FO3 itself is very firearms centric, too. Melee is hardly useful at all.

In my opinion to really pull it off you'd need to change enemy skillsets and equipment to make them more melee oriented as well. As long as enemies are wielding long-range guns, melee isn't going to be a viable first choice for combat tactic.

gothemasticator

Now, I'm no modder, so take anything I say regarding the nitty gritty of how fo3 works with a pinch of salt, but the mod says it alters the spawn points, rather than the spawn lists - and I still notice the new enemy types and weapons in my game. Worn Weapons is also good, but I do love having a wasteland where your average raider has, at best, a .33 pistol, and most of them are using sticks and stones. (But I use both anyway )

I've mostly resolved the problems melee has in my HNK mod but that's a separate thing.

It's true that f03 is extremely gun centric. 200 years after the war, the only things that survived are guns and the only thing people make is ammo, it seems.

There is an old saying that you should not bring a knife for a gun fight. Having said that, the main problem are not the guns as such, it is the automatic guns. Even when in bad shape, a clip of most automatic weapons will rip your character to shreds. Decreasing the odds that raiders (and others without access to high tech production facilities) have an automatic weapon, could make a pure melee character more likely to make it.

Regarding Phalanx: If you've really got a problem with the ammo followers start with, you could always take it, drop it on the ground, open the console, click on it, and type "disable" then "markfordelete" if you really want to get rid of it without unbalancing your game.

Yeah, I was thinking of that after I made my post as well. Maybe I'll try to play around with Phalanx a bit more--because I really love the follower commands. I'll try and look in Craterside Supply and see what one could reasonably obtain for $1000. I wish followers started with a few stims as well.

You could sell the ammo for stims...

re: melee characters: I played a melee + explosives character in vanilla and had no problems and had a ton of fun with him. It's the only char I've taken to level 20 and through the MQ. It was definitely possible to play a melee char in vanilla. There were some tough spots like Fort Bannister and I didn't explore everywhere (e.g., Capitol Building), but, in general, I would say it was possible because the raiders presented no credible threat and the spawn groups were small enough that you could often isolate and sneak-kill the more credible threats. But, with MMM and FWE (increased spawns + tougher opponents) it is next to impossible to play a melee character. But, indeed, never bring a sword to a gunfight--especially when those guns are automatic weapons. If less opponents had weapons, especially automatic weapons, that would help a lot though. But I'm glad that you can't storm the Capitol Building with a Chinese Officer's Sword

RE: Melee, "Savage Wasteland" and Compatability

The initial release of Savage Wasteland was titled "Fewer Gun Wielding Maniacs", in it I created unarmed units and then added my unarmed and the vanilla melee units to the spawn lists in varying degrees for each faction. It is fully compatable with MMM, WMK, CFW, FOOK and many more. As a new convert to FWE I had not fully tested compatability at the time of release. From what I can see Savage Wasteland was fully compatable with FWE until the introduction of Worn Weapons. Worn Weapons added the worn weapons to the leveled lists as well as added melee variants to the spawn lists. This can be resolved by way of load order. Worn Weapons only affects Super Mutants, Outcasts, BOS and Raiders; Savage Wasteland affects Super Mutants and all human faction, with the exception of watelanders. I also think that the effect of Savage Wasteland, especialy for Raiders, is much more severe. The worn weapons themselves will still appear on all appropiate NPCs if Savage Wasteland is loaded afterwards. I've been working on the new release of Savage Wasteland, and I am now doing so with the intent of makining it fully compatable with all aspects of FWE. The new plugin titled "Unfound Loot" may require some heavy tweaking or a compatability patch, I've not done robust compatability testing as of yet.

I like using melee weapons, nothing beats beating your enemies with a tire iron. But it was quite horrible meeting super mutants with automatic weapons, needless to say my character did not survive the encounter as there was no place for cover. FWE+WMK+MMM definitely makes the game much more fun, but I will find a way to beat those mutants with a melee weapon next time.

Alright that's good to know.

Does Unfound loot alter the Leveled Item lists or just remove items in the worldspace? If first is the case you won't be able to really make a compatbility patch as soon as FWE 5.0 is released(it also won't really be necessary anymore).
The reason for that is that Mez made the leveled loot lists now depend on a global, which you can alter in the new FWE main menu. So basically you can now lower (or increase) the frequency with which you find ammo, chems, etc. through our new menu

Very good to know!!

Unfound Loot, right now, changes only the hand placed items in the game. Upon entering a cell the game generates a seperate random number for each hand placed item and compares that to the PCs Luck. Make the luck roll and an item will be there, otherwise you've lost your chance to get it. Eventually the I plan to have globals control how much Luck affects the outcome as well as globals for the leveled list affecting containers and vendor prices. I'm also working on using globals for Fewer Gun Wielding Maniacs. The issues I'm worried about, for compatability, are any mod that achives rarity by simply removing hand placed items, and any mod that replaces certain handmade items with new items. Any mods that change or add scripts to the hand placed items but maintain the same formID should (?) be compatable.

