[WIP] Project Extend And Change Everything (PEACE)

[Macnspam]

 

On character fragility in WARS and PEACE though; what I want is for armour progression to have a noticeable impact on how much punishment a character can take, even if HP values have been normalised. That may be something I'll have to hammer out once I can do the AmmoTweaks integration and start testing things in earnest.

 

I mean, there's always Damage Threshold Framework... :)

[Moldy]

Hmm. Survival Mode disables fast travel,outside of using the Institute's teleporter,but that mandates going to the Institute,then setting the teleporter to send you out,again. And,obviously,this ceases to be an option when you earn the enmity of the Institute,and eventually reduce them to a smoking crater. You can use the Vertibird flares,but considering the general fragility and other weirdness surrounding Vertibirds,many players,myself included,don't use them. Further,there are some places where the Vertibird simply cannot land; I challenge you to find a place where a Vertibird can land in Hangman's Alley.

 

However,I've been playing a lot of Fallout 3,lately,with Fallout Wanderer's Edition installed. And,yes Antistar,WMK as well. And FWE has an interesting solution to fast travel being disabled. Limit fast travel to a personal vehicle. By interacting with it,you can fast travel to another point on the map that you've discovered,and the vehicle will travel with them. Include wear rates and fuel consumption,and you have something that the player will need to spend resources on in order to keep their handy transport. You can also include multiple upgrade options that the player can craft,be it with the appropriate perks,or after finding the requisite schematics in the world. Things like storage capacity,fuel efficiency,fuel tank size,and a GPS tracker.

 

Really,I'm suggesting you ape FWE's Wasteland Explorer motorcycle. But,maybe instead of a motorcycle,you instead have an ATV of some sort? Maybe one of those long ones with a flatbed on the back? I hear those are even amphibious,which would allow the rider to reach Spectacle Island.

[antistar]

For what it's worth, I am beefing up vertibirds substantially in WARS. (I might have already done that a while back actually - I'll have to go check.) In vanilla it really is like they're made of tissue paper.

Yeah, I remember the Explorer motorbike; it was pretty great. It worked by spawning it next to you after you used it to fast-travel somewhere. I mean... usually it worked and didn't spawn the bike inside a rock or something. Procedurally spawning a great big ATV in the same way would be more fraught.

There are already some player home mods involving moving vehicles around as a form of fast-travel - like Red Wave and some APC ones. They do work in a more limited way though obviously; moving between certain pre-defined locations rather than going to any map marker.

 

Anyway I like this idea a lot, but it's probably too complicated for me to have time to do myself, unfortunately.

 

I mean, there's always Damage Threshold Framework... :smile:

And I am still considering it. ;)

[Radsweeper]

For what it's worth, I am beefing up vertibirds substantially in WARS. (I might have already done that a while back actually - I'll have to go check.) In vanilla it really is like they're made of tissue paper.

 

 

Actually the base Vertibird is made of double ply toilet paper. Up armored one were created out of wet Cardboard. :)

[antistar]

For an update on PEACE:

 

I recently finished going through all the consumable items (food, drink, chems, etc) and making the required changes for PEACE. Generally that meant:

 

- Removing "magical" effects like healing or breathing underwater from food/drink. Sometimes replacing those effects with things like +1 STR (e.g. instead of increased damage) or +1 END (e.g. instead of a particularly huge healing amount) if it felt appropriate.

 

- Adjusting weights to be vaguely closer to the real world. Sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter.

 

- Dividing especially valuable cooked food items into multiple portions. I.e. you get more when you craft it, but each piece has a lower weight and caps value. Survival Mode uses the caps value of a consumable to determine how much hunger/thirst it increases/decreases, and if that sounds to you like it would be awkward then you'd be right! It means you can't really (say) make a powerful medicine worth a lot of caps without it also instantly dehydrating the character to the point of dying from thirst.

 

It also means that very valuable food is a waste to eat unless you're starving. You can't just eat a smaller portion; you have to put up with the stat penalties from malnutrition until you're hungry enough to eat the whole thing in one go, apparently. So to address this, I took anything that was worth more than 25 caps and basically divided its value/weight/effects - and multiplied the portions you get when crafting it - by the same number, so that each portion is now worth less than 25 caps. (From looking at HC_ManagerScript, a value of 25 should mean that if you ate something worth that much as soon as you get at all hungry, you won't be wasting anything.)

 

 

This all took quite a while because holy moly there are a lot of consumables in FO4. In a similar vein, I'm now going through and adjusting weight, caps and component values for all the junk items in the game.

 

Oh man.

 

Oh man there's a lot. I'm aiming to be quick about it - not going to anywhere near as much trouble as I did over the weight of different firearm parts for WARS - but still, wow. (As a side-note though; seriously Bethesda it only takes like ten seconds to do a google search for the weight of a regulation baseball, for example.)

 

An awful lot is just estimation, which is fine - but if it's something I've got lying around at home (like a ceramic plate) then I've just been chucking it on some scales. For example I've still got the steel Vault-Tec lunch-box that my collector's edition of Fallout 3 came in, so now the in-game version will have a true-to-life weight. ;) (~280g or ~0.6 lb, by the way.)

 

Again, some things are heavier now, and some are lighter. When making something heavier though I'm typically compensating by increasing the number of components it breaks down into. I'm also adding additional component types if it seems reasonable. (E.g. it looks like it contains screws but doesn't already have them as a component.)

