Health and melee hotkeys

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Let me start by saying that I have little or no scripting experience- none with the GECK- so I have absolutely no idea whether or not any of this would work, or how it might be accomplished.

That being said:

 

1. A melee hotkey (pistol whipping, not knifing)

Project Nevada has a submod that adds a grenade hotkey... is there a way to add a "melee" feature to the game for guns and the like? I think there's a command to degrade an equipped weapon's condition, as I'd imagine using a gun like a club is bad for said gun; the powered melee attacks (right hook? uppercut?) might be reusable, but with a script to damage the gun and knock back/damage the enemy.

 

2. Injuries and healing

 

While I was put off by the complexity/harshness of Arwen's tweaks, I like the basic concepts (increased penalties for "crippled" limbs, disease, etc.) in a more simplified form.

 

Injuries:

 

In general, all crippled limbs aside from the head create a "hard" ban on using weapons over the strength limit, instead of just a stat penalty. Also, a crippled torso or leg will cause an encumbered player to take damage while moving, possibly even while just standing around.

 

Head: I think that the concussion effect should be permanent until you treat your injured brain, possibly varying in intensity instead of an on-off. As a side note, unless you're wearing a helmet, you should get a brief concussion effect when you take sufficient head damage.

 

Legs: drastically decreased movement for crippled legs (falling down when hit by a "staggering blow" & definitely decreased resistance to grenade/etc. knocking you down) and decreased carry weight/run speed, take damage while walking/running (preferably just running, but I'm not sure if that's possible to filter)

 

Arms: could result in a weapon jamming (hard to reload?) and/or much slower reloading speeds, drawing and holstering weapons also takes more time. Also, there is a risk that you will be hurt when attacking (recoil hurts) or blocking- unarmed attacks are less powerful- and "special" or power attacks are impossible to use. Heavier weapons (two handed, at least) might be dropped when you try to use them; if your right hand is crippled, even one-handed weapons might be dropped. If both arms are crippled, then you are unable to use two handed weapons, in addition to the penalties for each arm.

 

Torso: carry weight, strength, and endurance are all drastically reduced, but the stat penalties are the major downside; given the aforementioned ban on exceeding your strength limit, this is going to hurt a lot more than in vanilla. Additional side effects include a possible chance of "flinching" which also would run a check for the above "drop weapon" or "fall down" chance if arms/legs respectively are crippled. Given the presence of vital organs, healing might be impeded (eating food could make you nauseous, perhaps?) and in general, survival-life sucks even more.

 

Diseases:

Head trauma (crippled, or just sufficiently damage), dehydration, sleep deprivation, disease, or bloodloss (i.e. low health) potentially result in the blurry "concussion" effect.

Exsanguination: severe injuries take a while to heal; taking excess damage or otherwise overexerting (fighting/firing a weapon, jumping/running, taking damage, etc.) can reopen them, causing blood-loss, i.e. you lose health over time.

 

Items:

 

->these items can only be used outside of combat.

 

Splint: The splint/brace in-game is a (re)usable/equippable? item that prevents the scripted damage for crippled limbs from running; stat penalties stay until treated by chems or meds. A "reinforced" brace additionally lowers the chance of getting knocked over or dropping a weapon, at the expense of mobility and reload/draw/fire speed.

 

Bandages: prevents the "bleed out" effect from exsanguination. Not reusable, but "bloody rags" or just "rags" (salvaged from clothing, among other things?) are given after being removed; with enough medical skill, a player could "sterilize" the bandages with a recipe (alcohol?) at a crafting table.

 

Drugs:

 

Med-X: as a pain-killer, it would reduce (but not eliminate) the penalties that arms and legs give, but it would also give a slight, pain-killer haze effect if you aren't already concussed. Once it wears off, a player who exerted/pushed themselves beyond the pain get a dose of reality... flinching, plus a double check for exsanguination, weapon-dropping, etc. so it sucks if you're still fighting...

 

Psycho: given its combat-oriented origins, it would greatly offset most of the penalties; a player would be able to "ignore" the scripted effects (a concussion would be replaced by a "drug induced haze, perhaps? wiki says it makes "fearless but impulsive" soldiers, so...)

given the nature of the drug, the withdrawal is far, far worse than Med-X; all existing penalties are doubled in severity and/or risk for a time; only Med-X, Fixer or resting it off will remove the penalty.

 

Alcohol is a sort-of a Med-X/Psycho go-between; it starts by reducing stat penalties (like Med X) and builds up to a drunken stupor.

