it works with your file

thank you very much

My Realism Tweaks already gives Power Armor a bonus in carry weight . . . by increasing your carrying capacity by 75% of the armor's weight when worn (regular armor only carries 50% of its weight). Since my encumbrance penalties are based on your carrying capacity, you're already getting a bonus when you wear Power Armor . . . so any other reduction in encumbrance would be pretty unbalancing.


I haven't tried PPA, as I'm not into using PA, since my character is relies more on stealth and only wears light armor. But I am working on balancing out Power Armor . . . in addition to my GOTY patches (where I've rebalanced most of the GOTY armor now). I've also added a new feature (which will be in v.4.9), where any armor that you scavenge off a dead NPC will be in pretty poor shape. I'm also considering adding a PA perk, where you need the perk just to use PA . . . and there will be a negative side effect (probably to stealth).

So I'm wondering how compatible your PPA, with your patch for my Tweaks, with be with my own philosophy behind my mod.

The central concept of the Powered Power Armor mod is that power armor becomes sort of a vehicle. You get larger stat bonuses than with vanilla, at the cost of having to keep the armor charged, and, in the next release, the risk of having some armors explode during combat. That, plus the high upgrade costs and -20 penalty to stealth, are what I'm hoping will provide the balance. One thing I could do though is remove the default "Power Assist" carryweight boost that is automatically applied to all charged power armors (I've already toned it down for ART from 75 to 40, so that the overall boost from power armor works out to my intended 75). I could also reduce the Lower Liquid Cooling carryweight bonus from 40 to something more like 10 or 20. TRO's bonus comes with the overheating penalty - its even more limiting than strain, forcing you to use the toggleable speed and carryweight boost tactically to dash from cover to cover or close the distance to your enemy for a melee attack.

I've written the compatibility patch (I know I'll be using it at least), and am testing it out, and the effect is subtle. What I've done is:

1) Back calculate the player's carry capacity without any power armor carryweight boost by subtracting the carryweight boost from the player's max carryweight actor value.
2) Subtract the power armor's carry weight boost from the total inventory weight to determine the amount of weight carried by the player.
3) Use those numbers to calculate an adjusted "inventory weight:carry capacity" ratio
4) Substituted that number into your calculation of MoveBaseSpeed when power armor is worn

There's also a great deal of tuning that can be performed with the TRO configuration. By adjusting the speed bonus and the Strength Amplification Factor, you can:

Set the speed bonus to its lowest setting and increase the Strength Amplification Factor to the highest value that won't cause hazardous overheating. This will minimize the player's adjusted encumberance, letting you haul more weight across long distances.

or

Set the speed bonus very high, and the SAF to something low. You'll overheat very quickly (within a couple of seconds) and strain will not be mitigated very much, but during combat a couple of seconds of speed every once in a while might be all you need.



It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm intending to implement a feature where power armor breaks down into sub components during combat. Basically, if an NPC's overall armor health or limb condition is low enough at the time of death, certain armor components will be rendered into scrap metal. If the microfusion pack detonated, there won't be much left at all. You'll need rank 1 of a "Power Armor Mechanic" just to recognize any recoverable pieces amid the junk. With rank 2, you'll be able to reassemble the pieces into power armor, provided you've managed to salvage a complete set. I'm thinking the components will be the chassis, microfusion pack, chest plate, left and right leg plating, left and right arm plating, left and right upper servos, and left and right lower servos.

I don't know how you're implementing your power armor degredation, but what I could probably do is add a delay before the power armor is split up into subcomponents, meaning your adjusted armor health would be used to determine which components remained intact. Players using the ART/PPA compatibility patch would see complete sets of power armor become much rarer.



I'm not really sure how this would work out, there's already a power armor perk, though I guess you could remove the existing means of obtaining it (Paladin Gunny and Operation Anchorage). Would the penalty apply when you weren't wearing power armor? A permanent hit to stealth just because you know how to use power armor would be tough to justify, though a character that used power armor all the time might become physically weaker (although that's already a part of IMCN).

Well, i'll nitpick on the repair in your mod, and if you'd like i can perform the first half of the suggestion the second half not so much.

Repair feels easy mode and completely [censored] for other weapons.

I've always felt energy weapons should have cross repair ( Laser pistols with Laser rifles , plasma pistols with plasma rifles etc etc) Things with similar firing mechanics should be repairable with one another .32 pistols should not repair hunting rifles.

Crafted weapons should repair with the materials used to craft the item.one thing also is DLC weapons arnt covered in your mod atm, and scrap metal should only be used for repair if you have scavanger perk and 50+ repair.

