Weapon Damage Modding

[OmniTree]

Please bare with me as this is my first Mod attempt. I guess I should start with my end goal, which is to mod all the Unique and normal Weapon damages to be more consistent along a given baseline. For instance lets take the 44 as a Baseline, the 44 is for all practical purposes 44/100 in dia. Casing size not withstanding a 44 is a 44, same with the 32, 5.56, 5mm, etc. Assigning a damage potential to the 44 as the base damage of the Scoped .44 Magnum and knowing it's diameter we an extract the damage per 1/100th of an inch then adjust the damage of each firearm based upon the caliber of the ammo used. Granted there must be some adjustments, such as the casing size of a magnum is substantially longer then your standard 44 caliber round. Other adjustments must be made based upon the Unique factor, but all following within a set of guidelines.

 

Using the .44 Mag as a baseline we get .7954r (54 repeating) per 1/100th, calculating that to the 10mm and the .32 we can make adjustments based energy rates for closest bullet grain. Granted the .32 barely has 10th the energy of .44, so we'll need to adjust up for playability.

 

This same ideology can be used against rifle rounds, such as the 5.56mm, .32 Cal, .308, and even the 5mm Minigun ammo. Once again liberties must be made for Pistol to Rifle usage as well as Unique weapons. That said a standard can be determined from which additional damage can be calculated for Uniques based upon the size to damage ratio.

 

While all the above is interesting to me. What do you, the Modding society as it were, feel about my proposed changes? Is this a mod that has interest outside of my own? I welcome and and all feedback.

 

*Edit*

I realize there are holes in my logic that may or may not need to be filled. It may come down to using dmg/energy, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[AnthraxPants]

That seems to be a good idea as some of the weapons seem to be either too powerful or not powerful enough. It would take some amount of testing and some players would no doubt have arguments about how powerful a weapon should be. Also bare in mind that some creatures may be damaged by different amounts with certain weapons.

[Omnimmotus]

Well you certainly sound dedicated enough. :blink: Another deserving of the Omni name.

 

I would try to compare the weapons of the game to real world counterparts and then look up ballistics tests on those weapons. If nothing else, that can help you fine tune your calculations, but it might work well enough to give you an idea of the strengths. You might also consider giving gun damages as a whole a little boost, to make every shot count. Just make sure to give the Laser and Plasma weapons damages that keep with the proportion.

 

You could also consider adjusting the accuracy of the weapons to better simulate their real life counterparts, but watch out, the game might get a little easy against non gun-wielding opponents. That might not be a problem though, if the gun-wielding ones are a lot tougher.

[Wreckless1]

Please bare with me as this is my first Mod attempt. I guess I should start with my end goal, which is to mod all the Unique and normal Weapon damages to be more consistent along a given baseline. For instance lets take the 44 as a Baseline, the 44 is for all practical purposes 44/100 in dia. Casing size not withstanding a 44 is a 44, same with the 32, 5.56, 5mm, etc. Assigning a damage potential to the 44 as the base damage of the Scoped .44 Magnum and knowing it's diameter we an extract the damage per 1/100th of an inch then adjust the damage of each firearm based upon the caliber of the ammo used. Granted there must be some adjustments, such as the casing size of a magnum is substantially longer then your standard 44 caliber round. Other adjustments must be made based upon the Unique factor, but all following within a set of guidelines.

 

Using the .44 Mag as a baseline we get .7954r (54 repeating) per 1/100th, calculating that to the 10mm and the .32 we can make adjustments based energy rates for closest bullet grain. Granted the .32 barely has 10th the energy of .44, so we'll need to adjust up for playability.

 

This same ideology can be used against rifle rounds, such as the 5.56mm, .32 Cal, .308, and even the 5mm Minigun ammo. Once again liberties must be made for Pistol to Rifle usage as well as Unique weapons. That said a standard can be determined from which additional damage can be calculated for Uniques based upon the size to damage ratio.

 

While all the above is interesting to me. What do you, the Modding society as it were, feel about my proposed changes? Is this a mod that has interest outside of my own? I welcome and and all feedback.

 

*Edit*

I realize there are holes in my logic that may or may not need to be filled. It may come down to using dmg/energy, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

 

There's a great deal more to the terminal effectiveness of a cartridge than its bullet diameter - for instance, an 8mm Mauser (0.323" bore diameter) is orders of magnitude more powerful than the 0.400" 10mm Auto.

