Pointiac
A skillpoint enhancerl

This mod enhances the way skillpoints are earned and assigned in a way that makes SPECIAL's more useful.

Notice:
I am going towards controversial changes, so I will leave older versions available for those that do not like the changes. Read the changelog at the bottom.

Full list of details:

• All skills have been reduced down to a base of 0, so now you only start out with skillpoints relative to your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
  
• Tagged skills now gets raised by +2 per point spent (like in FO1/2).
  
• Tag also gives an immediate +5 skillpoints to the tagged skill.
  
• All SPECIAL's now give 3 skillpoints to their linked skills instead of 2 points (ie. Agility give +3 Small Guns, +3 Sneak, etc). Luck is unchanged and gives it's usual 0.5 skillpoint on all skills.
  
• Every level you gain 7 skillpoints instead of 10. (Plus points from Intellect and perks)
  
• The perk "Intense Training" has been changed from a perk to a feature. Every 5 levels you gain a SPECIAL.
  
• The perk "Educated" has been disabled.
  
• The perk "Tag!" have had it's level requirement set to 20.
  
• Some loadingscreen tips changed to accommodate the above changes.

Compatibility notes:
Pointiac will not be compatible with any other mod that has changes that affect skillpoints. However, by loading it last, it will override any changes made by other mods.
You can use http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35726 for this.

Known Issues

• Most likely not balanced.

Recommended mods:

• You really want to have more perks available when playing, so I highly recommend http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35979 by Dree.

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Download at: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35707

Version 1.2x
1.20, 02/11/2010 - New build: Removed educated, revamped Intense Training and nerfed amount of SP you get per level.

Version 1.1x:
1.11, 30/10/2010 - Bugfix: Forgot to set base survival skill to 0, when porting the mod from FO3.
1.10, 28/10/2010 - You now only gain 5 points when tagging a skill. Also you have 2 less skillpoints every level.

Version 1.0x:
1.04, 30/10/2010 - Bugfix: Forgot to set base survival skill to 0, when porting the mod from FO3.
1.03, 28/10/2010 - Changed the Educated perk back to level req 6, since you don't get a perk at 5. Also distributed the Intense Training out more, giving it at 4,8,12,16,20,24 and 30.
1.02, 28/10/2010 - Bugfix: Changed the Educated perk to level req 5, instead of 6.
1.01, 28/10/2010 - Initial release for New Vegas.

Reserved

personally i wouldn't use it...it seems so extreme, lowering the amount of sp you get even when in default you only get a good 5-6 skills with int 8.

my main gripes would be educated so late - makes it much less useful and the fact that you start with 0 breaks pretty much every early game speech check.

If you have 6 in all stats and 4 luck (I know this isn't possible, but let's go with it for the math's sake...), you would get about 20 in speech from the charisma. 25 if you tag it.

With the changes from the alternate version, you would have your 3 tagged skills at ~53 when you're level 8, and 3 non-tagged skills would be ~34. This is if you evenly distribute the points on 6 different skills. This is with NO educated perk and only gaining 3 SP intellect.

Level 8 is quite early in the game unless you race through only the main quests. The idea of the mod is also to be an incentive to work on your SPECIALS as well as picking perks that give bonuses to your skills (Like Daddy's Boy, Gun Nut and those perks that most likely will be included by other modders).

But please continue to give thoughts, ideas and constructive criticism.

I might make a test-version where you get a new SPECIAL every 4th or 5th level, removing the Intense Training perk all together. Thus freeing you up to pick more fun and tailored perks when they start getting implemented by the others.

oh i totally agree with the increases in the specials and the fo2 system of +2 for tagged skills

frankly i couldn't live without intense training at lvl 2 cause there's literally nothing there, same with lvl 4 and 6 if you raise the requirement on educated and comprehension.

the biggest worry though is the fact that everythings at 0 before counting your special and i do really like the general premise of the mod! three are some others which are like 25 base + 2 skills per lvl on tagged which are kinda over the top

Unless I'm misunderstanding something from the description, you realize that by average your skills will start higher on average at level 1 with this mod, than without this mod...

Say your starting SPECIAL stats are at 5 / 6 / 6 / 6 / 6 / 6 / 5

Default game: Each skill has 2 points + (2 x associated SPECIAL) + (0.5 x Luck) = melee starting at 15, your other dozen skills at 17 = 219 total
Add in 45 points for tag skills, and you'd start with 264 skill points at level one.


With this mod (assuming I'm understanding the description correctly - haven't actually looked at the esp to verify):
Each skill is 0 + (3 x associated SPECIAL) + (0.5 x Luck) = melee starting at 18, your other dozen skills at 21 = 270 total
Add in 30 points for tag skills, and you'd start with 300 skill points at level one.


Now assume that you're putting 10 skills points per level into different tag skills for the first nine gained levels... so by level 10 you've earned an "extra" 90 skill points with this mod (ie, 180 points to the tagged skills rather than 90 in vanilla). At level 10, not that high at all, you're now 120 skill points ahead of where you'd be with the vanilla game.


...so yeah, I'm not really seeing this cause a problem with difficulty making skill checks that you'd otherwise have been able to make. Unless you're making a charisma 1 character and wanting to make some speech checks at level 1...

Thanks for the math there. Arwen had the same conclusion when she used it back in FO3. Quote from her site:
"I used this mod for several months, as it was better than the default skill points calculations, except for the fact that I had even more skill points for all my non-tagged skills (as in 4 more per skill, after leveling up the first time), so my average non-tagged skill had 23 points. That's 1/4 of the way to being an expert in everything!"

