Incline Fallout 2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod Discussion

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Ok, after racking my brilliant mind over the whole rest healing thing, I've decided to nix the whole deal and return it to the way it worked in vanilla, i.e. with effectively insta-healing your party outside of combat. I was hoping to create some kind of interesting mechanic where you'd have to deal with decreasing health while travelling due to encounters and make travelling more hazerdous that way, but there's just no way to make it work in a fun way (especially with boring "outs" existing such as just spamming the healing skills or resting until being able to use stimpaks continuously: degenerate gameplay gallore ).

Still, I really want to give Doctor and First Aid some type of systemic use in the game, so instead of giving them a long-term strategic use, I'll give them a tactical use during combat (i.e. more or less the way it works in FO:T). How I'm planning to make it work is if you stand next to a character, and press the H-key over him, then you use a certain amount of AP to heal HP's based on your First Aid skill. I'll make sure the AI does this as well. Having a First Aid kit in your active hand while doing this gives a flat skill bonus.

With crippled limbs, I would love to have a system where you can heal them (outside of combat) based on a combination of Doctor Skill and the patient's Current HP (e.g., with 0% skill you could heal the crippled legs of someone with 200 HP, with 200% Skill, everyone). That way Endurance would have another use in letting you get healed of crippled limbs more easily. Problem is that the current system of just spamming the doctor skill use until success makes all that moot, so that's impossible (especially with Timeslip's retirement due to getting married and all :neverforget: ).

What do you guys think? Clockwork Knight?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Dinobro, I admire your attempts to give some depth to the puddle that is the crippling system, but even with those suggested improvements it is still largely pointless, as healing is only ever a problem during combat. Even if you gimp your medical skills to be abysmal, you can still try to heal as many times as you want, depending on your patience. If it was up to me, I'd just make Doctor affect how efficiently you can apply healing items and First Aid heal wounded limbs, which would only last until the combat is over (allowing the penalties to be more severe, which in turn makes the medical skills more appealing). This is both easier to understand and causes a bigger impact on the game.

The friendly Merchant perk sounds like a souped up version of the mysterious stranger (which is not a bad thing, I like the guy). But if it's restricted to the area he hangs around in, it risks becoming "flavor" like the MS (has he ever actually saved your ass? I pretty much have to babysit him or else he dies and my perk point disappeas in a puff of smoke. Probably why they made him a "summon" in FO3/NV). Maybe it would be better it it was some sort of "guild" faction operating in several areas (I'd call them Gear Runners - Original Idea Do Not Steal), with high Barter PCs being effectively merchants themselves - thus justifying some benefits like receiving help from goons in service of the group or extra "VIP" items on sale, directly from the merchant's "personal inventory".

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Dinobro, I admire your attempts to give some depth to the puddle that is the crippling system, but even with those suggested improvements it is still largely pointless, as healing is only ever a problem during combat. Even if you gimp your medical skills to be abysmal, you can still try to heal as many times as you want, depending on your patience.

Yeah, that's why I said the cripple stuff would only become an option when I could revamp/disable the way you could just endlessly repeat using the doctor skill without consequence. I am planning on adding a "combat doctor" perk to the next version tho, which'll let you spend a turn healing crippled limbs in the same way the new first aid during combat would work (which I hope should be interesting now that stims can be used much less frequently and only one thing can be done in the inventory at a time).

The friendly Merchant perk sounds like a souped up version of the mysterious stranger (which is not a bad thing, I like the guy). But if it's restricted to the area he hangs around in, it risks becoming "flavor" like the MS (has he ever actually saved your ass? I pretty much have to babysit him or else he dies and my perk point disappeas in a puff of smoke. Probably why they made him a "summon" in FO3/NV). Maybe it would be better it it was some sort of "guild" faction operating in several areas (I'd call them Gear Runners - Original Idea Do Not Steal), with high Barter PCs being effectively merchants themselves - thus justifying some benefits like receiving help from goons in service of the group or extra "VIP" items on sale, directly from the merchant's "personal inventory".

Good point, I'm thinking now of dropping the whole goon angle altogether (I already have a barter perk that lets you recruit goons for cash in a more flexible way); instead I'm thinking of something kind of like what you're suggesting: you use the perk in one town, creating a merchant there, the next town you go to, you create another merchant. These two then get items in stock based on the other guy's town (e.g. one in Klamath and another in San Fransisco would have the Klamath merchant offering Power Armor for sale and the Frisco one gecko pelts). Because of the way my economy works with luxury items being less in demand in poor areas and vice versa, you could get big discounts this way.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

New version up, check the first page for version 0.7!