Similarly, the new .327 Ruger Magnum is damn close to as powerful as .357 Magnum even though the projectile diameter is significantly smaller. Yes, you mentioned casing size and the powder charge is ultimately the deciding factor - with projectile mass (the bullet 'grain' is actually a measure of weight - 1 grain is 1/7000 of a US pound) factoring in after that.

 

But there are cartridges that are almost the same dimensionally, yet one is loaded to a much hotter spec than the other, like the 7.63 Mauser vs the 7.62x25 Tokarev - the Tokarev is considerably hotter than the Mauser cartridge and while Mauser ammo could be used in a Tokarev chambered weapon in a life-or-death sort of pinch with a reasonable chance of success (though it'd likely have issues cycling the weapon because of its reduced power) the Tokarev cannot be used in a 7.63 Mauser weapon without risking considerable weapon damage.

 

I've always found that trying to make firearm damage reflect things true to real life in a game almost always throws off the game balance in a huge way - for instance, to be truly realistic a single shot to the open face with a 10mm would be universally lethal to a human and the vast majority of the critters in the game, including the player character, regardless of "level".

Only Power Armor would have a chance to allow survivability but then once Power Armor is 'fixed' to actually be Power Armor again, you might as well be invulnerable when facing anything this side of nasty robots or super mutants.... or other people in Power Armor.

 

In my opinion, I'd just make virtually all the firearms significantly more powerful in-game to reflect a more realistic lethality. While this could make playing a melee character considerably more difficult, most of the combat in-game offers the chance to find cover and close on a bad guy without being stuck dead out in the open.

[Guest]

Please bare with me as this is my first Mod attempt. I guess I should start with my end goal, which is to mod all the Unique and normal Weapon damages to be more consistent along a given baseline. For instance lets take the 44 as a Baseline, the 44 is for all practical purposes 44/100 in dia. Casing size not withstanding a 44 is a 44, same with the 32, 5.56, 5mm, etc. Assigning a damage potential to the 44 as the base damage of the Scoped .44 Magnum and knowing it's diameter we an extract the damage per 1/100th of an inch then adjust the damage of each firearm based upon the caliber of the ammo used. Granted there must be some adjustments, such as the casing size of a magnum is substantially longer then your standard 44 caliber round. Other adjustments must be made based upon the Unique factor, but all following within a set of guidelines.

 

Using the .44 Mag as a baseline we get .7954r (54 repeating) per 1/100th, calculating that to the 10mm and the .32 we can make adjustments based energy rates for closest bullet grain. Granted the .32 barely has 10th the energy of .44, so we'll need to adjust up for playability.

 

This same ideology can be used against rifle rounds, such as the 5.56mm, .32 Cal, .308, and even the 5mm Minigun ammo. Once again liberties must be made for Pistol to Rifle usage as well as Unique weapons. That said a standard can be determined from which additional damage can be calculated for Uniques based upon the size to damage ratio.

 

While all the above is interesting to me. What do you, the Modding society as it were, feel about my proposed changes? Is this a mod that has interest outside of my own? I welcome and and all feedback.

 

*Edit*

I realize there are holes in my logic that may or may not need to be filled. It may come down to using dmg/energy, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

 

There's a great deal more to the terminal effectiveness of a cartridge than its bullet diameter - for instance, an 8mm Mauser (0.323" bore diameter) is orders of magnitude more powerful than the 0.400" 10mm Auto.

Similarly, the new .327 Ruger Magnum is damn close to as powerful as .357 Magnum even though the projectile diameter is significantly smaller. Yes, you mentioned casing size and the powder charge is ultimately the deciding factor - with projectile mass (the bullet 'grain' is actually a measure of weight - 1 grain is 1/7000 of a US pound) factoring in after that.

 

But there are cartridges that are almost the same dimensionally, yet one is loaded to a much hotter spec than the other, like the 7.63 Mauser vs the 7.62x25 Tokarev - the Tokarev is considerably hotter than the Mauser cartridge and while Mauser ammo could be used in a Tokarev chambered weapon in a life-or-death sort of pinch with a reasonable chance of success (though it'd likely have issues cycling the weapon because of its reduced power) the Tokarev cannot be used in a 7.63 Mauser weapon without risking considerable weapon damage.

