Skyrim verisimilitude mod

[avianmosquito]

I'm starting a Skyrim Verisimilitude mod as soon as the kit is out, supposedly today, and I will need some help to complete it. I can't do modeling at all, so the weapons listed here will need to be made for it to be done as I intended, although I will work without them if I have to. I also can't script my way out of a wet paper bag, so I will have to consult the forums for help in that regard. I'm making a wide variety of changes, because honestly Skyrim's gameplay is horrible and broken, even compared to its predecessors.

 

1. Executions:

 

In the original game, executions would occur when the last actor on a side was attacked at about 25% health. This last actor was almost certainly the player, because they are always alone. This left them unable to move, block, attack or otherwise defend themselves while their enemy winded up an attack for sometimes as long as five or six seconds. This was a horrible mechanic clearly designed only to look cool, like everything else in Skyrim. It was pointless, frustrating and made no sense. Your character has enough time to block, attack or just move far away, but they just stand there and stretch their neck out for the enemy's attack and there's nothing you can do about it. Worse yet, it was instant death, which made no sense because by default in Skyrim weapons leave little cuts and bruises and normally take dozens of hits to kill most enemies.

 

I'm removing executions in their entirety, because there's just no way to fix a mechanic that horribly broken.

 

2. Weapon damage:

 

In vanilla Skyrim, a character took practically no damage from weapons. Getting hit with a warhammer was less damaging than getting hit with the tiniest puff of fire. Axes were stronger than swords, and maces were stronger than axes. Worse yet, bows were stronger than any of them, and the same pattern repeated for their two-handed counterparts just barely above the damage of bows.

 

In reality, a blade or bludgeon does an obscene amount of damage to a human body. A sword will normally cut most of the way through a body, destroying organs, bones and muscles all the way across its path. The target is immediately incapacitated and death from blood loss rarely takes longer than a minute. While bludgeoning is generally not as deadly, it's just as incapacitating. Broken ribs, ruptured organs and torn blood vessels tend to put people down and keep them down. More importantly, the order is almost the exact opposite. An axe is far more deadly than a mace and stops just as well. A sword is deadlier than both of them combined. I understand gameplay balance requires doing it a bit differently, but they could at least have done it in a manner that made sense. And another thing: bows are weaker than melee weapons on a consistency. Don't get me wrong, bows are as deadly as firearms. (More or less, depends on the bow and the arrow as well as the firearm you are comparing it to.) The issue is that melee weapons are by far deadlier, and the advantage of intimidation does not exist in Skyrim because the enemies don't fear for their lives and will not take cover from you.

 

I'll be changing all of that. A sword will be by far the strongest melee weapon, but the other two will be cheaper and more common, with an advantage against armour. Bows will be slower and weaker than melee weapons, but their range and speed will be by far greater. Specifically, a melee weapon will have a base damage score which will be improved by skill, quality and perks. For example, a longsword will have a base damage of 40, an axe 30, and a greatsword 60. This will be improved by 5 for each grade above steel, and reduced by 5 for each grade below. This is increased by a percentage equal to skill and perks can increase it by as much as 100%.

 

As for bows, I may handle them the same way, but I want to do it in a way that fits reality more closely. Namely, I want to make it so that bows multiply an arrow's speed and damage depending on your ability as an archer. I want the bow to provide a cap to the multiplier you can get, so a new bow only matters if your marksman skill is higher than the cap of your old one. The arrow would provide the base speed and damage values. The base speed of a normal arrow would be about that of the original game, but the multipliers would normally have it moving considerably faster.

 

3. Armour:

 

In Skyrim, armour provide no noticeable penalty to movement or spell effectiveness. It also provides no noticeable protection. I'm serious, armour is nearly meaningless in Skyrim. Look at the formula, and it becomes rather clear your armour is not protecting you any significant amount. Clearly Bethesda believe armour is useless.

 

Yeah, that s*** don't fly with me. The way armour will work in my mod will actually make sense and be much easier to read. Each quality grade has a base armour rating. (4-15 light, 9-20 heavy) Armour provides a rating five times as high, a helmet or shield provides and equal value, gauntlets half the value and boots one quarter the value. This comes to a total 7.75*base. Skill improves it by a percentage equal to half its value (0-50%) and perks can add as much as half the base value as well. This means the maximum rating is 310. There will be no "hidden rating."

