Arcanum Arcanum Rebalance Mod

[gunman]

Anyway, this mod sounds silly. At least he should come up with something that makes sense instead of the "wooden ring" thing. While the vanilla schematics are oversimplifications, at least the components are making some sense. But wooden rings? Carcanum again.

 

[Shadenuat]

Guns in the mod are quite powerful, Hand Cannon does 4-72 damage, LGR is back to it's pre-patch state (41-41), and Elephant Gun has shorter range than LGR but it's damage is 20-60. However! The guy tweaked monsters too. Meaning while you can reliably kill a lot of random creatures in turn based and even more in real-time, some of them are tougher than you might think. You can finish both welcoming parties in The Boil with a revolver, but you can't even half the health bar of a small lizard from Void near Blackroot with LGR or Elephant gun So techies can suck it, they're still get in trouble.

 

[sea]

Here's what dude did with magic if anyone's interested:

So as final conclusion, magic in mod still breaks game. Now you just use schools which were crap once, but now are good. Oh, you also have unlimited mana outside of combat.
It's less straightforward though. A lot of spells are made with spellsword in mind. Sometimes I want to cast Tidal Force+Stoneskin and kill rats with sword. Sometimes I will summon rapelizards. Sometimes I will throw fireballs around. But all dungeons are a joke because of new Meditation spell.

I also checked on some of the techie recipes, and there's a lot of broken stuff. Wooden ring in arachnid recipe wtf

Mod is amateurish work at best. Only good for slight change of experience.

Yeah, I tend to agree. I think guns are just a bit too powerful now, magic just shifts around what's good and what's not, and while many changes were done with good intentions, a lot of them also remove resource management altogether, i.e. removing consequences of mana use outside of combat, giving insane numbers of bullets in crafting, etc. I'm gonna play through the game with this mod installed but I don't think it's necessarily superior to the existing game balance either.

 

[Shadenuat]

Mod also tweaks companions in a strange way. I'm level 22, and Magnus doesn't even think about helping me to craft something. All dwarf does is lifting, his strength is around 17 and melee almost maxed. And melee sucks in this mod a lot.

Still, some things made me smile. The most underwhelming companion I always loved to carry around as a techie, Jaina Stiles, now throws points in GUNS! So I gave her a cannon, which I made out of fancy pistol and WOODEN RING.

fukk yea
that's just how gunsmithing works

 

[gunman]

Bling, bling.
That's how it should work?

Only with females, but I don't think you can code it like that in-game.

You can have Hand Cannon 30 minutes into gameplay, once you reach Tarant and pickpocket that idiot gnome with a fate point from tricking the thieves at the bridge, or pickpocket the gun shopkeeper for another very nice revolver (better than the one given by Doc Roberts).

And as a technologist you will be swimming in money by selling what you make, once in Tarant I was quickly in 5000-6000 range. A Tesla rod alone sells for 800-900 a piece to a junk dealer.

So I don't think the game is unbalanced for a technologist.

Meta-gaming, bro. It also doesn't make guns any less shittier, don't you think?

Why meta-gaming? It's not like your character wouldn't know the gnome is having a hand cannon, since he has it equipped. And since you are a gunslinger, you want it. And the gnome has strong anti-social tendencies, so it's better for everyone's safety to leave him without it.

If the magic is broken and imbalanced, making the combat too easy, doesn't mean that weapons should be overpowered broken as well. The guy who is making the mod should tone the magic down and leave the tech as it is. The weapon's progression looks fine to me, and by the end of the game Droch's Warbringer makes combat negligible.

 

[Coriolanus]

The guy who is making the mod should tone the magic down and leave the tech as it is.

I think so as well. A major overhaul of the magic system would be needed, though. Not just Harm, but stuff like Summon Ogre and Disintegrate needs to be toned down for other stuff to shine. How about making some cool quests for a magician who can talk to ghosts? Super dangerous spider-infested areas that make use of the Charm Beast spell? Some super strong caster enemies to make use of the Meta school? One can dream.

 

[Johannes]

The problem with guns is that enemies using guns are trivial 99% of the time, compared to if they had melee weapons. So the basic weapons should be buffed, but the high end stuff like Hand Cannon etc. is mostly fine as is in vanilla.

Though I think it'd be thematic for the game that magic and tech are just plain more powerful than melee (without good spell/tech support). It's a shame though that most enemies are boring sword wielders or monsters, so that'd basically just make things easier for the PC.

 

[Shadenuat]

Yeah, if you're going to really fix Arcanum combat, abilities are of second concern. You'd have to tweak enemy AI and encounters. Make them use cool spells and throw grenades at least. Harm/Ogres/Stun grenades won't be that op when you start getting them on your ass too. Or watch Virgil get mind controlled and attack you. Then you'd wish you'd placed a few points in Meta school or had that tranquilliser in your backpack.

 

[CappenVarra]

Yeah, if you're going to really fix Arcanum combat

Not gonna happen. You could sacrifice a thousand Drogs to Tzeentch and it still wouldn't be done. Only Tim Cain can save us from the Void... But he won't. So, learn to enjoy the broken combat and you're golden. Break it in stylish different ways (there's tons of them) with each new character, it's the only way.

 

[Leonidus]

Hey nice thread guys. I made the mod.

Most of you have been quite wrong about almost everything, but still some good points, which I appreciate. You guys weren't in the position of having to change the game, so you don't have the dilemmas I had in front of me, which is why some of the changes seem confusing. Understandable. Basically everything you guys have said were already things I had to consider (a good exception: summoned beast casting petrify spell? me and my brother both did summoner playthroughs, but still interested to see how that's happening).

Also seems like a lot of you don't know how Arcanum combat really works, so you can read the FAQ I made for new players here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/914155-arcanum-of-steamworks-and-magick-obscura/faqs/63974. It has some formulas like melee damage and weapon DPS and so on. There's also a ton of documentation with the mod, in pdf and excel format, not to mention the readme.... Note that this is all again very understandable, because no one had any reason to understand Arcanum combat before (except me because I wanted to mod it).

Just going to stress again that you need to read the readme, combat is meant for turn based, and there were still some things I could not balance. Decisions were based on what i could change, what would make the game balanced, and to a lesser extent what would make the game less unnecessarily tedious (complaints about easier bulk ammo crafting is pretty surprising).

Ammo crafting is a great example. Shops won't stock more than a certain amount of bullets, no matter what I tried (260 I believe), so I just made the bullet crafting give a large amount. This broke some suspension of disbelief and realism and whatnot, but it was the only option for bypassing the tedium of stocking up on bullets. You'll need a lot of bullets to get through the game now, because of the changes to the monsters.

Also a few other bugs I have had reports on that aren't in an updated documentation: throwing knives are bugged, the flood spell can cause crashing, and a few morph spells only affect NPC races (damage won't change on monsters for some reason).

Overall, the changes to the game are quite balanced and are extremely deliberate, with great consideration to the other 500 items and 80 spells in the game and so on. But as I said in the readme, there are still some things which I could not change. Some particulars to note are the Dog (nerfing him would nerf all brute fangs), backstab damage, most cursed items (use special scripts), certain special weapons (iron clan hammer, staff of xoranth, void weapons, few more). Regular Arcanum is incredibly broken all over. I made it so that is balanced and can be broken in the least possible amount of ways.

I did start working on the 2.0 a few weeks ago. This was all done with changes to the game files (spells, monsters, schematics, descriptions), with item editing done by qtscribe tool. I can do 2.0 now because I got my old XP machine mailed from my dad's house, so I can use the world editor and the old editing programs (like scr editors and so on.) With 2.0 I have begun it as an actual module that is a copy of Arcanum, so now I can make individual changes, which has already solved most of what I wanted to change. Some technical factors going to delay it's release for a while though (never made a module before). But Dog is nerfed, cursed items are nerfed, rigged weapons are nerfed, final fight with kerghan is much better, and so on. Just a ton of great stuff, and more to come. Especially once I get into Jaesun's awesome program and make some actually new material instead of editing what's there.

Finally, I know this isn't the perfect answer to the thread. I can get into explaining each and every thing you guys need (though I'll probably want to skip a lot of the more inane questions asked so far). But, I just got home after a flight from visiting my dying father. So we can do that later, and I'm going to play some video games with the rest of my night instead of just talking about games.

Best of Luck Adventurers,

Leonidus

 

[Leonidus]

I wouldn't say I'm a lurker here, but I'm not sure how much activity is required to attain lurker status. I found out about rpgcodex because someone suggested I should post the mod here, so I did back in April or so. I am a very occasional peruser of the codex, but find the tastes of the players here to be excellent. The more I read the codex the more I feel like I have finally found people who like games for the right reasons.

If you want to change the bullet ammo amount, or any yield number from schematics, here is how to do it quite easily from here:

Spoiler

Pidgeon if you'd like to create an arrow schematic, you could change one that exists to it easily. Follow the steps in my modding post to get to the game files of course, then get your description.mes and find the arrow item ID (the number next to it's name in there). Go into the schematic.mes and replace the Result part of your chosen schematic (2nd to last value, the sixth line there) with the number you saw in description.mes (arrow's item ID which is 7038). To change the description on the schematic crafting menu, change the wording in schematic_text.mes.

The only thing you (apparantly) can't change about Arcanum without devoting years to it is the artwork. Though the required items are autogenerated by the data you put in there (assuming you change the required components).

An easy example is the first schematic in schematic.mes:

//Heal Lite
{2000}{10} //Name
{2001}{11} //Description
{2002}{532} //Drawing
{2003}{10061} //component 1
{2004}{10062} //component 2
{2005}{10059} //Result
{2006}{5} // Result Amount

This is the crafted healing item for herbology.

Change it to:

//Heal Lite
{2000}{10} //Name
{2001}{11} //Description
{2002}{532} //Drawing
{2003}{10061} //component 1
{2004}{10062} //component 2
{2005}{7038} //Result
{2006}{500} // Result Amount

and now kadura stem + ginka root = 500 arrows.

Note that you don't have to unpack the files to edit them, just change the ones you downloaded with my mod.

