that's a massive improvement. The load times also don't start out as long; this is in a 60-hour or whatever save.

[nexusguy]

Great job! It's a good thing it ended up being simpler than what you initially thought, it's a shame that plugin couldn't help you, but either way you ended up not needing it, which is good!

[nexusguy]

Hey I forgot to ask, is WARS going to have custom sounds? I don't remember seeing anything related, if you posted about it before, my apologies!

[antistar]

Some of the new weapons have custom sounds, and some don't. Well... just about all of them have custom weapon handling sounds - though mostly they're edited vanilla sounds - but only some have custom fire sounds.

 

The anti-materiel rifles and grenade launchers have custom fire sounds, while the other new weapons are set to use vanilla fire sounds. That's so that people can use whatever weapon sound replacers they want (e.g. Commonwealth Warfare for me) - along with saving me time, of course.

 

 

As an update: Still bashing away at the test playthrough, fixing bugs and re-balancing things. Like - and I don't know how I missed this until now - I just noticed that the hotkey functions for swapping ammo, cycling fire/attack modes and toggling launcher mode could fire when the weapon is holstered. It... didn't seem to cause any significant problems, surprisingly - though I didn't test it too much. The worst seemed to be the weapon being empty when you draw it, if you swapped ammo while it was holstered.

 

In any case, I added a check so that those functions don't take effect if the weapon isn't out.

 

 

In my playthrough I'm in the middle of building an ammo factory setup, finally - I've been looking forward to doing this for... years. The idea is for it to take ammo that I don't want as an input, break it down into casings, primers, powder, lead, etc - and then reassemble the parts into the ammo I do want.

 

Should be very helpful. I've been finding enemy robots challenging due to a scarcity of armour-piercing and pulse ammo sub-types (which is how I wanted things to go with robots, so that's good) - but once I get set up to make a bunch of AP ammo, pulse slugs, pulse 40x46mm grenades, etc... the shoe will be on the other foot.

 

I've already got another factory line set up to - and this is more of a PEACE thing - butcher animals, process meat (and fruit and vegetables and everything else) and then turn the intermediate processed ingredients into packaged food like Cram and MREs and whatnot, that don't spoil.

 

... I should really record some videos showing these factory setups - if only because there's no other way to craft and breakdown ammo in WARS, and people who are maybe less into building factories might appreciate some ideas on how to do it. Videos like that would probably need commentary though, and I'm not super keen on hearing my voice recorded... but we'll see.

 

 

Anyway. I have still been turning up bugs and fixing them, like I said - but I feel like it's getting pretty close to time for the closed beta. Barring other bugs, the main thing still to do is tidy up the documentation a bit. (E.g. actually write the installation instructions parts in the various readmes.)

[nexusguy]

Wait, we can't craft ammo like in FNV? I thought we would be able to do so.

[antistar]

You can't craft and breakdown ammo at a reloading bench like in FNV, if that's what you mean; it's done using factory machines instead. Beyond that, it's very similar to ammo crafting in FNV. (Especially if you used my Ammo Crafting Schematics mod.)

 

The reason for this is because the crafting interface in FO4 (used by the Chem and Cooking stations) is really, really NOT well-suited to ammo crafting and breakdown. (You'll notice that BGS themselves avoided doing ammo crafting using crafting stations.) The three main problems are:

 

1) Each recipe can only have one output item. (This is the really big problem.)

2) There's no ability to set the quantity you want to craft. The recipe outputs a set quantity, and that's it. (Always a quantity of one though, because see below.)

3) The UI doesn't show the quantity (of the single output item) that will be produced by the recipe. Why does the game even support a quantity greater than one if it doesn't show it? I don't know.

 

These issues don't make it impossible to handle ammo crafting, but they do make it very awkward. It's especially painful for ammo breakdown, because that requires multiple output items, and you can't do that. At least, not without a cludgy workaround. You can have a recipe output a dummy item that is scripted to then remove itself and give you the contents of a levelled list (LVLI), but that's a pain to do. You need to make the LVLI and dummy item with a script attached, then set the script properties to point at the LVLI - for every single thing that needs a breakdown recipe. (I did exactly this for just a molotov cocktail breakdown recipe recently - so that you can get the Flamer Fuel out of them to use in building fuelled generators.)

 

That's every ammo sub-type, every empty casing type, every primer type, every grenade case and fuze and mine sensor and etc, etc. It'd be a nightmare. Setting up the crafting/breakdown for all these things using factory machines took me many months. I don't really want to do that all over again, but worse.

 

Like I said, it's not impossible; AmmoTweaks v1 even includes a reloading bench like this - but it's disabled in WARS because it's set up for ammo sub-types added by AmmoTweaks, not the sub-types added by WARS. (When I was working on the ammo sub-types stuff, the idea was still to move to AmmoTweaks v2 once it became available - and I needed something different for some of the ammo types anyway, so using the AmmoTweaks v1 ammo sub-types wasn't really practical.)

 

From memory, one of the things isathar was working on for AmmoTweaks v2 was an all-new crafting system/interface that functions more like the crafting interface in FNV. (I've said it before, but wow... so many things in FO4 were a step backwards compared to FNV.)

 

 

Anyway, the lack of an ammo reloading bench wasn't much of a blow for me personally, at least. I'm having a blast setting up my own ammo factory in my game.

 

The key thing about it being a factory, too, is that it's automatic once set up. There'll be a minor bit of fiddling to swap between crafting different calibres for example (at least with the design I've come up with so far) - swapping out a builder machine, maybe setting a sorter to sort a couple of different things - but apart from that, I'll be able to just dump the ammo I don't want into it, and then get the ammo I do want out the other end.

Edited March 31, 2023 by antistar

[nexusguy]

Thanks for the explanation! Also, oof, only one item as an output? That's quite a limitation, why did they do that? I doubt it was because of time constraints, like you explained before at the start of this thread, I believe they were mostly inspired by arcade shooters and not other RPG's.

[Shanzyboo]

Thanks for the explanation! Also, oof, only one item as an output? That's quite a limitation, why did they do that? I doubt it was because of time constraints, like you explained before at the start of this thread, I believe they were mostly inspired by arcade shooters and not other RPG's.

Bethesda was likely also just being a bit lazy and coming up with excuses to be douche canoes too, apparently Dogmeat was supposed to be a constant consistent follower but one of the programmers intentionally left that disabled..with a rather nasty and childish message in the programming.

[Mavkiel]

Dump question, if you only output one item, can that one item have a script attached to it? Say you craft an "ammo box", when the box is consumed it then outputs everything else.