Ah, I hadn't considered the technical side. I suppose it's a small price to pay for compatibility with all power armours, and by the time you DO get PA, it's at least fairly likely you'll have a decent repair skill, so it's not entirely out of the question. Looking forward to the next release, on-tap-explosions are always good

This mod sounds very nice!


Oh god. I'm using Arwen's Realism Tweaks which already reduces running speed, even more so with low agility and heavy armor, so in my game wearing uncharged power armor would probably make me as fast as a snail.

:turtle:

Lol. I was thinking sentry gun.

I tried this out and really liked it, but I have to recharge way too often. Is there a way to slow that down? I hate being in t he middle of something and suddenly running at half speed. Also, when it's powered I seem to be running like speedy gonzoles on speed.

If your timescale is set to 30, you'll need to recharge way too often. You can either lower your timescale, or enter the PPA config menu (hit "P" or click on the [PA] Config apparel item) and lower the power drain multiplier. If your timescale is 30, you should probably set it to its lowest setting, 0.05. That will get the power drain rate to just about what I intended when I was putting the mod together at a timescale of 5.

The armor alone shouldn't effect your speed, but Lower Liquid Cooling will boost it by 40%. When TRO is engaged it will boost it by another 60%, basically doubling your speed. I clocked it with a speedometer I made, based on the official FO3 unit conversions, and you'll hit about 20 mph, tops. Getting even geekier, according to lore, the MicroFusion packs that sets of T-51b armor use put out 60,000 Watts - which is about 80 horsepower. I think its pretty reasonable for an 80+ horsepower, single occupant vehicle to go that fast.

That worked smashingly, thank you.


As far as the speed issue, was just making sure it was intended and not an issue on my end haha. Now that I don't have to stop and recharge in the middle of every mission, this is definitely a favorite mod.

Is there a way to make a specific armor that counts as power armor not require charging? I use NAPA, but I need to use the power to run it, which lowers my sneaking skill, which makes no sense for that armor.

However, I rather enjoy this mod otherwise. I got my hands on a set of PA a while back, fixed it up, and finally tried it on. I moved slower then normal(which struck me as odd, since I was moving really freaking slow), but thought enough to hit P, and then I charged it up, and ran off again.

I'm not familiar with NAPA, so I'm not sure what the best solution would be. You could open NAPA up in FO3Edit and clear the PA flag, then this mod would leave it alone entirely. Or you could tweak that armor's stats to offset the -20 stealth penalty. Post a link, I'll check it out and maybe make a compatibility patch.

*Edit - woops, didn't realize that was another name for Coyote Reflex Power Armor. This mod might conflict with that mod's jumping, but other than that they should work together OK. If you feel up to making a quick compatibility patch yourself for the sneak reduction, I'd flag PPA and NAPA as masters using FO3Edit, load them up in the GECK, and make an .esp file that edits the PPAEffPowerAssist object effect. Add a getequipped condition to the sneak reduction, with the equipped object being the Coyote Reflex Power Armor, with the conditional basically saying "if the target is wearing NAPA, don't apply the sneak penalty." You'll continue to get the carryweight boost, and you'll need to recharge.

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3365. It's a fun mod. esp is named NAPA.esp, which makes sense in my eyes, since it's North American Power Armor. Made in Canada, for Canadians.
EDIT: Hm, that would work better then what I was going to do. Makes sense, and it sounds alright. I was just going to remove the PA flag, like you suggested before your edit.
EDIT2: Done, and done. Gonna go test it now.
EDIT Tri: Hey, it's mergable in Wrye Bash! Win for us!

So... I was trolling around on a Fallout New Vegas thread about power armor restrictions looking for ideas, and came across one posted by Calgone - in order to make power armor more rare, it should only show up as individual components when you go to loot it. Leg plating, upper body servos, chassis, microfusion pack, etc. I'm thinking about implementing the idea, either as a disableable option or a seperate .esp for PPA. When a PA equipped NPC dies, I'll have a token run a check on their limb conditions. Unless they died from a bunch of head shots, and the armor condition is still above about 50%, you'll find a bunch of sub components depending on limb condition. The individual components will be worth much less than when they're assembled into power armor, and you'll probably need a perk or two and a workbench if you want to be able to salvage and assemble them into power armor. It shouldn't be very hard to do, but maintaining compatibility will be more difficult than it has been with the rest of the mod, which is one reason I'd like to release it as a separate .esp. Sound interesting to anyone? It's a little like FOOK's (or is it FWE's?) destroyed power armor, but should be a bit more interesting - you still end up with something useful most of the time.