 

This does three things: It adds a number of bonus hitpoints equal to its value, provides a point resistance equal to half its value and a percent resistance equal to one quarter of its value. (Capped at 70%) This means at 310, you have 310 bonus hitpoints, 155 is subtracted from each hit and another 70% is resisted. The square root of your rating is used as a magic resistance, as well as your resistance to bludgeoning weapons, both point and percent in both cases.

 

4. Environmental damage:

 

In Skyrim, there is no such thing as environmental damage. You can swim naked in the frozen northern waters and be perfectly fine. This is completely nonsensical, and I shouldn't have to point that out. I'm changing this. You can now take as much as ten points per second frost damage from the environment, double that in water. To compensate, a resistance to fire, frost and shock is added just for wearing clothing. Wearing a hood or helmet resists 2/20%. Gloves and gauntlets, as well as shoes and boots, provide 1/10%, and armour provides 5/50%. This is multiplied by .75 for shock, and .5 for fire. So wearing a full outfit will resist the coldest parts of the map for quite some time, but going into the frigid nordic water will still kill you fairly quickly.

 

5. Stats:

 

I really think Bethesda screwed the pooch removing attributes, but there doesn't look to be anything I can do about it. So I'll just work with what little I have. Base magicka and stamina will now be 1000 and improve 100 points per level should the player decide to improve them. Stamina will now naturally regenerate 10000/hour, magicka 100/hour and health 1/hour. Timescale is one. So 3,600 seconds, not 120. This means magicka will not regenerate fast enough to keep casting once you run out in combat, and health will take days, maybe weeks, to return from a significant injury. Also, your health automatically improves 1pt/level, your stamina and magicka by 10/level. Finally, each skill improves your health, magicka and stamina by a small amount with each increase. It improves a total five points, assigned to each of these three. (Health only improves 10% as much as the others) For instance, the skill "one-handed" will improve stamina by 3 and health by 0.2 with each increase. So with 100 one-handed you get 300 bonus stamina and 20 bonus health. "Destruction" improves magicka by 3, stamina by 1 and health by 0.1, so at 100 you get 300 extra magicka, 100 bonus stamina and 10 bonus hitpoints.

 

6. Impairment:

 

I know the critical existance failure is a universal trope, but I hate it and I'm doing something about it. Health damage will now reduce maximum magicka and stamina by ten times its value. You also lose a percentage of armour rating, weapon damage, carrying capacity and spell effectiveness equal to 1/2 the percentage of your health you've lost. You WILL get weaker when wounded, and the same goes for anyone you wound. So striking first will make winning a whole lot easier.

 

7. Magic:

 

In Skyrim magic is so horribly overpowered the other methods of attack are almost without merit, and it's so extreme I dropped the game out of disgust with Bethesda's quality of work just because of it. It isn't just that, either. Fire is badly overpowered compared to the others two elements, conjuration magic doesn't last long enough to mean a damn thing, and illusion is not worth using. So you're stuck using destruction, resoration and alteration through the game, because all the other options are s***.

 

That said, the other changes made change this rather drastically, and magic is now the clear underdog. So a few quick fixes will fix this and the issues with the magic schools other than destruction. Firstly, increase the range and speed of spells, as well as increasing their effects to match the new system. Namely, frost damage will deal twenty times its value to your stamina, while electricity will deal ten times its value to your magicka. Fire's extra damage will last much longer. Conjuration spells will take ten times as much magicka, but last thirty times as long. Not certain how to deal with the uselessness of alteration and illusion.

 

8. Hand to hand:

 

Hand to hand is useless in Skyrim. It has no skill associated with it, so you can't improve it at all, and it deals almost no damage, with a slow attack rate, no blocking, and a horrible animation that basicly amounts to angry, drunken flailing.

 

If I can add new skills, I will add hand to hand as one of them. If not, it'll be counted under one-handed. It will follow the melee formula, with a base damage of 10. You will be able to block with it, and the attack rate will be much faster. It'll be a bludgeoning weapon, so it'll be affected less by armour, cause double normal stamina damage and earn extra experience. Finally, it'll deal better sneak attack damage than most weapon types.

 

9. New skills:

 

If I can add new skills, I will. These are hand to hand, (see above) movement and endurance.

 

Movement will be the replacement for acrobatics and athletics. It'll improve a little bit just walking, but it'll improve faster running. Sprinting improves it even faster. You also improve it by swimming, which combines with the other two. Jumping and taking fall damage will also improve it. Its perks improve walk speed, run speed, sprint speed, swim speed, jump hieght and fall damage, as well as reducing the stamina cost for all these things.