 

I've always found that trying to make firearm damage reflect things true to real life in a game almost always throws off the game balance in a huge way - for instance, to be truly realistic a single shot to the open face with a 10mm would be universally lethal to a human and the vast majority of the critters in the game, including the player character, regardless of "level".

Only Power Armor would have a chance to allow survivability but then once Power Armor is 'fixed' to actually be Power Armor again, you might as well be invulnerable when facing anything this side of nasty robots or super mutants.... or other people in Power Armor.

 

In my opinion, I'd just make virtually all the firearms significantly more powerful in-game to reflect a more realistic lethality. While this could make playing a melee character considerably more difficult, most of the combat in-game offers the chance to find cover and close on a bad guy without being stuck dead out in the open.

 

 

 

I agree with you, especially the last two paragraphs. However if you make bullet damage more lethal, wouldn't it also serve to make weapons like the super sledge cripple limbs easier?

[OmniTree]

Please bare with me as this is my first Mod attempt. I guess I should start with my end goal, which is to mod all the Unique and normal Weapon damages to be more consistent along a given baseline. For instance lets take the 44 as a Baseline, the 44 is for all practical purposes 44/100 in dia. Casing size not withstanding a 44 is a 44, same with the 32, 5.56, 5mm, etc. Assigning a damage potential to the 44 as the base damage of the Scoped .44 Magnum and knowing it's diameter we an extract the damage per 1/100th of an inch then adjust the damage of each firearm based upon the caliber of the ammo used. Granted there must be some adjustments, such as the casing size of a magnum is substantially longer then your standard 44 caliber round. Other adjustments must be made based upon the Unique factor, but all following within a set of guidelines.

 

Using the .44 Mag as a baseline we get .7954r (54 repeating) per 1/100th, calculating that to the 10mm and the .32 we can make adjustments based energy rates for closest bullet grain. Granted the .32 barely has 10th the energy of .44, so we'll need to adjust up for playability.

 

This same ideology can be used against rifle rounds, such as the 5.56mm, .32 Cal, .308, and even the 5mm Minigun ammo. Once again liberties must be made for Pistol to Rifle usage as well as Unique weapons. That said a standard can be determined from which additional damage can be calculated for Uniques based upon the size to damage ratio.

 

While all the above is interesting to me. What do you, the Modding society as it were, feel about my proposed changes? Is this a mod that has interest outside of my own? I welcome and and all feedback.

 

*Edit*

I realize there are holes in my logic that may or may not need to be filled. It may come down to using dmg/energy, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

 

There's a great deal more to the terminal effectiveness of a cartridge than its bullet diameter - for instance, an 8mm Mauser (0.323" bore diameter) is orders of magnitude more powerful than the 0.400" 10mm Auto.

Similarly, the new .327 Ruger Magnum is damn close to as powerful as .357 Magnum even though the projectile diameter is significantly smaller. Yes, you mentioned casing size and the powder charge is ultimately the deciding factor - with projectile mass (the bullet 'grain' is actually a measure of weight - 1 grain is 1/7000 of a US pound) factoring in after that.

 

But there are cartridges that are almost the same dimensionally, yet one is loaded to a much hotter spec than the other, like the 7.63 Mauser vs the 7.62x25 Tokarev - the Tokarev is considerably hotter than the Mauser cartridge and while Mauser ammo could be used in a Tokarev chambered weapon in a life-or-death sort of pinch with a reasonable chance of success (though it'd likely have issues cycling the weapon because of its reduced power) the Tokarev cannot be used in a 7.63 Mauser weapon without risking considerable weapon damage.

 

I've always found that trying to make firearm damage reflect things true to real life in a game almost always throws off the game balance in a huge way - for instance, to be truly realistic a single shot to the open face with a 10mm would be universally lethal to a human and the vast majority of the critters in the game, including the player character, regardless of "level".

Only Power Armor would have a chance to allow survivability but then once Power Armor is 'fixed' to actually be Power Armor again, you might as well be invulnerable when facing anything this side of nasty robots or super mutants.... or other people in Power Armor.

 

In my opinion, I'd just make virtually all the firearms significantly more powerful in-game to reflect a more realistic lethality. While this could make playing a melee character considerably more difficult, most of the combat in-game offers the chance to find cover and close on a bad guy without being stuck dead out in the open.

