Hey guys. I'm setting up the loot lists to do some testing on the "Npcs use ammo" flag, but I need to know what the "chance none" values are for ammo for each ammo rarity setting. It isn't imperative for my initial tests but it will be for balancing the changes. Based on what I can tell from looking at FWE's global values, an ammo rarity of "rare" would be 50% chance none correct?
Normally, the "chance none" is exactly that, the chance per item count in the leveled list that an instance of an item won't spawn. If you have an entry with 30 5.56mm bullets, and chance none of 50, on average you'll find 15 bullets (30 * .5 = 15).
Instead of specifying a value in the chance none field, you can flag it to use a global instead, as FWE does. Since you can change globals, this will allow you to change rarity for things in-game (via the control panel in FWE's case).
FWE's implementation is a little confusing with the different global I used. I don't remember what the ammo globals were (common, rare, ?somethingelse?) . . . when developing it, I realized that "rare" ammo types ended up needing a lower percent none because the quantities you find them in. In either case, the default globals values can been in the GECK or FO3edit in the global records, and are labeled FWEConfigAmmoRarityxxxxx . . . . keep in mind that people can change this through the in-game console.
If I had to guess, I'd say you might want to increase ammo between 1.5-2.5x depending on the type of weapon. For semi-auto weapons, keep it closer to 1.5x, for automatic or mini-gun weapons, keep it closer to 2.5x or higher. The AI has a really bad trigger finger with automatics :/
I have to say again that having the NPCs use ammo would be an excellent addition to the FWE environment. Adds a lot of realism imo. Always seems frustrating to me that NPCs have unlimited ammo. Then it becomes a tradeoff...Do I try and get them to use up their ammo so that I can kill them when they go melee--but get no ammo when I kill them? Or, do I try and kill them while they still have ammo (and thus are more dangerous) so that I can get some of that ammo. For a stealth character who can kill without being spotted, the ammo haul would make up for the increased difficulty (imo) of playing a stealth char.
Really love this idea.
I agree that this change could introduce to new options and balance improvements for certain playstyles, in particular melee or stealth oriented characters.