@Arwen: Thanks, that makes sense

@Povuholo: No, but agility affects small guns, which affects accuracy... right?

Hmm. True. Well, I'll leave it up to the expert Arwen herself to answer that then.

Yes, in a number of ways. Perception is way more important than many people seem to think.

First of all, I have to address the red compass markers. When I first began to play Fallout 3, one of the first things I did was turn off the detection messengers and the compass tick marks. Then I figured out the game a bit, and now I have the markers enabled. This is your 'radar' . . . it is not a cheat, but is how awareness is handled in the game. The NPCs and creatures also use this as their means of detecting you. It is not perfect, but it works . . . especially if you use other mods that improve it.

Most of my sneak changes were done in ways to enhance this awareness. For instance, my dynamic stealth script alters how you perception level affect how close you have to be for the markers to show up (which also affects the NPCs' markers). Detection actually relies on Perception (not Sneak skill) to determine a base "perception skill" for the actor, which is what the NPCs detection ability is based on (which is something that I've also altered . . . a bunch).

When you suffer a concussion, your awareness drops a bunch (your PER receives a penalty hit), which is another effect that I've increased . . . to the point that you will black out for a few seconds when you are suffering from a concussion. If you are Whacked in my mod, your PER will drop to 1 for 5 minutes. And my Blast effect also results in a temporary loss of PER.

Perception directly affects your ability to use Explosives, Energy Weapons, and to Pick Locks. So it is a pretty important stat.

Oh yeah, . . .some of my perk changes require that you have a minimum PER to take the perk (and some perk bonuses are temporarily removed if your current PER drops below a certain amount).

High perception can also give new speech options and there is at least one perception skill check in the vanilla game that can give you access to some loot if you pass it.

Alright, thanks for the info.


I'm currently using ART together with (just) the optional http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9022 of the Savage Wasteland mod, which reduces the amount of handplaced food items in the game through a script that also takes the player's luck in account. I think it complements ART quite well and it's also compatible with Real Injuries/Primary Needs and the other mods on your mod list.

After playing the current version for a while I'll try adding that Responsive Kill Reactions mod. The readme says it functions like this:



Which sounds like it could work with ART.


edit: When is the timescale tweak supposed to kick in? I'm using your full tweaks.

I have not had a chance to try either with my Tweaks, but I did take a look at "Unfound Grub" and it appears to be full compatible. I'm not so sure about "Responsive Kill Reactions," as that mod is still sort of in the beta state; plus I'm concerned at how it might react with my dynamic stealth and my Smarter AI changes (which are both now part of my Realism Core).

The timescale change only kicks in when you first exit the vault.

I loaded a modless save from right before exiting the vault that I always keep for a quick start, and then left the vault with ART active. Time passed pretty quickly though even after playing a while and a quick getglobalvalue check said that timescale was still 30.

I'm also getting the full 200 experience while leaving the vault but that might just be another mod interfering. But your journal mentions an activation message and I didn't notice that. I didn't notice getting a little extra reward either. Of course I might've missed it with all the other stuff popping on screen the moment you leave the place...

It sounds like I don't have the Reduced Quest XPR Module active, but I do.

I had a look at which mod might interfere with quests. I removed the FO3 achievement remover, but that didn't help. Here's my load order:


Or maybe I'm missing something really simple.

I've just loaded my vault door entrance save, after taking a few steps away from the vault door, the Reduced Quest XPR pop up popped up and I didn't get the 200 xp. In my load order the Reduced Quest XPR esp is a lot further down, but my load order is a lot shorter than yours, so I guess that doesn't really help.

I'm using Responsive Kill Reactions, together with the dynamic sneak and the improved combat AI from ART, it definitely puts an end to shooting raiders like sitting ducks. Choosing a good position for a sniper attack is now very important, and even so my stealthy sniper finds that he has to use the combat shotgun quite often.

Arwen, do the crippled arm restriction also apply to the NPCs or only the the PC? I'm asking because I shot a raider, got the message about his arm being crippled, he put the assault riffle away, but when I closed in to finish him off, he equipped the assault rifle again and finished me off instead. :flamed:

Povuholo,

I'm not familiar with all the mods in your list, but I do know that Real Injuries also changes the script for the "Escape!" part of the Main Quest, as this is how the first-aid kit used to be added to your inventory. I considered making a patch for RI/PN, but apparently the RiPnO CorePatch.esp changes the first-aid kit, and the main quest change is no longer needed. I just load my Reduced Quest XPR Module after the RiPnO CorePatch.esp and everything seems to work fine.