 

 

You made some great points, to the extent that using a cartridge size based calculation is not a good route to take. What may work is use the energy of a given bullet grain / cartridge combination. The energy imparted by a cartridge has a direct correlation to the damage it does. While weapon type, barrel length, rifling in said barrel also contribute to variations in damage, for the purpose of this mod cartridge energy is the simplest method of determining damage. Some liberties will be taken with cross-ammo weapons, such as the .32 Pistol --> Hunting Rifle and the .44 Magnum -- > Lincoln's Repeater. In the case of the Chinese Assault Rifle and the Assault Rifle, both of which use 5.56mm NATO (taking a leap here) the difference between weapons won't be damage, so much as damage potential, through variations in the accuracy modifier (I have yet to find that). Other cartridges, such as the 5mm for the Minigun, I'll be looking at the .204 Ruger for inspiration as the only other 5mm rounds I found with energy data are the 5mm SMC which were never produced in mass quantites. For the baby of the bunch, the .32, I've gone with the .32 H&R Magnum, only because it has the highest damage potential of all the .32 caliber rounds. That said, I couldn't find data on the .32-40, which like the .44-40 can be chambered in both a revolver and a rifle.

 

As a side note, I fully realize that this mod will drastically alter the landscape of the game. The Lincoln Repeater will no longer be Zues' lightning bolt. And to be frank, the difficulty level will be ratcheted up, most likely significantly. However, it will certainly make the game more 'interesting'.

[Wreckless1]

I agree 100% that the ammo type should dictate the damage for the most part - Honestly I'd take a page from FO1 and FO2 and just make the regular 'Assault Rifle'/G3/R91/Whatever you want to call it chambered in 5mm instead of 5.56, and rechamber the hunting rifle for 5.56 as well, leaving .32 to be a handgun round exclusively. This makes its lower damage compared to the 'AK' more understandable as well as makes the hunting rifle actually make sense, as well as explain why it does so much less damage than the .308 Sniper Rifle.

 

For a hot ass .32, .327 Ruger fits the bill quite nicely, like I said in a previous post its very close to the .357 Mag in performance.

Though with the number of hobby wildcatters out there that make custom ammunition all the time from different sorts of brass and necking them up or down to fit different sized projectiles etc, I've not placed much weight on trying to relate fictional ammo in games like Fallout to actual cartridges found in real life. If that were the case, 10mm would be a hell of a lot more damaging since 10mm Auto is a hell of a hot handgun round in real life.

 

As far as accuracy, I'd like to see a mod that locked damage as a constant (since user skill and weapon condition doesn't change a projectiles velocity or size at all) and changed the shot dispersion of a weapon into a formula based on skill in that weapon and weapon condition, with both being high the gun would shoot nearly laser-straight (or relatively so, based on the gun type itself) and have good VATS accuracy to a much longer distance, whereas weapons in poor condition would shoot all over the place in the hands of someone with 25% skill in that discipline, etc.

This would help the RPG aspect as well in that a twitch gamer that rocks at CS or Quake can't just run around and blow everyone away and ignore VATS with a character that has 20% in small guns.

[OmniTree]

I agree 100% that the ammo type should dictate the damage for the most part - Honestly I'd take a page from FO1 and FO2 and just make the regular 'Assault Rifle'/G3/R91/Whatever you want to call it chambered in 5mm instead of 5.56, and rechamber the hunting rifle for 5.56 as well, leaving .32 to be a handgun round exclusively. This makes its lower damage compared to the 'AK' more understandable as well as makes the hunting rifle actually make sense, as well as explain why it does so much less damage than the .308 Sniper Rifle.

 

For a hot ass .32, .327 Ruger fits the bill quite nicely, like I said in a previous post its very close to the .357 Mag in performance.

Though with the number of hobby wildcatters out there that make custom ammunition all the time from different sorts of brass and necking them up or down to fit different sized projectiles etc, I've not placed much weight on trying to relate fictional ammo in games like Fallout to actual cartridges found in real life. If that were the case, 10mm would be a hell of a lot more damaging since 10mm Auto is a hell of a hot handgun round in real life.

 

As far as accuracy, I'd like to see a mod that locked damage as a constant (since user skill and weapon condition doesn't change a projectiles velocity or size at all) and changed the shot dispersion of a weapon into a formula based on skill in that weapon and weapon condition, with both being high the gun would shoot nearly laser-straight (or relatively so, based on the gun type itself) and have good VATS accuracy to a much longer distance, whereas weapons in poor condition would shoot all over the place in the hands of someone with 25% skill in that discipline, etc.