Version 0.7:

- 8 new perks added.
- Healing system has been revised: the new resource-based healing system has been removed in its entirety, and doctor's bags and first aid kits now work as in vanilla FO2 again, while rest healing is the same effective auto-healing as in the original. Healing powder now works the same as the new stim paks, so you can use them to heal, but only once every 30 minutes. To give first aid some kind of purpose, you can now use 7 AP's to heal yourself or someone standing next to you with the J-key (note that the reduced AP doesn't show up in the UI immediately). The amount healed is based on the FA-skill and whether you have a First Aid kit in your active hand.
- Fixed a problem where "oops! hit the wrong target" was occuring a bit too often and randomly.
- Fixed issue with the message that the "this weapon can't be used properly" message appeared incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug in perks that cause critters to switch teams, so that if they are forced by their scripts to still attack the player on sight, they switch teams again.

Next version will probably take a long, long while. Will try not to add any new content and just do some balancing/bug fixing for that one, but again don't count on it any time soon.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

New version, 0.7.1, on the first page, but it only corrects me idiotically leaving in the testing script in 0.7, so you can also just manually remove it from the script folder (gltesting3.int).

Also, I've updated the installation instructions for RP (and added an important clarification for all versions, namely that you should always use the Fallout2.exe in the mod folder). Previous RP instructions were incorrect and needlessly complicating, because all you have to do is have RP regularly installed for the mod to work.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

0.7.2 up already, sorry about that, but just found out the Gifted trait changes were applied to Sex Appeal for some reason, fixed that. Also added instructions for more easily updating to a new version of the mod without doing clean installs (just delete the scripts folder then overwrite).

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

And turns out a lot of the traits were a complete mess. Fixed these now in 0.7.3, and made a couple of changes to them while I was at it to make it a bit more balanced:

- Jack of All Trades now puts the skill cap at 125 instead of 100 (actually, it didn't do this at all yet, so this is also a fix)
- Fast Shot now also increases your critical failure chance on top of the decreased critical hit chance.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I've been working on a lot of fixes for the mod, and I think I've found the bug that has caused the game crashes for a lot of people but which had been eluding me. So, um, don't download it for now I guess.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Jim, why you took out resource-based healing? Auto-healing is popamole as all hell.

Problem is that I can't remove the existing healing system of just spamming the first aid skill over and over. Like I said, ideally, I'd put in a system that made you either invest in resources or first aid/doctor in your party for healing in between combat, but there's just no feasible way to do that unless I can at the very least block out the way the original system works.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Big new update up in the first post! I just did some testing going through all the motions in the temple and arroyo and checking out klamath and not a single hitch, so seems to be doing well. I'll try and finish the game once at least before releasing v. 1.0, but don't count on that being any time soon.

Also, small change at the end of the installation instructions.

Version 0.8:

Changes/Additions:

- Changed the way agility works in deciding aiming bonusses in a more intuitive way. Now it decides your base aiming bonus, which is set at agility*20. Each AP spent aiming raises that by 50 up to a maximum of 200 + perception*20 (so, e.g., a character with 6 Agility, spending 3 AP's aiming gets a bonus of: 6*20 + 3*50 = 270). P
- added perk pictures for all the new perks; rather than fitting with the theme of the perk, these depict the attribute or skill needed to get additional ranks for that perk (usually 4 + 2 per attribute, and 50 per skill; so, e.g., if the perk picture is the same as that of charisma, then you need 6 base Charisma for one rank, 8 for two and 10 for three).
- changed the way unarmed damage works; previously both the "weight" of the attack and the amount of that weight that translated to damage was determined by Strength, which stupidly caused an exponential effect that caused low ST characters to do close to no damage. Now the weight is a constant 4 (same weight as a club, though the club gets additional max damage), which can get raised through the "heavy hitter" perk.
- all critters that make unarmed attacks with claws and teeth instead of blunt force (i.e. all of them other than humanoids) now have 25% higher max damage and 25% lower min damage (which means they have less chance of causing knockdowns and knockouts, but higher penetration), the max damage additionally gets raised based on their experience value.
- removed the healing item collection mechanic that had still remained over from the old healing system. Pressing Q or the corresponding button in the UI now shows the chance of a certain status effect (knockdown, knockout, etc.) occurring for the bodypart of the enemy you last aimed at (previously this was under a different key).
-raised the amount of melee weapon weight that gets translated to damage per melee damage stat point to 25% for max damage and 20% for min damage (this way even a 1 ST character can at least potentially deal some damage with his fists, which have a weight of 4: 1*4*0.25 = a max damage of 1).
-Lowered the critical failure chance and made the additional roll tied to the Jinxed trait independent from the Luck stat.
-Added the Golden Gecko bartender in Klamath to the new merchant system.
- Removed the new blocking mechanic, which was simply too untransparent and didn't really add anything in the way of tactical options because of that.
- lowered the stats of the temple of trials guy; he was way too tough for a non-combat build under the standardized stat system, and wouldn't want to force you to tag speech or make a thief build just to get past him.
- simplified the defence mechanic to one based on perception and unused action points (if you can see the enemy attacking you, you get a defence bonus based on how many AP's you've "spent" concentrating on figuring out his move), and another based on hexes moved and agility (the faster and more you move, the harder you are to hit).
- also simplified/merged the armor and carry weight penalties. Given that carry weight now concerns only worn armor and weapon in the active hand, it was needlessly complicating to keep separate penalties. The penalty is now also directly visible by applying it to the aiming bonus you change by spending additional AP's through the UI or key bindings. The way it works is simply that the percentage by which you exceed your max carry weight is substracted from your aiming bonus (so, if you get an aiming bonus of 200%, and you exceed your carry weight by 10%, this aiming bonus is now 200*0.9=180%).The maximum penalty is 50%.
- the aiming bonus now also reduces the thc nerfing. bit of a complicated issue, but what this basically helps to avoid is spending additional AP's being only useful when bridging very low (and thus unnerfed) THC values.

Fixes:

- fixed a huge bug in the damage formula that caused unarmed and melee damage in all cases to nonsensically depend on the player.
- Cleaned up some of the formulas and especially the damage formula so that it rounds the outcome both up and down rather than only down as it does in the original formula (given the relatively low damage outputs in the game this makes more of a difference than it would seem).
- fixed an oversight in the damage formula not being completely up to date for additional targets in a burst.
- Fixed a couple of issues with critters not properly getting the right stats under the new systems (namely melee damage, sequence and crit chance).
- Fixed an issue with several traders still carrying endless amounts of first aid kits and doctor's bags under the old healing system.
- Fixed an issue in the new burst system which was a result of an sfall bug that has since been fixed: previously all hits were dealt as "extra targets" meaning no status effects like knockdowns could occur, this has now been fixed and one of the hits is automatically treated as the "target".
- cleaned up a lot of scripts to be "safer" so as to prevent any potential bugs (debugging FO2 isn't exactly an easy job so tbh I'm not even sure to what degree this was necessary; it couldn't hurt at the very least). Also optimized a few to improve performance (especially the two handed switching script was needlessly bulky).
- fixed a problem in the loot generating script which caused ammo on your person to change amounts when first entering a map.
- fixed a bug in the container overseer system which caused the script to be attached to all ground items rather than just containers.
- fixed two potentially game crashing errors in the gear generation script and made it work properly for containers on the map, which wasn't happening previously.
- fixed a huge bug having to do with a version switch in sfall changing the way arrays work. Note that this has also resulted in a slight change in the installation instructions (found on the first page or in the zip file).

 

[Irenaeus]

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

and of course I left a display message in at the very beginning because I'm an idiot. It's just on map start up (it shows the amount of items in a set of arrays), I'll have it out next version which'll be pretty soon (just figured out how to do some interesting things).

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I have a question for you guys. One of the major problems with ranged combat in Fallout 2 is of course the step around a corner, shoot, step back exploit. I don't really have a good idea yet on what could be done to try and address this; I can only think of two vague approaches, which might create more problems than they solve:

(1) "Interruptions": I saw someone refer to this, and while I'm not sure how this is usually done, it might be something like this: your current AP-count drops below half your max, then a check is made against the opponent's sequence, and if you fail, you lose the rest of your turn.
(2) If you're standing adjacent to "cover" (an impenetrable hex), the game reads this as you actually trying to take cover, meaning that the opponent gets a penalty to his to hit chance, but you do as well (this would try and simulate the "peek around a corner" effect of your actions).

