The Berzerker Dart Gun

[sombrehombre]

The main flaw with FO3 in comparison to FO1 and 2, in my opinion, is that the designers of those games had a cardinal rule that every quest must have at least 3 solutions: Shoot, Sneak, or Speak. It was (almost) possible to play through them without making a single direct combat kill, and that sort of diversity of playstyles adds to the replayability of the games.

 

Now, there's no way to replicate this in FO3 without a complete overhaul of the world, but there are some interesting mods that bring an entirely different flavor to the obligatory combat. TheTalkieToaster's RobCo Certified and Wasteland Whisperer(still a few bugs in the latter) are making it possible to play science/sneak heavy characters as Beastmasters. Mods that permit entirely different character development and playstyles (rather than giving the vanilla one a new gloss of paint) are my favorites.

 

I'm a heavy, heavy user of the dart gun in the game, but the idea occurred to me that if every NPC/creature could be turned berzerk (as the Grayditch fire ants when you shoot off their antenna), combating crowds would have an entirely different character. One could sneak, identify the strongest adversary, and then cause them to rampage against all their peers, while sneakily watching from a safe distance.

 

I propose a new schematic for a Berzerker Dart Gun, available fairly early in the game. As with the present dart gun, it would require 1 paint gun, 1 toy car, and 1 surgical tubing, but no Radscorpion poison glands. Instead of darts, it fires syringes of Psycho. One could use the same graphics for the dart as the existing dart gun, or use the Med-X syringe graphic (probably best), or make a new graphic from the existing Psycho (removing the large serum canister next to the needle).

 

But instead of having merely the effects of Psycho (Damage +25%), the serum if injected without the target's knowledge, and for the duration of its effect, causes the target to aggro all beings friend and foe that it can see in its vicinity. Since this can have considerably more effect than a poison dart (if a target is selected with care), the more expensive Psycho is required rather than a single dart.

 

Obviously, a Berzerker dart would have no effect on machinery like robots and turrets. Also, syringes don't have the penetrating power of darts, so for realism, perhaps it should be made ineffective against any foe in power armor.

 

I'm pretty sure this would be a straightforward mod for those with any experience modding aggro states, but I suspect it would take a week or more for me to learn Bethesda's modding tools and scripting language, and I'd initially produce a poorer product.

[grrantu]

I created a mod that does many of the things you were asking for. You can find it here:

 

http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3760

 

 

Grrantu

[arcoolka]

I made something else, but base idea is similar http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3789

My mutagen darts change humans to ghouls and feral ghouls to /not humans/ but humans like, they start to be friendly and you can speak with them a little bit :) But I like your idea too, so if U are interested, we can start work on it. As U can see, my english is not perfect, so will need somebody to help with this :)

[arcoolka]

Here it is available /alpha version/

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3866

:)