[RELz] Arwen's Realism Tweaks [Thread No.8] : Fallout 3

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 2:31 pm

Hey Arwen,

Just a little something I noticed - and quite a bit off topic than what's being discussed recently. But, it seems to me that somewhere within the depths of your mod there is something (possibly a leveled list) which means that Gob and Leo Stahl aren't really selling that much booze.

After a, somewhat disastrous, encounter with a bunch of Super Mutants I was really looking forward to spending what caps I had left on some hard liquor - Gob had a bottle of Crown Royal and a few Stimpacks... :sadvaultboy: Leo Stahl had a little more, but only because I hadn't bought from him before. Do these guys Inventories not replenish?

Relevant mods of yours I'm using:

Arwen_Realism_Core.esp
Arwen_Less-Is-More.esp
Arwen_RiPnO+BLTC_Patch.esp

I understand that Less Is More is designed to reduce the chance of "stuff", but I'm pretty sure Moriarty wouldn't be too pleased if he found out Gob wasn't replenishing his stock !

Anyway, just thought I'd share my findings.

~Xeph'

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:26 am

My Less-Is-More module reduces many items in the game . . . including hard liquor . . . by reducing the percentages that spawn. You're the first person to complain that I have decreased any item too much. I'm not suggesting that you are wrong in your observations, and I REALLY appreciate your feedback on this. But I do have to wonder why no one else has let me know of this problem. I'm totally willing to adjust any settings that are messing up game play, but I really need to be sure that others are indeed having the same issues.

You are aware that your LUCK stat has a major affect on the amount of spawned items? If you are playing with only 1 or 2 points of LUCK, you're going to have some rather slim pickings. My own character only has 3 LUCK, and I haven't noticed that the vendors' inventories had been all that sparse.

I'm am rebalancing the way LUCK alters the amount of items spawned in v.4.7, but my new changes will not increase the items for characters with very low LUCK.

*** So if anyone else has had similar issues, PLEASE let me know, and I'll try to fix this.

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:36 pm

i dont buy too much from either gob or Stahl but i do notice that their inventories do get rather sparse. glad that low luck characters wont get hit much.

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:29 pm

...
You are aware that your LUCK stat has a major affect on the amount of spawned items? If you are playing with only 1 or 2 points of LUCK, you're going to have some rather slim pickings. My own character only has 3 LUCK, and I haven't noticed that the vendors' inventories had been all that sparse.
...

Ahh, that might have something to do with it. I wasn't totally unaware of this - I remember reading about this now. Slipped my mind when I posted though. But, if it's any help, these are my SPECIALs: s5 p7 e6 c3 i9 a6 l3 - so yeah, my Luck is pretty low. This was intentional though, because as I made a last check on my stats when leaving the Vault, I thought yeah, this is a pretty unlucky situation...

I think the only reason it looks abnormal though, is because Gob is only selling liqour (and a couple of stimpacks) wheras most other traders/vendors/merchants have a wide variety of things to sell and in comparison are pretty well stocked - I haven't noticed any similar situations with say, for example, Moira Brown or Doc Hoff.

I did want my character to not have much going for her ( except brains and beauty

) and to see how harsh your Tweaks really can be (and it has been tough!). I was even tempted to restart because I thought I'd over-nerfed her stats, but I/she struggled on and managed to scavenge enough caps for a Workbench, Large Backpack and NV Goggles. She's Level 12 now and still hasn't found her Dad! But it has been fun!

:)

~Xeph'

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:35 am

The issue seems to be that Gob doesn't have much of an inventory to begin with (by default), and my reduced spawn items just add to the problem.

Without making edits to the individual vendors (which I something that I've avoided so far), the only way that I could increase the amount of liquor in the merchants' inventories is to increase the amount of liquor everywhere . . . and no one has complained that my Tweaks have made liquor throughout the Wasteland THAT scarce. I'll take a look at my settings again . . . perhaps I should just bump the liquor spawn rates up a bit.

