Well, the entire needs package and can be disabled, and presets changed for food/health to restore their default healing properties. So if the primary needs is a hang-up, it can be made to go away very quickly =)

FOOK doesn't have a hunger/needs system. FOOK is far more focused on new content (weapons, textures, armor, etc...), revamping leveled items + spawn lists, etc... rather than focusing on gameplay balance and mechanics, which FWE is more concerned with.

FWE isn't really comparible to FCOM, it's more comparable to OOO or Francesco's (FOOK's probably a little closer to Frans). The FOIP program + the FWE-FOOK merger is what's going to give you the closest FCOM equivolent, as it combines FOOK/FWE/MMM/EVE/WMK/BP/RWI . . . so it's FFMEWBR! But it still needs a fair bit of polish overall.

Keep in mind too that FCOM didn't arrive on the scene until all of it's constituants were in a nearly stable / final state to begin with!

The next version of FWE, which as I mentioned will include a rather enormous (1,800 lines of code) in-game config and menu system that will let you tweak many aspects of the basic gameplay as well as the various FWE-added mechanics. Needless to say I wish I had started this menu earlier, as it makes the whole package much for tailorable to your individual tastes.

I think Kai might even get his own preset in the config too =)

I appologize if I'm missing this from a README but I have a simple basic question on "Perk Mastery"

On some perks like Thief the description says it increases some skills and then gives you a bonus at "Mastery".

What is meant by "Mastery". For example if the Thief has 3 levels does Mastery come when you get all three levels? So if Thieve increases 5 points of sneak per level and 5 at mastery (I don't remember if this is specifically the case) then if you take all three levels you'll get a total of 3x5+5 = 20 skill points in sneak?

Or does mastery come when you reach 100 in sneak (though this doesn't seem to make sense with some perks).

And do the perks now allow you go go above 100 in a skill?

Again sorry if I'm just missing something. Thanks in advance for the clarification.

"Mastery" is just the last level of the perk line. For example, gun nut has 5 ranks. Each rank provides +5 small guns and +5 repair, except the last (fifth) rank, which provides +10 small guns and +5 repair. This means that for the 5 rank skill perks, becoming a "master" provides a total of +30 skill points for small guns + repair (in the case of the gun nut perk).

The perk ranks don't allow you to go above 100 skill points, although you can use the wasteland mastery and associated mods to uncap your skills if you want.

Oh, don't get me wrong...FWE works perfectly, the changes it makes to some of the core features just take a little getting used to.

Disabling Primary Needs makes things like dirty water, nuka-cola, etc give health again, but water sources you find outside still don't heal. Is there a way to revert that, too?

Besides, Kai's video on FWE keeps making me come back to this mod xD

Are there any FWE additions that remove the P-90 and the other added guns? I feel that some of the guns don't fit in the game and I would like to remove it.

As much as I love this mod, I'm really frustrated at the clothing/armor rebalancing in this mod, particularly as pertaining to The Pitt. After spending several hours hunting down all of the steel ingots, I was rewarded with a [censored] power armor (tribal power armor) with a huge weight, low DR and poor effects. Killing Ashur, a 5-minute job, rewarded me with a much lighter armour which had more than double the DR and much better effects. This seems quite unbalanced to me. Also, changing what the effects of different armors are is quite annoying for those of us who use the Vault wiki to look up the bonuses to different armor. Why did you bother?

Also, changing Tribal Armour's bonus from Melee Weapons to Energy Weapons seems pointless, since Tesla power armor already adds EW skill, unless I'm mistaken.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, I still couldn't play without FWE.

i play perfectly fine without primary needs. i plan on turning it back on once FWE and MMM are in a more stable state with fewer updates because otherwise i forget to turn it off when waiting the 9 days for a reset.

Is there some specific "order" you need to install these mods in?

Because for the past 5 clean installs, I've been installing FWE and MMM, along with other cosmetic mods like Fellout in a ton of different orders, and none of them have worked.

Which is odd, because I remember not two days ago I could just install FO3, patch it up to the latest, and then without even ever clicking the new game button could install FWE and all it's requirements, MMM, Fellout, use boss for load order, enable them in FOMM, and have it play perfectly.

I'm really convinced that installing mods in fallout 3 is muuuuuuch different than in oblivion, regardless of what people say.