I have to keep ammo availability high in my game because otherwise it is a huge waste of time to get the amount needed to kill the monsters. That's also why molotov creation was increased. It's for gameplay, and this being a balance mod, gameplay has to trump immersion. If there is something that would make characters really hate playing which I could easily change, even though some purists won't like it, I have to do it. Players annoyed by unrealistic outcomes (in a fantasy game) is better than the average player saying to themselves before they uninstall "Dude should've renamed the mod Shopping Eternally For Ammunition To Kill 8 Monsters Arcanum." This mod, above all, must make playing Arcanum better.

You all have made some wonderfully uninformed opinions about weapons and spells in my mod. I had to personally test many game mechanics due to the lack of information on Arcanum, so go figure. Have no fear, for after this post you'll be able to make some very good opinions, even in regular Arcanum. As far as my mod goes, the documentation which I'm sure everyone read actually does most of the work for you. It has spell damage charts, full spell info chart with notes, a weapon chart with dps for trained and untrained, and more. These alone can dispell most of the "new changes are broken" ideas you might have immediately. There's always room to be unnecessarily negative about purely subjective things, however! No one can argue with you if you want to endlessly troll about the usefulness of knockback in a spell etc.

Now some explanations of how Arcanum combat works with speeds used from turn based combat. It's from memory and scattered notes, so if you have a discrepancy you could very well be right (but unlikely my good sirs).

Melee Damage

Close combat weapons.
Melee skill for hit%.
Max damage of a melee weapon can be increased up to 3x.
Strength damage bonus applies to melee damage.
Magic (+damage) will also increase damage up to 3x the max of the weapon.
Separate damage (like bonus fire/elec damage) is applied after main damage, and it is unaffected by any damage bonuses.
Training increases weapon speed by 5.

So, on a melee weapon, the limiting factor is usually max damage of the weapon, because ST bonus can get extreme (Chunkka gets 32 bonus damage). With ST 20 (+20 damage), a 1-3 dagger doesn't do 21-23, it does 9-9.

A 1-3 dagger with 1-3 fire damage would still do 9-9, then also 1-3 fire damage, so that can push total damage over the 3x max limitation.

Hand to Hand Damage (HtH)

Base (ST 10) damage is 1-5.
Hand to hand damage is completely weaponless.
Uses melee skill for hit%.
Gauntlets can increase the max HtH damage.
Max damage can be increased up to 2x.
Strength damage bonus applies.
Takes 5 speed to attack in turn based (equivalent to weapons of speed 9 to 11).

HtH limiting factors are damage from gauntlets and the fixed speed (you cannot get faster HtH attacks). Without gauntlets, the highest damage is 10-10 at 5 speed per attack (2dps). With your average war gauntlets, the base damage becomes 1-15, and with 28 bonus damage from a 24 ST half-ogre, damage is 29-30 (6 dps).

Ranged Weapon Damage (guns, bows, reusable thrown weapons)

No damage bonus from PC stats.
More factors can lower hit%: aptitude of enemy (guns vs magic), inbetween object, blocking object, perception, range
Missed attacks can still hit things nearby or along projectile path.
Training in bows fires 2 arrows at a time, doubling effective damage output.
Training increases weapon speed by 5.
Requires line of sight.

The limiting factor for ranged weapon damage is foremost the inability to increase the weapon's damage. To make a ranged character have higher straight damage output, you can only increase your speed or get a better weapon. A ranged weapon's normal damage will only increase from magic (+damage).

You can always focus on increasing your chance to hit, or getting higher MA to get more bonus damage out of that Arcane Bow as well.

Spellcasting

Takes 4 speed to cast a spell.
Mana cost is consumed from FT. Not having enough can fizzle the spell and knock you unconscious, teleport excepted.
Spells can be resisted by Tech Aptitude of a subject or Magic Resistance.
Healing spells cast by yourself on yourself will never fail from TA.
Scrolls cast without manacost.
Mastery from Tulla reduces manacost for that school alone by half.
In vanilla Arcanum, spells have unlimited range.
Requires line of sight.
Highest spells available at level 15.
A 1s pulsing maintained spell takes something extreme like 48 turns in turn based.

The limiting factor for spellcasting is the constant 4 speed for casting and your FT.

Backstabbing

Training allows axes and swords to be used.
Extreme damage, formula unsure. Completely imbalanced.
Allowed on 'unaware' targets. Stunned targets are automatically unaware.
NP on items is Noise Penalty. Negatives hurt your prowling.


Some Other Considerations

Hit% starts at 25.
1 character point in a skill raises hit% by 20, max of 5 points. Throwing increases by 24%.
MSR = Minimum Strength Required. Hit% -10 for each ST less than required.
Intelligence of 20 adds 10% to hit, regardless of weapon.
Lighting will reduce hit% by a percentage, -20 from 125 at day hours 20pm to 3am.

Throwing objects (grenades, passports, etc.) always takes 4 speed in combat.

Blunt weapon crits can stun enemies.
Throwing non-weapon items at people will actually do small amounts of damage.
Some weapons are applied on the enemy at melee range, like poisons.
Poison damage is 1 per pulse, always.
Fire damage can damage item durability.

DR reduces regular damage, regular spell damage (ex:harm). Fire and Elec damage are reduced only by FR and ER. MR increases chance to resist a spell outright. Max is 95% for all.
AC reduces chance to hit by about (AC x 0.5 x 0.01 x chance to hit). Max AC is 95.
This means AC is not nearly as important as DR (almost always).
Adding more DR to an already high DR helps infinitely more than adding the same amount to a low DR. A 30 DR 100 HP fighter takes 143 damage to kill. A 75 DR 100 HP fighter takes 400 damage. An 85 DR 100 HP fighter takes 667. 95 DR would be 2000 damage for 100 HP.

Weapon Speed

In turn based combat, the amount of Action Points available for combat is your character's Speed stat.
Weapon speed is independent from character speed.
Training usually raises weapon speed by 5. This actually changes the number you see in-game from then on, you don't need to add the 5 mentally.
Weapon speed determines how much character speed is used per attack in turn based combat.
The formula is basically 8 - (1/3 x weapon speed, rounded down) with the exception that 18-24 weapon speed is 2 speed used, and only 25+ is 1 speed used per attack.
Ex: Weapon speed 9 takes 5 speed because 1/3 x 9 = 3 and 8 - 3 = 5 speed used.


Therefore to compare dps you take average damage divided by speed used per attack

Remember: gun damage never changes, bows double with training, melee max damage can increase 3x, HtH max can increase 2x + gauntlets, spells and throwing things is always 4 speed used, HtH is always 5.

 

[Johannes]

Seeing these stats, I no longer doubt you, the mod is certainly perfect. If you can collect that data without fault then you can also make all the right design decisions, I reckon.

 

[Leonidus]

A strange argument to make my good man.

That post is necessary because none of you seem to even know whether you are right or wrong, making extremely baseless judgements about this weapon or that. This gives people the ability to compare things in Arcanum, and in my mod, which is what I said in the post.

Next is going to be how the game had to be balanced, based on these formulas within the game. Things like why it must be balanced for turn based combat, spellcasting for damage, weapon type comparisons.

Then I'll answer particular questions. Most of that is going to be quoted directly from the readme, sadly.

 

[Johannes]

There's no single correct way to balance this game and you're an idiot to pretend that it is so.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

no rebalance mod can save arcanum from its endless waves of filler combat, waaaaay more than your average dragon age.
and the golems which eat your weapons. oh god the golems.
arcanum needs no fights at all.

 

[CappenVarra]

no, Arcanum needs a +200% simulation/verisimilitude bonus and it would become the best game of all time. gameplay balance, pffft.

 

[Leonidus]

Come now Johannes. I pretend no such thing.

Regular Arcanum is incredibly broken all over. I made it so that is balanced and can be broken in the least possible amount of ways.

So it would seem we agree? To completely fix the game would require recoding a good bit of it, among other things. But to balance most of it? That is what I did, and that is neither wrong nor idiotic.

To the matter at hand, I need something from you all. Not just reports on bugs you might have found. Something important. I spent an inordinate amount of time learning how to change the game, the game mechanics, and so on in order to make this mod. All I need in reciprocation is for you to hear me out. Be reasonable. That's all.

This wonderful game from the minds behind Fallout deserves that. That is likely the only reason why any of you are reading this post: because you know Arcanum is great and it is such a shame that parts of it are so utterly flawed. You want to enjoy it without feeling like combat is ludicrous. Or cartoonish like that abomination Carcanum.

If I'm right about that, then please just listen. Disregard the superficial comments for a moment. I'll answer them afterwards and show you specifically where they are wrong. You won't have to even take my word for it, you can prove it to yourself, that's why I posted the game mechanics for you all. That's why there are spreadsheets and pdf files and a readme with the game download.

If you really have doubts, then simply try the game. Play a normal difficulty game past the wheel clan dredge, and you will see for yourself. This mod is not ridiculous, it is quite well balanced, and it makes the game better. You will be pleasantly surprised.

------------------------

Firstly, I made the mod only by changing the game files(.mes and .txt from the .dats). No hex editing, couldn't use worldeditor on my win7 comp, and no old programs meant for editing (because of 64-bit OS). Now that I have my old XP machine back, the difference there has been like night and day. But this explanation is for game-files-only editing, which still changes most of the game. The main difference is that the worldeditor makes individual changes, and game files change entire types of things.

Arcanum's easy combat dilutes the player's choices in character development to a mostly meaningless selection of similar flavors. That is to say, you can pretty much build your character however you like and still cheese through the game regardless. It makes the path you pick matter less. So to resolve this, difficulty of enemies needs to be improved wherever possible and to the extent that is reasonable.

So I changed the monsters to be much better. You can die if unprepared, even at high levels with a powerful character. The main things which can be changed on monsters are basic stats (dex,etc), hp, resists, and damage. They do a lot more damage, have a lot more hp and resists, and there is variety in their basic stats. Monsters you face later in the game were made to be more and more challenging. Some monsters are now powerful bosses, with some extreme damage or hp in the thousands, and so forth. There is actual variety in resists now, so the average monster will have higher DR than the slightly exotic FR or rarer ER, but some will have higher ER/FR/MR than DR. This makes certain spells and weapons better vs certain enemies, which is very important for combat. There are fun extremes, such as a monster with 95 DR that you will need other forms of damage to fight in order to avoid an attritive series of turns. Swarmer monkeys will use their speed to attack like piranhas. Dragons will bypass your DR using fire damage. The monsters now provide something good to fight against.