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:03 am

There's still some FOSE functions in 1.2 b2 that haven't been documented yet. One of them is IsQuestItem:

int form.IsQuestItem(ref obj = NULL) - returns if form (or obj if present) is a quest item

so from this I would think you use it like this:

if (rWeaponRef.IsQuestItem)    ...don't do things to lose it endif

I cannot seem to get this to work, I tried it with the Rolling Pin quest item weapon, and it still drops.
Here is a snip of my Blast script:

	if isWeaponOut		set weapon to getEquippedObject 5		if weapon.IsQuestItem ; prevents dropping a quest item		else			drop weapon 1		endif	endif

Any suggestions?

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:11 am

You could try calling it with the Base form:

if isWeaponOut set weapon to getEquippedObject 5 set weaponbase to weapon.GetBaseObject   if  IsQuestItem weaponbase; prevents dropping a quest item   else	 drop weapon 1   endif endif

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:58 am

Thanks RickerHK, but that didn't work either.

Those changes did prevent a quest weapon from dropping, so at first I thought it was the answer . . . but then I discovered that it prevented all weapons from dropping.

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 5:48 am

The issue seems to be that Gob doesn't have much of an inventory to begin with (by default), and my reduced spawn items just add to the problem.

Without making edits to the individual vendors (which I something that I've avoided so far), the only way that I could increase the amount of liquor in the merchants' inventories is to increase the amount of liquor everywhere . . . and no one has complained that my Tweaks have made liquor throughout the Wasteland THAT scarce. I'll take a look at my settings again . . . perhaps I should just bump the liquor spawn rates up a bit.

You could add the liqour through script to Gob.

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:54 am

Perhaps . . . but first Iwould have to figure out how to actually script something like that. (There's still a LOT that I don't know about scripting).

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 7:42 pm

Perhaps . . . but first Iwould have to figure out how to actually script something like that. (There's still a LOT that I don't know about scripting).

scn GobAddLiquorSCPTIf Gameday == 0 ; The start of a new month.   If Gob.GetItemCount Whisky > 3 ;You can ofcourse change this. This checks if Gob has less then 3 Whisky and adds 1 whisky till its at 3 again.      Gob.AddItem Whisky 1 1   EndIf   If Gob.GetItemCount Scotch . 3      Gob.AddItem Scotch 1 1   EndIf   If Gob.GetItemCount Beer > 3       Gob.AddItem Beer 1 1   EndIfEndIfIf GameDay == 15 ;This is at the half of the month   If Gob.GetItemCount Wine > 2 ;Why would a shop offer the same stuff everytime?       Gob.AddItem Wine 1 1   EndIf   If Gob.GetItemCount Vodka > 3       Gob.AddItem Vodka 1 1   EndIfEndIfEnd

Ofcourse you can tweak it what ever way you wish.

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 5:41 am

Thanks Harmy!

I can probably work from your script and may try to add something like that in the near future. I started working on it, but got a bit sidetracked on trying to figure out an easy way to include all the vendors who should have a decent supply of liquor. Then I ran into the problem of compatibility, since I use and recommend the BLTC (Better Living Through Chems) mod, which renames all the liquor.

Perhaps the bet thing to do for now, would be just to increase the liquor spawn rates (perhaps I reduced them a bit too much).

What Fallout 3 really needs is a major Economy Overhaul mod.

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:01 am

What Fallout 3 really needs is a major Economy Overhaul mod.

Sadly true. Started a topic for something like this too and a couple of modders are fiddling with it but doesnt seem like there's anything along the scale of OB's Enhanced/Living Economy.

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:11 am

Thanks RickerHK, but that didn't work either.

Those changes did prevent a quest weapon from dropping, so at first I thought it was the answer . . . but then I discovered that it prevented all weapons from dropping.

At this point I don't know and would start troubleshooting it - to see what the function is returning, or if it's just halting. Also, i've had problems sometimes with trying to put a function as a condition for an IF statement, and had to split it up so that I set a short variable with the function, then test the short with the IF. Another thing we can test here is if IsQuestItem returns what we expect - it might be reversed - return 0 if true, like the CompareNames function does when it matches.

if isWeaponOut set weapon to getEquippedObject 5 set weaponbase to weapon.GetBaseObject PrintToConsole "Base Object returned - %n", weaponbase set iQuestFlag to IsQuestItem weaponbase	;set a short to see what we are returning PrintToConsole "IsQuestItem returned - %.0f", iQuestFlag   if  iQuestFlag ; prevents dropping a quest item   else	 drop weapon 1   endif endif PrintToConsole "Got past Quest check without halting"

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:59 pm

RickerHK, I tried your latest changes but still no weapons are dropped. I'm not getting anything printed out in the console . . . do I need to enter something in the console for this text to appear?