 

 

I realise that all this isn't exactly edge-of-your-seat exciting, but it had to be done at some point; it's an important part of the mod. All the weight adjustments in particular are an important part of the encumbrance overhaul. Not much point in characters having something approaching realistic encumbrance limits in a setting where light bulbs weigh half a pound or whatever.

[Moldy]

A question,regarding your medical brace system. The overwhelming majority of attire in the game restricts the wearing of armour pieces,sometimes completely. Much of the attire that restricts or disallows armour carry impressive stat boosts,including the all-important Charisma and Intelligence stats. If a player elects to wear such attire,for whatever reason,and needs to fix up an arm or leg,what will their options be?

[UhlanB76]

This sounds like an excellent new addition and I am looking forward to it. Concerning fast travel, especially in survival mode, I have an installation of Thuggysmurf's:

 

Subways of the Commonwealth - Standalone

 

It provides actual subway stations with 'real' subway trains. It has become a standard in all of my games, regardless of mode. There are seven stations (Concord, DC, Cambridge, Malden, Goodneighbor, Jamaica P, and Castle) that have shops like a miniature Diamond City. I have found this a fun way to explore and skip the museum fiasco.

 

There is also actual travel that is fast, like the Kettenkrraftrad, but actual travel, not virtual.

 

Thanks a lot for the work you are doing on this and WARS.

[antistar]

Okay, that wasn't so bad; I've finished going through all the junk items and adjusting their weight/caps/component values.

 

Next I think I'll do the model for the head brace (speak of the devil). For the other medical braces (torso, arms and legs) I'm using the Heavy Synth Armour assets, though with a green re-colour. Specifically what I call "hospital green"; imagine a plastic kidney dish or bed pan. Yeah, like that.

 

The Synth Armour helmet isn't really appropriate for this, so I'll make something resembling a halo brace. Just the halo part though; not the torso part or the struts that connect to it. They wouldn't work right what with the character being able to turn their head. (Because I don't expect that I can actually stop characters doing that, and I don't think this is important enough to warrant trying.)

 

Obviously the halo brace wouldn't actually work without those struts, but hey... this is a computer game. The main thing I'm after is a head brace kind of thing that:

 

1) Prevents wearing a helmet.

2) Doesn't prevent wearing eye and face-wear.

A question,regarding your medical brace system. The overwhelming majority of attire in the game restricts the wearing of armour pieces,sometimes completely. Much of the attire that restricts or disallows armour carry impressive stat boosts,including the all-important Charisma and Intelligence stats. If a player elects to wear such attire,for whatever reason,and needs to fix up an arm or leg,what will their options be?

It is a shame that so many outfits in the game that logically should be able to have armour strapped over the top of them can't, due to how they were modelled. As I see it though the options are:

 

1) Change into something else for a while that the medical brace/s fit over.

2) Use Hydra if you've got it.

3) Hop in your power armour for a while, if you've installed medical braces in it.

4) See a doctor.

5) Sleep it off. (I'm not planning to change sleep-healing at this stage.)

 

It's relevant to mention here too that I'll be removing "magical" bonuses from clothes/armour - same as I did with food/drink. Charisma bonuses will stay because people are often treated differently based on how they're dressed... but putting on a soldier's uniform doesn't make you stronger, and putting on a lab coat doesn't make you smarter. Agility bonuses will stay too - for clothes that seem like they should be easy to move around in. Luck bonuses too I guess in some cases? I don't know, Luck is forever my dump stat (and in the game har har) - strictly speaking I'm not super fond of it being a stat you can influence.

 

Anyway; the medical braces are intended to be an inconvenience, and having to change out of what you'd normally wear (e.g. armour on the affected body part) is part of that.

This sounds like an excellent new addition and I am looking forward to it. Concerning fast travel, especially in survival mode, I have an installation of Thuggysmurf's:

Subways of the Commonwealth - Standalone

It provides actual subway stations with 'real' subway trains. It has become a standard in all of my games, regardless of mode. There are seven stations (Concord, DC, Cambridge, Malden, Goodneighbor, Jamaica P, and Castle) that have shops like a miniature Diamond City. I have found this a fun way to explore and skip the museum fiasco.

There is also actual travel that is fast, like the Kettenkrraftrad, but actual travel, not virtual.

Thanks a lot for the work you are doing on this and WARS.

Thanks. :)

 

I am a fan of immersive fast-travel systems (e.g. see the Travel Machine in Clockwork), and that subway mod seems relatively well implemented at a glance...

 

There's this test I apply to mods when considering how immersive/lore-friendly they are, though. I guess you could call it the "gossip test" or something; I've never really thought about a name for it. Basically though: is the mod adding or changing something significantly enough that you would expect it to come up in conversation among people outside the immediate area of those changes?

 

A functioning subway system like that (and the surrounding infrastructure that would be needed to make it possible) would drastically change the shape of life across the Commonwealth Wasteland; people would be talking about it.

[Moldy]

An idea pursuant to a fast travel system; A caravan network. Add a Settlement object that connects to established Supply Routes. Meaning,to travel settlements,you need established Supply Routes between settlements. To travel to major world locations,such as Diamond City and the Edge of the Glowing Sea,you need to first discover the map marker in question. Maybe find a way to keep players from travelling between the Island,Commonwealth,or Nuka World,though.

[antistar]

I like that idea too, and fortunately there are already mods around that do that; e.g. Journey.