Incline Fallout 2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod Discussion

[Jim the Dinosaur]

@Jim
BTW - the YAAM mod - while great uses modified proto files and because of this ahs two affects:
1- makes it at times incompatible with some mods
2- the changes do not take affect on those protos already on a map (if I remember correctly)

So you may want to look into how to recreate YAAM using solely sfall scripting methods.

Towards the step back exploit; I like the "Interruptions" idea, but some skill checks would need to be added in there to make this a little more appealing of a change.

I'm not totally sure, but I seem to remember that the modified protos aren't an essential a part of the mod (I'm pretty sure the DT/DR switch is made through Sfall), so the changes that are there I can easily do through scripts (I'll probably change them around a bit to account for the fact that the AC-mod no longer does anything).

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Forbid moving after doing any non-move action.

I briefly considered this, but I came to the conclusion that it's probably not a good idea. Because, either you apply it to AI and player alike and then the player mightget an even bigger advantage over the AI than he lost (though I admit I can't think of a lot of scenarios off the top of my headother than the way the AI loves to switch for a melee weapon when out of ammo and then run towards you). Or you apply it to the player only, and then it would probably just become a really annoying hurdle, where you occasionally forget to do your movement beforehand. A more systematic approach would probably be best.

 

[Glovz]

@Jim
BTW - the YAAM mod - while great uses modified proto files and because of this ahs two affects:
1- makes it at times incompatible with some mods
2- the changes do not take affect on those protos already on a map (if I remember correctly)

So you may want to look into how to recreate YAAM using solely sfall scripting methods.

Towards the step back exploit; I like the "Interruptions" idea, but some skill checks would need to be added in there to make this a little more appealing of a change.

I'm not totally sure, but I seem to remember that the modified protos aren't an essential a part of the mod (I'm pretty sure the DT/DR switch is made through Sfall), so the changes that are there I can easily do through scripts (I'll probably change them around a bit to account for the fact that the AC-mod no longer does anything).

The main formula changes are in sfall yes but for YAAM to work properly changes had to be made to DR mod values ammo has which YAAM uses as a DT mod value.

I would imagine you could use your proto inventory method, identify specific ammo protos and change the DR values as YAAM has them, all via script.

But to balance things correctly, values need to change in ammo and armor, and possibly weapons. You can see what I was beginning to play with here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...MzVPT1pMaDZtWnc&single=true&gid=0&output=html

You have to compare to original values yourself to understand where I was going, bare in mind I was thinking I could balance things this way in conjunction with may damage formula fix. I only gave up because I found out all proto files that I change would need to be updated on all maps or I would have to do it via sfall scripting which I had no skill at.

I'm not trying to sell you on my ideas, just hoping that my feedback helps in some small way.

 

[laclongquan]

HP inflation is annoying but the opposite, which is making tougher enemies, is hell on balancing. you will want a constant group of playtesters to check for overbalanced perks.

Example: how the hell do you get enemies get metal armor defense value without letting player loot those metal armors?

 

[desocupado]

Pay attention to some types of changes. Realism is not always good. In fact good gameplay beats realism everytime in my book.

For example (and I confess it's been a long while since I played fallout 1 or 2), if you add more conditions that would make an enemy flee, you might have the player end up having to give chase to the fleeing enemies a lot more often, which is usually annoying as hell in games.

The changes to books. Think as a player for a moment, you're not going to throw away any of those books, they're valuable game-wise so you're keeping them. I don't remember how heavy they were, but if they were light, it's a lot of inventory clutter. If they're heavy, you're storing that stuff on the car trunk, and making trips to get them when necessary, which is also annoying as hell. I remember hurting for carrying capacity in the fallouts, so we might end up with the later scenario even if the books are light.

The morale thing can be okay, but it might lead to save scumming. You might have players saving often, and reloading when they fail the morale checks on the harder battles. Same with the changes to stim (what's temporary damage?). Stimms are a too easy way out, and waaay to available, but not giving the chance to recover from a nasty crit or something other might be too harsh. Of course, it depends on what you really plan for those, it's not very clear from what you wrote.

On combat, I really, really wish combat was more complex and harder. Cover, crouching, better balanced and more differentiated ranges for weapons (the sniper rifle was a disappointment), and maybe companion control. I know it might make the game easier, but maybe it can be counterbalanced by some other changes.

I'm waaaay too fucking sleepy to think of more stuff. But what is above a tought.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

HP inflation is annoying but the opposite, which is making tougher enemies, is hell on balancing. you will want a constant group of playtesters to check for overbalanced perks.

"Making tougher enemies" is in no way the "opposite" of HP inflation; HP inflation of AI critters more or less follows pace with the projected HP inflation of the player (with some clear exceptions like the Chinese, who have considerably more HP than Enclave soldiers to compensate for having the equivalent of leather armor; which is why I suggested better game design would be better armor, but not in order to make them "tougher"). The main thing fixed HP addresses is duration of battles, not difficulty (but yes, non-human critters will inevitably get easier in the early game, and harder in the late game; but then again I would consider rats being less of a challenge and Deathclaws more of one a good balancing step).

