Does anyone know if there is a mod that tones down companion stats? It's already bad enough that most of them have 250+ HP (and some hidden DR it seems, they definitely lose health slower than I do), but not only that, they auto-heal as soon as they're out of combat. I was wondering if it's possible to make them more like Fallout 2-type companions where you still have to protect them in combat if they're coming under fire.

Thanks

EDIT:

Two things -

If you are playing on any difficulty level higher than "Normal", you are turning your followers into tanks, just like you are enemies. To quiet that dynamic down, you would drop your game difficulty setting down to "normal" and try some mods which focus on making just the enemies more difficult.

As far as follower Fallout 2 type considerations, my follower overhaul mod Phalanx is inspired by the Fallout 2 follower setup. It is not identical to it, tho. Among other things, the player must self-limit the number of followers relative to the difficulty of the game environment that's set up (there's no hard limit on how many followers you can recruit at once). You might read about it and see what you think, or try it. Relz thread is linked in my sig. Also, the FOOK beta has the bleeding-edge Phalanx in it ( FOOK beta version 2 which is coming out soon-ish will have a buncha fixes for that version).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1bRZt0k4SQ

Is it possible to disable the 'essential' NPC setting in your mod?

Also the reason why I don't do what you suggested and put the game mode on normal but download a realism mod is because while you can download mods that increase enemy dmg, on normal enemies die too quickly.

I'd recommend fook2, it really does balance things out, especially if you use mmm's increased spawns. Failing that, have you considered using a mod that just increases the incap time for essential npcs? Greatly increasing that time will give you incentive to keep them alive. It also would bypass any frustration if they decide to blow themselves up or hand-feed a behemoth.

Will you just reload if they die anyway, or is dead dead? if the former, then it's better just to leave them essential. A good companion overhaul will make the unconcious time lengthy so if they keel over they're out of the fight for a good while, and won't auto-heal them after battle.

I don't believe so. The death handling is complicated and a pain in the ass to defeat, I didn't get into that.

They are not like the game's regular 'essential' setting and they do not auto heal after combat. You might read this explanation before you condemn all of Phalanx for that eh....

in Fallout 2, the player got exactly the same treatment as the followers. If a follower died, it was gone in that savegame state. If the player died, the game had a non-canonical ending right there, and you would see end screens and [censored], and you had to reload back to a save which you had hand-made earlier. The game would not auto-load your save under any circumstances.

In vanilla Fallout 3, the player gets an instant, auto-reload back to his most recent save if he dies. Follower deaths however, the game ignores. This is a discrepency which fallout 2 people feel but may not necessarily put their finger on.

I attempted to make it so that the player could choose to reload his game if a follower died. The script command which theoretically would do this reload crashed the game instead of worked. So, I needed to resolve this discrepency a different way.

The thing I came up with is that when a follower takes too much damage in a fight, they get knocked on their asses for the rest of the fight, and enter a state called "disabled". While disabled, they are useless in combat and in fact a nuisance. If you are level 13 or lower (its very easy to have a follower die for stupid reasons at those levels), to reverse this "disabled" status, the fight has to be over and you just follow some dialogue selections with the follower. If you are 14 or higher however, I expect you to keep them up in fights. If you let one go down in combat, I require you to not use the follower for combat again for the next 5 - 7 game days, and you have to deliver the follower to your owned base/campsite for that recovery period. You can use the wait key to wait the time while the follower is dismissed there, or, just leave the follower there and go do stuff.



Maybe you are not using the right enemy mods. The mod I worked on for example (Foes Reworked NG, primary author named Gahan) does increase enemy HP, as well as significantly increasing their damage. I was not suggesting "realism" mods, I was suggesting enemy-increasing mods. Did you check the video I linked earlier? That's not a realism mod, and those enemies didn't die too fast - I even had Charon go down in that fight despite my efforts to keep him up.

Prior to making this post, I already was using the standalone MMM increased 1-3 spawns.

So I downloaded Phalanx and Foes Reworked and have encountered a lot of bugs.