I do not understand how you can feel that my mod makes repairs too easy. If you're using my Hard-Core module, merchant repairs cost twice as much as default, and you need a lot more repair items to do self repairs (each item used improves the item way less then in the default game). Yes, I did make it so merchants can repair your items much more . . . but merchant repairs are expensive, and my Hard-Core module makes caps much harder to come by. So how exactly is my mod making repairs easier?

My Realism Core includes a major overhaul of most of the repair lists and it does add cross repair to all the energy weapons . . . you can repair laser pistols with laser rifles, and the same is true with the plasma weapons. And you can repair the crafted weapons with the materials that are used to create them. Hunting rifles fire the same ammo as .32 caliper pistols, so why shouldn't they be cross repairable?

My repair list are greatly expanded . . . so that you can actually used some items that were totally useless in the default game . . . such as adding electronic parts like sensory modules and conductors to some of the energy weapon repair lists. I also added items that include lenses . . . like cameras and ophthalmoscopes.

I do agree that I could make repairs more difficult, by adding something like a scavenger perk (and I may do that at some point), but my goal was to increase the ability to do self repairs (with many more items that can be used to do the repairs with), increase the repair skills of all merchants (since any Wasteland merchant would have to be good at doing repairs to stay in business), while making repairs more costly (in caps and/or in the amount of parts needed). My Tweaks does not make repairs easier.

Povu- I noticed when I shoot in first person and I am looking straight down. The gun can do damage to me. I never use melee so I couldn't say if its similar. But one possible explanation.

Imp, I don't want you to get the wrong impression . . . I'm not saying that your mod makes PA unbalanced . . . just that I'm not sure that it fits in all that well with my Tweaks, since it seems to give way more benefits to using PA than penalties. In the default game there's very little reason not to use PA once you are trained to use it . . . since its benefits far outweigh any consequences that are attached to using it. One of the biggest focuses in my Tweaks is the addition of consequences for your action and balancing of armor and weapons. But I have not used your PPA mod, so my concerns may be way off base. So take my comments as just me thinking out loud . . . and not as criticism for what your mod does. My guess is that you're trying to give this the same balance as you did with your IMCN mod . . . which I'm a big fan of (although I do think that a compatibility patch is probably needed to balance out some things out when our mods are combined).

Lol, I was sort of anticipating this debate. You're right about my PA benefits, and its been a constant struggle for me to try to invent/preserve reasons that a player wouldn't want to use power armor. What it sort of comes down to is, if it really were me stuck in a post apocalyptic wasteland, I would have trouble coming up with scenarios where I wouldn't want to be wearing power armor. In a gunfight, being highly resistant to bullets is hard to beat. So I'm clinging to the one thing that's left - stealth. I've introduced a sizable stealth penalty, and up to this point I've resisted requests to implement some sort of integral stealth system like the CSA's. What I've said I'll do for the next release is implement stealth with the assumption that power armor is noisy, and no amount of camouflage or fancy stealth field can cover that up. So I'll make the stealth benefit from stealth boys be dependent upon whether the player is using powered up power armor - and give power armor wearers the option to turn off their power assist for quieter operation (probably via a "Stealth Package" upgrade that includes quieter joints and plating, and the power assist toggle switch). That would mean that in order to get the normal benefit of a stealth boy, you'd have to accept a crippling 50% reduction in movement speed, and -6 agility. Any stealth oriented player would obviously choose the CSA instead, but the option for occasional power armor stealth moves would be there when needed.

I would love it if the engine supported the kinds of things that would really make wearing cumbersome armor a no go - navigating claustrophobic spaces, molding yourself to cover, operating vehicles and some weapons, competent hand to hand fighting. But most of those are beyond my abilities as a modder.


I'm open for input regarding IMCN. I'm guessing the main thing is probably the magnitude of the nutrition bonuses, and I've already gotten some great, detailed suggestions as to how to rebalance them. For ART though there's always the option to disable them entirely.

I'm really liking the latest ART by the way. I'm finding I have to actually type TAI into the console when I want to test a new feature - otherwise I have trouble getting a shot off.

*Edit - Also, even if you're not a power armor user yourself, nearly all of Powered Power Armor's upgrades can be found in the hands of your power armor equipped enemies. Going up against someone with an Energy Pulse Generator is especially interesting.

Well, let me finally review some the new version.
I'll try not to get to nit-picky...since, frankly, the overall game-play is just getting more perfect every time.

Things that jump out of the otherwise smooth experience are immersion breakers, I guess, since I had no real bugs.
Things like the masculine panting sound. Now, I have no idea how heavy breathing would sound from out the first person as a female.
But to me it sounds a bit to heavy. This could be just superficial at my side, but still.
Oh, yes, well, babies and children have the same sound, but hell, I'm not going to whine about such a small part of the game.
Though, If you keep immersion experience on a high level, these phases of your characters life are important.