In oblivion, things were consistant. If you installed them correctly, they worked. In FO3, it seems, things AREN'T consistant. Even if you install them correctly, sometimes they'll work, sometimes they won't, and theres nothing you can do to change it.

No, the new weapons are pretty deeply integrated into various leveled lists. Not to mention all weapons we've added to FO3 are classic ones from FO1 and FO2, and thus are "canon"


We change all kinds of items and their effects. If you have a problem with that, well It's called an overhaul for a reason! Not to mention you don't need to check those stats in the wiki, you can simply click on the effect of the armor in your characters stats screen and it shows exactly what it does.
If you wish to give feedback on how an item is balanced, that is perfectly fine, but we would prefer a more civilized tone.


FWE and MMM are in a perfectly stable state and pretty much final with only a bit of polishing left to do. Not sure what you are waiting for, but updates for both mods are now few and far apart. So you might as well turn it on now or never.
Also you don't have to wait 9 days to do a cell reset.
Just go into your house, type "setgs iHoursToRespawnCell 1" into the console, wait for two hours, go outside and type "setgs iHoursToRespawnCell 180" into the console, and voila your cells are all reset.



Wrong.
Fallout mod installations work nearly exactly as Oblivion installations do and they are consistent across the board. If something is not working either the mod is kaputt or it's user error(or can also be a problem with Win Vista/7 UAC).
And no the order in which you install mods does not matter, unless you install several sound/mesh/texture replacers for the same thing, in which case the last one installed is of course the one that you see ingame.
If you are having an issue with mods not properly running, post your load order from the Fallout Mod manger.

To fix a problem with the Lead Belly perk there will be some basic changes to the way Primary Needs handles drinking from water sources such as sinks and water fountains in the next FWE release. I suspect that these changes will fix the problem you describe too. In the meantime try bottling the water and then drink the bottled water. To bottle water equip an empty bottle from your inventory then activate the water source withing 15 seconds. Everytime you drink a bottle of water an empty bottle in placed in your inventory so you can just keep reusing it.

I've got a quick question. I tried searching but I couldn't find an answer. Is FWE compatible with companion mods? And how does it handle body replacers?

FWE is compatible with companion mods so far as I know. One of FWE's optional modules provdes an overhaul of the original companions, but you can use a mod like Phalanx instead if that's your preference. New companion mods should be compatible as well. Bear in mind that companions that aren't essential are going to have a rough time in FWE =)

Body replacers are all perfectly fine to use with FWE.

Cool - thanks, Mez! The companions I was looking at, you are able to set them as essential. Oh, BTW, loving your mod so far, keep up the great work! B)

While I'm here, I've got another question. I've already got FWE, MMM, and WMK installed. Would it be too much trouble to install EVE if I've already got a good save going? Now that I've got all the gameplay mods I want, I am trying to get everything visually pleasing .

Nope, EVE is covered under the FOIP program as well. Check out the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1062103thread I posted a bit ago to verify your load order. The FWE-EVE package is posted on the FOIP nexus page. It isn't a problem to start using EVE with an existing save, that's what I've been doing.

Ok sweet, thanks again! Now if I could only get off work, lol.

I'm sorry if I came off as offensive or impolite, that wasn't my intention. It just makes upgrading difficult when I have to go back and change a bunch of statistics every time an update is released, but I guess it's worth it. I wouldn't bother for any other mod

It's not the lore that really matters to me, that's subjective, it's just how some of the weapons look with the animations and such. Thanks for answering my question though.

How about making a esp with just the changed records, and putting that last in your load order? Then all it takes is a quick check that the modified records are still valid after every update of FWE.

First I've been using this mod for a couple of weeks and I think it is great. Lots of very nice changes to the game and I really like the more "realistic", challanging and harser environment. I'm using FWE with MMM and the FIOP compatibilty patch. Playing on Normal difficulty. Based on some previous posts I set MMMzIncreasedSpawnsMax to 2.

That said I have a questions or comment on balance. My level 6 character was testing out the molerat whacker for Moira and got through Tepid sewers just fine.

But on the way back to Megaton, between Wilhelms Warf and the Super Duper Mart my character was ambushed by some Talon guys, and died in under a second.

