I'm not exactly sitting here doing nothing. B)

If I get into overhauling the weapons before it is fixed, I probably will have to see if I can at least improve the plasma weapons vs. DT.

Is there a reason you think obsidian will fix it on there own?

It just seems like an easy thing to fix.
And a LOT of people have complained about this.
And I'm guessing that there will be some other fixes/patches.
So why wouldn't they? Seems like a no brainer to me (and pretty cheap PR).

im using the mod that adds DT reduction to the energy ammo. they are still rather week thoug compared to guns. i even stopped using my most recent level 11 character and started over cause i didnt want to get stuck with slow guns. even after i increased the plasma velocity their refire rate and damages is still lower than most guns and if youuse the max ammo you guns degrade much faster. armor piercing rounds do the same thing and dont degrade guns as fast.

it's funny other that really high dt enemies like deathclaws i find the laser rcw to be the best weapon against most enemies

even with the recycler it goes through ammo like nuts. its also useless against radscorpions and robots which i save my pulse grenades for. i can head shot just about anything with the brush gun and the 10mm smg is insane.

Agreed. Most definitely realistic that soda, and especially alcohol, dehydrates you.

Credit where credit's due? Pretty sure I came up with this one

soda, and im assuming alcohol, might give immediate thirst relief but actually end up dehydrating you. in the old FOs, super stims heal you but then you end up taking hp hits at the end of the effect. maybe soda could also give immediate thirst relief but end up dehydrating you. this would be useful as a temporary solution to avoid thirst effects but eventually you'll have to find a proper h2o source or you'll end up worse off than before

I'm pretty sure I want to use your tweaks for New Vegas, as I loved them in Fallout 3. I have two questions, though.

1. Will loading it now in any way screw with my old saves, or will old characters transition just fine?

2. Are you going to/have you made differences based on the character's six? This is the one thing that always put me off about your Fallout 3 tweaks. I mean, I get why you did it, it just didn't make that much sense to me. Say a character has 7 endurance, right? Shouldn't that be the same for both sixes? Just because one six is usually more of one thing doesn't make it impossible for them to be another, like you made it so that females will always have more health at the same amount of endurance points. And with the carry weight, I was always confused at that, too. I figure that a strength of 8 is a strength of 8, you know? I guess what this boils down to is whether or not I'm going to use your hardcoe module, althogh I wish you could do it without the six differences so I could get the benefit of using it when it comes around. (Which I guess I wouldn't do anyways if I couldn't transition my character into it well, lol.)

Imp, I would have given you credit if this was actually true. The fact is that I wrote my script totally independent of yours, when I discovered the problem while I was play testing at timescale 4. My script was actually taken from part of my Med-Tec's Sleep Quest which I wrote weeks before FO:NV was even released. I also wrote a more advanced version that requires NVSE.

While i like the gender differences in ART, maybe you could make it optional for others like evercharmer? it'd be a shame if they miss out on the ARTastic gameplay just because of a minor thing.

I just stopped in to say I LOVE your work. It has made NV 100x more enjoyable (and challenging) for me.

Also, I head you were planning on including backpacks at some point, and KDS has made a backpack mod that is absolutely wonderful (albeit a tad unbalanced).

#1: You should be pretty safe now loading v.1.1 or 1.2 when I release it tomorrow (should be out by mid day,with any luck). Once I add my Hard-Core module, there may be some issues, depending on how far your game has progressed.

#2: Yes, there will be some Gender-based skill differences. I have a news flash for you . . . there are some basic physiological differences between males and females. I competed on a coed NCAA Sailing team at my university. In my senior year (in 2009) my team was number 2 in North America . . . so I was on a very competitive team. And we were just as competitive as the guys . . . but the gender differences between the athletes was pretty easy to see. And it wasn't like one gender had all the advantages . . . in fact we almost always teamed up as boy/girl when we raced in two-person sail boats . . . since that combination generally had the most success in races. Males are stronger, and have greater lung capacity, and less body fat. Females are more flexible, have better balance, and can withstand higher temperatures better. Women's hearts beat more rapidly than men's heats, and women's blood pressure is about 10 points lower than men's.

Even though there are factual differences, my gender differences were done mostly to add some much needed variety to character builds (which is very much lacking in the default games) . . . and I did this as fairly as possible, so that the differences pretty much balance out.

One of my biggest goals is to make your stats more important AND to make those differences have a major effect on how your game plays out. And guess what? Gender is a stat.

This mod is definitely something I am going to consider as one of the first major game balance modifiers, but I do have concerns about the way hit points are being changed. I think I remember you saying that this mod was built with "Normal" in mind, but what about people who played on "Very Hard"? Hit points are rather trivial for any gun based character anyway, but not so for a melee/unarmed character. With the decrease in player hit points and an increase in enemy hit points, is the balance supposed to be found with your skill multipliers for weapon damage? You now will deal more damage, but are unable to take as much for as long? For any melee/unarmed type of character I set my END to 9 anyway, but it looks like my hit points peak at level 1 and no longer increase after each level. Did I get that right?

Plus, I'm a little confused on what the 25% - 100% damage increase was for. Was this just because with your changes enemies had too much health if you left it at the default or something? Because with the DT ignoring perks or weapons, I've never found anything to be particularly hard to take down, so I'm worried that even more damage might actually be a bit too much on the easy side, especially for a ranged character.