Just wondering, but what would I have to change to get the temperature into Celsius? I don't understand Fahrenheit.

It's a little involved, but I think it can most simply be done via an XML edit, if you aren't planning on switching back and forth between it and Fahrenheit. It would take a while to explain though.

You'd need to open the PPA_HUD.xml, find the two temperature gauge rect objects, and replace the "*F" labels with "C". You'd also need to replace the value strings for both of them with Fahrenheit -> Celsius conversion equations, which might be a little tricky in FO3's xml math syntax.

Ok, so I have the xml open. That's about where you lost me.
EDIT: By which I mean I don't know which one is which. They all look pretty much the same to my eyes.
EDIT: Ah, found a string! Which means I can find other ones that are what I'm looking for. BRB

EDITEDITEDIT: I take it I now need to edit the multiplier on both parts with one, which will be a bit tougher because I don't really know what I need to set it to.

My xml file has changed a bit because of some of the upgrades I'm adding to the next release, so I don't want to upload the whole thing, but if you copy/paste the code below into your PPA_HUD.xml file, replacing the PPA_Counter3Container and PPA_Counter4Container rects (just look for two consecutive blocks of code that match what I've pasted below) it should work. I haven't tested it though.

Oh, thank you sweet jebus!

A million thanks for that.

I just tested it out, seems to work fine.

So, anyway, back to the power armor rarification idea... I tried to make it difficult to obtain upgrades by pricing them so high, but having too many lootable upgrades on NPCs messes that up. But I want to see them in use, so if I make it harder to obtain a set of power armor and its upgrades, that should fix the balance problem.

Will you have to do that for all armor types? Outcast, BoS, Enclave and Tesla? I assume the T51b & Winterized would come assembled as well as the lyons pride armor. I am not sure about the hellfire armor as i havent gotten that far in the main quest yet.

I could probably get away with just doing non-unique Enclave, BOS, and Outcast armors. The uniques aren't normally in the hands of NPCs, apart from companions, and they don't die that often. So it would support the vanilla armors, the DLC armors, and maybe compatibility patches for FWE and FOOK. Uniques and any other mod's armors would just be lootable like normal, but those don't often get put in the hands of NPCs so it wouldn't make that big of a difference. Even the "destroyable" armors would occasionally remain fully intact, especially if you killed the wearer with headshots. Armor placed in the gameworld, like the T-51b and prototype medic armors, would be found fully intact. Most components would be common, like all variants of T-45d would use the same servos, but the plating would differ between Outcast and BOS versions. If I do any unique armors they would probably reduce down to unique briastplates, but could be completed with other non-unique parts. I don't see much point in uniques though, since the main reason for this change it is to reduce the amount of loot found on killed NPCs.

Hey Imp,

You had previously voiced an interest in hearing about what modifications I make to your mods for my own play environment. In that spirit, I thought I'd share a few things that I've been playing around with with PPA. If this isn't of interest to you, just let me know and I won't bring it up anymore.

Anyhow, I'm still doing some playtest on the numbers to make sure I get the feeling that I want on everything... but here are the primary changes I've made:

• I changed the damage to run based on the average of upper and lower. (So I commented out the first damage calculation, and changed the second one to go off of ((fTUpper+fTLower)/2) instead of just fTLower). This allows for a certain amout of "either / or for longer than both" when using TRO.
  
• Changed the fWeightMult calculations to not take into account the added TRO carry capacity, and just divide the currently carried weight (minus (str*constant)) by the powered assist carry bonus (plus lower cooling if applicable - though I am considering removing, or at least reducing how much lower cooling is taken into account, so that the power drain will still take into account the fact that it is not only powering the armor and the cooling system, but that the main servos are also having to work harder / draw more power to lift the increased amounts... since the cooling unit is making that added work possible without overheating, but not actually making the servos more efficient).
  
• Changed the TRO's carry capacity increase to +1000. This combined with the fWeightMult changes makes it so that you can carry HUGE amounts if you want to - but the power drain and heat buildup ramifications of doing so get more and more severe.
  