The problem with the second option would of course be that it makes no sense that you're in "cover" if you're standing with your back against a wall (ideally, you would really have to be able to check for corners only, but I wouldn't have a clue on how to even begin making this possible).

The best candidate would then seem option one, but that would probably require overhauling the whole sequence system (which I would actually prefer; the whole double turn at the very beginning thing was always a bit odd to me), which I would have to ask Timeslip about (if he ever shows up again) whether that's even possible.

But how do other games address this problem (for instance, JA2, because I really can't remember)? How would you do so?

If I understand corectly you mean an enemy spoting you and getting an interrupt?

I really felt like responding. I took advantage of cover in FA1 to kill some of the mutants, but it was already insane how many times I'd die to criticals. The few chances I got to stand behind cover and get a few cheap shots helped me to finish the game without deleting the game from my harddrive and wishing harm to its name.

I love JA2 and I know what you're talking about. When you come into view of the enemy, they can get an interrupt. Generally speaking this is ok if the enemy isn't interrupting too often and other factors are considered like whether the npc is not looking in your direction or is wounded. Also when you're close to the enemy in JA2 you generaly do not try to walk into their view to get a shot because they almost always will get an interrupt and come very close to killing you. What I usually did would have a guy further away come into view and gain the attention of the enemy. Then I'd have another guy come in closer but out of sight and try to flank the enemy, so eveb if they do get an interrupt, it'll cost them more AP to chagne position and probably be a smaller chance since they're focused on somethign else. Also since the enemy is taking shots at the visible player or moving towards them, they usualy won't have enough ap to interrupt the character I have flanking them up close.

But I want to warn about this kind of thing. It can potentialy be a bad thing if it happens too often. If the enemy always got an interrupt, for example, there'd be no point in having cover at all because in order to get a shot you'd have to take one from all visibles. Keep in mind that in JA2 the enemies only get an interrupt if they have enough ap from last turn which was unused. If they used it for moving or shooting then they wouldn't have enough. So if this same mechanic were in Fallout then the mutant would have to stop moving towards you aggresively so it can use stored ap to interrupt you next turn.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Jim, why you took out resource-based healing? Auto-healing is popamole as all hell.

Problem is that I can't remove the existing healing system of just spamming the first aid skill over and over. Like I said, ideally, I'd put in a system that made you either invest in resources or first aid/doctor in your party for healing in between combat, but there's just no feasible way to do that unless I can at the very least block out the way the original system works.

It's not like healing systems in non-popamole games was ever interesting. Mostly just drinking healing potions or casting a healing spell or clicking on "Rest for 6 hours" which is what led to the spamming in some cases.

That's what you're trying to do with this mod is give the player something interesting.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

The Brazilian Slaughter Clockwork Knight

Hey guys, healing discussion for the millionth time:

Timeslip's successor, phobos, has just added a ton of new modding options, including (finally) a way to override how skills work, including of course first aid and doctor. So let's revisit the topic before concluding it's unfixable.

Now, CK, you pointed out rightly that in the end all efforts to improve "strategic" healing between combat would fail cause all you'd sacrifice in the end would be time and time is irrelevant in FO2.

So, what if we make time relevant? FO2 has a fun radioactivity mechanic that slowly debilitates you, except it never does. But what if it always affects you over time, causing excessive resting/taking long times healing to irradiate you faster?

I'd make First Aid and Doctor always succeed, but the amount of time spent healing would change based on your skill. The speed of rest healing would also be based on healing skills.

What do you think? ATM radioactivity only applies to the player, but shouldn't be too hard to have it apply to party members as well.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Bro, I don't see how to make time relevant without a quest time limit, and that is unecessary.
I think radiation doesn't work as a limitation, because you can simply take or buy RadAway and RadX - ok, less so in the early game (I don't think you find anti-rad drugs in shops until Vault City, but I could be wrong, they sell good drugs in Den) but after Redding you are starting to swim in shekels anyway.

Well sure, but resources should be a way to compensate for low skill anyway. And in theory you shouldn't be swimming in shekels in my mod.

I still think that Wasteland 2-style resource-based healing is superior.

