I wouldn't mess with that. It's based on the player's choice, and just adds to the experience. But there's too many arguments over the timescale to mess with it in the mod.

You could set it to 1, where a minute in game is a minute in life. Raven Rock to D.C. Takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Fall down 30 times.

You could set it high, to make the wasteland feel vast. Instance: start at Raven Rock. Go to D.C. Might take you an in-game week, depending on what number it's set to. You might fall down 15 times, never stopping.

To some, it's tedious. To some it's realistic and immersion. Let the player change it his/own way.

Arwen might post her preferences, and you can tweak things from there, but...uh...yeah. /rant.

Yeah, people do seem to get touchy about timescales.

I think having strain continue to drop while in menus/conversations would help with immersion and gameplay. If you're standing there resting, waiting for your strain to go down, it makes sense that you'd probably spend it messing with your pipboy (or maybe just panting, I don't know). In conversations you're just standing there anyway. It would be pretty easy to implement I think, and would be great from a gameplay perspective. With a "player.isincombat == 0" conditional it could also be made to work only outside of combat, to prevent exploitation.

Wow, the new version is absolutely amazing!
The encumbrance works perfectly(I thought the caps-lock issue was alright to get use to, but if it is already fixed, why not).
Having to pause after marching through the wastes for a while is lovely.
But having to calculate sprints and distances in combat is even better!
I can't wait till I get chased around by some huge mutant in for my head to see how it turns out.
Thanks for this great enhancement!

Here is what I can give on your feedback request. Since I don't have a lot of real experience being over-encumbered I will just give my feelings and/or game-play.

Your settings to me feel realistic. Encumbered at 200% I collapsed after about 6 seconds of walking. While lightly encumbered, the strain went up slowly which felt good. While lightly encumbered though the meter constantly pops-up at about every 2 strain points. Would be nice if that was less often.

Now here is the part that is entirely subjective: While I think your settings are pretty realistic, in terms of game-play I think maybe making them about 20 to 40 percent longer without "over-straining" maybe be a bit smoother. In terms of immersion, the pop-up meter needs to be somehow less noticeable or less often. I think even if it was shown all the time like Darn, it would be less distracting. The pop-up-i-ness is the distraction.

Anyhoo, I hope that give you something you were looking for. Let me know if you need any more specifics?

Mahalo,
Nemesis.

So after some playtesting... I love how this mod makes living/surviving in the wasteland as much a part of the gameplay as the combat itself. I love how encumbrance makes me consider movespeed and, well, encumbrance (carry weight). And i love the weapon effects so much, i dont mind not being able to add in new weapon mods which, if i understand correctly, are incompatible with this feature.

However, immersion conscious as you are, Arwen, i wondered if there were any way to have NPC's actually try to kill the PC more when knocked out by a melee weapon? I was wowed the first time i saw that effect (though the messages were a bit distracting - perhaps a shader/sound effect would be more immersive?), but when the NPC started looking around for me muttering things like "Where are you?" or some such, well, the entire effect was ruined. and this happened more than once in a single fight! to balance the effect, and give the knock out character a chance to survive/fight back even after being knocked out, maybe there could be a chance oto be knocked back into consciousness by taking damage (unless of course, the knock out effect kicks in again)?

hmm lot of knock-outs in that paragraph...

Another concern is with how combat damage is so low at the beginning of the game. granted, its vanilla isnt any better, but with less-is-more, skill values begin way too low to really be inflicting much damage. its immersion breaking to have to shoot a vault guard so many times before he goes down because my 10mm only does 5 dmg. i used FWE about a year ago and the increased dmg really made me think twice about engaging enemies. I much prefer ART's tweaks as a whole but would appreciate increased damage too. Perhaps an optional increased damage plugin? sort of like OB's Deadly reflexes increased weapon damage option?

I'll look into adjusting Strain for Timescale. It seems to make sense to factor in Timescale, since Strain is time based . . . so perhaps I can base this on being able to run for up to 30 minutes in real time (with an encumbrance of less than 60%), before your Strain reaches 100%. I based my current script on a Timescale of 4 (with 16 minutes of running time = 4 minutes in real time), so this would nearly double my current low-encumbered running time, since it takes 7 minutes for 28 game minutes to pass when the Timescale is set at 4. Anyone using the default Timescale of 30 would only be able to run for 1 minute, (but most everyone who is into making their game more realistic has their timescale set much slower than 30).

