[WIP] Project Extend And Change Everything (PEACE)

[payl0ad]

Hey Antistar, do you intend to cover loot full-scale with PEACE?

[Moldy]

Sim Settlements has quests attached to many of the T3 Advanced Industrial Plots,and one of them is looking for specific weapons. The beer brewery has you using certain food,chem,and junk items to make custom beer recipes. The Medical Plastics Factory has you taking base game flora items (Razorgrain,Mutfruit,silt beans,et cetera) to make new food and chem item recipes. There's a couple of Google docs out there that has everything an end user needs to know about these sorts of things,actually.

 

Plots,magazines,and quests: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HAwaYDPQpS8cxhVSG-oJyiMpTqxaRjUkYoeF2grKXgo/edit#gid=0

Brewery recipes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xc3pYjwAen-9w27Lly83QcKzHP-r_mKbSNQnv3HhLbc/edit#gid=0

 

Be sure to click on the cells for the quests tab,as there's some info squirrelled away in the cell... Descriptions? There's a text bar above the horizontal axis labels,where info pops up on for some of the cells. These sheets should give you a general idea (I hope) of what Sim Settlements is looking for.

[antistar]

Hey Antistar, do you intend to cover loot full-scale with PEACE?

There have been some changes and additions already, and I'll be making more as I go on I'm sure, but I don't yet know how far-reaching they'll be. I'm not planning any kind of full-scale loot overhaul; I don't know that that's needed. I'd prefer it if it isn't, really! That'd be a ton of work.

 

(It's worth mentioning though that WARS does make some significant changes to weapon spawning.)

 

 

Sim Settlements has quests attached to many of the T3 Advanced Industrial Plots,and one of them is looking for specific weapons. The beer brewery has you using certain food,chem,and junk items to make custom beer recipes. The Medical Plastics Factory has you taking base game flora items (Razorgrain,Mutfruit,silt beans,et cetera) to make new food and chem item recipes. There's a couple of Google docs out there that has everything an end user needs to know about these sorts of things,actually.

 

Plots,magazines,and quests: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HAwaYDPQpS8cxhVSG-oJyiMpTqxaRjUkYoeF2grKXgo/edit#gid=0

Brewery recipes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xc3pYjwAen-9w27Lly83QcKzHP-r_mKbSNQnv3HhLbc/edit#gid=0

 

Be sure to click on the cells for the quests tab,as there's some info squirrelled away in the cell... Descriptions? There's a text bar above the horizontal axis labels,where info pops up on for some of the cells. These sheets should give you a general idea (I hope) of what Sim Settlements is looking for.

Thanks for those links; they may come in handy later.

 

I don't think I'll be outright removing items from circulation that Sim Settlements might want. Possibly not even things like trying to reduce the somewhat high spawn rate of (say) stimpaks in the vanilla game. Instead I may do something like in the JSawyer mod for FNV, where the vanilla stimpak that's spawning everywhere is edited to be an "expired" stimpak that's less effective. To get a fully-effective stimpak (or RadAway or etc) you'd need to craft one from fresh ingredients. Maybe you could also "concentrate" several expired variants into one fully-effective one too; I'm not decided on that yet.

 

In any case, if Sim Settlements is adding a bunch of new consumables with similar effects to the vanilla game (i.e. treating food and drink like magic potions), I may feel inclined to make a compatibility patch for it and PEACE anyway. If PEACE kicks up any problems for Sim Settlements, I'd take care of it in that patch.

[celdorash]

Hey Antistar! I don't know if you remember but a while ago in the WARS thread I had mentioned some huge redundancies in the base survival system such as sicknesses that make your thirst, hunger, and rested state go down even faster. There was also problem where if you only sleep for a small number of hours you somehow wake up more tired than you were before. The different lower tier bed types giving you a drastically lower amount of rest when you sleep. (Rest is rest when your in the apocalypse I am sure people have learned to rough it. This isn't some socialite off of instant hotel scrutinizing the finer details of their sleeping experience.)

 

On top of the stuff above this I was wondering if you had any plans to change up the armor system at all such as removing ridiculous pieces of armor like the raider armor. No one would imagine something like that up over some decent leather. At least the Diamond City guard armor makes sense. It is effective and already there for use. Do you plan on looking at how much the armor scales with upgrades so that it makes a little more sense for how you are actually modifying the armor?