The limits on making enemies more difficult is mainly in the ai, stats which can't be changed, and NPCs. Arcanum AI doesn't like to cast spells, and I can't change that. Monsters can't be given spells that they will cast through the game files (though in worldeditor I have now). Though they might cast more of the spells they have if they had more fatigue. But, fatigue is not a changeable stat like HP is. Monster stats cap at 20, so you can't give extra fatigue by giving 99 to some stats either. The only way I've found to give fatigue is through an effect, which must be given through an item, spell cast, background, etc, none of which can be used to change all these monster's FT from the game files. Similar story with speed, which is determined by dex, maxed at 20 dex for monsters. Nothing to be done about increasing it beyond that.

The reason NPCs couldn't be made difficult like I want is because they draw from the same well you do. Changing the game files makes broad, sweeping changes, not individual ones to a specific monster on the screen. I have a vague recollection of other problems, but it's been so long now. But making all half-ogres better makes your half-ogres just as much better, except you probably have more of them and better items. Even amongst classes this causes problems, which determines changes to base stats like how a human guard is different from a human noble. Chunkka's class is guard, so making guards challenging at all would make a game with chunkka in the party obscenely easy until you reach much more powerful monsters later in the game. The inventories of only a few NPCs refer to the game files (about 20 total) and could be changed, another tragedy. These problems vanish in the worldeditor, thankfully.

What could be done of signifance to NPCs is changing level schemes. Making NPCs use their character points more wisely was a good improvement, and you can feel the results on a decent level NPC, though still not the difference I'd have liked. It still is nice to see the barbarians and higher guards fight back a bit. Allies benefit greatly from this, and in order to make worse allies more useful, all of them have some kind of decent combat contribution. Because individual NPCs couldn't be changed, you should still try to get them when around their level. Sogg's ogre strength isn't that great a help if he's behind by 20 levels.
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Changing combat difficulty must also be concerned with the potential of the player at that point, however. You should not make the end easy for low level players who breezed by, or the beginning so punishing that grinding is required to advance. There is a general arc of the game that the combat difficulty needs to match as closely as possible. This is why the early monsters are not altogether different or much more difficult, though some certainly are here and there. The players need proper time to develop their character, a fair chance if you will. At low levels, one of the many critical misses could cause decapitation at any moment, regardless of the monster at hand. So, the mod mainly ratchets up difficulty after the BMC/Isle of Despair. That is when the player or at least his allies can be expected to be well developed in some form of combat: 20 st for melee, or high dex with a good amount in a ranged skill, etc.

Note that even a level 1 player can still have 20 ST, or plenty of skill in guns, etc. To make the game hard for the combat extreme characters early on would be to the severe detriment of most character builds, and reduce incentive for a very customized PC which Arcanum excels at.

One of the key challenges here is how Arcanum monsters were placed. There is a wide cross fertilization of monster types in the different areas of Arcanum. Apes are in the Golgoth Pass as well as the island of Thanatos. Certain arachnids can be encountered in the sands of the Isle of Despair as well as the forbidden wastes near Vendigroth. So, monsters that you would face some of early cannot be so hard as to be insane at that point, but shouldn't feel weak when met at the later stages in the game. It is difficult to strike this balance, but it can be done with only a few real bothersome imperfections. There are some monsters where only a few are directly in the path of the player, but later entirely restricted to certain much later areas. In these situations, it really does seem best to make the game a little challenging at that spot rather than bland for longer periods later on. That's the give and take here. The patriarch wolf in the BMC is a perfect example. The wyverns near Razor's Point grasslands and then Caladon's plains are another. Lesser Void Demons near Liam's Shop have already been mentioned. So if a monster seems just a bit weaker then it might've been irrevocably in the way at previous stages; or, if it seems much stronger than others, it's probably one you see a lot more of later on. With this in mind, monsters were made much better than the original, just not quite perfect.
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A key decision was between real time and turn based combat. It was pretty easy to make the decision turn based combat, and that is mainly because Arcanum real time combat was deeply flawed in implementation. Perhaps the greatest flaw is the ease of kiting. Even with melee weapons only, you can kite the enemy around in real time combat and oftentimes the enemy will chase you mindlessly as your allies eviscerate from behind. It's not hard to do at all, there's essentially no way to stop it, and it is just a disaster. Beyond that, the firing range effect is an extreme advantage in real time. A party of ranged weapons can offload a tremendous amount of free shots before a melee enemy (which most are) has a chance to attack. It is not anywhere near the fair advantage of a few shots one would expect from a range vs melee encounter. Simply outlandishly imbalanced beyond repair, I'm afraid.

Now even if those two deep flaws didn't exist, there are more significant problems with real time combat. Spells can be cast extremely quickly. Knockdown animation can be interrupted. There's no way to discern the exact relationship between speed-weaponspeed-attackspeed without recording with fraps and editing the video for comparison (this makes an obstacle to even begin to know how to balance items for DPS in real time combat). Attack speed seems just silly at the higher values, and the differences between the normal spectrum of 1-25 weaponspeed are extreme in real-time. This means to have a non-ridiculous Arcanum, most weapons would be restricted to low speed values, limiting item variability. Run speed is determined by player speed (without sever encumbrance of course) in real time, and monster speed cannot be expected beyond 26 from 20 dex (monster stat limit), but a player has many other ways to get higher than 26, making kiting/escaping a sure bet if desired. And if you wanted to ensure an even footing, you'd have to remove all +speed effects from the game, which makes many items and spells more bland now.

Furthermore, turn based systems can allow for more thinking and strategy. Not to say that chess is better than starcraft, but the time to think is nice for letting some creativity get going. Turn based combat in Arcanum has discrete values for each action, which helps greatly for balancing. But it does take more time and that kind of quells some excitement from the game. So how should I decide whether players would even tolerate that? Well, the question I asked myself was "Do Arcanum players want more Fallout, or more Diablo?" The answer was obvious.
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With all the changes I did make, there is one nearly untouched part of Arcanum: races, backgrounds, and gender. There is a very simple reason for this. I want people to actually play the game. There is a lot of room for customization in Arcanum characters, and balancing/changing all the backgrounds/races/genders would make a large timesink as a hurdle to even starting the game for someone who takes consideration into character development. It's not unnacceptably horrible the way they are. The races kind of all have a fine place for character builds and combat roles, except maybe dwarves, but it's still pretty severely imbalanced. Half-ogres get insane ST and 10 free DR? Beyond unbelievable.
-
This ties into another important point, which is that a goal was to keep the same general feel as Arcanum whenever possible. Nature spells should feel like nature spells, generic swords should still do less than generic two handed swords, knowledge of the game should still payoff as opposed to everything being in a totally different place, and so forth. One shouldn't just put something which is not Arcanumesque into the game without an important reason. I didn't replace the overpowered fire dex buff with a water spell, I replaced it with a buff that gave +4 speed unstackable instead of +4 dex stackable.

What was removed was things which were completely imbalanced. The stun spell allowed endless free backstabs and made most fights insanely easy, so it was removed. Almost all stun effects were removed, because stun was an overpowered mechanic. Certain meta-magic spells were removed because they are famous for allowing permanent no-sustain-needed buffs from other spells. Why were the disabled spells left in the game then? So as to prevent bugs if the game called on them specifically. Uprooting embedded pieces of Arcanum is a dangerous proposition for any mod, and so because many spells are used in other areas, some vestigial disabled ones remain. Only 6 however, not game ruining in the slightest. Additionally, in any project you have to weight time towards effective results. To waste too much on debugging some trivial percentage of the game is entirely unwise. Even making 6 good spells can take a long time, if they are the creative type of spell. All the same, to let completely overpowered but removable spells stay for the sake of neatness in the spell screen? What is balanced about that?
-
The combat styles in regular Arcanum could all do absurdly well, but next to none of it was really balanced, be it versus the enemies or considered with other interdisciplinary options or compared to the other combat styles. Good balancing means options should matter and be competitive with similar options from other combat styles. If you can fly through the game with molotov cocktails, what difference does it make that explosive grenades are better? No need to even bother with anything else, if that's the case.

So first let's begin with normalization. Basic weapons of different types should do comparable damage. But some weapon types have inflexible properties, like hand to hand always takes 5 speed per attack, and thrown grenades always take 4. Melee and HtH damage can change, but ranged weapon damage stays the same forever. A sword might do 1-8 at 6 speed/attack when a character is level 1, but 24-24 at level 20 at 4 speed/attack, but a gun balanced at 6dps against the level 20 sword would outperform at level 1. Making the level 1 sword comparable to the level 1 gun would make the sword overpowered for the rest of the game, because the ST bonus damage would soon outpace it. The same dilemma applies to bows, whose damage gets doubled with training.

Taking all of this into account, the weapons need to be comparable to each other on some even footing. My answer to this is a very reasonable one: balance weapons against each other assuming developed characters. Comparing a level 20 character to a level 1 character isn't proper balancing and so comparing a proficient gunslinger to a novice swordsman isn't balanced either. These differences between fluctuating melee damage and static gun damage and doubling bow damage disappear when making reasonable assumptions: that the player who wants to do well in combat is trying. Melee will go for 20+ ST with dex, guns will go for 15+ PE with dex, bows something similar, and all will attempt training. This can be achieved relatively early, or usually by level 20, depending.

Note how this also fits into the allowance for character development in monster balancing. The grace period in the start of the game also lets melee catch up to guns if they did not start with ST 20 at level 1, though guns will outperform until the melee character gets going. There are also mitigating factors to that outperformance: melee characters still get more HP from ST and can wear heavier armors. So the durability forte of the melee style can compensate for the early damage advantage guns have. Ranged weapons later have the first strike advantage, which of course acts as a balance against their usually lower ST from necessarily investing in PE and therefore lighter armor.

On that basis, a 24 ST half-ogre will do about 6 dps in your average HtH, which is the most inflexible of all weapon styles. It earns that superlative because the gauntlet bonus damage could not be changed, nor could the 5 speed per attack, therefore limited to 1-5 gloveless, 1-15 with everyday war gloves. 6 damage per speed then becomes a good figure to revolve damage normalization around, so that HtH doesn't unduly suffer. I changed the basic everyday items (generic short sword, claymore, axe, revolver, rifle, boomerang etc.) to match this. Weapon DPS in my mod escalates from 6 to 9 for most weapon types, with a few exceptions being the weapons which are above that and could not be changed from game files (curse you, Isle of Despair sword!). A 50% DPS increase limit isn't limiting character damage to a 50% increase, because speed can be increased as well, of course.