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:13 pm

RickerHK, I tried your latest changes but still no weapons are dropped. I'm not getting anything printed out in the console . . . do I need to enter something in the console for this text to appear?

If you don't see anything at the console, then

set weaponbase to weapon.GetBaseObject

is probably causing the script to halt. The PrintToConsole command will print whenever it is reached on the code execution and you don't have to do anything to make it work.

This is a ScriptEffectStart block, right? I had the same problem recently with GetBaseObject in this block type. I recall I never got it to work. It works in a quest script but that would be a major overhaul and complication and we still don't really know if we need to test the base object or not.

If you try this, the Printtoconsole command will tell you what IsQuestItem is returning when called two different ways. At this point we would like to know if it is even going to work or if we are just spinning our wheels.

if isWeaponOut set weapon to getEquippedObject 5 PrintToConsole "Weapon returned - %n", weapon set iQuestFlag to IsQuestItem weapon	;set a short to see what we are returning PrintToConsole "IsQuestItem Base Form returned - %.0f", iQuestFlag set iQuestFlag to weapon.IsQuestItem	;set a short to see what we are returning PrintToConsole "IsQuestItem call by REF returned - %.0f", iQuestFlag   if  iQuestFlag ; prevents dropping a quest item   else	 drop weapon 1   endif endif PrintToConsole "Got past Quest check without halting"

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:03 am

Yes, this is a ScriptEffectStart block.

Your latest code didn't seem to work either, as the quest weapon (Autumn's Laser pistol) was dropped. And there was nothing in the console . . . so no printout happened. But I really appreciate your help in this!

I'm thinking that I'll either just not force the active weapon to drop when in the radius of an explosion (but keep the drop weapon in my Gunshot and Whack scripts, where the weapon is not blasted away from the actor). But I want to try one more thing first . . . I'm thinking that I might be able to make the drop-active-weapon a separate script where the actor drops their weapon when their fatigue drops below 0 (as they collapse).

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:58 am

You could try calling it with the Base form:

set weapon to getEquippedObject 5 set weaponbase to weapon.GetBaseObject

http://fose.silverlock.org/fose_command_doc.html#GetEquippedObject

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 8:05 am

http://fose.silverlock.org/fose_command_doc.html#GetEquippedObject

I guess i'll have to review the docs every time I use a function till it sticks in my brain. Thanks for pointing it out.

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 6:54 pm

Regarding your optional Arwen_ Reduced_QuestXPR plug in...

Is there a way to make this uniform across all quests etc. as might be added by various mods etc. or is this all down to individual values per quest?
If this was moddable to be uniform..what would be the likelyhood of this element being modular..i.e having reduction values of say..10/20/25/33/50 percent?

Not been using this myself as personally feel it reduces the quest xp too much as is(personal taste maybe?)and takes a little away from the sense of achievement and accomplishment from completing a difficult quest..but..would be more likely to use this optional element if it was modular or not so harsh..especially if it was a global factor that impacted on all quests,including player made ones etc.

Played up to 36 hours of a game..and just decided to restart as although was only l5..felt that some mod xp rewards were having too great an impact and making the levelling faster than it should have been..181xp..seemed a lot..even if one took the quest into account..find a person..get help..escort them back etc. while fighting off enemies at the location and the usual hazards of traversing the wasteland(Quest was from Arefu Expanded mod by Azar)

I love adding content to the basic game..places..quests etc. but really want the experience to be an epic journey,a battle for survival etc. which your realism tweaks etc, really help to convey....but am worried that by doing so..the balance of level advancement will be skewed..hence my request regarding you quest xp plug in.......already use your reduced xpr btw..