Well im playing a melee char right now. also played melee with ART in FO3. i can tell you right now its unforgiving. yes hitpoints dont increase with level. melee characters really do have it rough in ART. its SLIGHTLY better with the new thrown weapons but i still really have to pick my battles, lay traps (courtesy of the bear trap mod), wait around corners to bash the enemy who foolishly comes close, run again, maybe grenade a cluster of enemies, etc.

and its only going to get tougher as Arwen finishes her other modules. even if you win a fight, you'll end up with the brutal effects from the injuries module, have less healing items, and, in my case, little money for repairs and doctors. im also awaiting ART's weapon effects so i can Whack my enemies to oblivion. but then they can also Blast and Gunshot (?) me to pieces. plus, the Strain module will have me flat on my back if i get too eager in swinging my weapon. but i still play melee because i really like to get up close and personal for combat.

now imagine how much harder a time unarmed fighters get. i originally wanted unarmed since they were awesome in earlier fallouts but it was just too hard for me with ART:FO3. Maybe if the y had some sort of passive evasion tied to the skill...

I guess I won't use your hardcoe module then. You really didn't have to get so snippy about it, I was just explaining my side of things and didn't mean to offend or anything.

As far as number 2 goes, will that be released as a separate module as opposed to being included with other changes? I'm loving where this is going so far but that is the one change from your Fallout 3 tweaks that I wasn't too fond of. If I want to play the *stereotypical* guy or girl, I could do so by selecting appropriate stats. I'm a fairly large guy but I'm sure there are women smaller than me who could kick my ass in an arm wrestling match . I guess if it does get rolled into other changes I could snip it out... would just hate doing it with every update.



Don't bring a knife to a gun fight? Kidding aside, I like how melee feels tougher - but then again - I always play ranged characters with some supplemental melee skills. Now that makes the melee skills seem weaker, but once a few mods come out that reduce the amount of ammo you find, you will be glad you put them in those skills. I know it doesn't solve your current issues. I might try a melee character though given the changes to it in NV. Is it at least a more interesting build choice in this game as opposed to Fallout 3?

No no. Dont get me wrong. I wasnt complaining about the difficulty, i was rejoicing in it! As for the build choice, its a lot easier for now without all of the ART modules so i cant say yet. but as i mentioned, the addition of thrown weapons (note however that im using the mod Improved Throwing so i can reuse my spears) do make melee more interesting.

ART increases the difficulty level considerably. I assume Normal difficulty with ART is somewhat comparable to 'very hard' in the vanilla game, only the difficulty is achieved in a different way, that doesn't turn enemies into bullet sponges.

I think most people who play Very Hard for the challenge will find Normal with ART (once all the modules are out) quite challenging already.

well very hard isnt very hard its more like shoot 3x as much ;p

Any chance of you adding/changing up the weapon skills correlate to accuracy instead of damage? That, along with more realistic damage ( 1 headshot=dead ) AND increased spawns/spawn sizes makes for a fun game. Also, any chance of you going modular, so we can run the changes we like?



Just by the very nature of plasma being plasma, it should be considered an armor piercing attack.

This has been requested quite a bit actually (myself included). And while Arwen feels that skill affecting damage is more RPG than it affecting accuracy, she has been gracious enough (thanks to our nagging? )to promise some tweaks along the line of skill affecting accuracy. although its still a way off so a little more patience is required.

EDIT: re plasma, could it be made to damage armor more? so that even if its AP isnt increased directly, it would fare better against high DT opponents. and against hi-DT, but non-armored opponents (radscorps, deathclaws), perhaps a DT-reduction-over-time effect to simulate the same thing?

One thing I've thought of was to keep energy weapons similar to native - slightly less damage but better crit chances - but add either mods or other ammo types that have similar effects to AP and HP conventional rounds. Basically, imagine mods that changed the beam or plasma effects slightly. Laser weapons could have lenses that fire tighter, more focused beams that are great at punching through armor but leave smaller wounds or widened beams that do serious tissue damage but lack armor penetration. Just throwing ideas out really.

Another alternative would be to just give energy weapons DT reduction that differs from weapon to weapon. You could then add certain creatures or armor types that have energy resistance to help balance things. I'm not sure how well that would work though.

I wasn't being "snippy" . . . I was just trying to explain my reasoning. Look, I have language issues, due to a brain injury when I was little, so my communication skills are not so great. I tend to be direct and often come across as lecturing or as being inflexible, when I'm not that way at all. Plus it was very late and I have even more problems when I'm tired (it actually takes me a while to be able to talk when I wake up). Sorry if I came across poorly last night . . . I meant no offense.

But I REALLY do not get why so many seem to have such huge issues with my Gender Bonuses. Is it because our (American) society tries to ingrain in us that we are all the same? Guess what? We aren't. And when someone like me even suggests that a game should play out a bit different for a female character than it would for a male character . . . people get all defensive, stomp their feet, and refuse to use one of my most important modules, just because it contains a few lines of code that give different stat bonuses based on gender. How dare I put such blasphemy in my mod!!!

The thing is, my Gender Bonuses are just LITTLE perks . . . and 90% of what my bonuses change can be nullified but just spreading your SPECIAL points around a bit differently. I haven't even decided on the exact details of my NV Gender Bonuses yet. But I plan to make similar to what I did in FO3 . . . but they will not be exactly the same. With my FO3 Tweaks, females have an END bonus and males have a STR bonus. So, if you want to play a female character, but don't like my gender bonuses, just put less points in END and more in STR. All it takes is a little thought and a bit of planning (which are both skills that you need to have to really enjoy my Tweaks). Here's the link to my Fallout 3 http://amito.freehostia.com/Fallout/Arwens_Hard-Core.htm#gender.