[WIP] Project Extend And Change Everything (PEACE)

[antistar]

Hmmm Antistar, you've been on the modding scene for a while. So I gotta ask: Why doesn't anyone ever try and make a durability system for normal armor pieces in the game based on the Power Armor durability and repair system already in place? Is it an engine limitation? Wouldn't it be more realistic that the shabby 200 year old piece of metal you put over your chest has a limited number of bullets you can riddle it with before it unequips itself from your body (with 0/however much hp) and has to be repaired? It does sound like a lot of work, but with scripts couldn't people just take armor types and dynamically assign values to them based on that and let the game engine handle it from there? It does seem tedious with so many items in the game, but it'd really open the door up for all sorts of interesting survival mods...

 

Just curious.

There are a number of things I wish BGS hadn't ditched/simplified in the move from FO3/FNV to FO4, and weapon/armour durability is one of them.

 

In FO4, power armour pieces and regular armour pieces use the same Armor records, and these records include a "Health" value that determines the base durability of a piece of power armour. It's obviously not used for regular armour, and as usual with this sort of thing, the question is how hard-coded it is that the durability is only used for power armour. Personally I have no idea to what extent the Health value is actually hooked up to anything when it comes to regular armour.

 

I imagine this hasn't been done yet (as far as I know) because it would require a lot of work and a lot of specialised knowledge. Off the top of my head, you'd need:

 

- A way to store the current/max condition on individual armour references. (I.e. instances.)

- Ways to calculate damage to armour condition based on different damage types.

- Ways to stop damage to armour condition from potentially doing something weird to NPCs that may have invisible "armour" (like creatures).

- UI changes and additions to show armour condition in the HUD, Pip-Boy and whatever else.

- A bunch of other stuff I'm sure.

 

It's just a whole bunch of difficult work. I'm sure it can be done; it'd just require F4SE plugins and UI work and whatnot.

[rfriar]

How does PEACE compare to something like Horizon?

[antistar]

PEACE and Horizon are both overhauls, and overhauls can vary hugely in terms of what their authors decide to address, and how they go about addressing those things.

That's kind of a big question, in other words. So I don't know; if you'd like to take the time to look over Horizon's feature list, and then compose an essay or something on how it compares to the feature list of PEACE (and WARS, its sister mod) - WIP feature lists are found in the second post of both threads - then maybe you can tell me. :wink:

[Macnspam]

 

Hmmm Antistar, you've been on the modding scene for a while. So I gotta ask: Why doesn't anyone ever try and make a durability system for normal armor pieces in the game based on the Power Armor durability and repair system already in place? Is it an engine limitation? Wouldn't it be more realistic that the shabby 200 year old piece of metal you put over your chest has a limited number of bullets you can riddle it with before it unequips itself from your body (with 0/however much hp) and has to be repaired? It does sound like a lot of work, but with scripts couldn't people just take armor types and dynamically assign values to them based on that and let the game engine handle it from there? It does seem tedious with so many items in the game, but it'd really open the door up for all sorts of interesting survival mods...

 

Just curious.

There are a number of things I wish BGS hadn't ditched/simplified in the move from FO3/FNV to FO4, and weapon/armour durability is one of them.

 

In FO4, power armour pieces and regular armour pieces use the same Armor records, and these records include a "Health" value that determines the base durability of a piece of power armour. It's obviously not used for regular armour, and as usual with this sort of thing, the question is how hard-coded it is that the durability is only used for power armour. Personally I have no idea to what extent the Health value is actually hooked up to anything when it comes to regular armour.

 

I imagine this hasn't been done yet (as far as I know) because it would require a lot of work and a lot of specialised knowledge. Off the top of my head, you'd need:

 

- A way to store the current/max condition on individual armour references. (I.e. instances.)

- Ways to calculate damage to armour condition based on different damage types.

- Ways to stop damage to armour condition from potentially doing something weird to NPCs that may have invisible "armour" (like creatures).

- UI changes and additions to show armour condition in the HUD, Pip-Boy and whatever else.

- A bunch of other stuff I'm sure.

 

It's just a whole bunch of difficult work. I'm sure it can be done; it'd just require F4SE plugins and UI work and whatnot.

 

 

This kinda makes me think that with the advent of Ammo Tweaks 2.0, maybe something could be done for armor using what Isathar's made. Maybe the Ammo Tweaks framework could be used to actually manage things like armor health and what it does upon breaking. Especially since weapons plain didn't have anything to do that sort of thing before he made the framework for it. I think that's massive as far as potential goes. I'm excited to see where the future of modding this game and Fallout 5 goes. :D

[geala]

I find the whole concept of armor deterioration strange in the context of high energy weapons. If hit, armor is usually out and has to be replaced. However, the game handles armor in the way that projectiles always penetrate, but only a bit. In such context armor degradation, albeit stupid in regards to reality, even makes a certain sense.