-Clover's collar is back on, and can't be removed via console like it usually should be. Can't remove it via either the trade menus either
-Jericho has 20 strength, 150+ small guns and big guns
-Jericho and Clover both have an insane amount of 10mm ammo and shotgun shells in their inventory
-For the first time in my life, I actually saw Jericho do the 'run/curl up into a ball' thing. It was so unbelievable, I had to screenshot it! http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/3333/jerichocower.jpg
-After changing Clover's skills once, it seems you can't change it back.

And this isn't a bug, but your version of Increased Spawns is the 4-7 Increased spawns version. Although you are correct in saying this adds a challenge, you shouldn't have to turn Fallout 3 into Smash TV in order to make things a challenge. I'm going to go back to the 1-3 version and let you know how Foes Reworked goes with that, but for now I think I am going to skip out on Phalanx. It's not other mods causing this problem. Phalanx and Foes Reworked were the only two I added this evening.

edit: Foes Reworked seems to cause my companions take a little more damage. Thanks for making the mod, it doesn't tone down companions but it tones up common enemies like raiders and mutants up enough so that it's once again a challenge. Still having problems with Phalanx though.

I didn't touch Clover's collar. If she has a near death, it will re-appear but that wasn't something I'd planned for, its how she works because its in her base inventory. That part is not a bug in either Phalanx or Fallout3.exe, it's how the base inventory works.

20 strength +150 small guns etc. is a vanilla bug with stat changing armor and followers. It looks ugly but it doesn't affect them too much I don't think (20 strength acts like 10 from what I can tell). It escalates further with Phalanx because to defeat certain destructive bugs in the game I have to force them to re-evaluate their inventories more frequently than vanilla does, so, that vanilla issue kicks in more.

Followers show up with like, 500 - 1000 ammo or something by design. It's the only free ammo they ever get, it's relative to attempting to balance out how poor the player is in beginning game and how extreme some of the fighting can be. If you see like 10,000 on them, that's different... there's a glitch that can happen rarely with 1.08 which can cause that, OR, some other mods can damage the distance-based weapon selection system and cause it. But that initial ammo, yeah, it is a large amount.

Jericho cowering: see the (disabled) next to his name? You let him have a near-death in combat and that's how they act afterwards. You have to fix him before you can use him again. You should have seen an explanatory message box pop up the first time you had a follower go disabled, and there will be a note in your pip boy explaining it too. Design thing, not bug.

Training followers' skillsets is only doable once per savegame by design. I meant for players to pick one and be stuck with it, just like the player himself makes skill choices and is stuck with them. But if you absolutely must re-do her, Gary who is alongside the Megaton wall resets her training variable if you say "I have a follower that is malfunctioning" and say to reset her.

Foes Reworked NG is still a bit of a work in progress, not quite perfect yet in fact. As you level into the mid-20's it becomes quite evil, you see quite a few of the Broken Steel mutants and they are rough.

Your choice on what to do obviously, but I don't see any Phalanx bugs described in your post... =p

edit: the next standalone Phalanx release will be 1.1, and it's coming out shortly after embedded FOOK version is out of beta which, hopefully, is sometime in May. That thing's got 4 months of work in it that the standalone version does not have. If you decide to keep Phalanx, you'll want to keep an eye out for that 1.1 jump, it's moved quite a bit ahead of standalone at this point. I should make a post in my main thread with some of what's coming in that one.
.

Ah, ok...thanks for clearing these bits up. I'm going to just trash the ammo though because it feels like cheating to use it.



I have a question about the Talons and Raiders. I see the new classes of them, but do regular Talons and Raiders each do more damage or just the new named ones? I am also noticing only 1-2 named raiders per raider camp (Kaelyn's, Charnel, etc) - is that normal?




I don't use FOOK. As great and as polished as it looks, I'm not really into the modern warfare overhaul mods. What does it do to followers?

If this is an established savegame, that would make sense. In brand-new games it may feel different.



I think they all come with better weapons such as .44s and so on. I'm not as familiar with Foes Reworked NG as with Phalanx - the main author behind Foes Reworked is this guy named Gahan and he has been disappeared for almost a year and a half, now. . Most of my work with Foes Reworked NG is with the Super Mutants.



That question has a somewhat convoluted answer. The situation this second is not what it will be when all is said and done.

