Thanks for the feedback.

@ Davos: That's strange, as their Calculated Health in v.1.2 is exactly the same as in the default game. I'll bump it up a tad more in v.1.3.
On my mod's Nexus forum thread one user has had problems with patients in hospital rooms dying . . . has anyone here noticed that? If so, I need the names or IDs of the NPCs, so that I can try to fix this.

@Doedel: I'm still working on the best way to balance DT and how tough the Player and NPCs are.
I've also reduced the DT of some of the Radscorpions and Deathclaws.
What is NOT right is how ineffective explosives are against DT . . . I'm going to attempt to improve that in v.1.3.
I'm not impressed with the DT system either, as it seems to rely too much on special ammo . . . and it is MUCH harder to balance.
I have tweaked the Cazadores, but they are tough buggers . . . In v.1.2 Head shots now do 3 times the DAM as vanilla . . . and Torso shots do 1.5 to 2 times the DAM.

@Mr.Moe7: Helmets do NOT specifically reduce damage to the head . . . the helmet DT (or AR) is just added in with the armor DT. The total DT is what determines the amount of damage that is subtracted from the victim's health . When the DT is higher than your Weapon DAM, only 10% of the DAM penetrates the armor or the hide/shell of creatures (in the default game, 20% of the DAM penetrated). The exact amount of HPs that are affected depends on the part of the body that was hit (along with that body type's Damage Multiplier and Health Percent).

I'm considering adding some selectable minimum Threshold Resistance percentages in my options menu. That may be the best way to handle this, as I doubt that I'm going to be able to find ones etting that balances out this in a way that works for everyone. I'll see what I can do.

would it be possible to make helmet and armor dt mutually exclusive? as in if you headshot someone it only lowers it from the helmet DT not the helmet + armor dt

Just a note about Action Points in NV.

"New Action Points formula: Your agility level is a much greater factor in determining your total number of Action Points, with a MUCH greater range in points. Range [AG:1-10] = 36-90 points (default was only 66-85)."


Looks like the default formula for NV is base 65 + (AGL x 3) instead of x 2 like it was in FO 3. AP default range would be 68-95.

@ Necro: I don't know of any way to mod this. I remember that there have been attempts to factor in helmets directly in reducing head damage since Oblivion. But I don't believe that anyone has ever been successful. And this has ALWAYS really bothered me. So (not being the type to give up easily) I have been working on a possible work-around . . . which could possibly do something indirectly that would at least be an improvement. I need to play around with this a LOT more before I know whether my techniques is actually worth all the effort that it would involve.

@ exoromeo: Thanks! I was aware of the changes to APs, I just neglected to change my own notes on it, and then just cut and pasted from my notes in writing my mods readme. I'll make the corrections, as I do try to be accurate (but my changes still result in a much greater range in APs: 36 to 90, compared with 68 to 95).

I see you have not built your mod around the http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35909. Is that something your future versions will do? Thinking especially about armor being placed somewhat in wrong places, clipping, etc.

Just out of curiosity, how did you raise the run speed of just the player? I wanted to make the speed boost 125% instead of 110% (just personal preference really), and fmoverunmult increases the run speed for EVERYTHING instead of just the player, making the animations kind of janky. Thanks!

i recommend - if arwen doesn't incorporate the fix's or work around it, is it just use fomm or the like program for nv to load the community fix firstthen arwen's after that and it should work fine


@arwen - yea i figured it may not be possible unfortunately

Everything should be affect by my movement speed changes, but most creatures do not have the ability to holster weapons (since most just have teeth and claws), so they don't get any holstered weapon bonus. And the NPCs seldom holster their weapons when they are pursuing you.

But, you are correct, in that Creatures are affected differently than the PC and the NPCs. My changes actually use the default ?fMoveBaseSpeed (77), with a smaller fmoverunmult (4.00 --> 3.65); and a larger ?fMoveNoWeaponMult (1.1-->1.2). Personally I found the default creature animations to be a bit too fast, so my method slows their jumpy movements down a bit (but they still run just as fast). I reduce the fmoverunmult because my Encumbrance module will be adding a speed bonus when your load is below a certain percentage of its maximum carrying capacity.

The default game gives a 110% holstered weapon speed boost; my mod gives you a 120% boost. It sounds like you want a 130% boost. To get that into your game, leave all my other movement settings alone, and just change the ?fMoveNoWeaponMult from 1.2 (my value) to 1.3.