I wish there was some way to alter the quest XPR, without touching the quest scripts, but I cannot figure out any other way to do that in a way that would prevent the instant level up when you exit the vault. What I may be able to do is move the Timechange, my little reward item, and my quest activation message to a separate script.

Yes and no. This seem to be a bit quirky in how it affects NPCs (which seems to be a hard-coded quirkiness). I think the problem is that NPCs regenerate their health, and a limb is only crippled when it has a health of 0. So as soon as the NPC's crippled limb's heath is no longer 0, the NPC will be able to use all their weapons again.

I'm going to release version 4.3 in a day or so, even though v.4.2 was released just over a week ago.

Version 4.3 is mostly to correct some minor bugs with v.4.2, and since two of the three modules are affected, I decided that a new version would be easier (and less confusing) than a hot patch for v.4.2.
The biggest bug was a weird problem that my Stealth Quest Script caused, where opposing NPCs would not always react with one another. This bug has been around since v.4.0, but I thought I had squashed it with some changes that I made in v.4.1, since no one had complained about this since I released v.4.1 (even though my Tweaks have had over 500 downloads since then). But then I discovered this past weekend that the bug was still there, in my Realism Core module. With some help in my mod's thread on the FO3Nexus forum, I was finally able to reproduce the bug, and then I went to work on rewriting my Stealth Quest Script, until I was able to finally squashed this bug. I also fixed a couple of very minor bugs in my Less-Is-More module.

Anyhoo, since I have received very little feedback on v.4.2, I have no idea if users of my mod like my new changes or hate them. And v.4.2 was a major update, with some pretty major changes, so the lack of feedback is surprising. So I'm asking . . . is there anything else about v.4.2 that needs fixing? Or is there anything else that users of my Tweaks would like to see added or expanded? (Note that I'm only referring to the type of stuff in my Tweaks . . . basically game play changes, and NOT stuff like additional items, or texture replacers.)

I'm trying to get my Tweaks to a semi-final version, but doing so is difficult without receiving much feedback. Once I have a bug free, semi-final version, I'll get to work on the GOTY patches for my Tweaks.

Hi Arwen,

I'm a first time user of your mod with version 4.2 - and I love it. I'm using most of the mods on your site too, decided to take your lead on things and am having a great experience so far. Was a previous FWE user but fancied a change after a long break from Fallout.

Things I love:

The scarcity of ammo (using Less is More module) Really makes me scrounge around for stuff. I'm using RH_Ironsights (basic edition) with your mod, which is FANTASTIC. I highly recommend. I made a simple patch with FO3edit to add gunshot effects to the relevant weapons, plus a few other stats, and remove the don't use IS first person animation flag, but as neither RH nor you change much other than that it doesn't take long at all. Coupled with bullet time it's a lot of fun. Using garybash I can just patch it into a bashed patch so it doesn't even take up an esp slot.

How rubbish at barter I am and how expensive everything is. It's really not worth me carting around a load of raider armours to sell because of the reduced carry weight, and I don't get much for them anyway. I carry what I need, which means it's hard for me to make money. The feeling of having to survive is great.

In general the game feels very well balanced. I'm using MMM with increased spawns and feral ghoul rampage. Super mutants are now scary. I find myself sneaking around a lot more, which is more realistic.

I'm using frag mines, setting traps and ambushes a lot more than I ever did before. I have to now use every resource available to me to survive.

My skills feel realistically balanced. I am not some sort of superhero. I have to use my wits. It's a lot more fun. Likewise the toughness of enemies in relation to me feels perfect.

To make the game slightly easier I'm using Yet Another Disguise mod to sneak past raiders when I can. I have a relatively high charisma so this works most of the time for me and makes it possible to go through DC sewer sections in one piece. Have experienced amazing battles between huge gangs of raiders and huge swarms of feral ghouls deep underneath DC, being on the raider side. Lots of fun. Also leads to fun when I come across Brotherhood or other good faction and forget that I look like a raider and get mown down.