 

Nevertheless, for me the biggest disadvantages of FO4 armor are that the game has locational damage (which is great) but armor does nor work locationally, and that it has damage resistance instead of a penetration or at least a threshold system. As the locational protection seems impossible to achieve ingame, there are threshold systems, and I would put my efforts in this field instead of creating an additional artificial item repair system.

 

As a very primitive form of item degeneration and due to my everlasting efforts to make loot scarce I think of chance none settings for LLD lists. There is a high chance that the bullets through the guts also destroyed the armor, so you get nothing from it. :tongue:

[antistar]

This kinda makes me think that with the advent of Ammo Tweaks 2.0, maybe something could be done for armor using what Isathar's made. Maybe the Ammo Tweaks framework could be used to actually manage things like armor health and what it does upon breaking. Especially since weapons plain didn't have anything to do that sort of thing before he made the framework for it. I think that's massive as far as potential goes. I'm excited to see where the future of modding this game and Fallout 5 goes. :D

I think I recall isathar saying something about possibly doing something with armour durability one day... so hey, that may happen.

 

 

I find the whole concept of armor deterioration strange in the context of high energy weapons. If hit, armor is usually out and has to be replaced. However, the game handles armor in the way that projectiles always penetrate, but only a bit. In such context armor degradation, albeit stupid in regards to reality, even makes a certain sense.

 

Nevertheless, for me the biggest disadvantages of FO4 armor are that the game has locational damage (which is great) but armor does nor work locationally, and that it has damage resistance instead of a penetration or at least a threshold system. As the locational protection seems impossible to achieve ingame, there are threshold systems, and I would put my efforts in this field instead of creating an additional artificial item repair system.

 

As a very primitive form of item degeneration and due to my everlasting efforts to make loot scarce I think of chance none settings for LLD lists. There is a high chance that the bullets through the guts also destroyed the armor, so you get nothing from it. :tongue:

For other people reading, "LLD" is a prefix typically used in the Creation Kit to refer to LevelledItem Lists that are to be assigned as "Death Items" on Actor records. They add items to an actor's inventory on their death - often used to add meat to animals when they're killed, for example. You know, things that you shouldn't be able to pick-pocket from an actor while they're still alive. ;)

 

That means though that Death Items couldn't be used to remove armour from an actor when they die: they only add items; not remove them. The armour needs to be there while they're alive, obviously.

 

 

Re: damage resistance vs damage threshold; there is the Damage Threshold Framework. It's sounding like AmmoTweaks will support DTF - and possibly be the ideal way to use it, even - so it may end up being the ideal way to use WARS, too.

 

 

Locational damage in FO4 though, oof. It does kind of seem like BGS only paid lip service to locational damage, and even then only did so under protest due to how high-profile VATS was in their marketing efforts. I remember getting actually Mad At Computer Games when Survival Mode was coming out and one of its features was body parts no longer magically healing automatically at the end of combat.

 

It kind of floored me that that automatic healing was in there by default. I hadn't realised during my playthrough of the game; I'd thought my character's body parts were always full because they were being healed when I used stimpaks. (Something I obviously don't like either - hence changing that in PEACE.) It just never occurred to me that it could be otherwise, because magically healing them seems like such a deeply strange thing to do. Why even bother having locational damage in the first place if you're going to do that?

 

Then I realised; it was so that they could have VATS, along with its *cough*non-interactive*cough* Awesome Animations That Look Cool In Trailers.

 

 

For another example of the half-hearted implementation of locational damage, like I said earlier I'm currently working on the Strength Requirement system in PEACE, and as part of that I've been looking at some armour omods. You might reasonably assume that the "Strengthened" lining mod that "Reduces limb damage" (by 20%) would do so for just the body part covered by that piece of armour... but it doesn't. Instead it appears that it's just a blanket 20% reduction to limb damage across the whole body - per piece of armour with that mod.

 

I'm not sure I can fix that in PEACE (make it only affect the relevant body part, I mean), but I have dropped it from 20% to 10% per piece, at least.

[geala]

Yup, I never before invested much thought into armor loot, only made changes to LLI or LL armor and weapon lists and ammo, stimpack etc. loot (my loot is generally based on Fallout Loot Overhaul, with some additional restrictions and some eases, f.e. you can harvest from plants). Yesterday I searched for the armor loot lists and even asked on reddit, but it seems hardcoded that the NPCs drop as loot what they wear and carry and there are no lists. The LLD lists just add several other loot, as you say. That's sad. And arkward for me. :laugh:

 

Could armor and weapon loot be ruled by a script? I cannot script and assume it's a kind of magic formula, so ... When you think about it, you fired 20 bullets into the breast of a person and killed him/her, but the armor he/she wore is perfectly fine? That is nonsense.