My mod is still in its early stages and I haven't installed hardly any other mods yet, so that I can be sure that only my mod is affecting the changes that I'm making to the game. I'm aware of the "Community Bug Fix Compilation Patch," but I haven't even looked at it in any detail yet. I'm guessing that I'll add a compatibility patch once my mod is more complete.

i use both and don't really have a problem (use nvmm for load order) and have the community fix to load first and arwen's last.

from what i gleaned there shouldnt be many fixes that conflict with arwen's at it's current stage atleast. it would be nice at some point to either merge both or have a compatibility patch

i noticed a big problem witth the dt changes, companions (ed-e in my case) are really weak, a tire iron which does nothing to me in leather armor kills ed-e really quickly (i'd say maybe 6-10 hits)

EDIT: it seems its a melee thing, as with the ranged mobs (in this case the escaped convicts in primm) they do normal dmg (around the same as to me) but melee, one convict could easily solo ed-e

I checked with the console, and ED-E has a damage threshold of 0 in my game. So yeah he's pretty weak. Veronica has a DT of 6, even though she's just wearing those ugly clothes. At least, I assume there isn't armor under it. She won't let me check.

His DT could be a bit higher I guess, he's made of metal after all. But apparently it's possible to upgrade his 'armor' somehow, which gives him a DT of 8 (same as protectrons) which should be pretty good.

But ED-E wasn't really meant to be used as a combat companion, so it's normal that you'd have to keep a close eye on him.

My Ed-E exploded a few hours ago, good riddance!
His sensor range was too great, confusing

You could tell him to wait if you wanna hang on to his perk

yea, i always assumed ed-e is armored like all robots ;p

yea but its kind of...out there atm where 1 melee unit can take him on and i have to all the time be healing him, with 2 melee mobs they hurt him faster than i can heal.

ranged combat...no such problem


ed-e is my trusted packmule err...companion!

Not sure if this is the mod or just how the perk works:

The Perk "Hit the Deck!" (50% increase to DT from explosives) is being increased by only 2 because it is going off of my base DT of 4 which is what I have when wearing no armor.

So is this perk just useless, or did the changes not account for armor DT with this perk? I have never taken this perk before in any of my other play-throughs.

Sounds like a perk from the perk pack mod, probably bugged

Looks like New Vegas also has the 'Here and Now' perk which allows you to go up another level instantly. Has this perk been changed to work with the Reduced XP multiplier like in FO3?

With all those changes you've been making, it wouldn't surprise me if you missed it, and I'm seeing no perk edits on the Realism Core file.

I haven't touched any Perks or Traits . . . yet. When I do tackle them, it will part of my Hard-Core module (just like my FO3 tweaks).

Thanks Povoholo, I TOTALLY forgot that I had to edit the Generic Quest to make that perk compatible with my XPR multipliers. I just made the edit . . . it will be in v.1.3.

Hello there!

First of all I want to thank you Arwen for all your time and effort. You are making a great job. I was using some modules of ART in Fallout 3 and after 1.2 I started using it in New Vegas too. I know the mod is in early stages and need a lot of balancing, improvement. So I've got some feedback for you

I just finished an annoying fight in Primm against those criminals and I wanted to share it with you. I fought against three of them at the same time and I did this for 5 times for testing. All of my fights were similar. I was covered near a ruined building, making small moves to the right, fire and back to cover. But that didn't last for long. Because every single time they walked towards me firing their weapons. They didn't use anything for cover (there were some blown off cars between us). They didn't do anything to flank me. They just keep walking and taking my bullets. When they got too close I retreated to another building next to the first one. They kept coming and dying. During this combat however they used dynamites while I was reloading and tried to get me off my cover, which was pretty logical. As a summary:

1- They don't care about taking bullets. They never use cover. They only want to kill me with all cost. And they act like we are fighting with toys not actual,deadly firearms.

2- They use their dynamites as they should do, so good for them.