 

My main concern from the stuff above is sleep related things. I am pretty sure if you don't sleep long enough you can get insomnia however sometimes I just want to sleep a few hours to cap off my rested bar before I go off somewhere. I don't want to be punished for not sleeping over a specific threshold every time I sleep.

 

Was hoping for your thoughts on this! Thanks man I really appreciate the work your doing and these two projects are looking more incredible every time I open the forums.

[payl0ad]

There have been some changes and additions already, and I'll be making more as I go on I'm sure, but I don't yet know how far-reaching they'll be. I'm not planning any kind of full-scale loot overhaul; I don't know that that's needed. I'd prefer it if it isn't, really! That'd be a ton of work.

 

(It's worth mentioning though that WARS does make some significant changes to weapon spawning.)

 

I was actually asking because PEACE sounds like it could be the combat math overhaul Damn Apocalypse (see signature) will want. If I'm being completely honest I'd like it better if you didn't touch loot at all, or as little as you can get away with, so patching becomes less of a nightmare. But that's just, like, my opinion dude. ;-)

 

And let me tell you, doing loot "right" is incredibly tedious boring work. You don't want to go through that, trust me. I've been there.

[antistar]

Hey Antistar! I don't know if you remember but a while ago in the WARS thread I had mentioned some huge redundancies in the base survival system such as sicknesses that make your thirst, hunger, and rested state go down even faster. There was also problem where if you only sleep for a small number of hours you somehow wake up more tired than you were before. The different lower tier bed types giving you a drastically lower amount of rest when you sleep. (Rest is rest when your in the apocalypse I am sure people have learned to rough it. This isn't some socialite off of instant hotel scrutinizing the finer details of their sleeping experience.)

 

On top of the stuff above this I was wondering if you had any plans to change up the armor system at all such as removing ridiculous pieces of armor like the raider armor. No one would imagine something like that up over some decent leather. At least the Diamond City guard armor makes sense. It is effective and already there for use. Do you plan on looking at how much the armor scales with upgrades so that it makes a little more sense for how you are actually modifying the armor?

 

My main concern from the stuff above is sleep related things. I am pretty sure if you don't sleep long enough you can get insomnia however sometimes I just want to sleep a few hours to cap off my rested bar before I go off somewhere. I don't want to be punished for not sleeping over a specific threshold every time I sleep.

 

Was hoping for your thoughts on this! Thanks man I really appreciate the work your doing and these two projects are looking more incredible every time I open the forums.

This got me thinking about Survival Mode as a whole, so I'm adding this to the Commentary section in the second post:

 

 

The problem with Bethesda's "Survival Mode"

(Spoilers: It's because they designed it as a difficulty setting.)

 

People often refer to "survival" games and "survival" gameplay mechanics; like the need for a character to eat, drink, sleep, etc. Maybe medical concerns more complicated than losing and gaining Hit Points - that sort of thing.

 

I feel like there may be the perception among some people that survival games and games with these kinds of mechanics are difficult or "hardcore" or something - and that they are difficult because of these mechanics.

 

I don't see it that way. I see "survival" mechanics as things that aid immersion, in other words making a character you're controlling in a game feel more like an actual person and not a robot. "Immersion" is an over-used and abused term these days of course, which is unfortunate because I think it's incredibly important in a lot of games - e.g. the games BGS makes, obviously. I think it adds more weight to the amazing things you get up to in games if you feel more grounded in the simulation - in the world that's being created. If you're no more than a floating pair of hands holding a gun up close to the camera - no need to ever eat or drink or sleep, able to carry well over double your own body weight in an invisible "backpack", and unlimited ammo because ammo is weightless... then not so much. Then it just kind of feels like some goofy video-game.

 

So I was happy when I heard that BGS were patching in Survival Mode. Giving ammo some weight (which wasn't possible without clunky work-arounds prior to the patch), adding the need to eat/drink/sleep, adding disease mechanics, etc. That all sounded great!