• Largely as a matter of personal taste, I've decreased the speed bonus for TRO (which also makes the fWeightMult less of a hard hitter - part of why I'm still tweaking numbers). I suppose it is noteworthy that I also use a sprint mod that already gives me the "short burst of added speed" element.
  
• I added a counter wrapper to the heat increase and decrease calculations (the same way you have around the damage calculations) to make the ramping up and cooling down of the armor a more prolonged and "smooth" transition. This also makes it so that if you go into damaging heats, you can get yourself in trouble - since the armor doesn't cool off ten times before damage is applied again.

The combination of these gets to the point where, if you want to use the TRO for the purpose of hauling lots of weight for long term (as opposed to quick in combat use only), that is feasible... but you'll want to have your weapon away, and be very careful not to move around if/when you find yourself in combat suddenly.

The overall effects of these changes on the TRO in combat, outside of being under a heavy load, is still something I'm playing around with as well, since this obivously changes the feel of TRO rather noticably... but so far so good (for me anyhow).

I also made a similar change, and wanted goals very similar to DUBs, though I'm less proficient so was unable to get it as close as he was. The way I figured it was that if I can supply the servos with power they should be able to exert tremedous force (I emulated this by changing the str modifier to +10, couldn't figure out how to make heavier weights take more power though )

I also feel like upper and lower temps should have more effect on each other - at the very least, the outer shell is seamless, so I can't imagine there being an insulating layer to stop heat transfer, for example.
Not sure about reducing speed, though - perhaps make it more dependant on carry weight, an unburdened persion could probably move as fast as they could ask the suit to run.

In any case, getting every limb crippled by a grenade immediately under me, and then still beating a super mutant in a fistfight, was certainly an awesome experience thanks to PPA

edit: Though, DAB, you wouldn't mind outlining what changes achieved those effects, would you?

I agree, personally.

Ultimately I want to make it so that the temps actually impact the other slightly (upper being way overheated when the lower is quite cool, causes a slight increase in lower temp and a slight decrease in upper temp) --- since the change I made to damage already results in "damage if one temp is particularly high, OR both are fairly high".

That is the next thing I plan on messing around with, after I've finished my current playthrough with the changes I've already made - since knowing the equations used right now, I suspect the math on that will require a good bit of tweaking as well.


Uhh... how familiar are you with scripting?

If the answer is somewhere in the vicinity of "not at all", then my outlining changes probably won't be that useful.

If the answer is closer to "pretty good / proficient", then the best approach would really be to crack open the PPAMain script and follow it through to learn what it is doing and how it is doing it... then reread my description of what I did and go from there (and/or ask pointed questions if something in particular isn't making sense to you).


My changes are almost entirely dealing with script modifications - and Imp's scripts are complex enough that in my opinion, it isn't advisable to play around with them unless you're able to wrap your brain around the whole thing first.


(PS. "DU" would be my requested short hand... DarkUncle is the real handle -- but it was already registered when I came here, so DarkUncleBoh became my backup -- since Dark Uncle is the nickname for a literary character whose real last name is Boh... but I digress over trivial matters)

Gotcha, DU
Well, I'm not too hot with FOScript, but I'm a dab hand with Python, PHP, and C#, so if I can't figure it out with half an hour and a strong coffee I need to hand in my badge!
I've taken a peek at the main quest script, and added F-to-C conversion for the temperatures, but all my other changes were in FO3Edit. I'm sure with a scripting tutorial I could figure it mostly out, but I'm terrible with all this "art" stuff, so I've tried to keep as far away from modding as possible and just play the game

I do most of my work in FO3Edit as well - really only pop into the GECK when I need to compile a script it seems.

Anyhow, if you're proficient in general - just unfamiliar with FO3 scripting specifically, then you really shouldn't have much difficulty. The syntax is extremely easy to follow... it is still just going to be a matter of becoming familiar enough with the PPAMain script to understand how Imp is doing everything (several aspects of it were confusing to me at a first glance - till I looked at it again and figured out the ramifications of different values... then it made a lot more sense).


...but any further questions for me specifically on that, I'd kinda suggest taking to PM --- I don't want to be seen as trying to hijack this thread with my personal ideas of how the mod should be changed... I just wanted to throw some things out to Imp for consideration. He and I tend to have ways of looking at things that in some ways seem very similar, in other ways seem very far off from one another - so I just throw my ideas out there and let him grab or ignore whatever he wants.