 

Recently I changed the armor balance in the game considerably. I use a mod which increases damage, so armor loses importance, which is good to a certain degree. Most armor in FO4 ist total garbage (leather armor? some monstrous metal plates? Nuka World nonsense?), so it deserves to be diminished in importance. And who would wear leg and arm defenses in a world of firearms? So I more or less removed limb armor and made torso armor stronger (triple for raiders, double for the rest). The only arrmor which makes sense, combat armor (and Marine armor) is also the only armor now with considerable strength (base torso armor has 200 dr, heavy armor has 390 dr, army helmets have 70 to 90 dr etc.). Only gunners have access to it. I'd like a lot of it would vanish from the loot, that's the reason I looked after the lists.

 

To locational damage, it works to a certain degree, at least what I can tell from the damage multiplicators. I also made the groin/lower belly a hit zone. With head, torso, groin, legs and arms there is at least a (very) primitive base to simulate effects to the body. BTW, I never use VATS, but if VATS brought us locational damage, I'll open a shrine to praise it.

 

To legendary effects, I cannot say much about it. I use a mod to remove legendary drops. I also have disabled many of the legendary effects. Cricket does not like it, for example she cannot sell a weird gun named Spray and Pray, as the description tells the buyer that the bullets don't explode, for unknown reasons. :ohmy:

 

I considered to use one of the threshold systems but I'm a bit nervous about possible complications and incompatibilities. But maybe I should take a new look at it. Do you have experiences?

 

To the healing: I tried out any system which made it more complicated, so you needed stimpacks for wounds and special stuff for limbs, and x for y and a for b. But in the end I threw it all from the harddrive. What I especially don't like is the limb damage stuff. It sounds good that stimpacks don't cure crippled limbs (how could they?). But the most remarkable effect of such a system is that the whole focus is on limb damage, as it is the only damage which really hampers you in the fight. So you can get bullets through the brain and heart and guts, and keep acting with a smile, but some damage to the legs is a catastrophe. In my opinion that is such an artificial exaggeration of limb damage importance, I cannot stand it at all.

What is ok is when there are special cures for special diseases. Of course neither sleep nor food should heal. I also like a bleeding system, with a special cure.

Edited July 31, 2019 by geala

[antistar]

I'm sure it could be scripted so that there's a chance for armour/weapons to be "destroyed" upon an NPC's death. In the grand scheme of things that would probably be a lot easier than scripting a durability system too - but I think a durability system would be a more natural-feeling way to achieve what you're talking about.

 

I haven't used the Damage Threshold Framework myself yet, though isathar was giving it a glowing review recently.

 

Re: bleeding as a kind of status effect cured by bandages or what-have-you; I'm of two minds about that. I've always liked the idea in theory, but I've also played STALKER: Clear Sky before it was patched/modded. ;)

[Macnspam]

I'm sure it could be scripted so that there's a chance for armour/weapons to be "destroyed" upon an NPC's death. In the grand scheme of things that would probably be a lot easier than scripting a durability system too - but I think a durability system would be a more natural-feeling way to achieve what you're talking about.

 

I haven't used the Damage Threshold Framework myself yet, though isathar was giving it a glowing review recently.

 

Re: bleeding as a kind of status effect cured by bandages or what-have-you; I'm of two minds about that. I've always liked the idea in theory, but I've also played STALKER: Clear Sky before it was patched/modded. :wink:

 

Yeah DTF is actually super good. And the best bit is it dynamically assigns DT values to EVERY SINGLE ARMOR PIECE. Even modded ones. YOu can use the default setting which kinda just spitballs DT values on gear or you can create your own. The game implements the values and the threshold system within the engine so it blends right in. No muss no fuss. And the best bit is you can just remove the mod and it doesn't get baked into your save file. Honestly if something like THAT is possible, a durability system doesn't sound so far fetched.. Just give the non-power armor pieces across the game a flat Heath value and set it so that a portion of the damage you take is absorbed into armor Health instead of YOUR health. Bada bing bada boom, all normal armor pieces function like power armor pieces and need to be repaired every so often (and can be found in varying condition in the wild). Maybe you could go all the way and make the armor look broken if you felt like it, but why not make a script that unequips the pieces and places them into your inventory with a new name or tag that is a "broken" variant of the piece that you have to craft at a bench to remove? Horizon sortof already does this. Minus the actual item breaking while it's equipped.

 

Heck, I think 76 just unequips the things that are broken. Not even a broken item mesh swap or anything. It just unequips until you repair the item in question. Seems feasible to implement something like that into 4.

[Radsweeper]

Hi antistar,

 

Just a quick post here. I stumbled upon this Power armor add-on WIP by Nutulator, on Artstation.

 

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1n3ZRZ

 

Looks kinda cool. It has a Vietnam era feel to it.