The Whack and Shot effect have become even more awesome. I was all in a frantic when I stepped on a mine, to be dazzled and hazed and stumble upon a super mutant around the corner with a minigun in his hands.
Taking cover as good as a I might, applying my last stimack to y broken arms so I could use my trusty rifle, I swayed around to kill the beast.
Limping and unaware I tried to find my exit out of the building...which left me blind for another mine just behind my back. Boom.
I blacked out and awoke with pretty much all my bones broken.

I love the effects and the way they're brought upon the character.
The only thing I might add is your name appearing in the effect.Which of course is awesome, since you deserve all the credit for this and more, but again, I know it was your mod that did this, so simply stating what has happened to me would be enough, I think.

Lastly, I know you hate FOOK and think it counteracts every aspect of your intentions with your tweaks.
But I have been using them together now for a long time. And indeed, at first some things were out of balance.
But since the last few version, this balance has somehow been event and increased the difficulty and harshness of the world to a huge extend.
With the right appliance of a bashed patch, all is fine. Now I am able to use a large variety of gear and have to be alert since the enemies are as deadly as ever with the same gear.

The visualFx as part of the main mod is nice, though I'm still not entirely sure my settings are tight for this, since I tend to play on already dark light settings so that interiors are more hallow and surprising.
The outside lightning is just fine for me I guess.
Still, the effect of putting on eye-wear is nice indeed.

Again, thanks for this amazing experience!

Thanks! And I really appreciate the feedback . . . even when it is nit-picky, as it sometimes make me rethink some of my changes/balances.


I made my breathing sound to be as unisix as possible . . . but I pretty much based it on my own personal experience as an athlete . . . so I really expected that the guys would complain that my breathing sounds were not masculine enough for their male characters. So your opinion that my sounds were too masculine was a surprise. The only other complaint I have had was from one users who wrote that my sounds were way too loud. Perhaps it is just the differences in sound systems, or in where the audio setting are set at. The other thing is that when guys play as a female character, they have unrealistic expectations as to what the average female sounds like (to herself, which is what my breathing sounds are made to represent). I was a member of the women's varsity volleyball team in college (and also a member of a coed sailing team) . . . so I can tell you first hand that there is nothing dainty about the sounds an out off breath female makes. Your point about baby and child panting sounds is valid . . . but my mod was made to be used with the default game characters . . . where, other than the brief time in the tutorial, your character is 19 years old.


Thanks. As to my name being attached to my spells, thats more of a convenience for me as a modder than anything else. I also preface all of my scripts and quests with my first name, since that makes it very easy to pull up all my changes in the GECK (by just typing Arwen in the filter, and then clicking on all).


You are never going to convince me that FOOK is compatible with my Tweaks . . . as its focus is pretty much totally opposite my Hard-Core module's focus . . . since a large part of this module is about increasing the game's RPG aspects; and in making guns and ammo more rare . . . while much of FOOK's focus is to make the game more FPS-like and in making guns more abundant. Plus I've rebalanced most of the default weapons in the game, and adjusted the weapon skills, weapon condition penalties, localized damage, armor AR, and NPC/Creature to match this balance. Most all of FOOK's weapons and armor would be very over powered if they were added to my mod.


With version 4.8, I've made it so sunglasses are no longer meant to be used indoors, as I felt that was more realistic (plus I finally figured out how to alter the effects when indoors). So I've intentionally made your vision darker when you are wearing sunglasses inside. I've tested my mod with Darker Interiors, Realistic Interior Lighting, and Fellout . . . and my imod effects work as intended with all three.

You're very welcome.

Arwen, awesome job with the update. But...

I was on my way to kill some mole rats when I passed over a bridge full of landmines and shot one to blow the rest up. When the bullet hit it, the landmine went flying into the water. Same thing happened to others when I shot them. Did you do this purposelessly? They all blew up with a frag grenade.

I leveled up to level 3 and I got the music for it, and about a minute later the screen popped up. Picked my perk and it froze. I know others have had this issue, but I never have before.

Thanks!

But . . . I didn't make any changes to frag mines in v.4.8 . . . in fact mines have not changed since v.3.0 . . . so my guess is that another mod is doing this. All I ever changed in the mines was the explosion itself . . . stuff like force, radius, and made the knockdowns from explosions happen all the time, rather than just some times. My blast effect is just an object effect that is attached to explosions . . . not to the mine,

Again, I doubt that the level up freeze is being caused by my mod. That bug seems to happen when object effects are attached to certain helmets. Way back in an early version of my VisionFX mod, I added FX to some of the helmets . . . but that was removed and is not part of my Realism Tweaks at all. Take a look at any mods you may be using that add object effect to helmets.

Arwen. I have yet to grab any unofficial patches. What(if any) ones do you use? I'm trying to tone the length of time my saved games load at. 10 mins seems a bit lengthy on 4gb ram, but So many varieties of machinery. =)

I has some CTD problems when I used the Unofficial Patch, which I never could track down, so I stopped using it. I'm currently using "Error Correction" (search FO3Nexus).