 

Unfortunately their implementation has a lot of problems, in my opinion; all the way up to the base design choices they made. The main problematic design choice being to conflate their new survival mechanics with "difficulty". Perhaps the designer/s behind it did see survival mechanics as intrinsically difficult/hardcore. Perhaps it was because they already had a difficulty setting in the game called "Survival", wanted to use that name, and also thought that assigning the new mechanics to a pre-existing option in the game settings was easier than having to add new options to the menu?

 

Whatever the case, it seems like a whole lot of Survival Mode was designed as a difficulty setting, rather than something to improve immersion. Probably the most obvious example of that is the infamous need to sleep to save your game. (Made worse by then hanging several other mechanics off this key decision.) This obviously makes no sense in terms of creating a convincing world - and is arguably actively harmful to that endeavour, in fact - since it requires a character to change their behaviour in order to affect something outside the fiction/simulation. The "I'll just take a quick one-hour nap to save my game before this difficult combat situation" problem.

 

So if sleep-to-save was not intended to improve immersion, what's left? It makes the game more difficult. (Or perhaps more punishing, some might say.) Other mechanics in Survival Mode were then designed to play off that sleep-to-save design element, reinforcing its importance in BGS' eyes. E.g. the Adrenaline perk, which increases the damage the player character does (via magic, I suppose) based on how many enemies they kill without sleeping.

 

It's far from being the sole aim of WARS and PEACE, but both mods make changes that are intended to steer FO4's Survival Mode away from difficulty for its own sake and more towards interesting mechanics that support - rather than harm - immersion.

 

Also, the draft readmes for both WARS and PEACE currently recommend using mods like Unlimited Survival Mode and Survival Options in order to allow the user to toggle/adjust Survival Mode's features to their own tastes. In other words, how Survival Mode should have been implemented in the first place (in my opinion): a suite of independent options divorced from BGS' concept of "difficulty settings".

 

(To be honest, I'd go further and say that there shouldn't have been a Survival Mode at all - not as an after-thought. FO4 should have had integral "survival" mechanics from the start.)

 

 

 

Having said all that, I'm not sure yet what I think about the particulars of the sleeping mechanics in Survival Mode. (Beyond that it absolutely should not be required in order to save the game.) Because man, "waking up" feeling more tired than when I went to bed sure sounds familiar. Most recently I had that myself at both ends of the New Zealand trip, thanks to inconvenient flight times and extremely uncomfortable beds.

 

I actually like the idea of there being some more depth to sleeping in FO4 than just sleeping x hours to remove y units of fatigue or whatever. Maybe in certain circumstances you do only manage to sleep in uncomfortable fits and starts, and that has flow-on effects on your well-being.

 

Having said that though, I haven't played the game with Survival Mode active yet, and I do need to look into it some more - so I may change my mind there.

 

On armour; I'm reluctant to remove things outright, and while I think a lot of it is over-exaggerated (obviously intentionally, but still), I think there's a place in this setting for makeshift, cobbled-together-from-scraps armour. Stat-wise I haven't gone through and looked at all the armour yet, so it's too soon to say for sure what I'll be changing there. What are the scaling-with-upgrades problems you mention there, out of interest?

 

 

I was actually asking because PEACE sounds like it could be the combat math overhaul Damn Apocalypse (see signature) will want. If I'm being completely honest I'd like it better if you didn't touch loot at all, or as little as you can get away with, so patching becomes less of a nightmare. But that's just, like, my opinion dude. ;-)

 

And let me tell you, doing loot "right" is incredibly tedious boring work. You don't want to go through that, trust me. I've been there.

Oh yeah, Damn Apocalypse. I've got that noted down as a possible reference for the animal-butchering feature, as I've been considering doing something similar. I was thinking of having it require an equipped weapon that is considered a blade, that it would advance time depending on how big the animal is, and that it might have the chance that you are ambushed while doing it by a larger predator that smells the blood and comes to investigate. And in return you'd get more meat than in vanilla, plus bones and leather, probably.

 

Combat math? (Or "maths", we'd say here.) Which parts are you referring to there, also out of interest?

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Edited May 31, 2019 by antistar

[chirola8080]

Hi Antistar, keep up this two awesome projects, really nice work! I can't wait to play FO4 with your improvements. Now the questions, do you plan to add animated chems or animated drinking / eating?