I'm not sure how to factor in sleep time, wait time, and menu times. If I can figure them out, AND they do not over complicate (slow down) my script, I'll consider adding them as well.

But I don't want to disable Strain while in combat, since that is one of the best features in how my encumbrance overhaul increases realism. Now you actually have to worry about tiring out during combat.

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You're most welcome!
The Caps Lock will be fixed in my next update.
And I'll be making some minor adjustments to the script. The biggest complaint seems to be that it should take longer to reach 100% Strain, so I'll likely extend that time, at least while running at low encumbrance.
(which may, or may not end up being based on what your Timescale is set at).

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Nemesis, thanks so much for your feedback!

It looks like I'll be increasing at least the low-encumbered running time by quite a bit, since that does seem too short for me. And I'll likely be increasing all the times a bit (so it will take a bit longer to reach 100% Strain). I haven't received much feedback at all on my recharge time settings (how long it takes your Strain to decrease), so I may leave that alone.

I agree about my pop up Strain Message, and would love for it to be a toggled DarN display, but I just don't have enough experience with menus or with XML language to do anything like that. So I'm afraid that this is the best I can do . . . I just don't see any way to make it less distracting, while still giving the necessary Strain info.

Your timescale tweak (and your XP tweak when leaving the vault) is always overwritten by some other mod I use that works with whatever scripts run when you leave the vault. Might be the unofficial patch, I don't know. Maybe you can add it to a different script of your own to ensure that it is always applied? Maybe use a triggerbox outside the vault entrance?

I often forget to change it myself until I see on my HUD how quickly I get hungry again with Primary Needs.

Right now you have your strain code running in a gamemode block, I'm guessing with "getsecondspassed" used to time the lapse between frames. If you added an abbreviated copy of it, just the strain-decreasing-over-time part, to a menumode block in the same script, it would run whenever you're in a menu, and you could still use getsecondspassed. It wouldn't require any changes to your existing gamemode code, so it shouldn't slow anything down.

I didn't mean disable strain while in combat, just prevent strain from decreasing while in combat and in a menu. Otherwise if the player was, say, running away from a radscorpion and got too tired to run, they could cheat and just bring up the Pipboy for a few seconds. The sleep/wait menu still wouldn't work exactly right (it would count the number of elapsed seconds, realtime, rather than the amount of gametime waited). To fix that, you'd need to check gamehour at the start of entering the wait menu, and again upon exiting, subtract the two, and use that instead of getsecondspassed (after accounting for crossing into a new day if it happens). I don't see that as being as crucial though.


I put together a HUD counter template (an .esp and the necessary xml files) that works with or without DUI installed, and uploaded it to Nexus along with instructions on how to modify it to incorporate it into other mods, so if you want to take a crack at adding a strain meter (and maybe encumberance too, though DUI's already got that) it should help.

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12977

very nice, hope we can get that in game

been thinking, would it be -possible- or -very difficult- to make a mod, or add it in with the realism tweaks to limit the number of weapons carried?

I find it hard to believe one person could carry a shotgun, sniper rifle,2 hunting rifles, and three pistols without great difficulty

I think in my current game I may be packing more than that, but just an idea

thought I would throw out here for consideration and see what is said

It would be a little tedious to set up. You'd need a "getitemcount" for each weapon in fallout, and compatibility patches for any mods that add weapons. The way I'm picturing it, if the player exceeded the maximum weapon count, maybe one rifle, one big gun, and a pistol or two, they'd get frozen in place and a message would pop up telling them to drop something, or maybe they'd be prevented from firing because their hands are full. Wearing a backpack would increase the max weapon count more than carry weight. You could maybe assign a size to each weapon, like a grenade counts as 1, a pistol counts as 3, and a flamer counts as 10, then cap it at 20 or something, or 30 with a backpack. That's not that much different than weight though, so maybe limit it by slot - one or two holstered weapons, and either two strap weapons (rifles), or a backpack weapon (flamer). What would be cool is if you could actually show them on the player.

