[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[ZOMKILL]

Hi Antistar, how do you wear your mod? I hope that as always it goes well, a very big hug

[antistar]

Thanks. :)

 

I've been working on normalising max HP values across... everything and everyone, pretty much. I'm incredibly fortunate that this FO4Edit script exists, because otherwise what I'm doing would be potentially unworkable and at the very least would take ages.

 

Basically the problem is that some actors vary hugely in how much health they have. Human characters are possibly the worst offenders, ranging anywhere from 30 HP to 1300 HP, if you can believe it. Possibly even more. That's one human taking around forty-three times the punishment of another, to put it in perspective. Humans stronger than deathclaws. Humans as weak as chickens.

 

Since I'm normalising the damage output of weapons, I need to do the same with max HP values. I'm still working out the implementation (you can see me talking about it in the comments on that "Despongifier" script there), but the current plan is to define a rough range of potential max HP ranges for each race (a.k.a. creature type) in the game by editing race records manually and actor records as needed via that script. The minimum is defined by the base health on the race record, and the maximum is defined by the script, which picks up any actor records with health that goes over the max I define, and then edits the record to reduce it.

 

The great thing about using a script for this is that I can tweak values in it and then just run it again to quickly rebalance things.

 

At the moment in WARS, humans range from around 150 to 300 HP - that includes the player, depending on their END. (Though boosting it a bit higher via various perks is still possible.)

 

 

I'm also taking the first steps towards defining the actual altered damage values different weapons will have. Currently tentatively setting 5.56x45mm weapons (because damage will largely be determined by ammo type) to 75 DAM, as kind of a baseline. So the absolute weakest, unarmoured human character can take two or three shots to the chest to go down. More or less depending on the condition of the weapon (i.e. the receiver level), its barrel length, and probably what kind of ammo is being used. (FMJ, HP, AP, etc.)

[Moldy]

1,100 RpM. Holy smokes,I never knew that the Glock was such a buzzsaw. Can the engine even handle that?

[antistar]

That's the low end of the apparent range for the Glock 18C fire-rate, too: 1100-1200 RPM. It's quite something. (I'm not really a fan of that show's direction/editing, but it does give a good look at the Glock 18C there.)

 

And the game seemed fine with it firing that fast.

[antistar]

As an update:

I've done the stats for the Glock now. Its weight ranges from 1.5-3.3 lb at the moment, though the calibre conversions (to .45 ACP and 10mm Auto, from the default 9x19mm) will add a little to that. It's very difficult to control in full-auto unless you put a stock on it, a compensator, preferably a ported barrel as well (though those do reduce the damage and range slightly). I once saw a video in which a guy tried out firing a Glock in full-auto and described it as being like trying to hold onto a fire-hose going full-bore - even with a stock attached - so that's what I'm going for with the recoil stats. :smile:

I also finished rebalancing max HP values across everyone/everything. It took a while, but now that it's all set-up (and my tweaked version of that script is done, importantly), making changes will be quick, if necessary.

Another recent thing was nerfing the often outrageous NPC accuracy across the game. Basically as in this mod, though with some different values here and there. The idea is to balance against the more deadly combat; you'll get hit less, but take more damage when you do.

What else... oh; I also tweaked locational damage across the game. In the base game, it's generally head-shots doing 2x damage and everything else doing 1x damage. I changed that to head-shots doing 3x damage and shots to limbs doing 0.75x damage. Body shots are still 1x. Certain creatures have some idiosyncrasies too; e.g. robo-brains and sentry-bots taking 1.25x damage to their tracks.

The aim here is for getting head-shots (and hitting other vulnerable parts) to be the new "critical hit", since I'm removing crits for ranged weapons. Making it more player-skill oriented rather than being a video-gamey VATS/random-chance mechanic.

[CaptainJax]

Dude you've been working on this for almost a year now. The progress from when you started is tremendous! Keep up this fantastic work, because I'm hype as hell for it's release.

[antistar]

Thanks - and I was working on WARS for a couple of months before posting this WIP thread, so it's over a year now; yeesh. I think I started in September 2016? Yeah, here's the first WIP image I posted for it. So I started on WARS immediately after I finally finished Clockwork (and did a couple of critical updates for it) in August.

 

Oh, and if anyone ever accuses me of feature-creep over the combat overhaul aspect of WARS, I can point them to the description for that very first image post; it was always the plan, right from the start. ;)

 

 

Anyway; the Mini-14 has (hopefully) realistic weight values now. It was a pain to work them out; I had to estimate a lot of it. Currently it ranges from 5.1-16.9 lb. For comparison, the AR-15 ranges from 5.7-19.6 lb, so the Mini-14 seems a bit lighter overall just from the min-max range. However I think it will work out that with ideal middle-ground configurations for each weapon, the AR-15 may be a little lighter. Also the higher max for the AR-15 is largely due to it being able to take more attachments. The M203 in particular is pretty heavy all on its own.

 

(This is all in the context of WARS of course - though again, hopefully it will be similar in the real-world.)

[meowjar]

What else do you plan on adding and rebalancing?

[antistar]

Hmm... I'll probably forget things, but off the top of my head:

 

- AmmoTweaks integration is a big one - once its update is out.

 

- Lots of changes and additions re: where and when weapons and ammo spawn. E.g. adding the new weapons, making certain DLC weapons available in the Commonwealth too.

 

- Related to the above; making weapons have finite ammo when used by NPCs. I'll have to make them spawn with more ammo plus a backup melee weapon. I may leave the companion weapons with infinite NPC ammo, though - the rationale being that if you leave them with their preferred weapon then they'll supply their own ammo, but if you want them to use something else then you need to supply ammo for it too. We'll see.

 

- I'll need to go over the weapon mod crafting recipes - mainly for the new/changed weapons, but maybe others too - tweaking ingredients and perk requirements. I may add solder as a new component to be used where adhesive doesn't make much sense.

 

- I still need to go through all the weapons in the game and rebalance them, tweak their weapon mod structure, etc. That's a big one too.

 

- Strength requirements may be a thing - like I was talking about a while ago. That's something isathar was working on for AmmoTweaks so I may get lucky there and not have to do much myself to get that in. ;)

 

- More descriptive info in weapon mod descriptions. Very similar to Better Mod Descriptions in that it involves actual numbers rather than vague terms like "better" and "exceptional", though I'm using language that's a bit easier to parse, I think. Anyway I've been doing this as I go, but I'll have to do it across everything eventually.

 

 

I don't know; lots of little things.

[SHOXXXXYY]

Hey Anti,

 

will it be possible to install Mods like TrueStorms with Wars without any problems?