So nerfing is in order.

I'm in the process of making a new version. My ideas at the moment (just brainstorming really):

- Intense Training is no longer a perk. It triggers automatically every 5 levels (Using a script Xodarap had in his overhaul for FO3). The idea behind this is that it gives you the "Oh, I'm looking forward to level X"-feeling.
- Another Tag! becomes available at level 20 instead of 16 (since we now have 30 levels instead of 20).
- Educated has been removed to keep it from being "the perk that you MUST have"
- Skill points from level reduced by 3, down to 7.

A requirement for this mod to be fun is to have a bigger variety of perks available on each level. Removing Intense Training and Educated, frees up your choices for many of the "boring" "+5/+5 skill"-perks, as well as new perks getting implemented by others. Thus you are able to tailor your character much more heavily to the way you want to play it.

I don't really have a grand design here, so I'm implementing changes as they pop into my head, hoping it will come out playable.

By the way, you have a mistake in your current version up that you should remedy as well...

You changed fADVSkillBigGunsBase (formid:8c836) down to 0, instead of fADVSkillSurvivalBase (formid:125e96).


...considering when you sort by formid, bigguns is right in the middle of the others - while survival is down the list a ways... tis an easy mistake to make.


As far as the math: I'm working on my own personal tweaks which includes some similar things: I'm doing 4 points per special, and starting each one at -4 (with a minimum of 4 points from a special of 1, and 1 point from a luck of 1, this still results in a minimum starting skill value of 1 point), then making tag skills give 2 for 1, and a one time bonus of 5. To put that in the math of my earlier example:

Vanilla: level 1: 219 from special, 264 total with tags
Pointiac v103: level 1: 270 from special, 300 total with tags

What I'm looking at works out to 256 from special, 266 total with tags.

I'm still trying to figure out how what I'm going to reduce the skills per level by / to... by the math, assuming tag skills start out at 30 and you get them to 100 eventually, that's 35 extra skill points per tag for 105 skill points to offset still. The simple thing to do would be to balance to level 30 and remove 3 skill points per level and call it close enough. *shrug*


As for Tag! and Educated perks: For what it is worth, I am not so convinced that they need to be changed/removed/touched at all. With this method of doing things, assume you use Tag! to slam up, say Energy Weapons - which you've been neglecting ever since. Assume it is around the same 25-30, so you're going to spend a couple of levels getting it up to 100 -- earning a total of 40 skill points (35 from level up, 5 from the tag bonus - well, based on my math anyhow). Educated taken at level 4, nets you 52 - even more skill points... but those are available much more slowly, and you'll only ever see that much benefit if you go all the way to level 30.

Compare to Intense Training: Int... which (again, using my math anyhow) gives you +12 to skills right away and +0.5 per level. Taken at level 2, that means 14 more skill points for only 26 total. A lot less than Educated, right? Sure, but you also need to take into account that int has other effects (changing dialogue, unlocking perks, etc) as well as the value of 12 of those skill points being immediate (while with Educated, you don't actually gain ANY benefit from it until the next level... so taking Educated at level 4, you'd be level 13 before you were seeing more benefit from Educated than you would have seen from IT:Int at level 2)

...again, all just my opinion, and based on my math which is currently a bit more aggressive than yours.

(FYI: Feel free to use any of my math/ideas/whatever - the mod I am making is a larger scope overhaul for my girlfriend and I to use... I don't know that I'll ever release it. Just don't give me a hard time about stealing your ideas if I ever do. *lol*)


So there is a WallOfText-ish ton of information and thoughts that you never asked for. Back to FNVEdit for me...


Edit: Forgot to say: Yes the total skill point value of Tag! and Educated are quite high, particularly if you compare against the +5/5 or even +15 of FO3. With perks being every other level though, they are much more valuable, and should be worth a lot more in the way of skill points. So while it may still be "too much" depending on your preferences, it maybe isn't as much so as it seems at first glance.

I'm intrigued by this mod, particularly your ideas with having Intense Training automatic every five levels and another Tag! being available. I don't know yet that I'm going to use it, I think I'm going to look around a little more, but I'm curious to know if I could use this on a character who is already about level 14. I mean, I'm okay with using the console to set him back to level 1 and finding some way to quickly get levels again (probably using console for that too) but I'm curious to know if that would completely screw up my game. Thing is, I don't want to remake him because there are quests I've already done and places I've already been. (There are also a few skill books I've already read, but I'll probably just try to remember which ones so I can add them to my inventory and re-read them).

Woops. Thanks for the heads up. Fixed now.


Hm... The fact that you can set base at a negative value completely eluded my mind. Will have to work it into my thought process.


Will at least put your "whatever"'s into consideration when I tinker about. And please use whatever you want. And do release.


It should be no problem at all. My mod is completely installable and uninstallable on any saves as far as I know. Your skillpoints might not be a 100% balanced though.

I will start to test my test-build against Arwen's overhaul soon and see how it balances out. Also looking at a couple of the extra perk and trait mods that are becoming available.

v1.20 released. I'm keeping the v1.0x and v1.1x online, so that people who do not like the direction I'm going can stick to the other ones.

New features compared to v1.11:
- Every level you gain 7 skillpoints instead of 10. (Plus points from Intellect and perks)
- The perk "Intense Training" has been changed from a perk to a feature. Every 5 levels you gain a SPECIAL.
- The perk "Educated" has been disabled.
- The perk "Tag!" have had it's level requirement set to 20.

I like!