I think the tweaks are harsh enough already without limiting the number of weapons the player can carry, difficulty of modding it in aside. Weapons are next to armor one of the first things I'd drop when I exceed my carrying limit anyway, which is pretty low with ART.

Since ART requires FOSE anyway, this is doable without compatibility patches for weapons mods, since FOSE has functions to get weapon types, skills required, etc. Also fuctions to walk through the player's inventory as well as what is equipped and track it all. It would be complicated though

Thanks! I'm glad that you have been enjoying my Tweaks.

But the way the NPCs respond is something that I don't have any idea how to change. Apparently when a victim is unconscious, the NPCs respond as if they were dead, invisible, or had never even existed . . . you no longer even show up on their radar. So even though Bethesda put in an unconscious effect, they never gave the NPCs any proper way to react to it. And I don't know how to trigger an awaking-when-unconscious-when-attacked condition.


But my Tweaks do increase damage . . . they always have . . . from v.1.0. It is now part of my Realism Core. Even though my Tweaks make weapon skill a much greater factor in how much damage you can inflict with a weapon, the DAM is nearly always higher than in the default game. For instance, with a Small Guns skill of just 10, a 10mm in perfect condition will do 6 DAM with my Tweaks; while the same weapon, with the same amount of skill will only do 4 DAM in the default game. And my weapon DAM increases faster than in the default game as your weapon skills improve. With a Small Gun Skill of 50, that same 10mm will now do 13 DAM, which is more than double the default game's 6 DAM, for the same weapon at the same skill level.

I realize that the DAM is still pretty low when you first leave the Vault, but that is intentional on my part. You're supposed to be pretty incompetent in combat, since you have like no combat training . . . but you will slowly get better. The idea is to make weapon skill increases worthwhile, rather than have you start out being able to easily defeat nearly every enemy.

The issue is really not how many weapons you can carry, but how easy it is to get them out.
It is certainly not a major problem to carry 5 or 6 rifles if you strap them to your pack, but you wouldn't be able to access them without a fair bit of fumbling. I wonder if there is some way to simulate this, or slow down the weapons changing mechanic?
Probably not an easy fix for that.

In my settings I have reduced carry weight to about 50 for a 5 str guy (try carrying more than this in just your pockets).
This makes a backpack essential, but still only raises max weight to a very weighty but possible 120.
If you use weighted ammo, then realistically its not possible to carry more than about 3 weapons and a decent ammo load and have any room left for an loot.
This seems to get around the need to artificially limit numbers of weapons.

Normally you've got one weapon holstered, that you can unholster pretty quickly. You could write a script that checks to see which weapon is equipped, and when it changes, force a re-holstering of the weapon, and disable the fire and reload buttons for a few seconds, to simulate digging the thing out of your pack.

I can't see this being particularly popular though, but if you could make apparel versions of all of the weapons, you could maybe sell additional holsters. That would let you have more than one weapon within easy reach, and partially preserve the current game mechanic. So you equip the holster (left and right thigh holsters, and a shoulder strap), and when you do you get a message asking which weapon you want to keep in it. If the player switches to that weapon, its instant, otherwise it takes a few seconds to dig out.

*Edit - Regarding the problem of being knocked unconscious rarely leading to being beaten senseless, you might be able to recreate the unconscious effect by just playing the unconscious animation, and freezing the player's controls for a bit. I don't know if that would keep them down for very long, but the NPC would keep attacking. Maybe there could be a random chance that that happens, possibly based on the intelligence and perception of the attacker, and the player's luck. It would make getting out of Vault 101 pretty difficult though.

Thanks so much for all the great feedback today! This is why my Tweaks keep getting better.
I haven't been able to reply to everything because I've been working on v.4.6 of my new Encumbrance Script.