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 7:14 pm

Assuming Arwen alters every experience reward individually, it should still be possible to make it modular. But it could very well be that some quests have balanced XP rewards but some give too much, making individual changes preferable to a general reduction of the XP to a certain percentage. But it could also be made a combination of both.

Anyway, for the modular XP reduction idea, there would need to be a quest script with a short variable like 'XPMultiplier'. XPMultiplier could then be altered by the player, setting it to 0.1 to get 10% of the XP, or 0.25 for 25%, etc.

Then in every result script where XP is rewarded it could be done like:

rewardXP *XPMultiplier

» Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:13 am

Thanks for the reply Povuholo..

While on the subject of slowing down xp etc.(Really wish I knew how to mod reduced quest xp etc. and/or even where to find the global reference that might let me tweak it without having to go through each individual quest)

Would a slower levelling mod be compatible with the tweaks/less is more/XPR or XPR extreme?and if so..where should it go in the load order..before or after Arwen's mods?

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:40 pm

My Reduced Quest XPR module already is pretty uniform across all quests . . . I basically reduced the experience points rewards (XPR) for all default quests by 90%. For instance, when you escape from Vault 101, default was 200 experience points, which I reduced to 20 XPs (200 - 200 * 0.90). Essentially this means that when you use my mod, most the default quests give rewards that are 1/10th what you received in the default. The only exception was for the small XP rewards, like the DC Librarian XPReward, which I reduced less (was 10XPR/book, now 2XPR/book).

I had to manually edit every since quest script. I don't believe that there is any way to do this globally, since the XPRs were not done with global modifiers. So it would be a lot of work to redo this again, with less reduction. If I was getting a bunch of requests for this, I would consider doing it . . . but right now I've got more than enough work in just keeping my mod updated and trying to get the GOTY patches finished.

Yes, you can use my Reduced Quest XPR module with my Reduced XPR mod (as I do in my own game). I probably should have made this clear in the ReadMe, but I do have it explained well on my website:

"Note: this module enhances my Reduced XPR mod, and the two are really meant to be used together (but are not in any way dependant on each other)."

I load my Reduced XPR mod last, just to ensure that no other mods overwrite it. And I load my Reduced Quest XPR module just before my Realism Core module (which is near the end of my load order).

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:04 pm

Thanks for the reply Arwen...
Looks like a modular quest reward system would be a lot of work then seeing as each quest needs to be individually tweaked in regard of reward..
Shame really as some sort of global modifier that had an effect on all quests.....modded and original would have been useful...as even with your main quest XP reduction..modded quests can still upset tha balance in rgard to their experience rewards.
There is a mod I stumbled across(Think I mentioned it before...Realistic XP by Vovenok)..that appears to help to an extent...something to do with experience being modified by stats..generally downwards if the parameters are set high enough.
Not sure exactly how it works but in a new game with your xpr extreme and less is more running....on exiting vault 101..was at a more manageable 95/200 xp.......thus no instant level up etc.

» Thu Oct 14, 2010 8:16 pm

Hey 'Tazmanius,

As it turns out, I just discovered that my Reduced Quest XPR module has some minor incompatibility issues with both Broken Steel and Point Lookout. While I was struggling to come up with a better way to reduce the experience points for completing quests, I finally came up with a solution that globally reduces the XPR points. I'm setting my new XPR multiplier to 30%, which will globally decrease ALL XPR points by 70% . . . which means that you will only receive 60 points for escaping Vault 101 (instead of the default 200 points).

The cool part is this is done without making edits to all the default quests. The downside is that it only reduces the XPR points and not any other rewards (like the amount of caps you receive), and it will not be compatible with my Reduced XPR mod. This means that that all experience points will be reduced by the the exact same percentage (while my Reduced XPR mod reduces the points for kills more than the other rewards).

But I feel that the pluses far outweigh the minuses, since my new method is much more compatible AND, since I'm doing this with a global modifier, it is very easy to change the percentage . . . although this is still somewhat limited, as I have configure my mod for each allowed percentage point. But you'll be able to select from a 0% reduction, to an 90% reduction (generally in increments of 10).

This will be included in version 4.7 of my Tweaks, and will be part of the Realism Core (and my Reduced Quest XPR module will be eliminated).