Better weapons are then made with special bonuses or higher DPS. Worse weapons (like railroad spike, rusty/old/broken, etc) have lower DPS. Varieties among each path's options are important, so some might have less damage but give +hit%, or have less minimum strength required, or longer range guns, or some extra fire damage, with compensating factors, and different speeds, and so on. To the best degree that is possible, all the differences in a weapon should be weighed. A particular challenge in this case is the sheer ubiquity of availability of many weapons. A large area is available for exploration even before the BMC, a lot of the shops of different cities share the same weapons and often exact same data file, the only really distinguishing shops are in the wheel clan and qintarra (not terribly far in the game, but still made some mid-game gear require these shops), and magic chests base loot off of character name/race/background/gender combination. This makes it difficult to have a good progression of weapons that are better but only available later in the game, when you need them versus the stronger monsters. It's important because acquiring one of the best weapons near the beginning of the game not only makes combat imbalanced, but makes the other weapons of that type inconsequential to that character for the rest of the game. This was solved as much as was possible, being of prime importance in a balance mod. With the worldeditor now, it can be almost entirely eliminated.

That is why some schematic components were changed. That is, some schematics required an actual character point investment, so they must be better than average to make it worth it. Therefore it is better to make them available later, and so this can be done through limiting their components. This also gives an especially good advancement arc to weapons available from crafting alone, because they can be rendered unable to attain before a desired stage of the game where the component is found. The component used had to be 1)a unique prototype, of which there are only so many, because that is what the schematic file requires as a reference, and 2) rare to the point that it is only acquired at a specific point and beyond. So I made a list of items matching these 2 qualities, and there aren't many (took some time). Most items one would think are 'unique' from others are actually a generic item prototype with a different name and art, completely unusable for a schematic (it won't allow you to craft, saying you don't have the right component). The ones that did exist were used to limit the availability of good weapons for balancing purposes, and it worked.

There is a special consideration for weapon balancing in turn based which should be noted. Slow weapons have an advantage for the player, because they can get an attack off with even 1 speed left in a turn, but they are worse in the hands of NPCs who almost always (if not always) won't attack without the full speed amount available. Because of AI in the game especially, it can be common for an NPC to use his speed moving and then refuse to attack at all that turn because his few remaining speed isn't even enough to get a full attack with the weapon. This is the kind of thing that is difficult to quantify, and if it feels unfair through testing and playthroughs then a compensating factor would be introduced. This wasn't the case from my judgement, it really seems just fine in the end.

That's all for now, with more later for explanations on spell damage output vs weapon types, armor, and probably some other things I haven't thought to address.

 

[Mother Russia]

Come now Johannes. I pretend no such thing.

Regular Arcanum is incredibly broken all over. I made it so that is balanced and can be broken in the least possible amount of ways.

So it would seem we agree? To completely fix the game would require recoding a good bit of it, among other things. But to balance most of it? That is what I did, and that is neither wrong nor idiotic.

To the matter at hand, I need something from you all. Not just reports on bugs you might have found. Something important. I spent an inordinate amount of time learning how to change the game, the game mechanics, and so on in order to make this mod. All I need in reciprocation is for you to hear me out. Be reasonable. That's all.

This wonderful game from the minds behind Fallout deserves that. That is likely the only reason why any of you are reading this post: because you know Arcanum is great and it is such a shame that parts of it are so utterly flawed. You want to enjoy it without feeling like combat is ludicrous. Or cartoonish like that abomination Carcanum.

If I'm right about that, then please just listen. Disregard the superficial comments for a moment. I'll answer them afterwards and show you specifically where they are wrong. You won't have to even take my word for it, you can prove it to yourself, that's why I posted the game mechanics for you all. That's why there are spreadsheets and pdf files and a readme with the game download.

If you really have doubts, then simply try the game. Play a normal difficulty game past the wheel clan dredge, and you will see for yourself. This mod is not ridiculous, it is quite well balanced, and it makes the game better. You will be pleasantly surprised.

------------------------

Firstly, I made the mod only by changing the game files(.mes and .txt from the .dats). No hex editing, couldn't use worldeditor on my win7 comp, and no old programs meant for editing (because of 64-bit OS). Now that I have my old XP machine back, the difference there has been like night and day. But this explanation is for game-files-only editing, which still changes most of the game. The main difference is that the worldeditor makes individual changes, and game files change entire types of things.

Arcanum's easy combat dilutes the player's choices in character development to a mostly meaningless selection of similar flavors. That is to say, you can pretty much build your character however you like and still cheese through the game regardless. It makes the path you pick matter less. So to resolve this, difficulty of enemies needs to be improved wherever possible and to the extent that is reasonable.

So I changed the monsters to be much better. You can die if unprepared, even at high levels with a powerful character. The main things which can be changed on monsters are basic stats (dex,etc), hp, resists, and damage. They do a lot more damage, have a lot more hp and resists, and there is variety in their basic stats. Monsters you face later in the game were made to be more and more challenging. Some monsters are now powerful bosses, with some extreme damage or hp in the thousands, and so forth. There is actual variety in resists now, so the average monster will have higher DR than the slightly exotic FR or rarer ER, but some will have higher ER/FR/MR than DR. This makes certain spells and weapons better vs certain enemies, which is very important for combat. There are fun extremes, such as a monster with 95 DR that you will need other forms of damage to fight in order to avoid an attritive series of turns. Swarmer monkeys will use their speed to attack like piranhas. Dragons will bypass your DR using fire damage. The monsters now provide something good to fight against.

The limits on making enemies more difficult is mainly in the ai, stats which can't be changed, and NPCs. Arcanum AI doesn't like to cast spells, and I can't change that. Monsters can't be given spells that they will cast through the game files (though in worldeditor I have now). Though they might cast more of the spells they have if they had more fatigue. But, fatigue is not a changeable stat like HP is. Monster stats cap at 20, so you can't give extra fatigue by giving 99 to some stats either. The only way I've found to give fatigue is through an effect, which must be given through an item, spell cast, background, etc, none of which can be used to change all these monster's FT from the game files. Similar story with speed, which is determined by dex, maxed at 20 dex for monsters. Nothing to be done about increasing it beyond that.

The reason NPCs couldn't be made difficult like I want is because they draw from the same well you do. Changing the game files makes broad, sweeping changes, not individual ones to a specific monster on the screen. I have a vague recollection of other problems, but it's been so long now. But making all half-ogres better makes your half-ogres just as much better, except you probably have more of them and better items. Even amongst classes this causes problems, which determines changes to base stats like how a human guard is different from a human noble. Chunkka's class is guard, so making guards challenging at all would make a game with chunkka in the party obscenely easy until you reach much more powerful monsters later in the game. The inventories of only a few NPCs refer to the game files (about 20 total) and could be changed, another tragedy. These problems vanish in the worldeditor, thankfully.

What could be done of signifance to NPCs is changing level schemes. Making NPCs use their character points more wisely was a good improvement, and you can feel the results on a decent level NPC, though still not the difference I'd have liked. It still is nice to see the barbarians and higher guards fight back a bit. Allies benefit greatly from this, and in order to make worse allies more useful, all of them have some kind of decent combat contribution. Because individual NPCs couldn't be changed, you should still try to get them when around their level. Sogg's ogre strength isn't that great a help if he's behind by 20 levels.
-
Changing combat difficulty must also be concerned with the potential of the player at that point, however. You should not make the end easy for low level players who breezed by, or the beginning so punishing that grinding is required to advance. There is a general arc of the game that the combat difficulty needs to match as closely as possible. This is why the early monsters are not altogether different or much more difficult, though some certainly are here and there. The players need proper time to develop their character, a fair chance if you will. At low levels, one of the many critical misses could cause decapitation at any moment, regardless of the monster at hand. So, the mod mainly ratchets up difficulty after the BMC/Isle of Despair. That is when the player or at least his allies can be expected to be well developed in some form of combat: 20 st for melee, or high dex with a good amount in a ranged skill, etc.

Note that even a level 1 player can still have 20 ST, or plenty of skill in guns, etc. To make the game hard for the combat extreme characters early on would be to the severe detriment of most character builds, and reduce incentive for a very customized PC which Arcanum excels at.

One of the key challenges here is how Arcanum monsters were placed. There is a wide cross fertilization of monster types in the different areas of Arcanum. Apes are in the Golgoth Pass as well as the island of Thanatos. Certain arachnids can be encountered in the sands of the Isle of Despair as well as the forbidden wastes near Vendigroth. So, monsters that you would face some of early cannot be so hard as to be insane at that point, but shouldn't feel weak when met at the later stages in the game. It is difficult to strike this balance, but it can be done with only a few real bothersome imperfections. There are some monsters where only a few are directly in the path of the player, but later entirely restricted to certain much later areas. In these situations, it really does seem best to make the game a little challenging at that spot rather than bland for longer periods later on. That's the give and take here. The patriarch wolf in the BMC is a perfect example. The wyverns near Razor's Point grasslands and then Caladon's plains are another. Lesser Void Demons near Liam's Shop have already been mentioned. So if a monster seems just a bit weaker then it might've been irrevocably in the way at previous stages; or, if it seems much stronger than others, it's probably one you see a lot more of later on. With this in mind, monsters were made much better than the original, just not quite perfect.
-
A key decision was between real time and turn based combat. It was pretty easy to make the decision turn based combat, and that is mainly because Arcanum real time combat was deeply flawed in implementation. Perhaps the greatest flaw is the ease of kiting. Even with melee weapons only, you can kite the enemy around in real time combat and oftentimes the enemy will chase you mindlessly as your allies eviscerate from behind. It's not hard to do at all, there's essentially no way to stop it, and it is just a disaster. Beyond that, the firing range effect is an extreme advantage in real time. A party of ranged weapons can offload a tremendous amount of free shots before a melee enemy (which most are) has a chance to attack. It is not anywhere near the fair advantage of a few shots one would expect from a range vs melee encounter. Simply outlandishly imbalanced beyond repair, I'm afraid.