I love being knocked unconscious. I was jumped by raiders in Super Duper Mart, they beat the sh1t out of me and left me for dead, wandered off and left me. Then I got up and sneak limped out, soon found a stash of grenades by the river and went back to blow them all up. Haha. Really nice, changes the rhythm of the game beautifully. The fight-die-reload game mechanic gets old. In general I would say that one of the triumphs of your overhaul is that I feel encouraged to just carry on,because it's so easy to get crippled and wounded and messed up that there's no point in just reloading until you get the perfect run. I've had fights that I've basically almost died in and had to make it to safety in a completely awful condition, but I did it. I didn't reload and try for the perfect run through the fight, knowing all the surprises that were to come. I play, I'm jumped, I fight, get crippled, wounded, beat up, almost bleed to death (using RIPNO), but somehow make it through.

Smarter AI is awesome. Seems better than the version bundled with FWE, I assume it's been updated.

Now some constructive criticism:

If possible I'd like ammo and caps to be even more scarce. I went through Arlington Library and every single container pretty much had caps and ammo in it, in small amounts but still, when you add it up it takes away from the overall feeling of scarcity a little. Why would raiders, or anyone store ammo in groups of 2 or 3 all over the place? Another slight immersion breaker. It would make more sense to have higher numbers of ammo in fewer containers, like in ammunition crates, as these are often guarded, and simply get rid of those piddly ammo caches scattered liberally in desks and filing cabinets. Incidentally, Scribe Yearling paid me 300 caps for 3 books! That's an exploit that needs to be looked at... already using your reduced quest xpr module, would be nice if caps were reduced in instances like this too.

Likewise with caps. I don't know if you can edit lists for container types but limiting caps to metal boxes and ammo to ammunition crates would be interesting. TBH as it is I've been using a scoped hunting rifle from ironsights as my main weapon, which isn't too powerful but lets me take down from a distance, and is easy on the ammo. It's probably hard to balance this, I realise.

The repair feature is bugged. It's already been reported on your nexus page by Gnosos, have just read again and seen that it's fixed by closing repair and going into it again. If you could fix this that would be great as it spoils immersion somewhat. Otherwise I completely agree with your repair changes.

Also noticed the Farragut blind supermutants and raiders, glad this is getting fixed.

I also noticed that with timescale set at 4, I hardly ever need to drink, sleep or eat with Primary Needs. A patch to fix the timescale balance would be great (Primary Needs is balanced for 10, your tweaks are balanced for 4 and is what I play with). The amount of food and water around is perfect otherwise. I'm also using the unfound grub mod which is rad. I noticed that there's a similar

Another issue I had, not sure it's your mod but thought I'd mention it, is a slight freeze I get whilst firing the combat shotgun. Anyone else have this or is it just me?

Thank you for all your work on this, have been curious about your mod for ages and now I am a convert. For me, you beat the mighty FWE, because I'm having more fun and having to be smarter whilst playing the game.

Cheers Arwen! I look forward to the next update.

(EDIT- Forgot to say I also increased the action point recharge rate as I use the sprint mod and the low rate of recharge made it useless. I doubled the rate of vanilla, which I'm going to tone down I think as unless I'm in a really crazy fight I tend to just slow-mo my way through).

Hey Zenbal,

Thanks sooo much for giving me such awesome feed back . . . especially for your constructive criticism, which is actually what I need the most. (After all, without criticism, I have no idea what areas still need work, unless I happen to stumble upon stuff on my own.) And I LOVED hearing about all the changes that my Tweaks have made in your game, since that's the whole reason why I've worked so hard to make my mod available to others (otherwise, I would just keep it for myself . . . which would have been so much easier). Oh, and my Smarter AI, which is now part of my Realism Core module, has been tweaked a bunch beyond the older version that was integrated into FWE. I'll now do my best to respond to the areas that you feel need improving:


I agree completely, but this would not be an easy thing to do, and very difficult to balance. So no promises, other than I'll take a closer look at this, and try to figure out a way to improve it.

What I have already done with v.4.3, is expanded my Reduced Quest XPR module a bit more, so that it now affects a number of Global rewards, both in the number of XPR points, and in the amount of caps you'll receive. On average these rewards are now only 20% what they were in the default game, so this should solve the Scribe Yearling book reward exploit (and a few others as well).


As far as I know, I'm doing this in a way that has never been done before, so I'm treading into the unknown, so I'm relying on my intuition mostly. It is not so much "bugged," as quirky, because in my play testing it didn't consistently pop up. When I tried repair with Crow, shortly after exiting the vault, it worked perfectly, without have to close and reopen the menu. I can try making a few changes to my repair script, but I'm guessing that this may be a game bug that is popping up simply because my mod is doing things in ways that the game was never designed to do.