Except that's always been the problem, why expend resources if you can also just expend time. The only way to do that would be to entirely remove passive healing and to force you to scrounge for healing materials or going past all the merchants each time you get hurt, which was how I tried it before and I just don't see a lot of fun in that tbh. I mean in theory if you completely remade the game based on a minimal amount of extremely lethal combat, then sure. But groaning and reloading every time you encounter rats because you know you'll sustain at least some damage and will have to find some healing materials is not a way of improving the game imo.

Maybe some minor health regen if you have lost, say, 10% or 20% of your default HP, to simulate the fact the body heals from minor wounds.

You can't conceptually differentiate minor from heavy wounds based on HP tho. suppose you sustain 30 minimal wounds of 1 HP, costing 30 HP, making for a major wound that can't be healed, later you sustain a major wound for 20 HP, making for a minor wound which can for some reason be healed. Not to mention the fact that this'd make sustaining 21 HP damage pointlessly frustrating.

 

[Ulminati]

if you guys have intelligent well thought out views on healing in FO2 share them here don't post anything silly or so help me god I will report you so fast it'll make your head spin misters

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Yeah, anything you can fix with consumables is a non-issue, especially in open-world style games where you can find items everywhere. Getting irradiated in exchange of healing just means you'll be collecting anti-rads instead of stimpacks.

Dunno if it's possible but how about making it so you temporarily lose some Max HP or skills/attributes every time you heal yourself, like a chem's withdrawal symptoms except the reasoning being that you're patched up but you can't do it forever in the middle of nowhere, you need to get to a doctor's clinic to get a "proper" treatment and go back to 100% again. Investing in the skills wouldn't be worthless because you can take more time between visits.

Well sure, but resources should be a way to compensate for low skill anyway. And in theory you shouldn't be swimming in shekels in my mod.

Rules and theories were made to be broken.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Yeah, anything you can fix with consumables is a non-issue, especially in open-world style games where you can find items everywhere. Getting irradiated in exchange of healing just means you'll be collecting anti-rads instead of stimpacks.

As far as I can remember Rad-x and Radaways weren't lying around everywhere. You'd still have to buy them at relatively high prices.

Dunno if it's possible but how about making it so you temporarily lose some Max HP or skills/attributes every time you heal yourself, like a chem's withdrawal symptoms except the reasoning being that you're patched up but you can't do it forever in the middle of nowhere, you need to get to a doctor's clinic to get a "proper" treatment and go back to 100% again. Investing in the skills wouldn't be worthless because you can take more time between visits.

How would that make for better gameplay than my approach?

Your solution is forcing the player to visit doctors who arbitrarily can do things you can't do regardless of your skill level and supplies.

My solution would be that you can (a) carry this solution around with you (b) can employ preventive measures (either through rad-x, or endurance/perk enhanced radiation resistance) and (c) use a nice system for reducing max HP and attributes already in the game, namely radiation.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

As far as I can remember Rad-x and Radaways weren't lying around everywhere. You'd still have to buy them at relatively high prices.

It's been a while since I played it, but IIRC Stimpacks rarer and more expensive because the danger of dying in combat is much higher than dying of irradiation.

How would that make for better gameplay than my approach?

Your solution is forcing the player to visit doctors who arbitrarily can do things you can't do regardless of your skill level and supplies.

Well, I imagine that it's not very arbitrary to assume that a professional doctor in an actual clinic would do a better job than the hobbyist-doctor player sitting on the ground performing open-heart surgery on himself. There are doctors in most inhabited places so it's not as if it would turn the game into Clinic Trip Simulator.

My solution would be that you can (a) carry this solution around with you (b) can employ preventive measures (either through rad-x, or endurance/perk enhanced radiation resistance) and (c) use a nice system for reducing max HP and attributes already in the game, namely radiation.

It's not a bad method, it just doesn't sound very difficult to deal with. I'm not scared of getting hurt in combat if all it takes to get back up are some consumables, which will be abundant even if you try to limit the player's obscene riches. Reduced stats from abusing healing would scare me, like when it happens when abusing chems. Radiation weakens you too but if it's affecting you constantly it could get kind of annoying, maybe.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Radiation weakens you too but if it's affecting you constantly it could get kind of annoying, maybe.

Hmm maybe, I do agree that constantly increasing radiation damage isn't ideal... what if there's a solution to the economy and healing all wrapped in one neat little package in the form of upkeep?

