Scarcity and the wasteland: Food, ammo, and medication are much more precious.
-Random food, stimpacks, and ammo occur at about 25% of the vanilla rate.
-Military-grade weapons like assault rifles and miniguns are much rarer, and wastelanders frequently carry post-apocalyptic makeshift weapons.
-Repair improves item condition less for each item sacrificed. However, weapons and armors were damaged much too quickly in the vanilla game, and this has been slowed.
-My First Infirmary is just a container with contents approximately equal in value to the purchase price.

Combat pacing: Players and enemies won't survive multiple gunshots to the face.
-Player and enemy health scale very little with level, and Broken Steel monsters have a lot less health than before.
-Basic pistols are closer in power to rifles - a headshot with anything is deadly.
-Low weapon skill penalizes damage less (though still penalizes accuracy.)
-Shooting limbs is less effective than the head or torso for killing an opponent outright, but crippled effects are much more debilitating than before.
-Many ballistic weapons have the "Impact" property indicating an increased chance to stagger enemies.
-NPCs are more likely to seek cover from gunfire.
-Point Lookout weapons no longer do extra damage when used against the player.
-Auto-aim is minimized.

Injury and rest: Only the body can really repair itself.
-Rest is the cornerstone of healing - but it takes several hours rather than being instant.
-Crippled limbs require extra rest to become un-crippled.
-Healing from rest is capped when extremely hungry, thirsty, or suffering blood loss.
-Food and drink do not directly heal, only satisfy hunger or thirst.
-When going more than a few days without food or water, increasing starvation and dehydration penalties begin to apply.
-Recovery from these penalties does not occur immediately upon eating or drinking, but incrementally over a period of staying fed and hydrated.
-Medical interventions are for emergencies - not the first resort.
---Blood packs remedy blood pressure loss from extreme injury.
---Med-X allows temporary relief from crippling effects.
---Stimpacks restore health, limbs, and blood pressure - but using too many too quickly can be fatal.
-Healing items are not instant - their healing is applied over time. Taking a second one before the first finishes resets the duration but does not double the rate of healing.
-Doctors can always help you, but you can't fast travel when crippled or from urban DC.
-Your enemies don't waste time while you're resting - many places respawn that did not before.

VATS: No longer god mode.
-Weapon spread is more meaningful in VATS. The difference between a shotgun and a sniper rifle should be much more obvious.
-Damage taken during slo-mo increased to 40%, and slo-mo doesn't last as long.
-AP takes twice as long to regenerate.

Sneaking: Also not god mode.
-Sneaking is easier than before in darkness and light armor.
-You are much more likely to be detected in heavy armor or in bright light.
-You will probably be detected in the stealth suit if you get very close.
-NPCs that have been alarmed will search farther for an enemy they can't see.
-Noise from all weapons has been reviewed, gunpowder weapons generally getting louder and energy weapons quieter.

Leveling and specialization: Defining who you are requires defining who you are not.
-Depending on INT, 8-13 skill points are gained per level, instead of 11-20.
-Tagged skills increase by 2 points per point invested.
-Educated and Comprehension perks have increased prerequisites.
-Strength has a greater effect on melee damage and carrying capacity.
-Agility has a greater effect on Action Points.
-Charisma has a greater effect on speech challenges.
-Perception affects gun spread.
-Some XP rewards are reduced.
-XP gain is not increased on difficulties above normal.

Miscellanous:
-Gloomier, greyer sky with darker nights
-Time passes at 3x realtime instead of 30x.
-Grenades are less bouncy.
-Caps have weight.
-Power armors support their own weight, as advertised, and have greater DR and bonuses.
-Logical additions to repair lists

It's Bubbly! now uses the COOK food interoperability system. This allows food added by mods to more easily satisfy hunger effects added by mods like It's Bubbly! As a result, bubbly-healing-dlc.esp is no longer required. If you have one left over from a previous version of It's Bubbly!, it should be deleted.

Compatibility patches have been provided for:
Mart's Mutant Mod RC 5
Energy Visuals Enhanced Beta .95
RH_Ironsights .86a
Fallout Food 1.3
Unique Weapons with Unique Textures 1.5

Base:
Creatures set to be initially dead will no longer respawn.
Rivet City and Tenpenny armor DR increased to equal Talon armor.
Schematic prices reduced by half.

Plugins: Point Lookout tribal clothes are no longer particularly protective or valuable.

Weapons:
Improved repair lists for makeshift weapons.
Fixed a bug that caused flares to disappear early.

Healing:
Added starvation/dehydration penalties for going extremely long periods without food or drink.
Medic armor does not use Med-X until a limb is much closer to being crippled.

Weather: Added actual illumination to fake lights in Megaton, so it doesn't look strange with darker nights.

Base:
Rads from water activators (drinking and immersion) reduced to 4x from 5x vanilla.
Removed the fire confidence reduction, as it seemed to have no effect.
There should no longer be a possibility of hitting level 2 before the skill gain adjustment is in effect.
Changes to repair rate were moved from the weapon module to the base module.