As for the "overbalanced perks", you shouldn't get the impression that I'm nerfing all the perks to make some sort of effective hardcore mode or whatever; I simply (too slightly) nerf the perks which are an automatic pick on level up, and intend to power up some of the completely useless ones. Will the net result of actually having a choice in which perks you take on level be a harder game? Possibly, butI can easily imagine that finally having future useful perks for non-combat/stealth characters, instead of having them all forced to take increased rate of fire, will make the game easier in some cases.

Pay attention to some types of changes. Realism is not always good. In fact good gameplay beats realism everytime in my book.

I know I brought this on myself, but can everyone please stop using this strawman. The reason for all these changes is better gameplay (you might not agree that they make for better gameplay of course, but that's besides the point); the only reason why the argument I use for them is usually "realistic" is that I (erroneously, it turns out) assumed that everyone understood why the problems they try to address make Fallout less fun. So, what I tried to do then is give a very simple explanation why I believe these changes aren't arbitrary, and don't constitute a rough break with the way the world of Fallout operates. I wanted to avoid outlining a fix for the obvious Stimpak problem in the current game, and then have someone say "well, that's all fine and dandy, but that's just not how the Fallout world ticks". Which I think is fair (suppose you could solve many of the gameplay issues by giving the player magic spells; you still wouldn't do it because it would clash with the game's world/atmosphere). So I've everywhere tried to balance concerns with gameplay with those with atmosphere, etc. (which is (sci-fi-)"realistic", at least in the points where I'm changing things).

For example (and I confess it's been a long while since I played fallout 1 or 2), if you add more conditions that would make an enemy flee, you might have the player end up having to give chase to the fleeing enemies a lot more often, which is usually annoying as hell in games.

(1) The point wouldn't necessarily be to make enemies flee more often, because I would also lower the morale threshold for to hit chance substantially (Arroyo warriors for instance are so ridiculously spoiled that they need a 30% chance to hit not to run away), (2) The chasing problem is mainly (at least, I think) because the current fleeing system has them run away from you only a relatively small distance (remember how they would just randomly stand around?); I would make them run off the map and out of your hair.

The changes to books. Think as a player for a moment, you're not going to throw away any of those books, they're valuable game-wise so you're keeping them. I don't remember how heavy they were, but if they were light, it's a lot of inventory clutter. If they're heavy, you're storing that stuff on the car trunk, and making trips to get them when necessary, which is also annoying as hell. I remember hurting for carrying capacity in the fallouts, so we might end up with the later scenario even if the books are light.

These are all problems we were already discussing earlier in the thread, but just to reiterate, the point of the changes has nothing to do with realism. Right now, you have 3-4 skills you would never conceivably allocate points to because you'll get to a 100% by mid-end game anyway; this just cuts away a huge chuck of player customization. One of the solutions would be (as people here have also suggested) to lower the max amount you can learn from them (say, 50%), but that would mean all books you find after the early game are simply useless. That's why my preference (for the moment at least) goes out to rare/heavy/expensive/unusable books (the most obvious problem, namely of the car trunk, could be addressed in a variety of ways).

The morale thing can be okay, but it might lead to save scumming. You might have players saving often, and reloading when they fail the morale checks on the harder battles.

Really? You're going to restart an entire battle just because movement takes twice as many AP for one turn? According to that rationale, you should do away with min-max damage in weapons as well because people would just reload everytime their weapon did minimum damage. (unless you're thinking of saving/reloading during battles, which was always a buggy exploit and can't be done anyway anymore in Sfall).

Same with the changes to stim (what's temporary damage?). Stimms are a too easy way out, and waaay to available, but not giving the chance to recover from a nasty crit or something other might be too harsh. Of course, it depends on what you really plan for those, it's not very clear from what you wrote.

Of course, if you get a chunk of you blown off, taking a stimpak will help you out for the duration of the battle; just remember that the recovery is only temporary, and that taking more than your Endurance tolerates might kill you after the battle. Which makes using First-aid/"resting" the reasonable option in between battles.

 

[laclongquan]

I am no modder, so i will spell things out the way I think:

- Can you put permanent status effect into NPCs? The perk effect, for instance.
- Can you make NPCs use a series of items at the start of battle?
- Can you make a series of item in NPCS inventory become unlootable?
Because you can make a chinatownman boosted with all avaivable perk, and auto-use a series of chems at start of battle to increased their combat ability. We can assume the SF chinatownman prosper for a reason. because, remember, it's the only big town where slavery doesnt exist. The only reason for it are suppreme effiency, good tech application, and tough old farmers.

Increase AC, increase DT and DR, are some of the benefits come from choosing the right perks, right?

 

[desocupado]

Pay attention to some types of changes. Realism is not always good. In fact good gameplay beats realism everytime in my book.