Is this just because that time is now passing 2.5 times slower? For instance, with timescale=10 you probably needed to eat every 36 minutes or so in real time (6 game hours). With timescale=4, this would translate to 90 minutes of real time (for the same 6 hours to pass). I've never really timed this, so I don't really know how Primary Needs' eating requirements would work at different timescales, but what I can tell, it seems to be based on the passing of gamehours. If so, the needs would not be any different for each gameday, no matter what your timescale is set at.


What kind of condition is the shotgun in? Damaged Guns will fire slower and will have a greater chance of jamming after reloading (than in the default game). That's about the only changes that I've made that might cause any pauses.


You're most welcome, and thanks! But I'm not trying to beat FWE . . . my goal is just to provide a different gaming experience than what you get with FWE or with any other FO3 overhaul. It is good to have choices and being able to have very different game play with the different overhauls is one of the things that makes FO3 so much fun to replay.


Personally I view the sprint mod as a cheat, since the NPCs cannot sprint, but this is just my opinion. Plus my mod includes what is basically a sprint toggle, which is activated by holstering your weapon, which gains you a 20% speed increase (default was only a 10% increase). And this affects the NPCs as well, so it is more balanced. The main problem with speeding up the Action Point recharge rate is that you're also increasing how long BulletTime lasts, which I found to be pretty balanced with my slower recharge rate (but I believe you can adjust this somewhat in the BT config).

O.k. here I go, love your mod by the way ,but #one thing that drives me nuts is without a stealth character is stepping into a building and getting bum rushed by every raider in it!

I have been thinking :confused: --its very dangerous sometimes-- and maybe just have some of the enemy npcs in a building have the better Ai would be a better solution?

at the moment most of um end up in a pile at the front door :gun:

but just a suggestion, I have no idea how to mod, and would never pretend to tell you how

O.k. # two thing is the over abundance of grenade wielding maniacs out in the wasteland, and of course the over abundance of grenades in general, its very hard trying to keep my character patched up when every fight I have to dodge grenades and get my legs crippled --by the way did you increase the splash area of grenades?--- or is it just my imagination?

my last thing would be the ease in which limbs are crippled I have had my right arm crippled three times in one fight which to me -imo- is a little much

and not really a problem but a question did you mean to put the gauss rifle and the plasma rifle under small arms to be able to use?

the reason I ask the other day I tryed to use them with a high energy weapons skill and it kept saying I needed a small arms skill of 35 to use them

but really thanks for the mod and the hard work and for sharing it with us it is appreciated and makes my game alot better

I'm not sure what exactly about your repair system is said to be bugged, but my experience with it is that it won't increase the merchant's repair skill to 100 until you've repaired at least one item with the merchant's default skill level. After that everything works as it is supposed to.

Yeah, that's what I meant by bugged, it was already explained and a work around was found on the tesnexus forums so i didn't go into it as i knew Arwen was aware of it - however it doesn't increase repair skill for all merchants to 100 does it? For example Moira, who's repaired quite a bit of my stuff, only repairs to 80%, which I think is the average. Arwen, when does the script kick in for the repair? Maybe it needs to kick in earlier? I know next to nothing about scripting unfortunately. Glad my feedback was of some use.

Kingsheart, are you sneaking slowly into buildings or just running in? I have a low sneak skill and 6 agility and i can still sneak about reasonably well so long as i move slowly and stay out of sight.

Also now that you can't repair things further than your max repair skill level, it's possible to attempt to repair something and have its condition actually get worse.


Well I thought it was funny.

Yeah, this happened to me too - another thing to look into.

Regarding the sprint mod being a cheat, considering the speed at which some npc's move when closing in on you, most notably feral ghouls and melee super mutants when closing in on you, this is much faster than your character can move, so I think they can sprint in a way. I'm too attached to the sprint mod, I love it. It's the only way of avoiding grenades near you sometimes too, so it doesn't feel unbalanced to me.

I've tested the interior stealth a bunch when my character only had 10 Sneak, and I've been able to remain undetected while looting the Super Duper Mart when it was full of Raiders. You just have to be . . . well, stealthy, which means moving slowly, staying in the shadows, remaining still if you've been detected (until they move off), not wearing heavy armor, and NOT using your PipBoy light (which will now totally give you away).