[payl0ad]

 

I was actually asking because PEACE sounds like it could be the combat math overhaul Damn Apocalypse (see signature) will want. If I'm being completely honest I'd like it better if you didn't touch loot at all, or as little as you can get away with, so patching becomes less of a nightmare. But that's just, like, my opinion dude. ;-)

 

And let me tell you, doing loot "right" is incredibly tedious boring work. You don't want to go through that, trust me. I've been there.

Oh yeah, Damn Apocalypse. I've got that noted down as a possible reference for the animal-butchering feature, as I've been considering doing something similar. I was thinking of having it require an equipped weapon that is considered a blade, that it would advance time depending on how big the animal is, and that it might have the chance that you are ambushed while doing it by a larger predator that smells the blood and comes to investigate. And in return you'd get more meat than in vanilla, plus bones and leather, probably.

 

Combat math? (Or "maths", we'd say here.) Which parts are you referring to there, also out of interest?

0 Links

 

 

While that's a nice idea I don't think it would translate to fun gameplay. But I might be wrong, depends on the implementation.

 

"Combat Math" is a term from MtG, essentially means all the numbers and formulas involved in determining a hit, hit damage and so on. In regards to FO4 I'd also include health management in the topic but that's just me.

[antistar]

To give a quick update on what I'm working on; I'm currently modelling the power armour cargo carrier; the steel one that all PA models besides the Raider PA get.

 

I feel like I'm second-guessing myself a lot on it; I rarely design and make something completely from scratch. Normally I have more explicit reference material to work from. So far though I'm drawing inspiration from things like steel jerry cans and armoured vehicles.

 

Anyway, texturing it is a little ways off yet, but it'll likely have different paint options to complement the existing PA paint jobs.

Hi Antistar, keep up this two awesome projects, really nice work! I can't wait to play FO4 with your improvements. Now the questions, do you plan to add animated chems or animated drinking / eating?

I do like that kind of immersive touch - and I do know how to animate for FO4 now, more or less - so that's a possibility. Probably a lowish priority though, since I've got so much other stuff to do on PEACE - not to mention WARS of course.

While that's a nice idea I don't think it would translate to fun gameplay. But I might be wrong, depends on the implementation.

"Combat Math" is a term from MtG, essentially means all the numbers and formulas involved in determining a hit, hit damage and so on. In regards to FO4 I'd also include health management in the topic but that's just me.

Okay - well so far I haven't changed any of the literal formulae related to combat - in either WARS or PEACE - but both mods are certainly making changes to the numbers they use.

[TacticalOchoa]

This sounds really neat to have. I also like how using certain consumables would also cause items to be added to the junk menu. Reminds me of a very funny video about health potions. I'll post a link if anyone is interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjXOwUnJzA0

 

I very much agree with you on adrenaline. The way that it works makes no sense. Adrenaline is supposed to be triggered in response to stressful situations that triggers fight-or-flight responses. Not by killing NPCs while avoiding sleep. Adrenaline shouldn't also just outright increase your overall damage. It's supposed to increase your physical performance. If anything, adrenaline in Fallout 4 should be triggered through certain actions like taking damage and, well, just being in combat in general...and maybe being in a near death state as well. Just overall being in a state where your life is in danger. The effects of adrenaline should be slower AP drain when using sprint or having increased max AP (which ever is easier), faster AP restoration, and maybe increased melee damage, damage resistance, and movement speed. Maybe increased VATS accuracy as well but I'm not sure about that one.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/25480/what-does-adrenaline-do

 

I don't think anyone mentioned this yet but I wonder if it's possible to bring back Fallout New Vegas' damage threshold mechanic for armor...or at least just implement some mechanic to make armor work like actual armor; especially with power armor. Power armor is supposed to make you a walking tank yet in Fallout 4, you can down people in power armor with pistols. Power armor should be able to shrug off at least most small arms fire. It should take high-caliber and/or armor-piercing loaded rifles and anti-tank weaponry to punch through power armor, well, armor. At least that's how I think most power armor should be; especially military grade power armor. Escape from Tarkov has a pretty good system with armor as well where armor can stop bullets and thus negate a lot of damage but your character still experiences blunt damage from the kinetic energy of the round itself.

https://fallout.gamepedia.com/Damage_threshold

https://escapefromtarkov.gamepedia.com/Ballistics