I know I brought this on myself, but can everyone please stop using this strawman. The reason for all these changes is better gameplay (you might not agree that they make for better gameplay of course, but that's besides the point); the only reason why the argument I use for them is usually "realistic" is that I (erroneously, it turns out) assumed that everyone understood why the problems they try to address make Fallout less fun. So, what I tried to do then is give a very simple explanation why I believe these changes aren't arbitrary, and don't constitute a rough break with the way the world of Fallout operates. I wanted to avoid outlining a fix for the obvious Stimpak problem in the current game, and then have someone say "well, that's all fine and dandy, but that's just not how the Fallout world ticks". Which I think is fair (suppose you could solve many of the gameplay issues by giving the player magic spells; you still wouldn't do it because it would clash with the game's world/atmosphere). So I've everywhere tried to balance concerns with gameplay with those with atmosphere, etc. (which is (sci-fi-)"realistic", at least in the points where I'm changing things).

For example (and I confess it's been a long while since I played fallout 1 or 2), if you add more conditions that would make an enemy flee, you might have the player end up having to give chase to the fleeing enemies a lot more often, which is usually annoying as hell in games.

(1) The point wouldn't necessarily be to make enemies flee more often, because I would also lower the morale threshold for to hit chance substantially (Arroyo warriors for instance are so ridiculously spoiled that they need a 30% chance to hit not to run away), (2) The chasing problem is mainly (at least, I think) because the current fleeing system has them run away from you only a relatively small distance (remember how they would just randomly stand around?); I would make them run off the map and out of your hair.

Fair enough if you don't plan to necessarily make them flee more often, but would you need to keep pressing the end turn button to wait for them to flee, until they are out of sight or out of the map? That can be annoying.

The changes to books. Think as a player for a moment, you're not going to throw away any of those books, they're valuable game-wise so you're keeping them. I don't remember how heavy they were, but if they were light, it's a lot of inventory clutter. If they're heavy, you're storing that stuff on the car trunk, and making trips to get them when necessary, which is also annoying as hell. I remember hurting for carrying capacity in the fallouts, so we might end up with the later scenario even if the books are light.

These are all problems we were already discussing earlier in the thread, but just to reiterate, the point of the changes has nothing to do with realism. Right now, you have 3-4 skills you would never conceivably allocate points to because you'll get to a 100% by mid-end game anyway; this just cuts away a huge chuck of player customization. One of the solutions would be (as people here have also suggested) to lower the max amount you can learn from them (say, 50%), but that would mean all books you find after the early game are simply useless. That's why my preference (for the moment at least) goes out to rare/heavy/expensive/unusable books (the most obvious problem, namely of the car trunk, could be addressed in a variety of ways).

I just wanted to point out that carrying them all can be a major annoyance, and unless you make it impossible to do so, players will try to do it.

The morale thing can be okay, but it might lead to save scumming. You might have players saving often, and reloading when they fail the morale checks on the harder battles.

Really? You're going to restart an entire battle just because movement takes twice as many AP for one turn? (unless you're thinking of saving/reloading during battles, which was always a buggy exploit and can't be done anyway anymore in Sfall).

Like I said, can be okay, I dunno the details. I wouldn't reload because movement takes twice as many AP for one turn, but maybe I would if I failed the morale check twice in a row and got the same -40% to hit result, while a deathclaw claws me to death. If like you said it's dependant on damage taken and it's a hard fight, you're invariably taking some damage, and having unlucky morale checks in a row could really fuck you up. Which could lead to people reloading until they're not fucked by morale rolls. But like I said, depends on implementation, I'm not saying I'm against any of those changes, I'm saying, pay attention to those details.

Same with the changes to stim (what's temporary damage?). Stimms are a too easy way out, and waaay to available, but not giving the chance to recover from a nasty crit or something other might be too harsh. Of course, it depends on what you really plan for those, it's not very clear from what you wrote.

Of course, if you get a chunk of you blown off, taking a stimpak will help you out for the duration of the battle; just remember that the recovery is only temporary, and that taking more than your Endurance tolerates might kill you after the battle. Which makes using First-aid/"resting" the reasonable option in between battles.

Fair enough.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Fair enough if you don't plan to necessarily make them flee more often, but would you need to keep pressing the end turn button to wait for them to flee, until they are out of sight or out of the map? That can be annoying.

I'm fairly sure I can have them keep running after the turn ends, so yeah.

Just to outline how I would do the new AI morale system, so it's clear why I think it won't result in more, only better, fleeing (I noticed I hadn't made it very clear in the other posts). Old system:

- Can't hit (so will run from agile but weak opponent).
- Too hurt (so will run when hurt, even if only opponent left is unlikely to kill the AI and the AI'd be better off continuing the fight)

New system:

-Can't hurt (so enemy's armor is too strong for my weapon)
-Absolutely can't hit
-Could get killed by next attack.

