I am very new to modding but seek to make FO3 a game more to suit my style and feeling of what the wasteland should be.
So here are a few things I have done what do you think, and any advice would be welcome.

1. limited the ammo across the board. Reason: to make melee and unarmed more of a focus for everyone.

2. Jacked the cost up of ammo to buy it, and change weight of other items too.

3. Going to give more npc's better access to close quarter weapons, the enclave and outcasts now have riot shock batons and no damage resistance daggers as well as common high tech melee weapons / powerfists.
Outcasts have acess to plasma based weapons and grenades of all kinds as standerd. Raiders have all low tech melee and unarmed weapons from axes, autoaxes and deathclaw gauntlets, as well as molotov cocktails buy the bucket load.

BoS, Outcasts and Enclave I plan on giving laser shotguns, carbines and other energy based weapons.

4. Added effects like knock down to all blunt melee and unarmed weapons on a crit allready, and will to some guns as well if I like it, as well as coming up with new effects when I think of some.

5. Made a semi automatic rifle for raiders and myself, and am going to modify / make some new guns to improve other enemies.

6. Going to change / add armour bonuses to other armours in line with their names, so low level enemies get a boost to certain stats making them more of a challenge later on.
As well as make some new armour types to give to higher leveled encounters.

So thanks for any advice you can give me.

http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9022 simply removes most ammo and loot. Read the real description.

Two most popular "difficulty" mods: (i.e reduces loot, rusts up weapons, ect.)

http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7565

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2761

I won't begin to discuss differences between these.

There's also a much older mod, still good though.

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=334

Sometimes I want to only use my fists or melee weapons for the whole game but with everyone else using some sort of gun I die quicker than usual as some NPC's still prefer to stand right up in your face to shoot their rifles, instead of switching to something more suitable.
I did my own little plugin to force NPC's to use melee weapons and unarmed. Nothing fancy or very interesting. It's one of oodles of mods newies learn to make and put on Nexus en masse. So not worth uploading anywhere.
All I really did was check the "NPC's Use Ammo" box on all guns and made them scarcer but the others more abundant. My plugin includes all DLC's and all the overhauls I use as well.
It's by no means ideal or a new thing. Some things don't work as intended. For example, if we're fighting those Raiders near the Citadel and they run out of ammo they'll disappear over to the Jefferson Memorial in search of that dropped hunting rifle with 3 bullets in it. Annoying little things like that.
But it's fine for me, for now.

Post above - I use FWE but have no interest in the others, though Savage Wasteland could be interesting. As long as it plays just fine with FWE. I won't give up FWE for anything

Thanks for the mod lists mooguy, cheers.



Yes I have been having fun with that unchecking the Use ammo boxes, and upping the ammo each npc has.
The things I have changed actually feel quite good to me, at the moment I am just using an older high level character, but allready have had a few factions fight each other change tactics and use fallen enemies weapons, so it is going to be fun playing from the start again with a fresh experiance.

well i use and vouch for ART and it does the above basically. im a big guns character right now but rarely use my big guns (reserved for tough enemies) because of ammo and caps shortage. many times ive been forced to switch to melee simply because ive no choice, having run out of all ammo. fwe also has options to limit ammo and other loot so with the two i think that parts basically covered. add in savage wasteland and youve got the WASTE part of the wasteland feeling as it should be

There are quite a few modders/players that share your vision of the wasteland. Personally I use FWE and Savage Wasteland with just a few XFO files that were never remade quite how I liked them.

ART is a very good lightweight mod, it only affects a few gameplay mechanics, but it works very well! FWE has a lot of overlap with ART but it adds a lot of new material to the game (weapons, chems, bullet-time, ect..) so it’s not the best choice if all you’re wanting is a little bit of game tweaking, but if you want all that extra stuff in your game then go with this. XFO is old, the earliest versions predate the GECK! But it works very well despite that, there are a few minor bugs in it that will never be officially fixed as Xodarap seems to have left the modding scene. Savage Wasteland should work with any of these as great efforts were made to keep it relatively conflict free. It is also still being developed so it would be good to check back on it from time to time as there will be more updates in the future. The downside is that it does have a few bugs, and the guy working on it seems to be kinda slow in getting out his updates. (The lazy bum probably just sits and drinks beer while watching reruns of MacGyver instead of modding!!)

Thanks for the help guys its helped alot.
I am really just tweaking the game myself at the moment more than anything, as I really wanted to learn how to more than anything else.
After which I will look more into other mods out there.
So far its going pretty well, I capped ammo but introduced more varity and numbers in weapons within the factions, with stronger ones such as axes and autoaxes to the raiders, and new ones such as 2 or more molotov cocktails for every raider.
I must say running tests in game has been fun as the fights are both more chaotic and suprisingly more leathal.
So thanks again for all your help.

For starters use a full on ammo weight pack and then ad firemans axes by neunen.

Seriously. If i ran out of ammo and seen some nut case chasing after my ass with a firemans axe I'd be running like hell !! lmao ^_^

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8934

The ammo and weapon rarity esp in this mod. Plus the other stuff people mentioned.

The weapon knockdowns esp will make almost all weapons knockdown after a couple of hits.

What you have to keep in mind is the amount of enemies you are fighting.
If most of them are carrying some sort of firearm and/or ammo, pretty soon you will have quite a lot of it.
So, if firearms and ammo are supposed to feel/be limited, most enemies have to use melee.

On the other hand, if you really manage to make ammo and firearms rare, their effectivity should be increased.
After all, what's the sense in using an rifle if you then blast all your precious ammo on a single enemy?