Strain is now calculated, based on Timescale. I've also made the Strain a bit less harsh.
If you have Timescale set at 1 (same as real time), and when your encumbrance is 50% or less, you will be able to run for 24 minutes before exceeding your Strain Limit.
If you have Timescale set at 4 (like me), this works out to 6 minutes of running (which is still 24 game minutes).
With an encumbrance of 100%, you'll only be able to run for 5 game minutes (1.25 minutes with Timescale set to 4).

With 101% encumbrance, you can now walk for 48 game minutes (12 minutes with Timescale set to 4).
With 110% encumbrance, you can now walk for 12 game minutes (3 minutes with Timescale set to 4).
With 150% encumbrance, you can only walk for 3 game minutes (45 seconds with Timescale set to 4).

Your Strain will now decrease at the rate of -18 Stain/game minute when walking; and -36 Stain/game minute when not moving.
[With Timescale set at 4, it will take 83 seconds when walking and 41 seconds when standing still, to go from 100% Strain to 0%.]


Thanks Imp! And, I understand what you meant now (sorry). I'm not using getsecondspassed in my script, but I was still able to get this mostly working by using a menumode block at the end of my script.
I haven't fully tested this yet, but it works great when you're in your PipBoy menus. Since you're basically standing still when you are in any menu, Strain will never increase . . . so this just decreases your Strain.
But since game time does not actually pass when you're in any menu, I gave a smaller decrease (than what you get when you are resting and not in any menu).
So when you are not in combat, and are viewing a PipBoy menu (I still have to check other menus), your Strain will now decrease at the rate of -12 Strain/game minute.
When you are in combat, your Strain will not decrease at all when you are in a Pipboy menu.


For now, I'm not going to reduce Strain when waiting or sleeping, as I don't really see the need. Strain decreases pretty fast when you are not moving, so I view this as time needed to fully wake up.

I'll take a look at your DarN HUD file, but all that menu stuff may still be more than I can grasp.

i know my characters gun skills are pathetic at the start, but i shot the vault guard point blank five times in the gut! only seemed to make him madder... increased weapon damage might make it easier to beat enemies even from the start, but it also allows them to beat you that much easier as well. So.. no go on the optional increased weapons damage? btw, i was told there's no game setting or some other setting to change for an across the board increased weapon damage? each weapon has to be tweaked individually? in which case, my request for an optional increased weapon damage esp might be asking too much since i understand its a lot of work. but know that we appreciate you for it!



this would help with the immersion a lot. sort of paralyze effect instead of unconscious. but then again add a chance to wake up upon taking damage. otherwise a knocked out character would just keep on getting knocked out and never wake up again.

Remembering the paralysis spell from Oblivion I did a few experiments. I had a look and the Paralysis effect is available in the GECK. I created an actor effect with the effect 'paralysis', on touch (it won't allow on self) for 20 seconds, magnitude didn't seem to matter but I set it to 100, and then in all the scripts that knock you out I replaced Setunconscious 1 with 'cast MyActorEffect myself', and Setunconscious 0 with 'myself.dispel MyActorEffect'. The script already says 'Set Myself to Getself' and such so I didn't even have to add that.

Edit: If you make a new Actor Effect with the Paralyze 'Effect Archetype', check the 'self' flag for it, and use that instead of the vanilla Paralyze effect, you'll be able to use 'on self' instead. I don't know if it really matters, the effect is still applied with the above mentioned method anyway.

Anyway from what I could tell it works great. Ragdoll wise it works exactly the same. But unlike with the unconscious state, everyone continues to attack me (and NPCs also continue to attack other unconscious enemies) and there are no strange comments or otherwise odd NPC behaviour when it happens. Because everyone keeps on attacking you at the same speed the knockdown effect is actually a bit too harsh now I think.

During the testing I got knocked down by 3 raiders who continued to bash me with melee weapons. I didn't even have a chance to get back up because my fatigue would just get lower and lower far into the negative... Even with 500 points restored I would just stand up and immediately fall down again.

But I think that could be tweaked. Possibly a check to see if the paralysis effect is active and if so disable the fatigue penalties from getting hit while paralyzed. I don't know if a similar check was already in place for the unconscious state but if so I didn't replace it for my test with paralysis.