I just wanted to point out that carrying them all can be a major annoyance, and unless you make it impossible to do so, players will try to do it.

I'm really not convinced that an idiot character will carry around science books for a useless +20 science bonus if the consequence is (1) he becomes worse at combat and (2) he can carry less loot. Ideally, I would like to handle exploits in the same way as one mod which is now out that causes random NPC's to pick up loot as well, only apply it to containers also (i.e. sure, put your loot in your car trunk, but don't lock/trap it well a la the Road Warrior, then it might get stolen while you're not looking (this would actually make things like the guy in NCR offering to guard your car make sense)).

Like I said, can be okay, I dunno the details. I wouldn't reload because movement takes twice as many AP for one turn, but maybe I would if I failed the morale check twice in a row and got the same -40% to hit result, while a deathclaw claws me to death. If like you said it's dependant on damage taken and it's a hard fight, you're invariably taking some damage, and having unlucky morale checks in a row could really fuck you up. Which could lead to people reloading until they're not fucked by morale rolls. But like I said, depends on implementation, I'm not saying I'm against any of those changes, I'm saying, pay attention to those details.

You know, the more I think about improving the AI morale system, the less sense the idea of a player morale system makes. After all, the idea I had behind it was to make the player just as handicapped as the AI; if the AI irrationally flees from a rat when wounded, then the player should experience some hindrance as well. But if I make the AI flee only when it makes sense, then the player would do so as well anyway. Damn. Oh well, I'll probably just leave the player morale system in as an option for those who find it interesting.

 

[DraQ]

Words.

Those ideas are good and interesting.

A bit more detailed reply:

Morale: Based on the outcome of a JA2-esque personality evaluation, it is decided how much the player's morale is impaired by things like killing people (especially children) and getting hurt, and how much it is improved by things like alcohol and good deeds. Any eventual morale failure lasts one turn and impacts either moving speed or to hit chances or attack AP cost (the reason is that where NPC's are regular humans who panic from time to time, the player has the unfair advantage of being something of a B-Movie action hero).

Good as long as personality system is going to be reasonably comprehensive. Otherwise it's better to be a B-Movie action hero than to be arbitrarily barred from having particular personality traits.

Consistent Localization: Now, if you have, say, a 25% chance of hitting someone when aiming for the eye, this means you have a 25% chance of hitting the target, so also the head or body (because it's very strange that narrowly missing someone's eyes doesn't result in you hitting the head)

I don't quite get what you're trying to say.
On one hand, yes, missing particular location should involve checking if you haven't hit adjacent location, but on the other there are pretty good reasons why professionals tend to aim for center mass when trying to shoot someone - aiming at peripheral body parts should make it more likely to miss.

Overall you'd need some sort of structure telling the game which body parts are adjacent to one another and which are in peripheral locations as well as ability to convert difference between roll's difficulty and result into meaningful measure of how much did you miss and using this information to calculate new to-hit difficulty for hitting particular body parts.

You could visualize it as finding radius of a circle circumscribed around targetted body part and then finding percentages of circle's circumference intersecting individual body parts. Of course, since fallout doesn't have the sort of spatial information, you'd have to come up with the math by yourself - I don't even know how FO calculates to-hit difficulty.

No More AC: Dodging an attack now depends on your agility and perks, and actually becomes harder the more bulky armor you wear (because AC is a weird schizophrenic stat in Fallout which seems to embody both attacks ricocheting off armor and you nimbly dodging them; better to split it up into agility and DT/DR).

I gather it tries to incorporate glancing hits as well as dodging, DT and DR, but it doesn't quite work. I'd replace AC by dodge and add "attack angle modifier" of sorts, increasing DT and DR based on the difference between actual and perfect roll value for successful shot divided by the difference between threshold and perfect value of the roll (to compensate for other modifiers such as distance - you need to know how much off-center you hit the actual target).

Critical Failures Can Always Happen/100% To Hit Cap: Even a "hit" can turn into a critical miss if you first fail a skill roll and then a luck roll. As a consequence the max to hit is raised from 95 to 100 percent. (because it was strange that your weapon could only spontaneously explode if you were already going to miss, and the arbitrary 95% cap was only meant to accommodate this weird system)

A hunderd times this. Criticals system was a stinking mess in FO.

Critical failure chance, at least for ranged attacks should be completely independent of difficulty of the attack, it should be entirely determined by attacker's skill, attributes and status, plus possibly modifiers from weapon itself.

Just because you're trying to hit a running dude in the eye at night, in the rain from km away doesn't make it any more likely that you'll drop your ammo while simultaneously shooting yourself in both feet. It just means that you will likely miss.

Increasing Reloading/Inventory AP Cost: Because reloading a minigun should take longer than it takes to take two steps.