But if your saves are taking 10 minutes to load, you have something seriously wrong.
My desktop system only has 4 GB of RAM, and my saves generally load in 25 to 45 seconds.

Try defragging your hard drive. Also I'm using a little program called Smart Ram (free version, by IObit) that improves my game performance.

hi arwen

thanks for helping me out - i'm now playing with your realism tweaks, Real Injuries (inlcuding PipNO patch) and primary needs.

However, I think sleep may be bugged. I've needed to rely on sleep more and more to get my HP's back but I have found my self unable to get back even half my HP's from 7 hours sleep. I think the sleep for Primary needs may be bugged because 'sleep' does not appear on my item list under quests>primary needs. It only refers to hunger and thirst.

Is it supposed to not be there and are the diminishing returns from my sleep intended or do you think this is a bug?

Does anyone else get this problem?

Interesting, thanks.

I've recently stumbled over some mines that were not armed, they were just lying there waiting to picked up. This was next to the Talon Headquarters (Fort Bannister ?) Could you check if the mines on the bridge are armed?

I think there should be a bigger 'penalty' to fast travelling. I fast travelled from the top east corner of the wasteland, the Republic of Dave, to the south west, to Rivet City, and that took 50 game minutes. With the reduced timescale you may be able to do it faster by normal travelling, but that's assuming you don't run into any hostiles, and it also doesn't take in account the fact that with the encumbrance module you can't run the entire route without taking breaks. So fast travel makes things really easy, by skipping all that.

I think that, especially with Primary Needs in mind, it would be nice if more time would pass when fast travelling long distances. That way you actually have to pay some attention to your hunger/thirst levels before travelling. And it just feels a little weird to me to fast travel so far, only to see time pass from 7 AM to 7:50 AM.

I wouldn't mind if it took, lets say, 5 times as long. Maybe even more. So that the Republic of Dave->Rivet City journey would take a little over 4 hours. Is this possible?

I'm using Imp's More Complex Needs [IMCN] in my own game. It still requires PI/PN and is the equivalent of using the PipNO patch, only it fixes/improves Primary Needs.

But you can configure PN in its in-game options menu:

Sleep healing: There are three choices are available.
Preset 1. Vanilla: Sleep makes full recover.
Preset 2. Endurance Base: Sleep effect: Recover (END)% / hour except Crippled Limb(s). [default setting]
Preset 3. Endurance + Strength Base: Sleep effect: Recover ((STR+END)/2)% / hour except Crippled Limb(s).
Preset 4. No Healing from Sleep: Sleep does not heal both health and limbs.

I haven't even looked at changing Fast Travel, since I NEVER use it. I just figured that most people who use probably don't want any requirements/penalties attached to it.

The best way to change it i mentioned before is that you cant fast travel with a crippled leg.

Found the problem. It was Amy Wong companion mod. odd behavior to it. longer your games up time. The longer you wait to load a save game. Removed her. My game loads in about 6 seconds. Go figure.

Not trying to rush you. I was curious when that shotgun fix deally was going to be added. So I thought I would wait for that instead of the current. =)

The shotgun number of projectiles fix is actually pretty minor. In fact it is a non-issue for many users, depending on their PC . . . I didn't fix it sooner because I didn't notice it at all. And the current shotguns are pretty balanced in v.4.8.2 (they are perhaps a bit overpowered, but their spread is so high that it would only be so for very close targets). In v.4.9 I'm rebalancing a bunch of the default weapons, adjusting weapon skill damage, and increasing spread when guns are in poor condition. I've also added a number of detection events to my dynamic stealth, making repairs more necessary, and made a bunch of other changes. I'm also working on a number of new things, that have been in my to-do list for a while . . . some of which will be added to v.4.9.

My main focus right now is to finish my Realism Core / GOTY patch, as I want it to be part of my next update . . . and there's still a LOT that I have to balance in all the additional content in those 5 DLCs. So v.4.9 is not going to be released until next weekend (at the very earliest) . . . and it may take me much longer than that, as it is impossible for me to tell how much work is still left to do. I've nearly completed rebalancing all the GOTY armor (and its attached effects), which has been a LOT of work, since it also involved quite a bit of rebalancing of my current armor changes (in my Realism Core). But I've barely looked at the weapons, perks and other GOTY content.

Hm...Well the level 3 freeze up is still going on, I'll take everything out but Arwen's mod. Then pop everything back in and hopefully it'll all go smoothly.

I've had the freeze on level up thing (when confirming the chosen perk) happen to me too, around level 7 I think. Still, after I kept on trying it would eventually come through, and I haven't had the issue since. I don't think it's related to ART.