I am very much looking forward to the next version of FWE, I've known about the FWE Main Menu and I can't wait to see it! (well I can wait because I don't have much choice, but you know what I mean)

Oh that's so great.

Great mod, but I have two questions -

1) Ive installed the alternative fast travel esp, but where do I find the motorcycle? And how do I activate the option to use that instead of fast travel.

2) Where do I find the alternative start file. I just hate the vanilla tutorial.

1) It stands in front of Megaton. When you start fallout for the first time with the alternate fast travel loaded(and have finished character generation) you will be asked to activate it, which will disable fast travel
2) There's no file, it's integrated in FWE. After the regular birth sequence you will be asked to "wake up", simply hit that.

I don't knowabout the fast travel but I believe the alternate start is part of the main file. Right after the birth sequence you should get a choice to Wake up or Keep Dreaming. One activates the alternate start and the other continues the vanilla tutorial.

Thank you my good man One more question, I know this is the wrong thread, and I apologise in advance if the thread owner is offended but you seem like a guy who's helpful. Is MMM Incompatible with any of these mods :
Fallout3.esm
CrossModData.esm
StreetLights.esm
LingsFinerThings.esm
CALIBR.esm
FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esm
Anchorage.esm
CRAFT.esm
BrokenSteel.esm
Sharing and Caring Companions.esm
FOOK2 - Main.esm
FOOK2 - [[censored]] World And Neighbourhood Kit.esm
ObjectPoses.esp
MTC Wasteland Travellers (Optional)- Crowded Cities.esp
Project Beauty.esp
PB FOOK2 - Main.esp
FollowersHire.esp
Uber Dogmeat.esp
UPP - Pack 1.esp
Easier_hacking_5_8.esp
UPP - Beverage Perks.esp
UPP - Quest Perks.esp
UPP - Experience Perks.esp
Portable Turrets.esp
BottleRefill.esp
WastelandMastery.esp
mika_essential.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esp
Portable Sniper Nest.esp
Fellout-Anchorage.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Anchorage.esp
assassin_robe.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Broken Steel.esp
UPP - Pack 2.esp
Radzinsky's Jumpsuit.esp
Level 3 Alot More Color.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - Alternate Travel.esp
JessiCompanion.esp
MTC Wasteland Travellers.esp
KelseyCompanion.esp
Fellout-BrokenSteel.esp
Fellout-SOTD.esp
Fellout-pipboylight.esp
Fellout-Full.esp
MaxLevelWorkaround-BS.esp
MiniHideout.esp
Dogmeat Leather Armor - no crafting.esp
sunglassescollection.esp
Alternate Dogmeat.esp
Weaponname Change.esp
Stealthboy Recon Armor - CRAFT.esp
Owned!.esp
Project Beauty- Broken Steel.esp
1 Camon's SS Outfits Version 2.esp
LingsFinerThings.esp
TombRaider.esp
AsharasBatmanItems.esp
UndergroundHideout.esp
FOOK2 - Main.esp
MyFOOK2 - Black & White Tranquility Lane.esp
MyFOOK2 - No [censored] Victims.esp
CRAFT - Activation Perk.esp
FO3 Wanderers Edition - FOOK Support.esp
CALIBRxMerchant.esp

Total active plugins: 64
Total plugins: 72


So will I need a compatibility patch for FWE or any other mods?

I don't think so, but even if it were - couldn't make it any worse! That LO needs a bit of looking at

Grab a copy of BOSS for Fallout 3, which should take care of the ordering, but you have a fair amount of things that shouldn't be loading - like fellout. SHouldn't load SOTD and Full at the same time, and the patch should probably go after it.

Ok, I'll take a look at this BOSS thing. Im havingtrouble startinga game now (God I feel like an idiot with all of these posts) But wheneverI wakefrom my "dream" at the beginning. It freezes up amd I have to Ctrl +Alt +Dlt to get out and end the game. A bug? Or something to do with the load order?

Probably your LO - but BOSS will fix that up

It does look like you're trying to load FOOK and FWE at the same time, without the compatibility patches, though - probably a bad idea. Grab the FWE-FOOK merger patch

To be fair, isn't most combat against those two opponents anyway?

Enclave are hellish with lag, with their fancy weapons and armor make my framerate cry.

mmm. I still say something is rotten in Denmark...meaning theres either a model issue or an animation issue or a command issue. Something in Fallout 3 is either done wrong or left out.

Oblivion had the same problem until the last two patches for me, then it never had that type of crash again.

It can't be a memory leak issue, because many times crashes in certain areas take place within seconds of loading and starting a fight.

That BOSS thing didnt work :/ I got an error trying torun it saying someting about accesss being deniedand about a million system 32 messages desplayed. Ive restarted my laptop andused the auto-sort in the FOMM.

Run it as administrator.