The optimal way would be splitting shooting into lengthier target acquisition (based on amount of hex sides to turn and slightly on distance, as well as weapon) and very fast and cheap shooting. You should be able to acquire empty hexes as well (so, you know guy is going to appear from behind the corner of a building, you aim at this corner), and "stick" it to even moving traget, both when aiming at empty space and something passes through and when aiming at actual target - you can visualize aiming at empty space as laying a "trap" of sorts that get triggered by anyone passing through and sticks crosshairs on them.

Reloading should indeed take the longest.

I have proposed such a system here previously.

Stimpak Changes: (Super-)Stimpaks now mainly serve to heal temporary damage, though super Stimpaks also raise the max HP temporarily (because it never made sense that you could survive a hundred consecutive shots to the head in a single battle merely by injecting a liquid in the wounds repeatedly).

Definitely. Stimpaks should be only temporary HP boost and wear off completely over time.

Healing Rate as First Aid Dependent: If you "rest", your healing rate goes up depending on your First Aid skill (I never bought that you could sleep off bullet wounds, and given that the active First Aid skill works like shit, might as well make resting into a medical break).

How about restricting healing by resting to only minor wounds?

I'd modify healing rate based on HP percentage (unmodified, so any transient effects like stimpacks are removed prior to calculation) - if it's above certain (presumably rather high) threshold you heal faster the further you are from it. If it's below the same or different threshold, your health deteriorates faster the further away you're from it.

So, you don't get to heal anything but light damage by just sleeping it over. You might need to give more NPCs medical skills, though.

Maybe merge medical skills too.

Skill Books: The idea that your Sledgehammer-wielding retard character would spend weeks on end studying science books to end the game with a Science skill higher than most physics teachers was always stupid, so I want to make skill books unusable reference material that raises your skill as you carry them around.

I think you should have stat and skill thresholds for book usability. Too low and they are incomprehensible babble to you, to high and you already know that.

If you go through with "reference material" idea, then maybe make it so that the bonus decreases as you use skill with book in your inventory, but your skill increases by the same amount, representing the knowledge you use rubbing off on you.

Also, gun rags should definitely be exempt for that rule (because you're not going to use them as reference in combat), but some instance ID mechanics could be used to tag individual instances as read, but prevent your character from just eating them.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Morale: Based on the outcome of a JA2-esque personality evaluation, it is decided how much the player's morale is impaired by things like killing people (especially children) and getting hurt, and how much it is improved by things like alcohol and good deeds. Any eventual morale failure lasts one turn and impacts either moving speed or to hit chances or attack AP cost (the reason is that where NPC's are regular humans who panic from time to time, the player has the unfair advantage of being something of a B-Movie action hero).

Good as long as personality system is going to be reasonably comprehensive. Otherwise it's better to be a B-Movie action hero than to be arbitrarily barred from having particular personality traits.

Like I said just above your post, I'll probably end up nixing the player morale system in favor of a better AI morale system.

Consistent Localization: Now, if you have, say, a 25% chance of hitting someone when aiming for the eye, this means you have a 25% chance of hitting the target, so also the head or body (because it's very strange that narrowly missing someone's eyes doesn't result in you hitting the head)

You could visualize it as finding radius of a circle circumscribed around targetted body part and then finding percentages of circle's circumference intersecting individual body parts.

This is exactly the way my system works now:

Spoiler

The system I use is that there's a certain percentage you have for hitting the desired body part, which rises as your chance to hit rises. Conversely, the chance to hit adjacent body parts diminishes, and that of "remote" body parts disappears (e.g., with a higher chance to hit the left arm, there is no longer a chance to hit, say, the right arm, and the chance to hit, say, the torso diminishes, until at 100+ percent to hit, you'll exclusively hit the left arm).

For most body parts the system is quite straightforward and the to hit system isn't changed, but there are two important exceptions: the eyes and the groin. These two are unique because they are entirely "embedded" in other body parts, namely the eyes in the head and the groin in the legs and torso. This is significant because the new system means that a 100% to hit when aiming for a certain bodypart no longer necessarily means a 100% hit on that body part but a 100% hit on the target. What this means is that whereas a 100% to hit when aiming for the torso is an automatic torso hit, a 100% to hit on the eyes can also mean a head hit. The practical consequence of this for the to hit system is that it no longer makes sense to give an eye shot a bigger basic penalty than a head shot; after all, whether your aiming for the eyes or the head "in general", you have the same chance of hitting the target.

Of course, in gameplay terms, this produces a problem; after all, say the head and the eyes are equally hard to hit, then why not always hit for the eyes instead of the head to get better criticals, etc.? The solution I've come up with is as follows: suppose you have a 10% chance to hit the eyes/head, then whichever target you choose, the chance to hit either body part is the exact same (roughly 1% for the eyes and 4% for the head). However, as your chance to hit rises, you become able to differentiate between the two, with the eye shot becoming progressively more difficult than the head shot. I believe this is a nice solution (in case you're wondering, this means I replace the basic penalties, which are as I said now equal, with a penalty in the "third phase" progressive nerfing).