And some question for you. I was wearing leather armor in medium condition, using a rifle in good conditon. My enemies were using 9mm pistols in medium/good conditon. I am only level 3 and those criminals were just bunch of tugs. Still I felt all that firefight was not just right. I know that, in this mod we can do more damage with higher skills (mine is 40 now for guns). But still do I have to hit a low level enemy 7-8 times from torso with 5.56mm bullets to kill him? Also I could take 10+ bullets (9mm) and nearly half of my HP was still there. Is that normal? I have read the argument about skill based damage system and your opinions about RPGs. I am not against that system but considering what a 5.56mm bullet from a rifle can do to a human in real life, 8 of them to kill someone is not fine I think. Probably you are still working on that weapon/armor balance thing so I just wanted to tell my observations. Oh and one last thing about weapons: aren't they too light? I guess carrying 10 rifles at the sametime shouldn't be that easy.

Anyway, I hope it was useful info for you. Have a nice work.

Ciao

Thanks for all the great feedback . . . this is the kind of details that I really need!

Nearly all of the Game Settings that I changed in my attempts to improve the AI were unchanged from the Fallout 3 default values. My changes do seem to help quite a bit, at least in my own game play testing (and from what others have posted), but there is still some weird stuff going on, which I haven't figured out yet . . . but I haven't given up. And I still have a lot of stuff to add/change . . . including many of my scripts, which are on hold until the NVSE is released.

I'm guessing that he combat aggressiveness of those criminals must be set at "foolhardy", which means that they are more interested in killing you than in protecting themselves. I haven't made any changes to the CLASSES yet, as I want to get my current changes better balanced first. But I will take a look at them.

In v.1.2, I made some adjustments to Localized Damage to better balance the PC and the generic NPCs. In the previous version some users complained that the PC was not receiving enough damage and the NPCs were too easy to kill. The current balance is better, but both the PC is still not being hurt enough and now the NPCs are also too tough. My guess is that my armor and DT changes have now complicated things (which tend to happen whenever I touch new areas of the game). My tweaks involve a LOT of back and forth balancing that I seldom get right the first time . . . so this is pretty normal. There's just way too much interaction between settings for me to be able to see all the effects that even a single change will have . . . and v.1.2 had a TON of changes. I'm currently making some minor adjustments to some of the armor DT . . . and too the global Threshold Resistance setting. Plus I've made some new changes to my Localized Damage. Version 1.2 was a big improvement over v.1.1, and I'm hoping that version 1.3 will improve the combat balance quite a bit more.

yeah i was wondering about the damage too.
that first village was being attacked by the powdergang and i had to shoot like 3 mags inside their boss until he finally died. I also dont receive a lot of damage. hehe bloatflies cant even hurt me at all.

I'v noticed that the Cowboy repeater gets stuck all the time after I reload it. I'm not sure if this is the weapon jamming or what but almost every time, I'll reload the gun and I can't shoot it for a good 5-7 seconds. I know it can jam more often when it's in bad condition but I have it fully repaired most the time and it gets stuck atleast 75% of the time after I reload. Not sure if this is tied to your mod or just something buggy with my game. I haven't noticed it with any other weapons yet.

Also, it seems extremely hard to kill armored enemies. I was on my way to Novac when some Legion assassins came to kill me. I wasted 3-4 mags (mostly just shooting at the chest) and didn't even get the guy down half way. I'm playing on Hard and it was a 9mm submachine gun around 120 DPS at the time.

Great mod, I'll continue to give some input as I play more.

Don't use a 9mm SMG against armored foes - it doesn't do enough damage to bypass the enemy's DT.

The reloading bug has nothing to do with Arwen's mod - it's a bug in the normal game.

Hello arwen.

first a big thank for ur work i would have abandoned the game if there were no mods.

quick question if u have the time:
- can your mod be viable with standard xp threshold?. i mean no matter the xp treshold if u level weapons first u get high in weapons quick. lowering xp treshold then only prevent me to lockpick and stuff.
i have realized that with high weapon skill the game is quite easy. enemies die quick no matter what especially when shot in the head and i rarely feel chalenged. of course i play in standard mode as u recommended since i hate having to pu5 bullets in someone head to see they go down. is it because i m still low level and things get harder later? (i ust freed the guys enslaved by the legion at primm).

i have a lot of hope in your work but really would like to feel a challenge in fights without putting dif to hard for the bullet sponge issue mentioned before.

thank you

edit: what i mean is am i using ur mod wrong? is it only balanced if xp is cut?

@ jmido: Don't play on Hard Difficulty, unless you want to use a LOT of ammo on armored enemies. All the Hard does is make your enemies harder to kill, you easier to kill, and you receive more XPs.
My Realism tweaks is already doing all that (and you get to pick your own XPR Multiplier through my Options Menu).