Skyrim Verisimilitude

[avianmosquito]

Alright, a while ago I mentioned I was starting a Skyrim mod once my Fallout: New Vegas mod was done. With my F:NV mod is done and being tested, I'm actually working on it. The point of the verisimilitude mod is to increase the believability of Skyrim's mechanics, reducing the strain on the player's willing suspension of disbelief. It also aims to make the gameplay overall more balanced and challenging. It's changed a great deal since from the original concept and I don't know what I'm keeping, so I'll just go over the changes I'm making in each version. Right now I'm working on the alpha, which will not be made public.

 

The alpha features more believable and better balanced combat mechanics, particularly when it comes to weapon damage. Kill moves are out until I find a way to make them function only on the AI. Weapon damage is many times higher. For instance, a steel sword has a base damage of 80. At 100 skill, this is now 160. With perks, 320. Without armour, melee weapons will generally kill you in a single hit. Swords are now the most powerful melee weapons, with better reach and damage than other weapons, but the others are now as fast as they are. To counter the sword's clear advantages, axes now ignore 25% of the enemy's armour rating and maces ignore 50%. Maces are now the weakest category of melee weapon. Weapons are also much lighter, although swords are somewhat heavier than the other weapons.

 

All weapons can crit for double damage, but swords get triple damage and daggers quadruple. Higher quality swords get a better critical chance. Daggers get this effect much more strongly and also get a higher chance to start with. Melee critical chance is now normally 20%. With daggers, it is 30%. For every quality grade above steel, this increases by 2%. This means the daedric dagger has the highest critical chance at 40%, while the daedric sword only gets 30%. Dual wielding no longer slows your attacks, I find not being able to block makes it useless enough already.

 

Note: I wanted to make skill increase critical chance. Don't know how. I'll see if I can figure it out, but if anybody knows please tell me.

 

Ranged weapons are now mostly dependent on the arrows they fire for their damage, although bows do lend a few extra points. Arrow damage is 5-40, bow damage is 0-40. A steel/ancient nord arrow deals 15, a hunting/ancient nord bow deals 10. 25 between the two, 50 with skill and 100 with perks. Base 10% critical chance for 2x damage. For every quality grade above steel, this increases 1%, so 15% with a daedric bow. More powerful bows fire more slowly. Arrows now have wieght, and heavier arrows fly slower, but arrows are much faster overall. (About as fast as real arrows fired from quality bows.)

 

Note: I wanted to make more arrows move faster when a more powerful bow fires them. Same deal as the previous note.

 

Magic is overall more effective, with spells costing much less magicka (except for conjuration) but magicka returning much slower and being harder to restore. Conjuration spells still cost the same amount, but now last much longer. You may now have as many summons as you want. (Not sure the AI will take advantage of this, but if they do some battles may get much harder.) Destruction spells have longer range, deal more damage and have more powerful special effects. Illusion spells now last much longer, alteration spells now have greater effect and restoration spells continue working for a while longer after cast.

 

Alchemy effects now take place over a longer time with a lower magnitude. A potion of healing now heals 1 for 60. That's ten points more than it used to be, but over a minute instead of it being instantaneous. Same for player-created potions. The exception are weakness/resistance potions, which have a longer duration, but retain their strength.

 

Armour now actually makes a difference. Even regular clothing provides an armour rating now (under the light armour skill until I find something better) and armour is now by far more protective at lower levels. Basically, the impact of skill and perks is lowered for armour, but the initial rating is higher. A full suit of light armor (no smithing benefits, not sure how I want to deal with that yet) ranges from 25.5-56.5%, while heavy armour ranges from 33.25-72%. Clothing should be 17.75-41%. Armour ratings are capped at 80% and shall remain as such until I manage to add equipment wear. (Then it'll be 90%.) However, armour also slows the player down much more. (The encum effects are now 5 with weapon and 4 without weapon.)

 

Note: I want to find a way to make armour defend against magic as well, by a smaller amount. Any ideas how?

 

Blocking also makes an actual difference. Blocking with a shield now blocks 45-90% of all incoming damage. Blocking with a weapon blocks 40-80%. Shields now also cut spell damage in half by default and cut it in half again when the elemental protection perk is used.

 

Note: I wanted to make it possible to block while dual wielding, (lower percentage, of course) but once again I don't know if I can. If you know how, please let me know.

 

Timescale is now 1, not 30. Regeneration has been changed to match. As a result, all regeneration effects last longer in order to make them actually matter.

 

That's all for now. In the beta (which will also not be public) I will be removing all traces of of Bethesda's rediculous levelling, bringing back all the races added by my Oblivion verisimilitude mod, adding playable children and so on. (Not using the vanilla child models. They're crap. Seriously, the vanilla model for the female child makes it look like she has a penis. If somebody is willing to make more realistic models, I'd appreciate it.) The final version will simply be a refined version of the beta.

[RedRavyn]

It's a mixed bag for me. I like some of your ideas and I dislike others. This is why I don't use "complete overhaul" mods, but just install smaller ones that tweak things just the way I like them.

 

I do have one specific comment, though. You do know that forcing timescale to "1" is going to cause quest-breaking and possibly even game-breaking bugs unless you completely revamp all the various time-dependent AIs in the game. This has been well-documented in Oblivion to break the game. I ran with a timescale of "1" in Skyrim and found a lot of quests stalling out. "2" works much better. Safer, still, is a timescale of "5" to "8". The main problem is that with low timescales NPCs AI's seem to get stalled, and in many cases they aren't able to get to places they need to be for timed events.

 

Try starting a new game, immediately set the timescale to "1", and follow your guide into Riverwood. You'll see all sorts of strangeness when you get there too early in the day because people won't be where they're supposed to be, but other people will be acting as though they are. I wish you well with trying to discover, unravel, and fix all the many time-sensitive events in this game

[avianmosquito]

If it doesn't work I'll just set it back. Just like I did F:NV. And actually, Oblivion works great at that timescale. My mod for that has a timescale of one and works perfectly.

 

Edit: Although "paranoia" becomes a huge pain in the ass. Spend 72 hours following people? No, I'm just going to cut Glarthir's head off and be on my way, thank you very much.

 

Edit2: Also, I want specifics. What you like, what you don't like and why. That's called "feedback" and is very useful, something "well it's a mixed bag for me" is not.

Edited April 28, 2012 by avianmosquito