Finally, an example to make the mechanics a bit more clear:

else if (bodypart==eyes) then begin 
       roll:=random(1,99); 
       if (roll < (10 + (n*7))) then begin 
          bodypart := eyes; 
       end else if (roll < (50 + (n*7))) then begin 
          bodypart := head; 
       end else if (roll < (80 + (n*7))) then begin 
          bodypart := torso; 
       end else if (roll < (90 + (n*7))) then begin 
          bodypart := random(left_arm,right_arm); 
       end else begin 
          bodypart := random(left_arm,right_arm); 
       end 
    end

the "n" variable stands for roughly the to hit chance divided by ten, so with more than 10% to hit, the chance to hit the eyes (upon a hit of course), becomes 17%.

No More AC: Dodging an attack now depends on your agility and perks, and actually becomes harder the more bulky armor you wear (because AC is a weird schizophrenic stat in Fallout which seems to embody both attacks ricocheting off armor and you nimbly dodging them; better to split it up into agility and DT/DR).

I gather it tries to incorporate glancing hits as well as dodging, DT and DR, but it doesn't quite work. I'd replace AC by dodge and add "attack angle modifier" of sorts, increasing DT and DR based on the difference between actual and perfect roll value for successful shot divided by the difference between threshold and perfect value of the roll (to compensate for other modifiers such as distance - you need to know how much off-center you hit the actual target).

Yeah, glancing was always the only reasonable justification for AC as a fourth factor besides dodge, DT and DR. I didn't really bother trying to think of a way of incorporating it (I always imagined that hits exceeding the armor's DT weren't that likely to glance anyway), but your "off-centre" idea is an interesting one. Combining info on how off-centre an attack is, how glance-prone armor is (I imagine metal armor being more so than leather armor), and the anti-glancing of ammo (I imagine that this would be the same value as their Armor Piercing value?), you'd get the outcome on whether the attack would glance.

The problem is that I have only the vaguest idea of what all these values would have to be. If somebody who knows something about weapons could help me out, that would be great.

Increasing Reloading/Inventory AP Cost: Because reloading a minigun should take longer than it takes to take two steps.

The optimal way would be splitting shooting into lengthier target acquisition (based on amount of hex sides to turn and slightly on distance, as well as weapon) and very fast and cheap shooting. You should be able to acquire empty hexes as well (so, you know guy is going to appear from behind the corner of a building, you aim at this corner), and "stick" it to even moving traget, both when aiming at empty space and something passes through and when aiming at actual target - you can visualize aiming at empty space as laying a "trap" of sorts that get triggered by anyone passing through and sticks crosshairs on them.

Sounds good, but besides some of these being, as far as I know, impossible to accomplish (empty hex targeting), the biggest problem would probably be the AI, which wouldn't have the slightest clue how to do all these things.

Healing Rate as First Aid Dependent: If you "rest", your healing rate goes up depending on your First Aid skill (I never bought that you could sleep off bullet wounds, and given that the active First Aid skill works like shit, might as well make resting into a medical break).

How about restricting healing by resting to only minor wounds?

I'd modify healing rate based on HP percentage (unmodified, so any transient effects like stimpacks are removed prior to calculation) - if it's above certain (presumably rather high) threshold you heal faster the further you are from it. If it's below the same or different threshold, your health deteriorates faster the further away you're from it.

So, you don't get to heal anything but light damage by just sleeping it over. You might need to give more NPCs medical skills, though.

Maybe merge medical skills too.

I assume you mean then that all the serious damage has to be healed through active use of medical skills? Because that's just the problem, these active skills work terribly; the system as I outlined it is just a placeholder until the First Aid/Doctor skills can be fixed so the amount they heal is based on the skill level (You'd also need NPC's automatically trying to heal themselves, not just because you tell them, and maybe Lenny running around like Virgil healing people).

I think you should have stat and skill thresholds for book usability. Too low and they are incomprehensible babble to you, to high and you already know that.

Okay, but how would this not reduce the use of an item you find throughout the game to one very brief period?

If you go through with "reference material" idea, then maybe make it so that the bonus decreases as you use skill with book in your inventory, but your skill increases by the same amount, representing the knowledge you use rubbing off on you.

This is a very interesting idea.

Also, gun rags should definitely be exempt for that rule (because you're not going to use them as reference in combat), but some instance ID mechanics could be used to tag individual instances as read, but prevent your character from just eating them.

Like I said before, I'm planning on making the gun rags "unlock" weapon upgrades (i.e. you go to an upgrader and show him the picture and specs of a turbo plasma rifle, and he can make it for you). I'm mainly thinking is this direction because that guy who does upgrades for free in New Reno is just way too much of an exploit right now.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Just remember to keep some ways for the player to heal himself without needing to go out of his way. Making resting only heal light wounds and stimpacks only heal temporary HP effectively means the loss of two important options for when the player actually needs healing (when he's very low on HP). I wouldn't suggest making it too dependent on First Aid and Doctor because that would make those skills "obligatory". Doctor NPCs aren't always available. Natural Healing rate depends on Endurance, which again means the character who needs constant healing the most (the one who doesn't have truckloads of HP to begin with) is at a disadvantage. The only other option for healing that I can think of is food, but I don't really like the idea of keeping sandwiches on your bag to munch on after a fight.