Now even if those two deep flaws didn't exist, there are more significant problems with real time combat. Spells can be cast extremely quickly. Knockdown animation can be interrupted. There's no way to discern the exact relationship between speed-weaponspeed-attackspeed without recording with fraps and editing the video for comparison (this makes an obstacle to even begin to know how to balance items for DPS in real time combat). Attack speed seems just silly at the higher values, and the differences between the normal spectrum of 1-25 weaponspeed are extreme in real-time. This means to have a non-ridiculous Arcanum, most weapons would be restricted to low speed values, limiting item variability. Run speed is determined by player speed (without sever encumbrance of course) in real time, and monster speed cannot be expected beyond 26 from 20 dex (monster stat limit), but a player has many other ways to get higher than 26, making kiting/escaping a sure bet if desired. And if you wanted to ensure an even footing, you'd have to remove all +speed effects from the game, which makes many items and spells more bland now.

Furthermore, turn based systems can allow for more thinking and strategy. Not to say that chess is better than starcraft, but the time to think is nice for letting some creativity get going. Turn based combat in Arcanum has discrete values for each action, which helps greatly for balancing. But it does take more time and that kind of quells some excitement from the game. So how should I decide whether players would even tolerate that? Well, the question I asked myself was "Do Arcanum players want more Fallout, or more Diablo?" The answer was obvious.
-
With all the changes I did make, there is one nearly untouched part of Arcanum: races, backgrounds, and gender. There is a very simple reason for this. I want people to actually play the game. There is a lot of room for customization in Arcanum characters, and balancing/changing all the backgrounds/races/genders would make a large timesink as a hurdle to even starting the game for someone who takes consideration into character development. It's not unnacceptably horrible the way they are. The races kind of all have a fine place for character builds and combat roles, except maybe dwarves, but it's still pretty severely imbalanced. Half-ogres get insane ST and 10 free DR? Beyond unbelievable.
-
This ties into another important point, which is that a goal was to keep the same general feel as Arcanum whenever possible. Nature spells should feel like nature spells, generic swords should still do less than generic two handed swords, knowledge of the game should still payoff as opposed to everything being in a totally different place, and so forth. One shouldn't just put something which is not Arcanumesque into the game without an important reason. I didn't replace the overpowered fire dex buff with a water spell, I replaced it with a buff that gave +4 speed unstackable instead of +4 dex stackable.

What was removed was things which were completely imbalanced. The stun spell allowed endless free backstabs and made most fights insanely easy, so it was removed. Almost all stun effects were removed, because stun was an overpowered mechanic. Certain meta-magic spells were removed because they are famous for allowing permanent no-sustain-needed buffs from other spells. Why were the disabled spells left in the game then? So as to prevent bugs if the game called on them specifically. Uprooting embedded pieces of Arcanum is a dangerous proposition for any mod, and so because many spells are used in other areas, some vestigial disabled ones remain. Only 6 however, not game ruining in the slightest. Additionally, in any project you have to weight time towards effective results. To waste too much on debugging some trivial percentage of the game is entirely unwise. Even making 6 good spells can take a long time, if they are the creative type of spell. All the same, to let completely overpowered but removable spells stay for the sake of neatness in the spell screen? What is balanced about that?
-
The combat styles in regular Arcanum could all do absurdly well, but next to none of it was really balanced, be it versus the enemies or considered with other interdisciplinary options or compared to the other combat styles. Good balancing means options should matter and be competitive with similar options from other combat styles. If you can fly through the game with molotov cocktails, what difference does it make that explosive grenades are better? No need to even bother with anything else, if that's the case.

So first let's begin with normalization. Basic weapons of different types should do comparable damage. But some weapon types have inflexible properties, like hand to hand always takes 5 speed per attack, and thrown grenades always take 4. Melee and HtH damage can change, but ranged weapon damage stays the same forever. A sword might do 1-8 at 6 speed/attack when a character is level 1, but 24-24 at level 20 at 4 speed/attack, but a gun balanced at 6dps against the level 20 sword would outperform at level 1. Making the level 1 sword comparable to the level 1 gun would make the sword overpowered for the rest of the game, because the ST bonus damage would soon outpace it. The same dilemma applies to bows, whose damage gets doubled with training.

Taking all of this into account, the weapons need to be comparable to each other on some even footing. My answer to this is a very reasonable one: balance weapons against each other assuming developed characters. Comparing a level 20 character to a level 1 character isn't proper balancing and so comparing a proficient gunslinger to a novice swordsman isn't balanced either. These differences between fluctuating melee damage and static gun damage and doubling bow damage disappear when making reasonable assumptions: that the player who wants to do well in combat is trying. Melee will go for 20+ ST with dex, guns will go for 15+ PE with dex, bows something similar, and all will attempt training. This can be achieved relatively early, or usually by level 20, depending.

Note how this also fits into the allowance for character development in monster balancing. The grace period in the start of the game also lets melee catch up to guns if they did not start with ST 20 at level 1, though guns will outperform until the melee character gets going. There are also mitigating factors to that outperformance: melee characters still get more HP from ST and can wear heavier armors. So the durability forte of the melee style can compensate for the early damage advantage guns have. Ranged weapons later have the first strike advantage, which of course acts as a balance against their usually lower ST from necessarily investing in PE and therefore lighter armor.

On that basis, a 24 ST half-ogre will do about 6 dps in your average HtH, which is the most inflexible of all weapon styles. It earns that superlative because the gauntlet bonus damage could not be changed, nor could the 5 speed per attack, therefore limited to 1-5 gloveless, 1-15 with everyday war gloves. 6 damage per speed then becomes a good figure to revolve damage normalization around, so that HtH doesn't unduly suffer. I changed the basic everyday items (generic short sword, claymore, axe, revolver, rifle, boomerang etc.) to match this. Weapon DPS in my mod escalates from 6 to 9 for most weapon types, with a few exceptions being the weapons which are above that and could not be changed from game files (curse you, Isle of Despair sword!). A 50% DPS increase limit isn't limiting character damage to a 50% increase, because speed can be increased as well, of course.

Better weapons are then made with special bonuses or higher DPS. Worse weapons (like railroad spike, rusty/old/broken, etc) have lower DPS. Varieties among each path's options are important, so some might have less damage but give +hit%, or have less minimum strength required, or longer range guns, or some extra fire damage, with compensating factors, and different speeds, and so on. To the best degree that is possible, all the differences in a weapon should be weighed. A particular challenge in this case is the sheer ubiquity of availability of many weapons. A large area is available for exploration even before the BMC, a lot of the shops of different cities share the same weapons and often exact same data file, the only really distinguishing shops are in the wheel clan and qintarra (not terribly far in the game, but still made some mid-game gear require these shops), and magic chests base loot off of character name/race/background/gender combination. This makes it difficult to have a good progression of weapons that are better but only available later in the game, when you need them versus the stronger monsters. It's important because acquiring one of the best weapons near the beginning of the game not only makes combat imbalanced, but makes the other weapons of that type inconsequential to that character for the rest of the game. This was solved as much as was possible, being of prime importance in a balance mod. With the worldeditor now, it can be almost entirely eliminated.

That is why some schematic components were changed. That is, some schematics required an actual character point investment, so they must be better than average to make it worth it. Therefore it is better to make them available later, and so this can be done through limiting their components. This also gives an especially good advancement arc to weapons available from crafting alone, because they can be rendered unable to attain before a desired stage of the game where the component is found. The component used had to be 1)a unique prototype, of which there are only so many, because that is what the schematic file requires as a reference, and 2) rare to the point that it is only acquired at a specific point and beyond. So I made a list of items matching these 2 qualities, and there aren't many (took some time). Most items one would think are 'unique' from others are actually a generic item prototype with a different name and art, completely unusable for a schematic (it won't allow you to craft, saying you don't have the right component). The ones that did exist were used to limit the availability of good weapons for balancing purposes, and it worked.

There is a special consideration for weapon balancing in turn based which should be noted. Slow weapons have an advantage for the player, because they can get an attack off with even 1 speed left in a turn, but they are worse in the hands of NPCs who almost always (if not always) won't attack without the full speed amount available. Because of AI in the game especially, it can be common for an NPC to use his speed moving and then refuse to attack at all that turn because his few remaining speed isn't even enough to get a full attack with the weapon. This is the kind of thing that is difficult to quantify, and if it feels unfair through testing and playthroughs then a compensating factor would be introduced. This wasn't the case from my judgement, it really seems just fine in the end.

That's all for now, with more later for explanations on spell damage output vs weapon types, armor, and probably some other things I haven't thought to address.

You are a pale shadow of Drog.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

no, Arcanum needs a +200% simulation/verisimilitude bonus and it would become the best game of all time. gameplay balance, pffft.

GURPS: Arcanum would be heavan.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Leonidus, you seem like a quite smart guy and all that, and your post is quite enlightening. I admit I haven't spoken much because I haven't gone past Shroudded Hills yet, promised mylself I will finish Geneforge 1 first.

That said, bro, you need to make smaller posts, as in WAY smaller. Not everyone is like me into long-reads, some people have less time or think reading is teh hard (lol manboons!). Also lighten up a bit, you're inviting yourself for trolling here (Andy here is just the tip of the iceberg). Just a friendly tip bro.

Question: What new stuff you can do now with the World Editor? Any ideas? When is next version coming out?

Also, lurk moar. And get a avatar, avatars make it easy for people to recognize you here.

 

[gunman]

This will end up bad.

 

[Jarpie]

This will end up bad.

All topics with modder posting will end up with someone getting butthurt

-Qwinn.

 

[Shadenuat]

Walls of text? Battles of Drogs? Count me in.

I think that you, Leonidus, fell into the same trap a lot of moders tend to fall. Instead of gently pushing the game into right direction and trying to fix what is broken, you decided to create your own version of Arcanum, suited to your powergaming needs. Based on community type of play, as who else would know where to find wooden rings but arcanumfags who played game for years. Yeah, I know that "gently" doesn't sound like it would help Arcanum, but otherwise you're just breaking the game in some other way.