 

Endurance is the replacement for the attribute of the same name. It improves every time you lose health, magicka or stamina, as well as with every level and skill increase. It provides a natural armour rating equal to 20% of its value, and its perks improve health, magicka, stamina and the regeneration of each of these things, as well as increasing the natural armour rating it provides.

 

10. Bleed:

 

If I can work out a reasonable system for it, I'll add bleed damage to all weapons. This will be an amount of extra damage taken after each hit equal to 10, 20, 50 or 100 times its value over ten minutes.

 

11. Body damage.

 

I would like to add body damage to Skyrim, like that present in Fallout. Not sure if its possible, but if it is I will implement it.

 

12. Random encounters:

 

It's highly unlikely you'd be attacked every couple minutes in the wilderness. I'll be reducing the aggression and confidence values of wild animals and reducing the chance of an encounter to 10% of what it currently is. However, the individual encounters will be somewhat harder to compensate.

 

13. Fall damage:

 

The fall damage in Skyrim is too damned high. Changing that.

 

 

[bamfigms]

I like the sound of most of this. I would love to see how this turns out. If I can get any better at modding I will help if I can.

Though one thing I would like to mention is that while your pretty accurate as far as swords being the most deadly weapon. That really only applies to someone in little or now armor. Historically when someone was up against heavy plate, a sword wasn't much more than a metal stick. A mace, axe, axe spike, hammer, or hammer spike would much more damage against someone in heavy plate

 

Edit: Props for the church quote in the sig.

Edited February 8, 2012 by bamfigms

[avianmosquito]

I like the sound of most of this. I would love to see how this turns out. If I can get any better at modding I will help if I can.

Though one thing I would like to mention is that while your pretty accurate as far as swords being the most deadly weapon. That really only applies to someone in little or now armor. Historically when someone was up against heavy plate, a sword wasn't much more than a metal stick. A mace, axe, axe spike, hammer, or hammer spike would much more damage against someone in heavy plate

 

Edit: Props for the church quote in the sig.

 

Oh yeah, sure, swords are useless against armour. I mean, just a suit of platemail takes it all the way down to just having your ribs broken and lungs collapsed. Yeah, that's not deadly at all. [/sarcasm]

 

Come on, you're still being clubbed with a metal rod, it's going to be deadly regardless of circumstance. The armour just reduces it, it doesn't negate it entirely. A sword can and likely will still leave lethal wounds straight through platemail. The armour does its job, to be sure, but the sword is still a killing weapon against any enemy. And you're just counting slashes. You can stab through any armour a human can wear, the only issue is getting the sword back out.

Edited February 8, 2012 by avianmosquito

[avianmosquito]

I'm starting a Skyrim Verisimilitude mod as soon as the kit is out, supposedly today, and I will need some help to complete it. I can't do modeling at all, so the weapons listed here will need to be made for it to be done as I intended, although I will work without them if I have to. I also can't script my way out of a wet paper bag, so I will have to consult the forums for help in that regard. I'm making a wide variety of changes, because honestly Skyrim's gameplay is horrible and broken, even compared to its predecessors.

 

1. Executions:

 

In the original game, executions would occur when the last actor on a side was attacked at about 25% health. This last actor was almost certainly the player, because they are always alone. This left them unable to move, block, attack or otherwise defend themselves while their enemy winded up an attack for sometimes as long as five or six seconds. This was a horrible mechanic clearly designed only to look cool, like everything else in Skyrim. It was pointless, frustrating and made no sense. Your character has enough time to block, attack or just move far away, but they just stand there and stretch their neck out for the enemy's attack and there's nothing you can do about it. Worse yet, it was instant death, which made no sense because by default in Skyrim weapons leave little cuts and bruises and normally take dozens of hits to kill most enemies.

 

I'm removing executions in their entirety, because there's just no way to fix a mechanic that horribly broken.

 

2. Weapon damage:

 

In vanilla Skyrim, a character took practically no damage from weapons. Getting hit with a warhammer was less damaging than getting hit with the tiniest puff of fire. Axes were stronger than swords, and maces were stronger than axes. Worse yet, bows were stronger than any of them, and the same pattern repeated for their two-handed counterparts just barely above the damage of bows.