I played some realism mods for FO3 that made stimpacks, food & water and resting useless for healing. Which in theory is okay because these resources make the vanilla game laughably easy, but the game is combat-heavy and so designed with the idea that the player would get hit often. So I was forced to become a heavy drug user in order to survive.

Like I said before, I'm planning on making the gun rags "unlock" weapon upgrades (i.e. you go to an upgrader and show him the picture and specs of a turbo plasma rifle, and he can make it for you). I'm mainly thinking is this direction because that guy who does upgrades for free in New Reno is just way too much of an exploit right now.

That guy (Algernon) was like a reward for a player that observed how the store owner would behave when you asked him for a (paid) upgrade, and then explored around the back of the shop. While he's definitely a tempting exploit when you already know of him, he shouldn't be completely "fixed". I remember feeling very happy when I found him and could upgrade my guns without using all my money. Maybe have him ask for random items (like the Elvis painting or the Small statuette) in exchange for upgrades, described via gestures or vague descriptions since he's...well, borderline retarded.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Like I said before, I'm planning on making the gun rags "unlock" weapon upgrades (i.e. you go to an upgrader and show him the picture and specs of a turbo plasma rifle, and he can make it for you). I'm mainly thinking is this direction because that guy who does upgrades for free in New Reno is just way too much of an exploit right now.

That guy (Algernon) was like a reward for a player that observed how the store owner would behave when you asked him for a (paid) upgrade, and then explored around the back of the shop. While he's definitely a tempting exploit when you already know of him, he shouldn't be completely "fixed". I remember feeling very happy when I found him and could upgrade my guns without using all my money. Maybe have him ask for random items (like the Elvis painting or the Small statuette) in exchange for upgrades, described via gestures or vague descriptions since he's...well, borderline retarded.

I don't get it. Why would having to collect an arbitrary set of items be a better approach than having to collect Guns'n Bullets magazines? At least in the latter case it makes some degree of sense (fine, the guy's a Rain Man who knows his way with guns; how would he even know what a Turbo Plasma Rifle is unless you show him from a magazine?).

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Ah, I thought the "show magazine to get upgrades" change applied to all traders, not just the New Reno guy (therefore making him the same as everyone else). Nevermind then.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Ah, I thought the "show magazine to get upgrades" change applied to all traders, not just the New Reno guy (therefore making him the same as everyone else). Nevermind then.

Not exactly what I had in mind, but close enough; this is what I'm proposing:

You have at least one Guns 'n Bullets in your inventory and you talk to a potential upgrader, you ask for an upgrade and either pay or don't (in Algernon's case), and 1 Guns 'n Bullets gets consumed.

The big problem with this approach is of course that it would make no sense that they would offer to, say, upgrade your Desert Eagle and your Plasma Rifle, then you upgrade one, but because you only had one magazine, suddenly he "forgets" how to make the other one. The only way around the problem would be to make each Guns 'n Bullets unique, but I'm not going to make any new item files for this mod.

These skill books are turning out to be way more of a hassle than I imagined they would be.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That sounds like too much work for a minor consistency problem, yeah. Maybe have the vendor keep the magazine as part of the payment for the modification, since it is an item of great interest for them (Algernon just keeps the magazine)? That would explain why the magazine is "consumed".

This way you wouldn't have to go to such extremes such as making every single copy describe an unique upgrade, or come up with a bullshit explanation for how you forget the contents. You could change the gun magazine description to say this, or if that counts as "new item file" just make a note of it in the readme.

Or maybe you could just remove the books. I don't care if some will think it's heresy, the game gives you enough skillpoints as is.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Here's the general outline I have for the glancing/ricochet system (i.e. the new AC system):

In the ricochet wiki there's four variables governing the likelihood of a ricochet, and because I'm fairly confident that these are all represented in Fallout already, I didn't feel like looking further:

-Type of bullet (how soft/likely to fragment is it): the DT/DR mod of the bullet
-Velocity of bullet: AC-mod of the bullet (at least, in the descriptions of ammo which happens to have a high AC-mod, this high value is always explained by their velocity EDIT: wait, no it doesn't. No idea why I remembered it this way. Oh well, then I'll just use something like weapon range/target distance to simulate bullet velocity)
-Hardness of outer surface: DT-value of armor
-angle of approach: how off-center the attack is from the bodypart hit (I'm well aware that this assumes a somewhat spherical shape of the armor, but unless any of you has a reasonable alternative, it's good enough).