The fact that you are basing things on a late game and high levels and recommend level cap remover (max level 127, woo, here I go golden bears!) speaks for that, I believe. I doubt that many people even reach level ~50 in most of their runs, because you don't get enough experience from quests. Sure, people probably would reach it if they try to search every nook and cranny, or just farm monsters, but most of the interesting quests end at level ~30. Then it's just either busywork or clearing dungeons. Most people probably go from ~30 to ~50 by slaying stuff on Thanatos, in Vendigroth and kicking lizards in the Void.

Firstly, I made the mod only by changing the game files(.mes and .txt from the .dats).

Your resources are limited, I'm sure everyone got that from your first post. No one is pointing a gun to your head because Arcanum is so hard to mod.

Arcanum's easy combat dilutes the player's choices in character development to a mostly meaningless selection of similar flavors. That is to say, you can pretty much build your character however you like and still cheese through the game regardless.

I don't think it's true for Arcanum. Playing as a lone thief, a techie or wizard with spells feels different. Actually, that's why Arcanum is such a replayable game. And as MCA showed us, you can create a crappy character even in Arcanum. I don't think Arcanum is easy, although I don't think it's hard either. I would say it can be both, but in the wrong way - like some of the spells or items being crap, while others overpowered; some enemies weak, others wrong way of powerful.

They do a lot more damage, have a lot more hp and resists, and there is variety in their basic stats.

Like that saved any RPG combat ever. Different stats and resists is good, but I don't see how brutefangs eating your face in two strikes brings something new to Arcanum.

with some extreme damage or hp in the thousands

HP bloat is not the best asnwer to problems in combat either, in my opinion.

This makes certain spells and weapons better vs certain enemies, which is very important for combat. There are fun extremes, such as a monster with 95 DR

And how should player discern these changes and abilities, unless he is playing a mage with Divination? Did you bother to add some books to the game dealing with those monsters or rumors? Or at least made these changes with common knowledge in mind, like giving high DR to, say, werewolves or stone golems? I did not notice zombies being vulnerable to fire, or molten masses of living magma shruggin off bullets. A shot from LGR can bring down those, but, say, Molotov's don't even scratch most of the monsters in your mod, even those which it should be useful to.
Yeah, I know you are hampered by crappy editor, but then maybe you shouldn't give a small lizard more HP and DR than an armored ogre, and should keep stuff low key instead.

One of the key challenges here is how Arcanum monsters were placed.

Yes, I've met a level 49 golden bear south of Shrouded Hills, and a small level 20 dragon which was almost immune to my abilities. I was not amused.

Allies benefit greatly from this, and in order to make worse allies more useful, all of them have some kind of decent combat contribution.

A useful addition, but then instead of making all characters unique and do something which suits their personalities, you are making them killing machines. Jaina Stilles with level 5 of marsmanship, really? I think that a balanced approach should be taken, with a thought of what types of characters would pick companions. For example, Jaina is a natural choice as a healer for techie party, yet as she progresses in levels, your party can't even heal poisons. Because she refuses to put skill points into what her character really is. I had to grab level 1 healing spell, which solved all my tech party problems - apparently it did't care for my tech app, and I could heal through everything because of how cheap it is. Even without meditation.

You shouldn't make every character a combat machine. And it's important to somewhat suit abilities of companions to what player faces at a particular stage of the game. Companions should provide an interesting selection of combat, crafting and magic skills in the beginning and midgame, and start developing their combat skills more in the end, in preparation to places like Thanatos, Vendigroth and the Void.

A key decision was between real time and turn based combat.

Well, fine, that's my way of thinking too, although there is a "but". But not everyone is interested in mowing down wolves and rats in TB *yet again*, or casting all spells only in TB to avoid some bugs with fatigue.

Half-ogres get insane ST and 10 free DR? Beyond unbelievable.

What's so unbelievable in monsters bred specifically for being bodyguards to be characters suited for combat best? Choosing a half-ogre dictates specific playing style and makes you act as a retard in dialogue.

Magic

Oh boy. 'Er we go.

Nature spells should feel like nature spells

Your Nature spells follow the most retarded concept ever, well, with the exception of disabled spells, which are even worse. That is, a player investing in them does not gain anything, and should do as much as going through "dump" spells which require high WP and CON, to get some crap like Entangle. Meanwhile, fun spells like Calm animals or Control animals get replaced with some garbage like turning yourself into a lizard. Which is also a fun concept, but is quite useless because even with high STR, without a decent weapon and close combat masteries mage will still suck in combat.

Yes, some spells feel out of place. Regeneration in particular is head scratching for a Tier 5 spell. But it is not your job to dictate to me what spells should be concidered useful or fun and changet them for your own concepts. Turning yourself into a bear? Fine, I like it, makes sense for high level spell, although it goes against Arcanum logic of magical aptitude. If you're changing spells people are used to, please be sure to check for a few things:

1) It should follow Arcanum logic in how powerful it is; i.e. it should grow in power with magical aptitude. So by all means, add shapeshifting, but then you should gain new animal forms as your app progressed. It would just make spell better. In case of shapeshifting, it could lead to cool tactical moves, like picking Nature Mage and turning into better animal by standing in the forest.

2) Make damn sure that spell was *really* useless. Because in case of, say, Charm Beast, that spell is quite useful for some playthroughs and runs. There aren't many spells which are completely useless, imo, it's just that other spells in vanilla outperform them so greatly.

3) Make sure that your new spell is not *really* useless. I don't know what were you thinking where you changed stuff like Stone Throw&Harm, but these are so weak now you can't even whack a mosquito with them. A mage is better with a sword, Tidal Wave & 1 point in melee than using them! These are supposed to be bread&butter spells. You're supposed to bring spells like Harm down from the stratosphere of powergaming to that level, not just make them spells which you pick to get to better ones. Speaking in D&D terms, Magic Missile - good, Ray of Cold - bad.

This is a thing I actually LIKE about Arcanum magical ap mechanics. As you progress, your basic spells also grow in power, catching up. So they have a lot more uses than killing wolves near crash site. And this is what you actually broke in many of your spells. Like many good damaging spells becoming very weak and being replaced by one-shot super expensive AoE's (goes well with unlimited mana, duh!).
I really like that in Arcanum, getting new spells presents you with new options. Like, you are not stuck as a lone fag if you're not going for Summoning school. Elementalists gain fun summoning spells too. Really, what game doesn't need is more damaging spells. Just make use of what there is already, and balance that out by monster resistances, so I'd have to switch from Harm to Fireball against different targets, ect.

Damn, if Harm&FoD would do 0 damage to undead enemies that already would be a terrific improvement.

4) If you can't or don't know how to fix it, then don't touch it. Disabling stuff does 2 things. First, it makes you look like a grumpy GM who can't balance abilities of his players, so he just invents some shitty argument why they don't work. Which just sucks all the fun in playing with the system. I don't want your "balanced" spells, I want to turn people insane and control their minds, I want raise Beauty if I am playing an ugly orc by a water spell, or charm somebody, and so on. Don't take fun shit away from me.

And second, if my "lol I want to mindrape Gilbert bates" argument sounds too silly: you ruin player's leveling plan because now somebody who want to be, say, a psionic, should put dump points into his school just because you couldn't fix Stun effect. Either provide reasonable replacement for every "broken" spell, or don't even start. It just makes your changes seem half baked and your work amateurish.

And speaking of removing stuff, with Meditation, you just cut most but all resource management in the game AND opened a can of worms, giving mage characters an option to unload all their mana on one encounter without thinking, just to be fresh and healthy after that. Strong fuck? Unload all, meditate! Powerful poisons? Pff, level 1 heal. Dungeon filled with hundred of deadly traps? Level 1 heal, meditate.

Maybe it's convenient for you, but I won't call that a good design. Also, note that by your design, mage is stuck with his basic mana pool for every encounter. Meaning, a gunslinger could kite something forever, doing hundreds of damage per turn, while mage, even if he's master of herbalism or whatever, can only do one single "boom". Sometimes it WORKS, and sometimes, yes, it makes you think what spells to use, but at the same time it cheapens OTHER encounters and resource management, so, again, the game is broken, just other way around: killing 100 solitary enemies is easy, while killing something with 1000 HP or whatever can often be solved by savescumming. Nobody is going to continue the fight if a monster just crited Virgil for over 9000 damage.

So first let's begin with normalization.

Let's. You realize the way you balanced weapons, NONE of them feel any special anymore, many feel just stupid (electrostaff without electrical damage, great; rapier with damage of a dagger), and their prices in shops now don't make any sense? Was it that hard to add more fatigue damage to maces and hammers, why did you remove that completely?
Why would I want to buy a 2-10 Broadsword for ~1000 gold pieces instead of 1-8 Longsword for ~150?
If the only thing which matters in DMG is STR, then some things happen. First, you want fastest weapon with good DMG, so most of expensive badass swords and axes are out. And you want to crit a lot, so broken shit like Tidal Force is a way to go.

You also make character growth very predictable. With low SPD and DAM, any fighters without VERY high STR are out. Which also affects companions, so Magnus just goes for lifting. AND companions also stop using their weapons often, because their low SPD affects AI (which you mentioned). So I present teh best melee damager: a spell casting able (ogres are out) dude in leather armor (which gives SPD +5... yes, armor makes you faster than being naked in this mod), shiny shoes (+1 SPD!), 20 STR and some sword. And beware of armor, because even basic chainmail weight 1000 units... fukking grand.

Not.

But bah. It doesn't matter, cause everybody would have STR 20 when we reach Thanatos. Or whatever.
Vanilla Arcanum melee is broken as fuck, but at least you can approach it from different angles. You can make a lot of attacks with average STR by buffing yourself with spells, potions, gadgets, and so on.
I don't know if it is possible, but modifying STR damage scaling would produce a much better effect than making most weapons shit and slow and same.

That is why some schematic components were changed.

Oh no, fuck that. You don't make hand cannons out of wooden rings.
It goes against so many things it would take another wall of text just to explain. I'll try the short version:
- Makes player invest into skills which do not give any reward, often waaaaay before he even gets a chance to aquire a component like wooden ring, black diamond, ect.
- Goes against common and world logic.
- Goes against gameplay logic. Technology is supposed to be avaible to the player, he shouldn't go onto some great quest to aquire occult artifact with highest DPS. You are supposed to use many items and combine them to handle encounters, not overpower them. It has exceptions, but those in world of Arcanum are few - largest dwarven clan has unique schematics, and there are some others; but usually you can get through most of the stuff just by your own wits and inventions.