As a bonus, when they are paralyzed it is also possible to loot anything they have on them that they do not have equipped which IIRC is not possible when they're unconscious. Also, it's possible to target knocked down NPCs in VATS which you also can't do with unconscious NPCs.

I think this could be a good alternative to the current SetUnconscious method. I hope this is useful! :foodndrink:


I also had a look to see if it would be possible to cancel VATS if the player is knocked out, because it's still a bit awkward when you are fighting in VATS, someone knocks you out with an explosion or melee weapon or whatever, and you won't be able to get out of VATS until you're back up again. And in the meanwhile VATS keeps tracking whichever NPC you were targetting. But I couldn't find anything. Too bad.

With my full Tweaks [the first 3 modules], restricting the number of weapons is not really necessary, as Povuholo pointed out, since my Tweaks reduce carrying capacity, and adds skill requirements for some weapons, and a bunch of other things that already make survival difficult enough. I'm thinking about reducing carrying capacity even a bit more in version 4.6 . . . at least in my Less-Is-More module. (although not as low as Gurachn has it set in his game). This was set lower in earlier versions, but then I increased it when I added my gender differences . . . but now I'm feeling that it is set perhaps 10 to 15% too high.

I've resisted making any more changes to my Whack effect, since it works very well for me most of the time (and it has been a beast to get it working this well). But I do pay attention to all the feedback, so I just completed an updated version of my Whack Script that should mostly fix the complaints about the side effects of being knocked unconscious. As Imp and Povuholo have pointed out, if I remove the unconscious state completely, your enemies will just keep whacking you until you die . . . which is not only no fun, but it defeats much of my reason for adding this effect. So I came up with what I feel is a good compromise. The unconscious flag will only be set on the player after their Health is lower than 25% . . . which means that your enemies will keep attacking you even when your fatigue is so low that you are knocked out (because you are not flagged as being unconscious to them).

i read about fatigue in the readme but only a reference to it being different from strain. can anyone point me to where i can get more info about it? at this point i really dont know what it is or what it does. good to see paralyze works though. now it needs only a way to give the knocked out player a chance to recover and not be whacked to oblivion all the time

You could just ask, Arwen's here a lot and loooooves questions. Just looooves them.

From the http://geck.gamesas.com: A derived stat: "Fatigue - Used to knock actors unconscious. Hand to hand attacks cause fatigue damage, nothing else reduces it."

My weapon effects all work by damaging the victim's fatigue. The player's fatigue has a maximum default value of 200. When it is damaged (knocked down below 200), it slowly regenerates, at about 1 point/second. (The NPCs only get 50 fatigue.)

Norbingel, you need to read the last paragraph of my previous reply. I'm not going to change my Whack script to use paralysis, but am sticking with fatigue, since it allows me to create more realistic combat effects. My new script will sometimes give you a window to escape/recover . . . but it will often be a very tiny window, since they will continue attacking, until your health is reduced to 25%. Which is why I had the player set to unconscious when their fatigue was reduced to 0.

thanks and sorry. i did read that part. meaning sank in after my post. only had 4 hours of sleep then went right back to work, only occasionally glancing at the forums.i'll try to be more careful next time.

I like the sound of your whack effect changes. Its a fun effect as it is. I used it to jump that lone Enclave soldier over by Dukov's place with about a level 4 character. He was waiting in a doorway when I left Dukov's, which scared the crap out of me for a second, but then I ran around the corner and waited with my baseball bat drawn. He never had a chance.

I also just put together a couple of HUD gauges for that JetPack mod, so I can do it pretty quick now. Let me know if you want a strain meter.

That's totally fine . . . I didn't mean to sound pushy, but just figured that you missed what I had pasted. Due to some medical issues I've been having lately, which are making it very difficult to sleep, I've been living on an average 4 or 5 hours of sleep since the end of March, so I can totally relate to sleep depravation.


My new whack script seems to work pretty well. But it makes enemy melee attacks much less forgiving, so I'm a bit concerned about what people will think when they get creamed for the first time. But this is what many have been asking for for months . . . but sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.

Thanks! I would love a DarN UI Strain Meter . . . although I'm not sure how I would go about packing it as part of my Tweaks. Would I have to release two versions of my Encumbrance module?