An extra condition to make it so this effect is only active while not in combat would alleviate the loss in energy weapons skill.
It would simulate the idea of having a harder time seeing things at night but once said NPC IS alerted he goes back to a normal state.

I know you can check if the actor is affected by a spell effect so that might be an option too, all the power helmets have a specific enchantment. There's a small risk that this may be incompatible with power armour overhauls though.

Edit: By the way, I still get a lot of random piles of monsters fighting each other in the wasteland. Is this intended, a bug, or what?

Yeah I can use GetItemCount. Doesn't reveal if an item is being worn, but spawned NPCs with armor automatically wear it. I'm going to presume Form lists can be nested, as then I can put the above into another Form and do a single check.



Sure, but they should also have reduced effectivness fighting at night too no? The main complaint with NPC combat at night is the insane accuracy of enemies.



Depends what you mean -- RC 4.1 spreads out wasteland spawns, but they'll still follow Increased Spawns rules. And I'm going to presume you followed the RC 4.1 upgrade instructions, or else you'll see large piles of enemies when upgrading from a previous MMM version.

Like a reduction in combat skill or just general accuracy?
Losing just energy weapons skill and not small guns/sniper rifles for example is not right.
From what I can tell most of the time the complaint you are trying to address is that the AI can see through graphical obstructions like a bush without issue. Mods like fellout really exasperate this.

The reduction in perception makes sense to me...
For loss in accuracy and combat effectiveness in general globally increasing the cone of accuracy at certain times of the day would make more sense.

I think in general this particular issue should be left alone until you really find a solid solution imho...

This is true, but I wouldn't want to affect other entities that rely on them, or clash with mods tweaking them.

Since PER affects energy weapons, a similar handicap for the other weapon skills is to just reduce the weapon skills. The perception hit is already being applied and removed via an ability, so it never touches base values or otherwise interferes with other factors affecting their skills. Even easier, it's just a matter of adding these extra values to the same ability. How about a penalty of 20 to Big Guns and Small Guns, 15 to Energy (since PER is already impacting it) and 10 to Melee (even though melee is close quarters, it's still harder to fight in the dark than in day). And again, NPCs wearing power armour don't get the penalties.

Open to other values for the above too, if you think these would be too little/too much. I tend to think darkness should be a resonable hit -- think how far you can see and aim in the pitch black of a wilderness away from city lights. Checking in game the average lvl 9 raider has small guns of 68, so actually those values above are probably a tad conservative.

Since the effects you are suggesting are very much under the hood, are easy to understand from a game play mechanic stand point, and generally logical it gets my vote.
Doesn't seem too outlandish with just the above adjustments you mentioned imo.

why would anyone in any powersuit not have some sort of night vision built into the visor to begin with. so why would there be a perception drop at all?

From playing wargames (airsoft) in the dark I can testify that a -20 to weapon skills is conservative indeed.

Hmm, I have to admit I'm not quite sure if I did it properly last time. I bet I didn't...

Re-read Martigen's last post.

thanks, i didnt notice the npc part. but i was thinking about player character. or did i miss something again?

player character have a skill drop in the dark even with a power armor?

3 of Martigen's posts up.

NPC's only, the PC will be unaffected.

I think some re-valuing of animal scalpings may need to be done. For instance... the Deathclaw Matriarch's horns weigh 4 WG, and are worth 60 caps. The far more plentiful and far less dangerous to acquire Carton of Cigarettes is worth 50 caps and weighs 2 WGs. I can keep my intestines inside my intestinal cavity, and haul 40 caps worth more of goods away for the same weight.

Even if factoring in value of other body parts, the Carton of Cigs still is a better offer. On a deathclaw matriarch I just dropped, I have two Deathclaw Bloods, a Deathclaw Hand, the afforementioned horns, and Deathclaw Meat. The blood and meat are consumables and may not ever make it to a market (especially considering I'm lurking in Old Olney right now), and the Deathclaw Hand is usable as constructing/repairing a Deathclaw Gauntlet. Even then, with a total weight of 12, that factors to a sum of 160 caps, while an equal weight of Cartons values in at 300 caps. And there isn't an apex predator attached to the Cartons either.

to me that sounds more like cartons of cigarettes should be nerfed rather than increasing the value of those horns.

Consider the cost of the ammunition expended to bring down the Deathclaw matriarch.

hmm good point

Are we talking about FOOK FWE or some other such balance overhaul where ammo is considerably more expensive?
Because in vanilla the ammo cost would be fairly negligible.

edit: also I am not actually suggesting to nerf the cigarettes becuase it would be clearly going out of scope. ect ect.. I am willing to buy into the idea that bottle caps tend to be too plentiful though as it is.

Depending on what you hit it with, the ammo cost would not be negligible.

I managed to hit a matriarch with a Fat Man and still had to put five Sniper Rifle shots into it to finish the job. Imagine how many LaserGat rounds or Minigun rounds or 5.56mm rounds it would take.

If you get absurdly lucky (or sneaky) and chain crit it with a hard-hitting weapon, the cost of ammo expenditure would be less than the cost of the scalpings. And that's not accounting for any repairs to hardware or mending yourself and teammates or detoxifying yourself after shooting up on Psycho or Med-X.

In the end nothing erases the fact that those damn horns are far harder to obtain than any carton of cigarettes.
Matriarchs are very nasty and they don't hand out horns for free that is absolutely true.