 

In reality, a blade or bludgeon does an obscene amount of damage to a human body. A sword will normally cut most of the way through a body, destroying organs, bones and muscles all the way across its path. The target is immediately incapacitated and death from blood loss rarely takes longer than a minute. While bludgeoning is generally not as deadly, it's just as incapacitating. Broken ribs, ruptured organs and torn blood vessels tend to put people down and keep them down. More importantly, the order is almost the exact opposite. An axe is far more deadly than a mace and stops just as well. A sword is deadlier than both of them combined. I understand gameplay balance requires doing it a bit differently, but they could at least have done it in a manner that made sense. And another thing: bows are weaker than melee weapons on a consistency. Don't get me wrong, bows are as deadly as firearms. (More or less, depends on the bow and the arrow as well as the firearm you are comparing it to.) The issue is that melee weapons are by far deadlier, and the advantage of intimidation does not exist in Skyrim because the enemies don't fear for their lives and will not take cover from you.

 

I'll be changing all of that. A sword will be by far the strongest melee weapon, but the other two will be cheaper and more common, with an advantage against armour. Bows will be slower and weaker than melee weapons, but their range and speed will be by far greater. Specifically, a melee weapon will have a base damage score which will be improved by skill, quality and perks. For example, a longsword will have a base damage of 40, an axe 30, and a greatsword 60. This will be improved by 5 for each grade above steel, and reduced by 5 for each grade below. This is increased by a percentage equal to skill and perks can increase it by as much as 100%.

 

As for bows, I may handle them the same way, but I want to do it in a way that fits reality more closely. Namely, I want to make it so that bows multiply an arrow's speed and damage depending on your ability as an archer. I want the bow to provide a cap to the multiplier you can get, so a new bow only matters if your marksman skill is higher than the cap of your old one. The arrow would provide the base speed and damage values. The base speed of a normal arrow would be about that of the original game, but the multipliers would normally have it moving considerably faster.

 

3. Armour:

 

In Skyrim, armour provide no noticeable penalty to movement or spell effectiveness. It also provides no noticeable protection. I'm serious, armour is nearly meaningless in Skyrim. Look at the formula, and it becomes rather clear your armour is not protecting you any significant amount. Clearly Bethesda believe armour is useless.

 

Yeah, that s*** don't fly with me. The way armour will work in my mod will actually make sense and be much easier to read. Each quality grade has a base armour rating. (4-15 light, 9-20 heavy) Armour provides a rating five times as high, a helmet or shield provides and equal value, gauntlets half the value and boots one quarter the value. This comes to a total 7.75*base. Skill improves it by a percentage equal to half its value (0-50%) and perks can add as much as half the base value as well. This means the maximum rating is 310. There will be no "hidden rating."

 

This does three things: It adds a number of bonus hitpoints equal to its value, provides a point resistance equal to half its value and a percent resistance equal to one quarter of its value. (Capped at 70%) This means at 310, you have 310 bonus hitpoints, 155 is subtracted from each hit and another 70% is resisted. The square root of your rating is used as a magic resistance, as well as your resistance to bludgeoning weapons, both point and percent in both cases.

 

4. Environmental damage:

 

In Skyrim, there is no such thing as environmental damage. You can swim naked in the frozen northern waters and be perfectly fine. This is completely nonsensical, and I shouldn't have to point that out. I'm changing this. You can now take as much as ten points per second frost damage from the environment, double that in water. To compensate, a resistance to fire, frost and shock is added just for wearing clothing. Wearing a hood or helmet resists 2/20%. Gloves and gauntlets, as well as shoes and boots, provide 1/10%, and armour provides 5/50%. This is multiplied by .75 for shock, and .5 for fire. So wearing a full outfit will resist the coldest parts of the map for quite some time, but going into the frigid nordic water will still kill you fairly quickly.

 

5. Stats:

 

I really think Bethesda screwed the pooch removing attributes, but there doesn't look to be anything I can do about it. So I'll just work with what little I have. Base magicka and stamina will now be 1000 and improve 100 points per level should the player decide to improve them. Stamina will now naturally regenerate 10000/hour, magicka 100/hour and health 1/hour. Timescale is one. So 3,600 seconds, not 120. This means magicka will not regenerate fast enough to keep casting once you run out in combat, and health will take days, maybe weeks, to return from a significant injury. Also, your health automatically improves 1pt/level, your stamina and magicka by 10/level. Finally, each skill improves your health, magicka and stamina by a small amount with each increase. It improves a total five points, assigned to each of these three. (Health only improves 10% as much as the others) For instance, the skill "one-handed" will improve stamina by 3 and health by 0.2 with each increase. So with 100 one-handed you get 300 bonus stamina and 20 bonus health. "Destruction" improves magicka by 3, stamina by 1 and health by 0.1, so at 100 you get 300 extra magicka, 100 bonus stamina and 10 bonus hitpoints.