Weapons:
The flare gun more reliably sets people on fire.
Flares that impact actors no longer leave fires floating unsupported in the air.
The BB shotgun uses the correct projectile graphic (though the swarm of tiny rockets was cute.)

Weather: Fine tuning of light and fog.

Base:
The Cannibal perk can be taken before level 12 if 100 humans have been killed by the player.
A new perk "Nukexpert" is available which allows you to get more cola from vending machines.
NPCs will more often look for cover from gunfire and search for cover in a larger radius.
NPCs will search a larger radius for hidden enemies.
Endurance contribution to health scales -50 to +50 instead of 0 to 200.
Removed the global NPC health reduction the vanilla game applies when the PC is level 4 and below.
Increased the benefit of strength on melee damage by 28%
Many ballistic and melee weapons have the "Impact" property, indicating increased chance to stagger.
Frag mines will almost always cause a knockdown.
Enclave soldiers no longer carry food made from mutated organisms.
Ice-cold Nuka-Cola eventually warms up.
Cardboard bedding may now be picked up and dropped. Some can be found in Springvale.
Reduced the base chance of limb dismemberment from 50% to 10%.
Weapons that set the target on fire do less damage initially and more through the fire effect.
Being on fire makes NPCs more likely to flee.

DLCs:
Weapon impact and NPC cover behavior extended to DLC weapons/NPCs.
Weapons that set the target on fire do less damage initially and more through the fire effect.
The Slo-burn flamer is more fuel efficient than a standard flamer, rather than less efficient.

Weapons:
Impact added to makeshift weapons.
Added a flare gun.
Raiders' .44 magnums have the correct rate of fire and are no longer marked unlootable.
The rubber band gun uses the correct projectile graphic.
Crude shotguns do useful damage now.

Healing:
The benefits of rest are no longer limited to 9 hours per day.
Healing from rest is capped when extremely hungry, thirsty, or suffering blood loss.
Food and drink do not directly heal, only satisfy hunger or thirst.
Occassional unobtrusive messages will indicate your hunger or thirst. The messages become more urgent in tone when reaching the point that healing is affected.
There are no penalties from hunger or thirst other than this limitation on healing through rest.
Blood loss occurs quickly when under 15% health and slowly under 50% health.
Blood loss can be remedied by blood packs, stimpacks, or doctors.
Blood packs can be used by anyone with Hematophage or with a Medicine skill of at least 40.
Besides countering blood loss, blood packs heal to a percentage of your health but provide no healing when used above that percentage (which ranges from 17% to 35%, depending on skill.)
Using blood packs through hematophage doesn't take advantage of the skill bonus, but can be done in combat.
Fixed a bug that caused fast travel to be enabled or disabled inappropriately.

Weather:
New optional module with purely cosmetic changes to the sky and weather. Weather will shift through a variety of overcast, cloudy, and foggy weathers with darker nights and no green tinting.

Is it possible to reduce NPC accuracy? The superhuman accuracy of even the weakest raiders don't mix well with terribly effective weaponry. I'm joining the army not until July but common sense says you can't score a headshot from 700 meters, while running, and with a half-broken makeshift weapon.

NPCs are subject to the spread settings on weapons, so that alone prevents them from being superhumanly accurate except with the few weapons like sniper rifles (and then only with sufficient small guns skill, so that they are in fact expert marksmen.) I'll take another look over my added weapons, but I was deliberately stingy with their damage, accuracy, and ammo efficiency. They're supposed to be terrible weapons. Beyond that, I haven't investigated what settings might govern NPCs aiming - it hasn't presented itself as problematic in my own testing.

Congratulations on the release. I'm already in the middle of a game with minibalance 1.2, what do I need to do to upgrade safely to Bubbly? I don't want to start a new game.

While I haven't tried this mod in particular, a lot of high-lethality low-wealth mods have a problem with NPCs armed with automatic weapons. Because the NPCs don't have to worry about ammunition they can spray entire magazines in the general direction of the plaer, repeatedly. And because it only takes a few bullets to kill, if only 1 in 20 bullets hit that will still kill you in short order. The same weapon in the hands of the player will have a drastically shorter range, because the player needs to hit with a high proportion of their bullets or they will quickly run out. This skews long-distance encounters in the favour of the NPCs.

While I haven't tried this mod in particular, a lot of high-lethality low-wealth mods have a problem with NPCs armed with automatic weapons. Because the NPCs don't have to worry about ammunition they can spray entire magazines in the general direction of the plaer, repeatedly. And because it only takes a few bullets to kill, if only 1 in 20 bullets hit that will still kill you in short order. The same weapon in the hands of the player will have a drastically shorter range, because the player needs to hit with a high proportion of their bullets or they will quickly run out. This skews long-distance encounters in the favour of the NPCs.