But I wonder why they are so valuable when compared to cigarettes. Since at least cigarettes have a basic function and are an addictive substance so to speak.
Perhaps if the horns, like the blood and the meat served an additional purpose?

In life, effort is not always proportionally rewarded.

What about in terms of game play though? :/
Should this always mimic real life?

Great, I'll run with it.



That's a fair point, and it's easy to change, but before I do -- consider that Deathclaws, presumably, are breeding creatures and there will always be a supply of them. Cigarettes are no longer being manufactured. Value is often associated with rarity, and in this case cigarettes hold more value because there is a limited, and dwindling, supply.

Eventually you may want to attach a warning to the next release, until the subject has been play tested a bit?
I do not understand the mechanics of decreased skills sufficiently, but I know that, given above values, most of Big Town's residents fight with a small arms skill of 0 (or -5, if negative skill values are possible), at night.
Just wondering if some players may feel uneasy about this.
(Or do these skill changes not affect non-MMM-NPCs?)

A lil' rant (targeted at Bethesda, not Mart) :
Apparently, Bethesda must have planned on all minor settlements to die out, later in the game (or is it a bug that deathclaws tend to spawn right inside the settlements?). What they may not have planned on is that some players take offense in the technical inability to prevent that from happening.
(E.g. either teach Big Town self-defense or repair the robots (Why not both?); you can repair robots, but only in this one quest and never again (wth?!); you can practically own the wasteland (I have enough resources in-game to buy it) but you cannot do anything to help the small settlements (aside of the town specific quests, which do nothing to help against deathclaws).

I find it funny how every modder says to load their files last. Right now I have about 30 files which should all be loaded last.

Funny you should mention that. I'm hoping to upload a beta here in a few hours for people to play with. Just finalising the new mutant armor textures, I have a couple of hundred entries to go through in the nifs.



Just MMM controlled or spawned actors. This constitutes most of the actors you fight while the mod is loaded, but not all. Unique/named actors are not altered (or if so, minimally) by MMM.


Big Town residents should be in the No Attack faction except for the SM assault. I will check. But yes, as a design decision, thanks go to Beth.



Yes, but the others are lying

That's funny, but;



Kudos goes to him

That's not a problem of load order, that's just the mod itself (and a particular issue fixed in the up-coming release).

Ok, beta time!

::: http://members.iinet.com.au/~amills/MMMF3-RC42-Beta.7z (27M 7z)

Changelog:

::: RC 4.2/5.0

• Fixed excessively large or small NPCs and Super Mutants
  
• Fixed Big Town Robots not attacking in Super Mutant assault
  
• Fixed some original Super Mutant corpses spawning Increased Spawns
  
• Fixed Enclave appearing near Purity after final quest (vanilla bug)
  
• Fixed Temple of The Union slaves' loaded Brahmin not showing Statue pack
  
• Fixed (hopefully) Night Ghoul eye vision triggering when it shouldn't
  
• Fixed Behemoths and Gargantuans spawning in bad places (Falls Church, Vernon's Square)
  
• Fixed incorrect normal maps for some Super Mutant armours
  
• Slightly reduced chance of Wanamingos appearing
  
• Slightly reduced volume of Enclave fodder in final quest
  
• Slightly reduced chance of Sentry Bots and Deathclaws in Wasteland
  
• Slightly reduced excess body count and combat globals for stability
  
• Added Republic of Dave NPCs to No Attack faction
  
• Added NPCs now lose Perception and weapon skills while outside at night
  
• Added new higher resolution armor textures for Super Mutants
  
• Added new global -- MMMzDLCIncreasedSpawns, defines whether IS applies to DLCs
  
• Added new global -- MMMzSizeScaling, defines whether dynamic size scaling is applied
  
• Added new global -- MMMzSpawnsChanceNone, sets percentage chance of no spawn at Wasteland points
  
• DLC Anchorage: Prevented Behemoths and Gargantuans spawning at Baileys Crossing
  
• DLC Broken Steel: Resolved minor conflict between UF3P Broken Steel and MMM Broken Steel
  
• DLC The Pitt: Added diverse skins for Street Troggs
  
• DLC The Pitt: Added Increased Spawns for Street Troggs
  
• DLC The Pitt: Scaled Trog variants to appear at earlier levels
  
• DLC The Pitt: Trogs take more damage from head shots
  
• DLC Zeta: Added Increased Spawns at a reduced rate for specific areas
  
• DLC Zeta: Added most MMM features including explosive robot deaths and stat, confidence and size scaling
  
• New Plugin: Reduced Wasteland Spawns
  
• New Plugin: No Size Scaling
  
• New Plugin: No DLC Increased Spawns
  
• New Plugin: DLC Zeta

Please test the new features, these include:

• The DLC Zeta plugin
  
• Alien and Robot Increased Spawns and general MMM features in Zeta
  
• Trog Increased Spawns and general MMM features in The Pitt
  
• Effectiveness of the Reduced Wasteland Spawns plugin (currently set at 12% no spawn)
  
• NPC reduced perception and weapon skills at night
  
• NPC reduced min and max size scaling
  
• Behemoths and Gargs spawning in bad spots
  
• New higher-res Super Mutant armors

NOTE: Rest 4 days (or more) inside with no NPCs and Creatures when adding the beta to let cells reset, you know the drill
NOTE: Some of the new Super Mutant armors have a bug in the alpha channel, this will be fixed soon