Simple is subjective.

[Mktavish]

Sorry maybe that was harsh ... but that is the reality of it.

 

And ya sure we can discuss your vision of a hardcore mode .... but let's not start with fantasy engine expectations.

 

So again ... why have all the skills start at Zero ?

[EPDGaffney]

The engine won't display 0 as far as I remember, but it will understand it as 0. Similarly, try setting your Unarmed to 500000 and deliver a bare-fisted punch to anything in the Wasteland, and it will die, but your Pip-Boy will still display 100.

 

To my knowledge, the only thing you can do would be to modify the skills directly, by -15 or something. That or do a little bit more complex scripting and grab the actual skill values after SPECIAL is set and subtract each one by that much. But I don't really know that you're ready for that. It's going to be a lot of little things to get it working cleanly. If it's for personal use, that's one thing, but throwing a ModAv on someone's game with no safety net if they uninstall or if another mod conflicts is not going to be well received. I don't really have the time to put in right now, but it's not going to be as easy as it probably should be, so do with that information what you will.

[Mktavish]

I had a modding thought that might be what your looking for on the role play start at 0.

 

Make a quest that displays objectives , telling you what level you are. And based on what ever criteria you want in game. You then have this quest advance stages , which trigger a script piece ... just an OnActivate type block. And also could have an NPC they go talk to , that each stage triggers new dialogue.

And then these dialogues can run their own OnActivate script ... triggering something else.

...........just to mention how the engine could work ... but don't lock yourself into one idea.

 

The Geck is very pliable ... and basically saying there are many roads to Rome.

But sorry unfortunately ... your base state 0 vision. Doesn't sound like it will work

But then remember ... with each of these quest stages , you could impose detriments , adjust skills , spec ... whatever. But it is a run time change ... not static in the file. If that makes sense :ninja:

[Alanedelawn]

Could a script pass console commands to set "X" skill to "Y" value at the beginning of the game, during the time the pre-order packs are being given for example?

[EPDGaffney]

A script can do almost anything. It's more the amount of work that may cause trouble. But the thing is the skills are already at 0 if you've taken care of the initial offset variables here:

https://prnt.sc/k2absj

 

But they're only 2 to begin with. What you're seeing is the result of the SPECIAL values adding to that base amount. This is governed by fAVDSkillPrimaryBonusMult, which is 2 by default and determines how many skill points are added to a skill by 1 point of the relevant SPECIAL actor value. Then there's fAVDSkillLuckBonusMult, which is 0.5 by default and determines how much Luck adds to all skills per 1 point in Luck.

 

You could set all that to 0 and be done if that works for you. But if you want to start with 0 in all skills and have only SPECIAL points accumulated later (or temporarily as by magazines or clothing, &c.) affect your skills, that's going to be harder to do cleanly.

 

Setting a skill to 0 without adjusting the Game Settings variables I mentioned above will involve knowing what's the value of each SPECIAL statistic, which you'll need to grab any time SPECIAL is adjusted at the beginning (twice, normally), then determining what that does to each skill, and finally using ModAV on each skill to remove whatever SPECIAL has done to increase it. Perhaps a Perk or Effect (preferably a Perk) can be made to implement this, so that uninstalling your mod mid-playthrough won't break anything.

[RoyBatterian]

There is a way to do this, I've seen it before. I will look into it and get back to you. I want to do something similar myself.

 

:EDIT: in addition to the above 2 game settings, there is also the following.

 

fAVDSkillBarterBase

fAVDSkillBigGunsBase

fAVDSkillEnergyWeaponsBase

fAVDSkillExplosivesBase

fAVDSkillLockpickBase

fAVDSkillMedicineBase

fAVDSkillMeleeWeaponsBase

fAVDSkillRepairBase

fAVDSkillScienceBase

fAVDSkillSmallGunsBase

fAVDSkillSneakBase

fAVDSkillSpeechBase

fAVDSkillSurvivalBase

fAVDSkillUnarmedBase

 

These are all set to 2 by default and you can change them to 0.

 

Additionally you can also change the following settings to make the game more difficult.

 

fAVDTagBonus (default 15) , I set this to 10.

iLevelUpSkillPointsBase (default is 11) I set this to 10 myself, and some folks set it to 5 or so.

iSkillPointsTagSkillMult (default is 1) you can increase this so every point put in a tag skill is multiplied.

iLevelsPerPerk (default 2) you can raise or lower this to control how many levels it takes before you get a new perk.

 

The following may control the intelligence bonus for skills on level up, but I'm not sure and you'd have to experiment to find out.

 

iLevelUpSkillPointsInterval (default 1)

iLevelUp01Mult (default 2)

iLevelUp02Mult (default 2)

iLevelUp03Mult (default 2)

iLevelUp04Mult (default 2)

iLevelUp05Mult (default 3)

iLevelUp06Mult (default 3)

iLevelUp07Mult (default 3)

iLevelUp08Mult (default 4)

iLevelUp09Mult (default 4)

iLevelUp10Mult (default 5)

 

Sorry for the runaround.

[Alanedelawn]

Thank you Roy....again. Thank you as well Gaffney. Really appreciate that you both gave me the "idiot-proof" solution.

I'm not sure what runaround you're talking about Roy?

[EPDGaffney]

No bother. In my honest opinion, I'd just give the player a perk from the beginning of the game and have that perk knock down all skills by 15 points. I think that would be really simple and get really close to what I think you were actually trying to do here, with the bonus of being very clean without worrying about too much.

 

I say 15 because if you set all your SPECIAL points at the beginning to be as close to equal as possible (I think one needs to be slightly higher), it's either 15 or 16 points that all the skills will have. So you'd be subtracting the right amount if you did it that way, and you'd still see slight benefits from SPECIAL skills that get set really high.