-Repair improves item condition less for each item sacrificed. However, weapons and armors were damaged much too quickly in the vanilla game, and this has been slowed considerably.

Really like where you're going with this. Reminds me a lot of the Redux mod for STALKER, which improved that game tremendously. I don't use a HUD, so the messages regarding the need to eat and drink are a great addition, as long as they aren't too obtrusive, as you say they are not.

One question: you say that there is no need to eat or drink beyond the fact that doing so aids in healing ... I understand that you don't want the player to have to micro-manage such things, but I think that if you go for days or weeks without eating or drinking it should have some sort of impact on your overall health. It is also a central part of The Road, with the characters constantly trying to find daily subsistence ... And it certainly fits into the world of Fallout as well. You are out there in the wasteland, trying to survive?and staving off starvation should be a part of that. Any possibility you could add this?

This is kind of a minor point, but ?I knew you were going to change the name, but "It's Bubbly" kind of surprised me. Having read The Road several times (haven't seen the movie) I get the reference, but it still seems kind of "cute" when your mod is anything but, and I'm guessing there will be plenty of people who might find it baffling ... Of course it doesn't change the quality of the mod, itself, but I'm guessing you want as many people to try it as possible and I hope the name doesn't throw them off ...

Considering the scarcity of stimpaks and that you can no longer apply an unlimited amount without ill effects (minibalance 1.2 reduced one point of Endurance for every applied stimpak, I don't know if its still the same with Bubbly) AND since now food does not heal damage (a relatively cheap alternative to replenish health) I guess that you will eventually have to eat food in order to rest and replenish health. Having said that though, for the sake of immersion and atmoshere if a player manages to not eat food for several days maybe that could progressively stop his natural regeneration and in exteme cases start loosing health continiously (sort of like an inverse regeneration). Just a few ideas.

Thanks for the feedback.



I'm not sure how much Bubbly would help you go HUDless. The messages tell you about hunger, but not your current HP - which is not the same thing. It would not at all surprise me if there's a mod out there that uses imagespace modifiers (red tinting blurring, narrowing FOV, blood textures) to communicate HP in an immersive fashion.

Detrimental effects of long term starvation would definitely fit with the theme, but I wanted to take it one step at a time, introducing hunger as a mechanic for the first time in this version. As I've said before I don't want to turn the game into a Tamagochi, but penalties that accrue beyond a week without food would not be out of line. However, if the balance is correct, someone would have to go to great lengths to avoid needing to eat to heal long before a week of game time. Compatibility patches with some of the most popular food/cooking mods in the next major version would help clear the way for starvation penalties.

I can definitely see how the name could be viewed as slightly suspicious. For awhile I worked under the title of "The Fallout Road" but I decided it was more fitting to allude to The Road than directly reference it in the title, and also the point of the change was to become less generic and more memorable. It's lightheartedness is in contrast with the grimness of The Road, but then ironic optimism is a hallmark of the Fallout series.




Stimpacks have the same effect as they did in 1.2:
Each one reduces endurance by 1 (I believe for 4 game hours). When you're at 1 and use another, it puts a debuff on you that lowers all the specials to 1 for 15 minutes. Using another one with that debuff kills you. There are progressive messages so its hard to kill yourself accidentally. It may sound harsh, but with enemies dieing faster, you're not necessarily getting bloodied by every enemy you meet. There are two scenarios I run repeatedly as I'm tweaking things to get a feel for balance: a character straight out of the vault with non-combat skills tagged going through Springvale elementary; and my main character with maxxed EW and power armor clearing The Mall of supermutants. The stimpack limit has not been stopping either one, but certainly did put an end to my attempt to take the level 2 to The Mall.

I can definitely see how the name could be viewed as slightly suspicious. For awhile I worked under the title of "The Fallout Road" but I decided it was more fitting to allude to The Road than directly reference it in the title, and also the point of the change was to become less generic and more memorable. It's lightheartedness is in contrast with the grimness of The Road, but then ironic optimism is a hallmark of the Fallout series.

Is it possible to reduce NPC accuracy? The superhuman accuracy of even the weakest raiders don't mix well with terribly effective weaponry. I'm joining the army not until July but common sense says you can't score a headshot from 700 meters, while running, and with a half-broken makeshift weapon.

This, I like a lot. Hunting rifles suis generis might be common, but a hunting rifle at 90% condition is a prized possession that an expert gunsmith has made from the best parts of a dozen lesser examples. Allows there to be rare and valuable weapons in the game without having to add a bunch of weapon types.

-Basic pistols are closer in power to rifles - a headshot with anything is deadly.

Forget what anyone says about the title. It's not that important, but IMO, it captures the spirit of both The Road and the Fallout universe in general anyway.

This looks like an amazing mod, and it is almost exactly what I've always been looking for.

Okay, you've convinced me. The name is very fitting. In fact, maybe Cormac Mccarthy should have called his book "It's Bubbly," instead of "The Road," because, you know, "It's Bubbly" really captures the spirit of what he was writing about ...