If you want to do it RIGHT, then please do follow the logic of gameworld you're changing. Lower the damage of basic guns in shops a bit. Also lower stats of common inventions like LGR and Elephant gun, or make them use more ammo a little. Then one should create mid and end game replacements for them. For example, Tarant could have very few schematics available. Add shit like High Velocity weapons in some dungeons and make them better. Add even more powerful schematics to Caladon, and make Vendigroth stuff most powerful. So player would have to change his guns from "Tarant" ones to something post-Tarant, then to Caladon-time and finally Vendigrothian weaponry. You could then make Tesla Rod as it was, not with diamond necklace, but make Tesla Cannon very powerful, but unavailable before post-Caladon, ect.

Yeah, I remember doing something like that can be impossible with editor and so on, but what you did with schematics for now is such bullshit and hurts game so much it's better you just bring back vanilla schematics.

Bessie Toon mine document to make Regenerative Jacket, vorpal bunny eat my face. So bad.

I have to keep ammo availability high in my game because otherwise it is a huge waste of time to get the amount needed to kill the monsters. That's also why molotov creation was increased. It's for gameplay, and this being a balance mod, gameplay has to trump immersion. If there is something that would make characters really hate playing which I could easily change, even though some purists won't like it, I have to do it. Players annoyed by unrealistic outcomes (in a fantasy game)

Oh for crying out loud, don't pull that "it's FANTASU and GAMU, so everything goes" on people. Let me check on that folder again. I believe it is called "ArcanumEquilibriumRebalance", not "MyOwnSpecialArcanum". Is there any ethics in moders community?

Wait, don't answer that. I've read RK Skyrim LP, I know there isn't.

If you want to REBALANCE the game, that should do exactly that. It should be the same game, familiar to people who actually like it, and it should not alienate players with locked spells, random, metagaming-based changes in crafting or companions who suddenly become master marksmen instead of peaceful healers. That not to mention that your 400 bullets per craft drag a small train of changes which make game economics make even less sense.
How does that even can work, gameplay trumping immersion? Isn't immersion is something you experience when gameplay is actually great multiplied by quality of the setting and all others parts of the game? Gameplay can't trump immersion, you get immersed because of all the things working together in it.
Yes, I am still angry on wooden rings.

Now to wrap things up.

First of all, I hope I did not went full retard completely on you and at least presented my, yeah I know, very puritanical, opinion on Arcanum and how your mod changes it. I don't want to be a jerk and just go all "lololo you are no Drog", cause I actually like Arcanum a lot, and I think there are some things in your mod which push Arcanum into right direction. Like, some of the spells are better, and it's nice to see guns doing something, and so on. But I also think your design vision is flawed, and many changes from your mod just stick out and seem illogical, untrue to the spirit of the game, break game even more, require a lot of suspension of disbelief to go with them, or just aren't that amazing.

Charming full level of animals to pass safely, or charming somebody who hates your guts, or raising BEU for that; taking Bates for a walk with Dominate, raising STR for your little gnome with spells to actually lift that tombstone and bring back it for reward; trying all the fun inventions you made just by going through world's shops and streets; all that little stuff is really important for me and makes Arcanum, and I won't change it for a few AoE spells and a Stoneskin.

To be fair, I don't even think Arcanum needs more combat or dungeons with bosses.

I played your mod with a few characters, with two spellcasters and one techie, so I kinda tried it out. And yeah I finished BMC mines (twice, actually) with it and went even a bit further than ~30 level. I know I haven't seen everything, maybe a lot, but I think I've seen enough to make points above. If I have to reach level 127 to fully understand your genius, sorry, I'm not going to. I do promise I'll go into more dangerous late game areas to see what's there though and to broaden my experience and make better opinion on mod if I will defeat my laziness.

 

[Average Manatee]

Spoiler

Come now Johannes. I pretend no such thing.

Regular Arcanum is incredibly broken all over. I made it so that is balanced and can be broken in the least possible amount of ways.

So it would seem we agree? To completely fix the game would require recoding a good bit of it, among other things. But to balance most of it? That is what I did, and that is neither wrong nor idiotic.

To the matter at hand, I need something from you all. Not just reports on bugs you might have found. Something important. I spent an inordinate amount of time learning how to change the game, the game mechanics, and so on in order to make this mod. All I need in reciprocation is for you to hear me out. Be reasonable. That's all.

This wonderful game from the minds behind Fallout deserves that. That is likely the only reason why any of you are reading this post: because you know Arcanum is great and it is such a shame that parts of it are so utterly flawed. You want to enjoy it without feeling like combat is ludicrous. Or cartoonish like that abomination Carcanum.

If I'm right about that, then please just listen. Disregard the superficial comments for a moment. I'll answer them afterwards and show you specifically where they are wrong. You won't have to even take my word for it, you can prove it to yourself, that's why I posted the game mechanics for you all. That's why there are spreadsheets and pdf files and a readme with the game download.

If you really have doubts, then simply try the game. Play a normal difficulty game past the wheel clan dredge, and you will see for yourself. This mod is not ridiculous, it is quite well balanced, and it makes the game better. You will be pleasantly surprised.

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Firstly, I made the mod only by changing the game files(.mes and .txt from the .dats). No hex editing, couldn't use worldeditor on my win7 comp, and no old programs meant for editing (because of 64-bit OS). Now that I have my old XP machine back, the difference there has been like night and day. But this explanation is for game-files-only editing, which still changes most of the game. The main difference is that the worldeditor makes individual changes, and game files change entire types of things.

Arcanum's easy combat dilutes the player's choices in character development to a mostly meaningless selection of similar flavors. That is to say, you can pretty much build your character however you like and still cheese through the game regardless. It makes the path you pick matter less. So to resolve this, difficulty of enemies needs to be improved wherever possible and to the extent that is reasonable.

So I changed the monsters to be much better. You can die if unprepared, even at high levels with a powerful character. The main things which can be changed on monsters are basic stats (dex,etc), hp, resists, and damage. They do a lot more damage, have a lot more hp and resists, and there is variety in their basic stats. Monsters you face later in the game were made to be more and more challenging. Some monsters are now powerful bosses, with some extreme damage or hp in the thousands, and so forth. There is actual variety in resists now, so the average monster will have higher DR than the slightly exotic FR or rarer ER, but some will have higher ER/FR/MR than DR. This makes certain spells and weapons better vs certain enemies, which is very important for combat. There are fun extremes, such as a monster with 95 DR that you will need other forms of damage to fight in order to avoid an attritive series of turns. Swarmer monkeys will use their speed to attack like piranhas. Dragons will bypass your DR using fire damage. The monsters now provide something good to fight against.

The limits on making enemies more difficult is mainly in the ai, stats which can't be changed, and NPCs. Arcanum AI doesn't like to cast spells, and I can't change that. Monsters can't be given spells that they will cast through the game files (though in worldeditor I have now). Though they might cast more of the spells they have if they had more fatigue. But, fatigue is not a changeable stat like HP is. Monster stats cap at 20, so you can't give extra fatigue by giving 99 to some stats either. The only way I've found to give fatigue is through an effect, which must be given through an item, spell cast, background, etc, none of which can be used to change all these monster's FT from the game files. Similar story with speed, which is determined by dex, maxed at 20 dex for monsters. Nothing to be done about increasing it beyond that.

The reason NPCs couldn't be made difficult like I want is because they draw from the same well you do. Changing the game files makes broad, sweeping changes, not individual ones to a specific monster on the screen. I have a vague recollection of other problems, but it's been so long now. But making all half-ogres better makes your half-ogres just as much better, except you probably have more of them and better items. Even amongst classes this causes problems, which determines changes to base stats like how a human guard is different from a human noble. Chunkka's class is guard, so making guards challenging at all would make a game with chunkka in the party obscenely easy until you reach much more powerful monsters later in the game. The inventories of only a few NPCs refer to the game files (about 20 total) and could be changed, another tragedy. These problems vanish in the worldeditor, thankfully.

What could be done of signifance to NPCs is changing level schemes. Making NPCs use their character points more wisely was a good improvement, and you can feel the results on a decent level NPC, though still not the difference I'd have liked. It still is nice to see the barbarians and higher guards fight back a bit. Allies benefit greatly from this, and in order to make worse allies more useful, all of them have some kind of decent combat contribution. Because individual NPCs couldn't be changed, you should still try to get them when around their level. Sogg's ogre strength isn't that great a help if he's behind by 20 levels.
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Changing combat difficulty must also be concerned with the potential of the player at that point, however. You should not make the end easy for low level players who breezed by, or the beginning so punishing that grinding is required to advance. There is a general arc of the game that the combat difficulty needs to match as closely as possible. This is why the early monsters are not altogether different or much more difficult, though some certainly are here and there. The players need proper time to develop their character, a fair chance if you will. At low levels, one of the many critical misses could cause decapitation at any moment, regardless of the monster at hand. So, the mod mainly ratchets up difficulty after the BMC/Isle of Despair. That is when the player or at least his allies can be expected to be well developed in some form of combat: 20 st for melee, or high dex with a good amount in a ranged skill, etc.

Note that even a level 1 player can still have 20 ST, or plenty of skill in guns, etc. To make the game hard for the combat extreme characters early on would be to the severe detriment of most character builds, and reduce incentive for a very customized PC which Arcanum excels at.