FOOK2 is in beta right now, and that beta version has an embedded version of Phalanx that has several more months of work into it than the 1.08 standalone. The beta version 2 of FOOK in particular, expected out in maybe a week or so, is pretty polished (the current one not-so-much).

In the end, FOOK's followers will be pretty much identical to standalone Phalanx' followers, except that, well, fook adds like, I'm going to guess 200+ weapons to the game and the distance-based weap selection system in that version will deal with it all.

What's different now? well .. the version of Phalanx that comes out within the NEXT beta release, beta 2, works better than 1.08 and has bugfixes that 1.08 does not have yet. I put a post into the main Phalanx thread with some info on it.

I don't know what happens if you load Foes Reworked NG on top of FOOK2. Maybe it would work! Phalanx' followers pretty much wipe the ground with the standard FOOK enemies tbh, even when only 1 ranged-weapon-handling follower is hired. If someone wants to run several followers in FOOK they are really going to need an enemy boost such as MMM or something.

I just read this on Fallout 3 Nexus:




Is it possible to do this with Companions maybe?

Uh, many of those same mods beef up the enemies.

Relative to Phalanx, after an operation like this, followers will revert to their regular HP after a near-death. They only have 250 - 300 hp in the first place, including Fawkes. (vanilla game has higher hit points for Star Paladin Cross and Fawkes).



I know that my/Gahan's foes reworked NG one does but it also ups their DPS. I don't count it as a 'realism' mod though. Its a make-enemies-(primarily-mutants)-into-bastards mod. FWE has probably inherited this characteristic of increased enemy damage but I don't know the increased-spawns situation with FWE.

At Very Hard, the balance seems just fine for how many shots it takes to kill an enemy given the stage of the game I'm at. The only problem that I'm seeing with combat is the sturdiness of companion followers, which is why I posted this. Although since it's possible that some of the mods you're referring to could solve this problem, any suggestions? (Besides FoesReworked and Harder Wasteland, I have both)



So it is possible then? What would the console operation be? go into console target the companion, and type "modav health -100"?



FWE is compatible with MMM.

Use Very Hard is one of the problems, here. Those skill setting changes boost your followers in exactly the same way as the enemies.

Using modav health like that will injure them, won't change their base health.

I feel pretty certain that the answer is in boosting the enemies' health pool through your mod choice and playing on a lower skill level so that the followers are not tanks.

Are you using Foes Reworked NG still? I could make a couple edits and double enemy health (raiders mutants talon co), and link the zip to you ...... . eheh let me know. Maybe I won't double the Broken Steel mutants though.... I mean they already have like 1000 HP or something ... 2000 is default for the behemoth if I recall.

I have it on yeah, but I notice the difference mainly on super mutants.

I see what you are saying here. You're saying that if I put it on normal and have increased enemy health, then it will be a health boost of a sort that doesn't force me to shoot someone in the head a billion times before they die - my damage on normal would be 50% more than on Very Hard, given the vanilla mechanics. At the same time, my companions would be weaker, and they would actually take more damage. At first glance, that would solve the problem.

The problem with that is if I put the difficulty on normal, enemy damage goes from 200% to 100%. Not only do they hit companions for less, but they also hit me for less. I have used this mod http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7433 to increase enemy damage, but it still isn't enough in the level 15+ realm. I want to point out here that I never had much balance problems at lower levels and companions would die all the time, but because the leveled lists seem to stop at around 9-13 for enemies (and I have better weapons now), I need to take new steps to maintain game balance.

I know that somehow, you can modify a companion's health. There is a mod on Fallout 3 Nexus: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3405 which increases companion health. I don't know why on earth someone would want to do that, but the best solution here would be one that mods their health in the other direction. That said, if you want to do some experimenting with Foes Reworked I'd be happy to help out.

That mod changes the followers' base health.

It's not experimentation for me with Foes Reworked, I can see what you're asking for. I'll get you an alternate Foes Reworked NG and let's see if I can make it perfect for you, with you running on normal difficulty level. I will call this version HARDMODE.

Only thing is, be sure not to overwrite my alternate Foes Reworked changes with another mod. You said you loaded a mod to increase enemy damage, this may be undoing my changes.

I'll post with a link in a bit, when I'm done editing. When you try it, unload other enemy-changing mods.

Here's the hit point changes going in. I am doing some tricks with the damage they lay down now.