Getting drunk eliminates all penalties, but also causes, well, a hangover, which simply penalizes stats and gives the proper, drunken haze visual effect. :pirate:

 

Jet: AD/HD on steroids; it has additional effects (good and bad) such as increased movement speed, reloading/holstering, etc. which increase when crippled to offset the injuries entirely, so that the affected stats stay at the same boosted level, crippled or otherwise. It gives a fatigue-induced lethargy (penalties to the previously augmented stats) when it wears off, which likewise increases in intensity when crippled; double the gain, double the pain.

 

Steady: Like Jet, it offsets the penalties of crippled arms plus gives the normal bonus to aiming. Gives "the Shakes" afterwards, which gives a flat penalty to both crippled and non-crippled players.

 

Mentats: clears up the concussion effect; no negative impact, aside from the standard potential for addiction.

[Wauthan]

Ouch! And I thought the XFO penalties were harsh enough. You sure don't mess around when it comes to getting hurt in-game. These effects sound pretty lethal just by themselves. I would say that such a mod is very possible though. There might even be various mods around already that, when combined, gets fairly close to what your looking for. But it would take quite a bit of additional scripting to put all of these things together.

 

I'll have to say that it sure doesn't sound like the mod would be much fun to actually play. At least not for someone who like a fast pace trough the game. I assume that you would want the Hydra drug removed since it would negate all the penalties immediately with no ill effect? But with your system even single crippled limb means that it's better to run away than to keep fighting. Leg injuries become very frustrating indeed for that reason. And the aftermath of almost every battle would become a time sink, unless you play as a stealthy sniper.

 

Not saying that the idea is bad. Just that it might take a while to balance out realism and fun so that neither is lacking. Also, to make sure that the battles don't start to lag due to too many scripts activating at once.

[Gribbleshnibit8]

All the health part sounds doable, but I'm not sure about the guns as melee weapons. While NVSE does have functions to switch them, they might not work correctly?

 

This mod has more information, and an example of it in action can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMWuhCyIcZs&feature=player_embedded

But the mod author hasn't updated it in over 8 months now, so it's probably dead. I agree it'd be a cool thing.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Ouch! And I thought the XFO penalties were harsh enough. You sure don't mess around when it comes to getting hurt in-game. These effects sound pretty lethal just by themselves. I would say that such a mod is very possible though. There might even be various mods around already that, when combined, gets fairly close to what your looking for. But it would take quite a bit of additional scripting to put all of these things together.

 

I'll have to say that it sure doesn't sound like the mod would be much fun to actually play. At least not for someone who like a fast pace trough the game. I assume that you would want the Hydra drug removed since it would negate all the penalties immediately with no ill effect? But with your system even single crippled limb means that it's better to run away than to keep fighting. Leg injuries become very frustrating indeed for that reason. And the aftermath of almost every battle would become a time sink, unless you play as a stealthy sniper.

 

Not saying that the idea is bad. Just that it might take a while to balance out realism and fun so that neither is lacking. Also, to make sure that the battles don't start to lag due to too many scripts activating at once.

Yeah, everything sounded, ah, nicer in my head. :tongue: I usually play a glass cannon with a tank companion to do the grunt work, so that probably colors things, too. Actually, I do think that Hydra should stay in; the survival skill is important in a survival setting, and tweaking the addiction effects could offset its usefulness.

 

 

The thing is, though, that I sort of expect armor to, well, work, and work very well. In other words: equipment, not level, should be the main factor in determining how much damage you do/take in a fight. In fact, I'd say that the guns and armor you and your enemies have should be the overriding concern, to the extent that good weapons are treasured beyond imagining and spotting a guy in full combat gear will scream trouble if you don't have similar protection. I don't care how much "experience" or "health" you have; a bullet's a bullet, no matter if it's a peashooter or a gatling. Unarmed players need to be walking tanks (ie power armor) or ninjas if they want to take out a guy with a gun.

Skill comes into play with stealth and accuracy, but at the end of the day, it's the gun that does the killing.

 

 

For instance, I'd like heavy armor to soak up ALL of the incoming damage (if it's capable of doing so) or at least be much more protective; it's a very fine line to walk, but IMO it would make for a far more interesting (and realistic) game.

Of course this is all blue sky conjecture.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

A bit of conjecture on a script for a melee hotkey:

 

there are two blocktypes: OnEquip and OnActorEquip- that might be of use; there's also a condition "isweaponskill" which could filter to energy weapons and guns; if the player has another weapon equipped, pressing the hotkey would give a "You cannot do that" type message and otherwise do nothing.

So, when the condition is true and the hotkey is pressed, the script plays an animation group (for the melee swing) and, if it hits, damages the enemy and the gun via script...