I save extremely frequently so had a save from just before my character detected the Talons. It turns out there were 5 Talon guys - a Sargent and a few Corporals and Mercs. With maybe two of them firing, my character with 260 health dies in literally under a second. I have reasonable stealth and explosive skills and tried mines, grenades. I have pretty good small guns too but anytime was able to get line of sight my character is killed, again in less than a second.

It took about ten tries to defeat them. Then defeated them twice again, but each time took about ten tries. And this is with knowing that they are there.

It makes perfect sense that 5 well equiped Talon Guys can quickly kill a level 6 character. However, dying that frequently is not particularly fun. Wouldn't it make sense to to have the Talon Company dispatch a lower number of members for a low character. Then my character might have a chance. That even makes "realism' sense. As you defeat more Talon parties they send larger groups.

Or am I just playing poorly, and maybe might level 6 character should be able to handle an ambush by 5 well equiped Talons without loading about ten times?

I think one of the core principles here that is never explained and normally goes against the grain of 99% of modern first person shooters is a greater importance of exercising your right to avoid conflicts you cannot win by running for your life. The reason many people run into a problem like this I feel is that in linear first person shooters over the ages its commonly known that you will never be given a conflict that you cannot progress passed.

Its certainly not a given in this case. And know I dont think its because you were playing poorly. You just didn't consider the option of escaping soon enough. It really does go against the grain. Consider it a unique experience you wont get from a freshly shipped game very often....

One thing I tried to achieve in FWE was to make players think a little about RISK versus REWARD in combat situations. There are plenty of times when I'm traveling along towards a quest objective somewhere, with a reasonable stock of supplies I've chosen carefully for the mission, and I'm faced with an encounter that I really need to decide: Is it worth it to figh this fight right now? Am I going to get enough ammo/chems/loot/etc... to make up for what I'll spend getting through the fight? Sometimes, the answer is no, and I'm better off avoiding the conflict. As TheCastle says, this a complete divergence from the norm for most modern days games, particularly FPS games.

Think of it more like playnig Diablo, and getting to a point in the harder difficulties where there is just no way you can fight your way through an encounter without leveling up more; you have to run. Or, maybe you can fight your way through, but you might not even be able to drink health potions fast enough to stay alive. At low levels, I frequently run into these situations in DC fighting against huge packs of super mutants, or elsewhere against big groups of enclave.

Incidentially, what is your DR? Armor matters A LOT in big encoutners. So if you're not in heavy armor, you'll need to compensate with DR enhancing chems as much as you can if you're in a tough fight.

Thanks. I appreciate the input I think that's good advise. But again it was an ambush. Running was not really an option, in fact I tried that and was shot in the back and killed in under a second.

The only way of avoiding the fight was to load a save and avoid the area. But that didn't seem realistic, since the characer wouldn't know they were there. If I had seen a platoon of 5 Talons in the distance then it makes sense to avoid. But these guys were hiding around the corner of a building. With perception of 8 I detected one red blip when I was nearly there. And panicing at every red blip seems kind of tedious.

If there was a way of scaling the number of Talons/Regulators sent after your character that seems more balanced at realistic, at least it seems that way to me at the moment. Why would the Talons devote so many resources to such a low level (level 6) wastelander. Just a comment for what it's worth.

I'm interested in other opinions. Is loading a save and avoiding the area the way to play this situation. Again running was not really an option due to the very quick kill.

You could try camping out for a while inside and see if they decide to leave their ambush spot.

Try a stealthboy if you have one.

Otherwise, you could try fleeing by downing as many drugs as you can and run screaming for the hills.

Another trick would be to go outside, use bullet time or whatever method you prefer to try and kill 1-2 of them, then run back inside. They may not follow you. If they do, you can set up mines, if they don't it will give you time to stimpak back up, replenish your AP's, etc....

I don't know about other people, but I often come to situations like this where it's almost a "puzzle" to figure out what I need to do to get through the encounter. I guess I like that . . . and dying and reloading has never bothered me. Anyone ever played the old Sierra quest games? Oh, I think I'll go here . . . dead . . . well, maybe I need to eat this thing . . . dead . . . hmmm, how about I pull on this rope . . . dead . . . ahh the good old days.

Was this a pre-scripted talon company encounter where they have dialog with you before the fight?
Was the increased number of them directly influenced by MMM functionality?

( just wondering )