One of the key challenges here is how Arcanum monsters were placed. There is a wide cross fertilization of monster types in the different areas of Arcanum. Apes are in the Golgoth Pass as well as the island of Thanatos. Certain arachnids can be encountered in the sands of the Isle of Despair as well as the forbidden wastes near Vendigroth. So, monsters that you would face some of early cannot be so hard as to be insane at that point, but shouldn't feel weak when met at the later stages in the game. It is difficult to strike this balance, but it can be done with only a few real bothersome imperfections. There are some monsters where only a few are directly in the path of the player, but later entirely restricted to certain much later areas. In these situations, it really does seem best to make the game a little challenging at that spot rather than bland for longer periods later on. That's the give and take here. The patriarch wolf in the BMC is a perfect example. The wyverns near Razor's Point grasslands and then Caladon's plains are another. Lesser Void Demons near Liam's Shop have already been mentioned. So if a monster seems just a bit weaker then it might've been irrevocably in the way at previous stages; or, if it seems much stronger than others, it's probably one you see a lot more of later on. With this in mind, monsters were made much better than the original, just not quite perfect.
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A key decision was between real time and turn based combat. It was pretty easy to make the decision turn based combat, and that is mainly because Arcanum real time combat was deeply flawed in implementation. Perhaps the greatest flaw is the ease of kiting. Even with melee weapons only, you can kite the enemy around in real time combat and oftentimes the enemy will chase you mindlessly as your allies eviscerate from behind. It's not hard to do at all, there's essentially no way to stop it, and it is just a disaster. Beyond that, the firing range effect is an extreme advantage in real time. A party of ranged weapons can offload a tremendous amount of free shots before a melee enemy (which most are) has a chance to attack. It is not anywhere near the fair advantage of a few shots one would expect from a range vs melee encounter. Simply outlandishly imbalanced beyond repair, I'm afraid.

Now even if those two deep flaws didn't exist, there are more significant problems with real time combat. Spells can be cast extremely quickly. Knockdown animation can be interrupted. There's no way to discern the exact relationship between speed-weaponspeed-attackspeed without recording with fraps and editing the video for comparison (this makes an obstacle to even begin to know how to balance items for DPS in real time combat). Attack speed seems just silly at the higher values, and the differences between the normal spectrum of 1-25 weaponspeed are extreme in real-time. This means to have a non-ridiculous Arcanum, most weapons would be restricted to low speed values, limiting item variability. Run speed is determined by player speed (without sever encumbrance of course) in real time, and monster speed cannot be expected beyond 26 from 20 dex (monster stat limit), but a player has many other ways to get higher than 26, making kiting/escaping a sure bet if desired. And if you wanted to ensure an even footing, you'd have to remove all +speed effects from the game, which makes many items and spells more bland now.

Furthermore, turn based systems can allow for more thinking and strategy. Not to say that chess is better than starcraft, but the time to think is nice for letting some creativity get going. Turn based combat in Arcanum has discrete values for each action, which helps greatly for balancing. But it does take more time and that kind of quells some excitement from the game. So how should I decide whether players would even tolerate that? Well, the question I asked myself was "Do Arcanum players want more Fallout, or more Diablo?" The answer was obvious.
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With all the changes I did make, there is one nearly untouched part of Arcanum: races, backgrounds, and gender. There is a very simple reason for this. I want people to actually play the game. There is a lot of room for customization in Arcanum characters, and balancing/changing all the backgrounds/races/genders would make a large timesink as a hurdle to even starting the game for someone who takes consideration into character development. It's not unnacceptably horrible the way they are. The races kind of all have a fine place for character builds and combat roles, except maybe dwarves, but it's still pretty severely imbalanced. Half-ogres get insane ST and 10 free DR? Beyond unbelievable.
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This ties into another important point, which is that a goal was to keep the same general feel as Arcanum whenever possible. Nature spells should feel like nature spells, generic swords should still do less than generic two handed swords, knowledge of the game should still payoff as opposed to everything being in a totally different place, and so forth. One shouldn't just put something which is not Arcanumesque into the game without an important reason. I didn't replace the overpowered fire dex buff with a water spell, I replaced it with a buff that gave +4 speed unstackable instead of +4 dex stackable.

What was removed was things which were completely imbalanced. The stun spell allowed endless free backstabs and made most fights insanely easy, so it was removed. Almost all stun effects were removed, because stun was an overpowered mechanic. Certain meta-magic spells were removed because they are famous for allowing permanent no-sustain-needed buffs from other spells. Why were the disabled spells left in the game then? So as to prevent bugs if the game called on them specifically. Uprooting embedded pieces of Arcanum is a dangerous proposition for any mod, and so because many spells are used in other areas, some vestigial disabled ones remain. Only 6 however, not game ruining in the slightest. Additionally, in any project you have to weight time towards effective results. To waste too much on debugging some trivial percentage of the game is entirely unwise. Even making 6 good spells can take a long time, if they are the creative type of spell. All the same, to let completely overpowered but removable spells stay for the sake of neatness in the spell screen? What is balanced about that?
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The combat styles in regular Arcanum could all do absurdly well, but next to none of it was really balanced, be it versus the enemies or considered with other interdisciplinary options or compared to the other combat styles. Good balancing means options should matter and be competitive with similar options from other combat styles. If you can fly through the game with molotov cocktails, what difference does it make that explosive grenades are better? No need to even bother with anything else, if that's the case.

So first let's begin with normalization. Basic weapons of different types should do comparable damage. But some weapon types have inflexible properties, like hand to hand always takes 5 speed per attack, and thrown grenades always take 4. Melee and HtH damage can change, but ranged weapon damage stays the same forever. A sword might do 1-8 at 6 speed/attack when a character is level 1, but 24-24 at level 20 at 4 speed/attack, but a gun balanced at 6dps against the level 20 sword would outperform at level 1. Making the level 1 sword comparable to the level 1 gun would make the sword overpowered for the rest of the game, because the ST bonus damage would soon outpace it. The same dilemma applies to bows, whose damage gets doubled with training.

Taking all of this into account, the weapons need to be comparable to each other on some even footing. My answer to this is a very reasonable one: balance weapons against each other assuming developed characters. Comparing a level 20 character to a level 1 character isn't proper balancing and so comparing a proficient gunslinger to a novice swordsman isn't balanced either. These differences between fluctuating melee damage and static gun damage and doubling bow damage disappear when making reasonable assumptions: that the player who wants to do well in combat is trying. Melee will go for 20+ ST with dex, guns will go for 15+ PE with dex, bows something similar, and all will attempt training. This can be achieved relatively early, or usually by level 20, depending.

Note how this also fits into the allowance for character development in monster balancing. The grace period in the start of the game also lets melee catch up to guns if they did not start with ST 20 at level 1, though guns will outperform until the melee character gets going. There are also mitigating factors to that outperformance: melee characters still get more HP from ST and can wear heavier armors. So the durability forte of the melee style can compensate for the early damage advantage guns have. Ranged weapons later have the first strike advantage, which of course acts as a balance against their usually lower ST from necessarily investing in PE and therefore lighter armor.

On that basis, a 24 ST half-ogre will do about 6 dps in your average HtH, which is the most inflexible of all weapon styles. It earns that superlative because the gauntlet bonus damage could not be changed, nor could the 5 speed per attack, therefore limited to 1-5 gloveless, 1-15 with everyday war gloves. 6 damage per speed then becomes a good figure to revolve damage normalization around, so that HtH doesn't unduly suffer. I changed the basic everyday items (generic short sword, claymore, axe, revolver, rifle, boomerang etc.) to match this. Weapon DPS in my mod escalates from 6 to 9 for most weapon types, with a few exceptions being the weapons which are above that and could not be changed from game files (curse you, Isle of Despair sword!). A 50% DPS increase limit isn't limiting character damage to a 50% increase, because speed can be increased as well, of course.

Better weapons are then made with special bonuses or higher DPS. Worse weapons (like railroad spike, rusty/old/broken, etc) have lower DPS. Varieties among each path's options are important, so some might have less damage but give +hit%, or have less minimum strength required, or longer range guns, or some extra fire damage, with compensating factors, and different speeds, and so on. To the best degree that is possible, all the differences in a weapon should be weighed. A particular challenge in this case is the sheer ubiquity of availability of many weapons. A large area is available for exploration even before the BMC, a lot of the shops of different cities share the same weapons and often exact same data file, the only really distinguishing shops are in the wheel clan and qintarra (not terribly far in the game, but still made some mid-game gear require these shops), and magic chests base loot off of character name/race/background/gender combination. This makes it difficult to have a good progression of weapons that are better but only available later in the game, when you need them versus the stronger monsters. It's important because acquiring one of the best weapons near the beginning of the game not only makes combat imbalanced, but makes the other weapons of that type inconsequential to that character for the rest of the game. This was solved as much as was possible, being of prime importance in a balance mod. With the worldeditor now, it can be almost entirely eliminated.

That is why some schematic components were changed. That is, some schematics required an actual character point investment, so they must be better than average to make it worth it. Therefore it is better to make them available later, and so this can be done through limiting their components. This also gives an especially good advancement arc to weapons available from crafting alone, because they can be rendered unable to attain before a desired stage of the game where the component is found. The component used had to be 1)a unique prototype, of which there are only so many, because that is what the schematic file requires as a reference, and 2) rare to the point that it is only acquired at a specific point and beyond. So I made a list of items matching these 2 qualities, and there aren't many (took some time). Most items one would think are 'unique' from others are actually a generic item prototype with a different name and art, completely unusable for a schematic (it won't allow you to craft, saying you don't have the right component). The ones that did exist were used to limit the availability of good weapons for balancing purposes, and it worked.

There is a special consideration for weapon balancing in turn based which should be noted. Slow weapons have an advantage for the player, because they can get an attack off with even 1 speed left in a turn, but they are worse in the hands of NPCs who almost always (if not always) won't attack without the full speed amount available. Because of AI in the game especially, it can be common for an NPC to use his speed moving and then refuse to attack at all that turn because his few remaining speed isn't even enough to get a full attack with the weapon. This is the kind of thing that is difficult to quantify, and if it feels unfair through testing and playthroughs then a compensating factor would be introduced. This wasn't the case from my judgement, it really seems just fine in the end.

That's all for now, with more later for explanations on spell damage output vs weapon types, armor, and probably some other things I haven't thought to address.

Would you like some TL with your DR?

You'd be a lot more persuasive if you simply gave a few example fights with 3 or 4 character archetypes (Fighter/Mage/gunsliger/etc) and show how they would do stat-wise, rather than presenting us with your thesis on game balance theory.

Though I did read your post, the fact remains that while in theory theory and practice are equally valid, in practice they aren't. Which is what Shadenaut seems to be showing in his TL;DR.

 

[gunman]

Yes, I've met a level 49 golden bear south of Shrouded Hills, and a small level 20 dragon which was almost immune to my abilities. I was not amused.

Stopped reading here. I'll avoid this mod like plague.