 

6. Impairment:

 

I know the critical existance failure is a universal trope, but I hate it and I'm doing something about it. Health damage will now reduce maximum magicka and stamina by ten times its value. You also lose a percentage of armour rating, weapon damage, carrying capacity and spell effectiveness equal to 1/2 the percentage of your health you've lost. You WILL get weaker when wounded, and the same goes for anyone you wound. So striking first will make winning a whole lot easier.

 

7. Magic:

 

In Skyrim magic is so horribly overpowered the other methods of attack are almost without merit, and it's so extreme I dropped the game out of disgust with Bethesda's quality of work just because of it. It isn't just that, either. Fire is badly overpowered compared to the others two elements, conjuration magic doesn't last long enough to mean a damn thing, and illusion is not worth using. So you're stuck using destruction, restoration and alteration through the game, because all the other options are s***.

 

That said, the other changes made change this rather drastically, and magic is now the clear underdog. So a few quick fixes will fix this and the issues with the magic schools other than destruction. Firstly, increase the range and speed of spells, as well as increasing their effects to match the new system. Namely, frost damage will deal twenty times its value to your stamina, while electricity will deal ten times its value to your magicka. Fire's extra damage will last much longer. Conjuration spells will take ten times as much magicka, but last thirty times as long. Not certain how to deal with the uselessness of alteration and illusion.

 

8. Hand to hand:

 

Hand to hand is useless in Skyrim. It has no skill associated with it, so you can't improve it at all, and it deals almost no damage, with a slow attack rate, no blocking, and a horrible animation that basicly amounts to angry, drunken flailing.

 

If I can add new skills, I will add hand to hand as one of them. If not, it'll be counted under one-handed. It will follow the melee formula, with a base damage of 10. You will be able to block with it, and the attack rate will be much faster. It'll be a bludgeoning weapon, so it'll be affected less by armour, cause double normal stamina damage and earn extra experience. Finally, it'll deal better sneak attack damage than most weapon types.

 

9. New skills:

 

If I can add new skills, I will. These are hand to hand, (see above) movement and endurance.

 

Movement will be the replacement for acrobatics and athletics. It'll improve a little bit just walking, but it'll improve faster running. Sprinting improves it even faster. You also improve it by swimming, which combines with the other two. Jumping and taking fall damage will also improve it. Its perks improve walk speed, run speed, sprint speed, swim speed, jump hieght and fall damage, as well as reducing the stamina cost for all these things.

 

Endurance is the replacement for the attribute of the same name. It improves every time you lose health, magicka or stamina, as well as with every level and skill increase. It provides a natural armour rating equal to 20% of its value, and its perks improve health, magicka, stamina and the regeneration of each of these things, as well as increasing the natural armour rating it provides.

 

10. Bleed:

 

If I can work out a reasonable system for it, I'll add bleed damage to all weapons. This will be an amount of extra damage taken after each hit equal to 10, 20, 50 or 100 times its value over ten minutes.

 

11. Body damage.

 

I would like to add body damage to Skyrim, like that present in Fallout. Not sure if its possible, but if it is I will implement it.

 

12. Random encounters:

 

It's highly unlikely you'd be attacked every couple minutes in the wilderness. I'll be reducing the aggression and confidence values of wild animals and reducing the chance of an encounter to 10% of what it currently is. However, the individual encounters will be somewhat harder to compensate.

 

13. Fall damage:

 

The fall damage in Skyrim is too damned high. Changing that.

 

 

 

Three notes: First, my copy of F:NV just started working again. Going to do that mod first, because I promised it first. Second, changing the armour system to no longer provide bonus hitpoints, have the point resistance be equal to the armour rating, have the percentage be 1/4 of the point resistance and cap at 50%. Third, I've got a project going on a video game now and I won't have as much time to work on this. So it's possible I'll never get to the Skyrim mod. That said, since in my opinion Skyrim is by far the worst game of the three, I'm not exactly heartbroken about this.