I'm thinking maybe you have a bag in your inventory (the "upkeep bag") where you can place items or cash in. The moment you put them in the bag, they disappear and their value gets added to your upkeep. Your upkeep gets subtracted every day, and rises if you are wounded, and might also count for your party members.

If you run out of upkeep funds, you start taking hefty radiation damage to represent having to drink tainted water, scrounge through trash for food, use dirty rags to bandage wounds (radiation would effectively represent general debilitation) etc.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

A couple of extra changes I could now do to the non-healing active skills:

- lockpicking: remove roll, make a relatively low threshold, but add a noise radius that gets larger the worse your skill is, alerting those within the radius.

- stealing: in addition to the changes already in place (low threshold for viewing contents of inventory; "teammates" of target can also spot you trying to steal), the difficulty for stealing heavy items would be raised, tho could be lowered based on your strength (would make stealing bozars a bit harder and more invoved).

- science, repair and traps (beyond the setting of traps I've already implemented more or less) I'm not yet sure about. I'm vaguely thinking of giving some kind of bonus for using science on computers (xp bonus?) but that isn't terribly interesting.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Upkeep bag is an interesting concept.

Lockpick change is nice, too. The roll is annoying and pointless since you can just reload.

Science - chance of getting a random skill level-up? (you dig up some data that increases your knowledge)

Repair - X% bonus to equipped gear's stats? (you keep your junk in good condition)

Traps - free itamz? (you dismantle the trap and acquire the components)

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Science - chance of getting a random skill level-up? (you dig up some data that increases your knowledge)

Repair - X% bonus to equipped gear's stats? (you keep your junk in good condition)

I meant more in terms of the active use of the skill, so when you use it from the skilldex and then click on something/someone. Also, I had that feature for repair a while ago but didn't really like how uninvolved it was (kind of boring to just give a constant bonus).

I was thinking maybe:

- Science: use it on a (dead) creature and you get a thc/damage bonus against that type of creature, given that you've learned about their biology or something? Repair would then work the same on robots. Tho maybe this could be better handled through a perk...


Or maybe I should use this approach to finally "fix" the way skill books work:

The main thing I hate about the skill books and why I obsess over them is how they "pervert" character development. You're incentivized to ignore/not tag certain skills because you'll increase them through skill books up to 100% anyway.

This is why I think it would be more interesting to invert the use of skill books: they don't increase your skill level, but work better if you have invested in a high enough skill level.

Now how about the skill books all work in a contextual way. This isn't terribly intuitive from a simulation perspective, but it could represent you studying a certain subject using the book as reference material.

In practice this'd work something like this, with the effects becoming greater based on the relevant skill's level:

- for outdoorsman books, if you read them in the mountains, you get a bonus when fighting in the mountains, or move faster through the mountains, if you read them in the plains you get a bonus when on the plains, etc.

- for the gun books, you get a bonus for whichever gun you have equiped.

- for the science books, you will get a bonus against the type of (dead) creature you use your science skill on next, as you learn about their biology.

- for the repair books, maybe same as science only for types of robots or something.

- for the first aid books I'm not sure yet.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Just a little something to make clear I'm still working on this thing and doing more random shit:

I made an improved version of the NPCs Loot Bodies mod.

The problems with pelicano's old version, in my eyes, was on the one hand that it was limited: only two npcs would loot at any given time. Most importantly though, it was very arbitrary and frustrating: imagine spending an hour-long battle with Metzger's goons only to find that junkies have taken all the choice loot. You can't fight the junkies without antagonizing the entire town, so you're pretty much fucked. Anyway, in my version this all changed:

- whenever an npc kills another npc, he "expects" his team (i.e. himself and those fighting alongside him) to be able to loot that body after combat. If anyone tries to loot that body (and is noticed), then his team will initiate combat to keep that from happening.
- his team will also reserve the right to loot the bodies of their fallen comrades.

What this does is introduce an element of "fairness" to looting: no longer will the player be able to wait out a battle between a caravan and raiders to pick the raiders' bones dry after the caravan has done all the fighting. Conversely, the player won't have to worry that his kills will get compromised by junkie looters.

You can get the mod (it's just a global script, so put it in the script folder of whichever mod you're using) HERE.

I made a little video demonstration of it in action: