Would it be possible to add Modifications for Unique energy weapons, like the AER-14, and to allow weapons that fire multiple projectiles to potentially crit for every strike in VATS, like they do outside of it? I know that there are mods that can do some of this, but it would be nice if they could be integrated for compatibility purposes, since it is likely that multiple sets of weapon mods would clash.


http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35009

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36420

Looks like you've got everything in hand, evil

I think I'm fresh out of ideas at this point.

Methinks this mod will pwn.

Here's the deal with the energy cell issues.


It was inconsistent because the game was trying to present energy cell ammunition as 'number of charges' rather than 'number of cells'. The inconsistency was meant to represent an obvious difference in the amount of energy-consumption that a certain weapon draws off of its battery. The plasma weapons in Fallout 3 were supposed to be FAR less energy-efficient than laser weaponry, but doing more damage in return. The problem came into play when, for the most part, you never saw that... because to the player... it doesn't -look- right.

There's no system for batteries holding a 'charge'... so everything seems artificial about it.

Both Bethesda and Obsidian have apparently struggled with the difficulty of conveying this concept without dramatically altering the way energy weapons function.


Much like the magical loading of cartridges into magazines, when you reload your energy weapon... mysteriously you insert a single battery/battery cluster into the receiver of your weapon, presumably connecting it to the electrical contacts inside, and -all- of your ammo is now available to it... but it only has so many 'charges' before you have to reload.

That's fine... if you don't mind clumsy systems that don't make any kind of sense to the user.

There's a terminal in Fallout 3 which explains the ammo consumption of an AER 9. It states that the weapon can get 'x' amount of charges out of a single micro-fusion cell before it needs to be replaced. However, what the GAME does is cost you a single micro-fusion cell for every SHOT... and then -relaod- after 'x' amount of shots have been fired. The reload animation? A single micro-fusion cell, of course!

It's... wonky... to say the least.

In both F3 and NV, a single microfusion cell provides more than 1 microfusion cell charge. There's absolutely nothing to indicate that each microfusion cell (each of which is the size of, what, four .50 BMGs taped together?) holds exactly one charge and everything to indicate that they do not.

Pretty much, I've always thought that was kind of obvious, given the MFC model is the 'clip' model for that ammo type rather than the model of a single bullet- you can find batteries placed in-world with values like MFC(20).
Different weapons having different clip sizes for the same MFC is a little odd, but less an immersion-breaking killer than a design quirk.

A lot of the unique weapons already incorporate mods from their standard counterparts. The Q35 Matter Modulator already has accelerated plasma bolts, and the AER14 prototype already has heightened damage (though no scope).

As for shotgun VATS crit fix... I am of the opposite opinion: having full crit damage on each scatter projectile is OP'd and a bug that never got removed from FO3 and realtime crit damage should match VATS crit damage.

...that is one way of looking at it.

On the other hand...

I pick up a magazine with (20) 5.56 rounds, and I pick up a Microfusion Cell with (20) charges.

...I put that magazine into a varmint rifle, and suddenly that one magazine stretches multiple magazines -- or I put it into an assault carbine and all of a sudden I'm augmenting that magazine with bullets from another one to make it complete. At the same time, if I drop one bullet at a time, I'll suddenly have 20 magazines on the floor in front of me, each with one bullet.

All of this is the same with the Microfusion cell - it can power less than a full weapon charge, or more than, and yet if I drop individual charges I'll have 20 microfusion cells on the floor around me each with a single charge.

With bullets you simply have a pool of ammunition that are magically inside whatever number of magazines that you need them to be in. The only reason energy ammo would be any different is because there is a lack of imagination in comparing "moving charges from one cell to another" compared to "moving bullets from one magazine to another".


So from that way of looking at it, the problem isn't any inconsistency of ammo use by weapons etc, but rather a naming problem. Change "Microfusion Cell" to "Microfusion Cell Charge" to resolve that problem - so that you are distinctly picking up charges that are just housed in cells, just as you pick up bullets that are housed in magazines.

A shotgun's critical damage is only something like 7-10 extra Dam (roughly the same per-projectile damage as non-crit damage). It is not anywhere near as large as it was in F3.

This is exactly along the line that I was thinking...

Each of those 'numbers' you see for Micro-Fusion Cells and Small Energy Cells should be thought of as a -charge-... rather than as an individual cell. The only way -one- of those is an entire energy cell, is if you happen to DROP it in an increment of one. The original Fallout 1 and 2 games did not LET you drop ammunition like this, and so never suffered from this problem. When you dropped -one- micro-fusion cell in those games, what you were really dropping is something like 25 charges of that ammunition. It showed you the charges by making each cell provide x25 (guessing, really. I'd have to go back and play to be sure. It could be x50... I'm not sure.) Micro-Fusion ammo.

All ammunition was handled like this. You would pick up a 'box' of ammunition, rather than individual cartridges. You would pick up an energy cell with 'charges' on it, rather than -one- battery.

If you think of it like that when dealing with Fallout 3 and New Vegas... then it becomes easier to understand that the solution to the problem is simple. We just need to realize that every shot is a charge, and not an entire power cell. When you see that number telling you how many Micro-Fusion Cells you have left, it's not really telling you how many Micro-Fusion Cells you have left. It's telling you how much power, between all the Micro-Fusion Cells you possess, that you have in total.

And then you decide how you want to represent that when it comes to weapons.


The first way, would to be make every weapon use exactly one charge... but reduce it's ammunition. Doing it this way, with the understanding of the 'ammo' being MF-Cell Charges rather than entire cells, the player is able to better grasp the idea that he/she is wielding a weapon which uses vastly more power from one MF-Cell than another if their gun only holds 8 charges when that other gun holds 16.


The second way would be to make all weapons that use a certain -type- of energy ammo... small energy cells for this example... have the same -base- clip size, but then represent the expenditure of the 'charges' by increasing the amount of ammo it takes to fire. This would then represent that ALL small energy cells can hold the same amount of power, but show that different weapons drain different amounts from it.

The second way is a bit more complicated, as you would have to do a great deal of decision making for the larger playerbase. You would have to, essentially, select a number which you liked to represent the basic amount of energy that makes up a 'full' power cell. On the other hand, this -would- provide for the uniform numbers you were saying you would like to see.

If a MF-Cell -always- has a clip size of 30, then you know that 30 is the number of low-power shots you can get out of the cell, and that when a weapon uses 2 or 3 charges to fire... that means that it's draining the battery faster than the weapon which can fire on 1 charge.



I suppose there are other ways of dealing with it, too... but these two seem the most practical to me.

This all is correct and is what I said earlier, but in a lot more words and mentioning the earlier games.



This is not correct. If a weapon uses 1 MF charge, it uses 1 unit of energy. Making it so the weapon can only store 8 units of energy does not show that it uses more power than a weapon that can hold 16 units of energy. It just shows that its battery capacity is smaller. In fact, since it uses the same amount of MF charges, it uses up the exact same amount of energy regardless of the number of units of charge it can hold.

Langy, what I am describing there are different ways of 'altering' what the perception of energy ammo is... not simply recreating the 1 cell = 1 charge of a cell concept in its most basic form. These different methods are for practical application, one closely mimicking the formula above, and the other using a different formula entirely which yields the same resultant understanding of 'cells' actually being 'charges'.

Of course, changing the name of the damn things would also help hit this one home, too.


The first description you have quoted alters the formula to something closer to what Bethesda had in mind. It represents the ammunition as charges, but no longer as 'cells'. Instead, the clip-size -becomes- the cell... and the ammunition the charges the weapon can draw off that cell before it is depleted and needs to be replaced. It is an entirely different formula, but using the same concept, and some will find it easier to comprehend than the alternative.


The second description, which you have not quoted, is the one which is more closely tied to the actual '1 cell = 1 charge of a cell' concept I described... and so seems more in line with Your Evil Twin's way of thinking about cells than the first option.


In that one, the charge of a cell is in uniform units of measurement, and again represented by clip size. However, 1 charge equals 1 shot from a weapon which uses only one charge... and 1 charge equals no shot from a weapon which uses more than one. Therefore you run the risk of a weapon depleting your charges to the point where you have three... but if it requires four to fire you're out of luck.

The first method represents this same concept, but in a different scale which does not allow for this to happen. Instead, each weapon's specific 'charge' is not calculable, because the player is never directly exposed to the ordered units of measurement which we would be -presuming- each energy cell to possess. Instead, the player simply knows the precise number of shots the weapon can fire before their energy cell is depleted, and the weapon will never get caught with a smaller number of charges than it requires to fire.

This seems the more player-friendly method, but in the end is the less-precise method as well.


The second method is more precise in its representation of the formula I described, but also results in the possibility of the player ending up with a weapon that is useless to them if he/she only has 2 charges, when their rifle requires three to fire. Therefore, it is a bit less-friendly to the player for the sake of upholding a formula which, to be quite honest, only really makes any sense because the developers borked things up and made it so the player can pick up ammunition in the single-digits.

It all boils down to design decision.

Neither one of those methods I described is wrong, they're merely based on different design decisions.

No, the first one you described is simply wrong. You said that a weapon with a battery of 8 charges would use twice the energy of a weapon with a battery of 16 charges, yet you also said that each 'shot' was a single uniform unit of charge and each shot would always use one charge. Those two statements are not compatible, and thus saying that it is so is wrong, not simply a design decision.

(Also, the way the game engine works if you've got any shots left you'll be able to fire your weapon even if one shot is supposed to use 50 charges and you've only got 5 charges available, so even if you used the second method you'd need to make it so every weapon's clip size was a multiple of its ammo use per shot)

D'oh...

I completely failed to take into account that the number of charges the player possessed would still remain the same! >.< You're right. The first option is completely screwed, because the number of 'charges' (the total ammo the player holds) would not deplete at a higher rate... whether the player used a weapon with a clip size of 6 or a clip size of 100. Ugh... there would be no greater consumption of energy between them... it would merely represent how many charges the weapon could hold.

Bugger it!

The second option is fairly sound though, yes?

Also, I haven't encountered any weapons in New Vegas that used more than one ammo per shot... so I haven't really tested it... but it didn't work that way in Fallout 3. I distinctly recall not being able to fire my double-barreled shotgun with only one shell. It just clicked at me like the damn thing was empty. Is this something that changed between the games, then?

The tesla cannon clone.

Not to mention plasma weapons, Gauss rifles, etc. I'm not positive that that's what happens, but I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere. Maybe they were wrong, though *shrug* Good thing to test, anyways.

Have you played around with it at all, Tarrant? Do you know if it will fire without the 'required' amount of ammunition?

Cause if it does, that would complicate matters a bit as well. Oi. I suppose I'll have to go make my energy-weapons character now and test some of this out a bit more in depth.

Yup, you can fire the Tesla Beaton with a meagre 1 cell instead of needing 45.

Well that's certainly unfortunate... -_-;'

Following with this line of thought, then a single "microfusion cell" would have some set weight, say 1 lb. so each individual charge (which is what the game engine is counting as the ammo) should weigh like .03 lbs. which is a way better than .1 lbs apiece for ever charge, which means a full MF cell weighs 3lbs, which seems like a lot.

Also this whole idea sounds fantastic, though I like the how in vanilla NV the pulse pistol is ridiculously rare.

Just my two cents worth.

You could easily set the 'effective weight' of MFCs to be a set value per 30 charge, but it wouldn't really achieve any more than just altering the weight of a single charge.

As I thought about your idea... I couldn't help but cringe.


Not at your idea, of course... but at the realization that the game has given WEIGHT to what essentially amount to energy. A battery doesn't get any heavier or lighter when it dies. Not in any perceivable way, anyhow. The battery houses the energy... but the mass of the battery comes from the materials it is made up of... not the electric charge it holds.

So if this is the case, then the weight of the charge should not, in fact, be anything.

The weight should be of the -cell-... which we haven't got an item for.

Here's my theory:


Would it be possible to create a miscellaneous item 'cell' (with one for each of the power cell types)... which would be automatically (and without any message?) added to the player's inventory the moment he picks up a 'charge'... and then simply add another one (for the purposes of handling weight) at every 30 (random number) or so charges... representing the player acquiring a second energy cell?

Or reverse that, and have the miscellaneous items replace all in-world occurrences of the 'ammunition' you find around the wasteland. Then have those items randomly add (without a message?) a certain amount of energy weapon ammunition of its type to the player's inventory.

Thus, weight would be handled... and each 'cell' could actually be represented in game by more than just the weapon's clip size.

Hell, this would even make for interesting mechanics such as RECHARGING your cells... since I believe they already -do- have depleted energy ammo cells in the game, yes?

The whole process could use some thought... but it's there... and it might be doable.

It would certainly make more sense than the game's current way of handling things.

This actually isn't that much of a problem - just make it so there's a 100% chance to gain a Drained Microfusion Cell (or SEC, whatever) whenever you fire a weapon. Yeah, you'll wind up with fractions of a cell in your inventory, but it won't be much more than a few pounds of weight difference.

I too thought that the energy charges having weight was completely absurd... but then it occured to me that might only apply to a chemical battery. A Fallout energy charge might be a unit of plasma and gas and stuff. Especially when we are talking Microfusion Cells.

A microfusion cell is supposed to be a self-contained fusion reactor, this is explicately explained by the item description in Fallout 1 and 2. This means it has a certain amount of fuel (hydrogen, or helium III) and that stuff undergoes fusion. The whole point of fusion is that it is very energy efficient, a large amount of the mass is converted into energy. Which powers your weapon. Also, the stuff that has fused together will probably be hot plasma... and perhaps that in itself is directly used by your energy weapon. In Fallout 3 there's a terminal in the outcast base that says a plasma rifle directly taps into and fires the plasma from the microfusion reaction. (On the other hand, this terminal gets the stats for the ammo capacity of laser and plasma weapons completely wrong, so it must have been written early in development and its canonicity is debatable.)

In Star Trek, the starship Enterprise has an antimatter reactor and its reaction produces large amounts of hot plasma. Rather than then converting this into electricity, this plasma is in fact pumped all around the ship. All the power conduits are full of plasma, even the lights and the control consoles and the monitor screens have circuits where tiny currents of plasma travel through them, rather than metal wires conducting electrons.

When you think about it, this seems rather technically unfeasible, and also quite dangerous... and it is actually the in-universe explanation for why it is that when the ship is damaged the control consoles explode in showers of sparks. A simple computer console can lose magnetic containment and explode, heh. Which also leads to the amusing fan explanation of "Why doesn't the Enterprise have seat belts? Well, would you really want to be strapped to one of those exploding consoles?!" But for the big energy users like the warp engines, and the phasers, and the shields, this direct usage of plasma makes some sense.

Anyway, it occurs to me that perhaps Fallout energy weapons work the same way. Hot plasma could be fed directly into a laser rifle, and since plasma is charged like electricity it can directly power the laser, or perhaps it gets converted into traditional electricity inside the laser rifle. While in the case of a plasma rifle, it just fires the plasma out of the front of the gun.

As you use up a microfusion cell, there is less fuel in it, and the plasma is used by the gun, so the cell gets lighter.

In the case of Small Energy Cells and Electron Charge Packs... hmmm. The Fallout universe has never bothered to explain what a Small Energy Cell actually is. It could be a very advanced chemical battery. Or perhaps nuclear fission. But then there's the fact that New Vegas lets you use different type of energy cells to charge each other up!

Perhaps a Small Energy Cell is a container of plasma. It doesn't even necessarily have to be HOT plasma - everyone has seen those lightning balls where you press your hand to glass and electricity jumps to your fingers. So SEC contains plasma, and a Microfusion Cell is a tiny reactor that actually converts some fuel into plasma. What's an Electron Charge pack? Dunno, but I guess it stores electrons. I suppose that if you removed all the protons and neutrons from a substance you'd just have a sort of negatively charged electron plasma.

So, yeah, all the energy cells are actually full of "pure, concentrated energy", a plasma of particles that is fed directly into the weapon. So the cell can actually get lighter when drained.

Oh, except for the fact that hydrogen, helium, and plasma are all significantly lighter than air, so the idea of an energy cell having signifcant weight and then that weight dwindling to nothing as the energy is drained doesn't really work cause of that. But, it does still make a certain amount of logical sense, the energy cells are being depleted in the same way that a magazine of bullets is depleted.



You know what, that's actually quite useful, because some of my suggested upgrades were for Energy Recyclers in the style of the Laser RCW recycler. But I feared that it could cause problems in weapons that used 2 or 3 energy per shot, as you could end up with just one ammo left in a weapon that requires two energy per shot.

In Fallout 3 a weapon would NOT fire if it didn't have quite enough ammo, but the game wasn't smart enough to then do the normal automatic reload you'd get when you actually depleted a magazine, so instead you'd be left going CLICK CLICK CLICK. This was a nightmare in VATS, cause the character would continuously go CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK for about TEN SECONDS until the game returned you to real-time play and you could then hit R to manually reload.

So yeah, it seems that because Obsidian made lots of the energy weapons require multiple ammo per shot, they anticipated that sort of situation and changed the game's ammo-use logic. It's the better of two evils.

yes lazy fix but just try fix it in other ways...you can't

EDIT: this mod is interesting...good luck for it!

Yeah I know! I tried to fix it other ways and I couldn't!