MutantsInfantry (CrSuperMutant1GunD): 400Basher (CrSuperMutant1MeleeA): 400Breaker (CrSuperMutant2MeleeA): 600Gunner (CrSuperMutant2GunA): 600Gunner (CrSuperMutant2MinigunA): 600Grenader (CrSuperMutant2MissileLauncherA): 600Berserker (CrSuperMutant3MeleeA): 800Gunner (CrSuperMutant3MinigunA): 800Hunter (CrSuperMutant3MissileLauncherA): 800Overlord Gunner (DLC03CrSuperMutant4GatlingLaserA) : 1250 (unchanged in NG)Overlord Breaker (DLC03CrSuperMutant4MeleeA): 1250 (unchanged in NG)Overlord Hunter (DLC03CrSuperMutant4GunA): 1250 (unchanged in NG)Overlord Grenader (DLC03CrSuperMutant4MissileLauncherA): 1250 (unchanged in NG)Raider changes:Fallen Brother: 300HP at level 12 (minimum 240 hp at any level)Medicine Man: 340HP at level 16 (minimum 250 hp at any level)Talon Co. changesTalon Co. Specialist: 320HP at level 11 (minimum 250hp at any level)Talon Co. Sergeant: 335 HP at level 14 (minimum 250hp at any level)Talon Co. Muscle:  340 HP at level 14 (minimum 250hp at any level)Talon Co. Gunnery Sergeant: 340HP at level 14 (minimum 255hp at any level)Talon Co. Trigger-Man:  340 HP at level 14 (minimum 255 at any level)

The reason why I said 'experimenting' is because when I look at values like that I don't know for sure whether or not it's going to be like shooting at a giant radscorpion or not yet. I have to see it for myself when the damage values of normal mode are applied to that kind of HP.

Out of curiosity, what was the original HP value of those enemies before you modded them?

PS: And yeah I'll be sure to disable Harder Wasteland.

Original mutants I think they were 185 - 280 or something, I cannot remember now.

I don't know exactly what it'll do either as far as precisely waht you wanted. It all seems like too much for my own game but we will see.

I think i'm mostly done a first run, doing a quick test on this thing, to see if anything ridiculous is going on (might be). heh.

I don't quite know what to think of this or, if it's working properly, but you could take a look and tell me how it's going.

http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/downloads/FoesReworked-NG-Hardmode.zip

This seems that it might have fixed the extra-spawning-glitch in the earlier standalone Increased Spawns:

http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/downloads/Mart%27s%20Mutant%20Mod%20-%20Increased%20Spawns-TarrantBrokenSteel.esp

Seems like the same as the other foes reworked. There isn't any major HP boosts as you described in an earlier post. The Gunners, marauders, fallen, etc. are still there though.

I also waited 3 days in an interior cell, no change.

I wonder if you\re running a mod which is interfering with their hp or something.

To view a mob's health directly, enter console (with the tilde key, ~), single-click on an undamaged mob so that you see its name and a number over its head, and type:

getav health

If you shot it or somehting, you will see the mob's lowered health due to it being damaged, so yeah you need to do this while its at full health. I was positively seeing the health scale up as indicated in the earlier post,

Don't forget that the names correspond directly with the health and that the mobs health is not all supposed to skyrocket just because you level. For example you will always see a number of "infantry" which only have like 400 hp, it's how the leveled list thingies are designed.

Wondering if you had any success with this.

I'm looking at that "hardmode" .esp version in the GECK right now and it's got HP and damage so high on these enemies that I wouldn't personally run it.

In my tests last night, some mob with a standard laser rifle murdered my health in 2 shots and I'm level 26 wearing well repaired hellfire power armor.


....

Sorry for the unresponsiveness, had a lot of work today.

No I'm having the same problem still. The only NPC-modifying mods and harder wasteland is still off. Here's a screenshot:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5379/foeshard.jpg

The SSGT has 145 hp, I just stood there tanking shots, didn't damage him or anything. I don't notice higher damage either, .44 mags, sniper rifles and big guns are still the only things that hurt me badly.

Just a question, but wouldn't it be easier to chop off 100 hp from all the companions instead of boost the health of so many enemies by such massive amounts?