That might work . . . if I knew how to do it. The problem is that the detection settings are global . . . there are not different settings for the PC and for the NPCs, even though (as I discovered with my stealth script) they work very differently in the way that NPCs detect other NPCs, from how NPCs detect the PC. So any script (if it would even work) would likely cause other problems.


This is one reason why you have to pick your fights carefully when you use my Tweaks. You're just one person (unless you are using a follower or two), so it is realistic that you're going to get creamed if you just run in firing at a bunch of Raiders (who seem especially fond of grenades). I've increased the splash radius (but not their DAM) for most explosions, to make them more realistic. The default radius was pretty pathetic for grenades . . . only 21 feet, so I increased it to 30 feet, which is still pretty moderate.


I haven't made it any easier to get crippled (other than by increasing the chances of crippling a leg when taking falling damage). What you are seeing is the result of now being able to take more damage to you limbs, without losing as many Hit Points. So now you're getting crippled more, but dying less.


I didn't change any of the ways that weapons are categorized . . . the problem is that Bethesda categorized the gauss rifle and the plasma rifle as TwoHandAutomatic weapons, and I added a requirement of 30 Small Guns to be able to use Automatic weapons (for females, males only need a SG skill of 25).

Thanks so much for the great feedback . . . and you're most welcome.

Arwen, I will start a new game as soon as 4.3 is out. One question though: Is it compatible with http://www.fallout3nexus.com/members/tracking/file.php?

That's actually pretty cool, and quite realistic . . . if I could somehow make that usable . . . like if you tried to repair something to a condition which was higher than your ability, there was a 50/50 chance that your repair attempt would damage your gear. But I don't know how to do that (yet). Probably the best I could hope for right now is figuring out how to make it so it doesn't happen.

I tried it once, and I think I ended up with 5 more SPECIAL points than you're supposed to have with ART.


As for new ideas for the Tweaks... Perhaps something cool could be done with addictions, besides the simple penalties to attributes? Same goes for radiation, really. I'll give it a thought.

My Realism Core should be fully compatible, but as Povuholo replied, there are a few minor incompatibilities with my Less-Is-More module, such as reverting to the default number os SPECIAL points. If you're using my Reduced Quest XPR module, the Escape! stage of the main quest is where I reduce the Timescale and my message on the module pops up, so those will no longer happen. But I don't believe there are any major conflicts.

To everyone: It looks like I may now have a bug free repair script, thanks to RickerHK over in the GECK forum, who helped me fix the problem. I figured out that the problem was that I couldn't make changes to the actor's Repair Skill Base while the repair menu was open, but I could not figure out how to fix it. Well that's not totally correct, because I could make the changes . . . but the repair menu need to be refreshed before those changes would kick in correctly (closing and then immediately reopening the menu worked, because it forced the menu to be refreshed.) Anyhoo, now it seems to work perfectly (and I tested it a bunch tonight, with no issues at all).

So give me another day to so to wrap v.4.3 up, as I have one or two more minor issues (in other areas) that I want to take one more look at first. But v.4.3 is looking good, as it should fix all the major bugs.

Hey Arwen, just reading up on these 4.2 changes after I discovered there's now only 3 esp's. Ha! Wasn't expecting that! Not to worry!

This caught my eye though:



You've already commented on this Arwen, but I think that what ever causes this to happen, you should leave in (or perhaps even improve upon), because it seems to be more of a happy accident rather than an unintentional side effect.

The way I'm interpreting this (without actually having tried this version yet) is that it's like trying to fix something you don't understand/don't know how to fix. Which, if you were to try this in real life, would invariably end up in you breaking something. I don't know, kinda like trying to knock a screw in with a hammer, because you have no comprehension of screwdrivers... :blink:

Just a thought.

:)

Thanks for the heads up. I couldnt wait for 4.3 so I started a new game from Vault 101 using 4.2 with all three modules activated. Only found time to play for an hour last night, but it's looking good so far. The wasteland actually felt really dangerous when I emerged from the comfortable safety of the vault. Nice.

On a side note: Considering the way you've totally reworked the economics and made it a lot harder to earn caps, the Silver incident in Springvale seems a little unbalanced. I could easily get 300 caps from her (400 if I had told Moriarty what I really think of him). Worth looking into? Also, I didnt have time to pick the floor safe in The Brass Lantern so I dont know if you already have done this, but the amount of caps you can get from it or the skill needed to pick the lock might need a tweak?