This would help the RPG aspect as well in that a twitch gamer that rocks at CS or Quake can't just run around and blow everyone away and ignore VATS with a character that has 20% in small guns.

 

I don't see any reason to alter the ammo type for the Assault weapon, instead what I've done is alter the accuracy of the four Assault weapons. They each have a shot spread that gradually reduces in size from the Assault > Chinese Assault > Wanda > Xuan Long. Admittedly this will require a lot of tweaking to find a proper spread to weapon variation i.e. you don't want the basic Assault rifle to accurate as compared to the Unique Xuan Long or Wanda. Basically my thinking based upon my extremely limited modding knowledge, is to adjust the parameters I can. While adjusting the .32 up to a .327 or even a .357 could be as simple as a bit of text, to properly do it I'd need meshes and graphics for the .327 or .357 neither of which I am capable of creating anytime soon. In regards to fixing weapon damage based upon ammo then altering accuracy based upon skill, I'd like to see that as well. However, I don't have a clue where to start with that. It would be nice if you strip out the current association of weapon damage with that of weapon spread. That said you would need to altar where the data is being retrieved from and the location of the relevant block of data within the new location. IF that is even possible.

 

Thanks to Accurate Assault Rifles by Crotalus, Wasteland Armory Upgrade by jhjoyner1, and 32 Pistol Upgrade by TheBionicRock for giving my the insights I needed to make the changes to my weapons mod.

 

 

 

Another change currently finished is the Hunting Rifle and Ole' Painless have been converted to .308 rounds.

[Omnimmotus]

I love this line of discourse. Especially since it is completely out of my league in gun knowledge. :happy:

 

If I were you, I wouldn't worry about the graphics of the items for now. If you change the .32 ammo to .327, custom graphics would only be the finishing touches. Just worry about the game application, then worry about the ornamentation later. (By the way, I know how to replace textures and might be able to make you a custom .327 ammo image in the future. Can't do Nifs yet though, we're still mostly in the dark on that one.)

 

Tuning VATS is also quite possible, though it seems to act oddly in a few ways. I've tweaked it a bit, and it seems the two important factors are distance and the spread of the gun. Unfortunately, they are calculated independently, not together. Distance reduces hit chances based on the distance to the target, but it affects equally on shotguns and sniper rifles. (Which explains why the sniper rifle is impossible to use in VATS.) Spread makes less accurate weapons hit less, but without regards to distance. That means if you remove the distance decrease so that sniper rifles are accurate, shotguns also become much more accurate at long ranges without regard to their bullet spread. You can turn up the effect of spread, but it still doesn't account for distance. (You might get a 35% chance to hit a head with a shotgun at one meter distance, and a 30% chance at 20 meters.) There are some other variables that need testing that may or may not fix this problem, this is just an initial assessment.

 

I'd say don't worry too much about VATS for now. Stick to the weapons themselves. Clearly you guys know what you're doing there, so I'll just sit back and watch for that part. :smile:

[OmniTree]

I've started looking at VATS trying to adjust shot spread to something more akin to manual aiming with no significant results yet. That said, I have managed to decrease bullet spread for Assault type weapons. Not anywhere near where they should be, as even with Zero values the spray is quite large, but certainly much better. Both data points contain values to allow VATS (altered or vanilla) to make calculations. On weapons using identical ammo types, I plan to use 'spread' as the major determining factor for damage potential. There will be minor increases to the stated damage figures for instance in Assault > Chinese > Wanda > Xuan Long. This same line of thought will be utilized for Hunting Rifle > Sniper Rifle > Ole' Painless > Reservists Rifle > Victory Rifle.

 

It appears to be working for the assault weapons on the surface at least. I have yet to test it with the single shot .308 Cal. Rifles (note: as previously mentioned Hunting Rifle and Ole' Painless were converted to .308). Also of note is that the appearance of functioning is solely outside VATS as inside VATS Assault Rifles are still wildly inaccurate.

 

Once I have the mechanics as I want them I'll start the damage calculations for Projectile weapons. I still haven't come up with a viable method of calculating melee and Laser / Plasma damage. One thing at a time though. Lets us not put the horse before the cart. Horse...horse...alright where did the bloody horse go? Who opened the stall?!