This is all reasonably simple to incorporate; the only thing I don't really have a clue about is how this would affect non-bullet attacks. Melee/unarmed I assume would also be straightforward (only with factor 3 and 4 exclusively involved of course), but I haven't a clue if electricity ricochets, or plasma. I imagine that the reason why Laser damage is so abysmal in the game is because of ricochets, so maybe it would be a good idea to greatly reduce armor's laser DR and DT, and instead just give laser damage a big ricochet penalty.

Then for the interruptions system I've only been able to come up with something like this:

After half your max AP is gone, you get a check for your sequence (the silly double initial turn thing would ideally be gone) and if you fail, your turn ends and the AP you had left gets added to your next turn.

That sounds like too much work for a minor consistency problem, yeah. Maybe have the vendor keep the magazine as part of the payment for the modification, since it is an item of great interest for them (Algernon just keeps the magazine)? That would explain why the magazine is "consumed".

This way you wouldn't have to go to such extremes such as making every single copy describe an unique upgrade, or come up with a bullshit explanation for how you forget the contents. You could change the gun magazine description to say this, or if that counts as "new item file" just make a note of it in the readme.

Or maybe you could just remove the books. I don't care if some will think it's heresy, the game gives you enough skillpoints as is.

Yeah, having the magazines as payment for Algernon only (would be silly to have double payment for others) would be an option. I'll just leave them alone for now.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Realism is good.

Fixed HP is unrealistic. More experienced soldiers are less likely to die from the same wounds than unexperienced soldiers.
On the other hand HP over let's say, double the starting HP gets unrealistic because it allows soaking up ridiculous damage.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Fixed HP is unrealistic. More experienced soldiers are less likely to die from the same wounds than unexperienced soldiers.

My first level character with 30 HP gets shot in the head at point blank range for 31 damage and dies instantly. My second level character with 32 HP gets the exact same shot in the head and survives. What is this mystical experience you're talking about that lets the second level character shift part of his brain mass momentarily so that it doesn't get blown away?

Of course you're right that experienced soldiers are less likely to die from the same wounds as less experienced ones, but HP works terribly at simulating this fact. You'd be better off giving First Aid a bigger role in combat.

 

[RK47]

Give weapons different critical rate. Swing. Thrust, what difference does it make? It's both 3 AP, anyone knows?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Give weapons different critical rate. Swing. Thrust, what difference does it make? It's both 3 AP, anyone knows?

Which weapons should have a higher/lower critical rate then?

I think the difference between swing and thrust is more or less the same as between non-AP and AP ammo (either that, or modders made it like that).

Edit: From the looks of it, nobody ever actually got around to changing it, so yeah, swing and thrust don't do anything different. I'll see what I can do.

Edit2: There was a mod that did change the swing/thrust effects, but I'm not sure if it can be downloaded anywhere anymore.

 

[baturinsky]

From what I learned out of Paradoxes of Defense, Thrusts are easy to parry or dodge, but only if you notice it in time. So it's good for agile fighters. Swing is much more powerful, but slow, so it's better option if you are stronger. Also, stab does not have much effect, if it hits extremities, and be either very fatal or barely effective even if hits torso. Slash that went through defenses is a guaranteed big wound, with lots of blood loss.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

My first level character with 30 HP gets shot in the head at point blank range for 31 damage and dies. My second level character with 32 HP gets the exact same shot in the head and survives. What is this mystical experience you're talking about that lets the second level character shift part of his brain mass momentarily so that it doesn't get blown away?

Of course you're right that experienced soldiers are less likely to die from the same wounds as less experienced ones, but HP works terribly at simulating this fact.

No. The problem isn't on HP but in weapon damage and critical hit tables. If you have a bullet splattering guys brain around, you should have an overkilling brain hit damage.
That way both the experienced dude that would otherwise soak up a lot of unaimed shots and less experienced dude that would go down faster would die.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I have a question for you all: did you like the the system of critical hit chance being drastically influenced by the bodypart hit?

Right now, the system works like this: if you hit the torso, the critical hit chance equals your luck (plus perks, etc.), but once you hit a harder to hit bodypart, the critical chance rises (up to a base bonus of 60% for the eyes). I never really liked the idea of this because (1) a critical should in my opinion always be rare and (2) it creates this strange situation where if you're aiming for a hard to hit boydpart, you effectively get two rolls you need to be beat for it to be the right choice, the first being fair (the to hit roll governed by skill), the second not (strictly random, with only a relatively small aspect of Luck involved). I also found it odd that if you miraculously managed to pierce an opponent's armor and hit him in the eyes (okay, not so miraculous in the old system) that there was a 30% or so chance that the damage would be the same as if the bullet had hit his shoulder.

Wouldn't a more sensible system involve leaving the critical hit chance for what it is and just raise the base damage per bodypart? The only downside I see to this approach would be that crippling would take place even less, but I suppose you could introduce a crippling system outside of the critical hit system... Not too sure about how you would do that though.

 

[RK47]

The cripple system is shit anyway. Never affecting the character that much.
Now, if you put in bleeding. And it does 6 - END/2 = HP loss per turn....