Hey Steve, good to see you haven't totally faded into RL!


This really is the prime question isn't it.
For me, having weps with very low health wouldnt work so well. I have decreased the degradation to about 5% of stock as I found it stupidly unrealistic how fast guns wore out. I have upped the condition-jam rate though so that would cancel out the issue some extent, but that would leave my raiders defanged because of constantly jamming weapons.

As a possible solution to the weak gunless raiders, I would suggest 2 options.
First, Let them have guns that are dangerous but undesirable.
I have a .44 pipe rifle that does a lot of damage, but is very innaccurate and only single shot. Exactly the type of cheap, cobbled-together weapon raiders would be likely to have. Does a lot of damage, but definitely not the type of thing that a player is likely to collect. I think the sawed off also would fit this bill. Or even crossbows

Second, is to equip them with a more deadly set of melee weapons. I have ditched all the pool cues, switch blades and tire irons, and replaced them with a nasty assortment of axes, spiked maces, and machetes. They still suffer from a lack of ranged weps, but when they do get in close they are extremely dangerous.
If you are interested, I would be happy to let you have the weps I have banged together.

As for the question of Quantums and sugar bombs, I say strip em all. Its just silly that either would still be around, except in locked rooms and other special locations. I always thought both of those quests were a bit frivolous, and can definitly live without completing them.
A mod called "Savage Wasteland" should be savage, damn it!
It should leave you starving, scabby and half feral, not happily skipping about collecting soda and childrens cereal!

I don't really see how that would solve the problem. As it stands now, a melee Raider coming at me isn't terribly healthy by the time they reach me, if they do at all. One or two shots from my Combat Shotgun if they make it and they're usually done for, unless they manage to surprise me. I have to be very careful with some Raider who has an Assault Rifle though.



Well the Sugar Bomb Run isn't really a quest, just a means to make some caps, so I can agree with you on those. But alot of people would be annoyed if they were unable to complete the Nuca Quantum quest, myself included. It bugs the hell out of me to have some quest in my journal that I can't clear out.

True, though in cramped spaces such raiders are a very real danger, especially if you use the increased spawns of MMM.
But I agree, just upping the melee effectiveness isn't enough.
An essential part of how I envision for a savage wasteland concept is the reduction of available ammo. Ideally the player should be faced with a situation where gunning down a group of raiders will deplete his ammo stocks to the point where his survival would be at risk. That makes melee armed raiders a credible threat to long term survival.
In combination with cheap innaccurate but hi-damage ranged weapons (pipe-rifles, sawed offs and crossbows) you end up with an enemy with more of a bite.



I say nuke that bloody soap-opera quantum quest altogether.
I suspect that the type of people who would be annoyed by the loss of that quest, are not the type to go for a hardcoe, ass-ripping mod like Savage wasteland.
Its just inconceivable that there would be any food, smokes, booze or soda lying around unless it was being hoarded under serious hard-calibre security or buried in some forgotten bunker.
I mean hell, is this "Savage Wasteland" or "Slightly-inconvenient Wasteland"?

But not everyone is approaching the mod the same as you do, or even Steve Dog for that matter. Personally I like these mods not so much for making the game harder and the Wasteland more barren, but because they add a random element to all the placed loot like the containers. Ordinarily the areas get rather predictable, you can know exactly what you'll end up with if you go somewhere. But using these mods adds a certain amount of uncertainty to the loot. You can never be too sure what you'll end up with. And the Nuca-Cola Challenge isn't necessarily the easiest quest to finish. The Nuca-Cola plant can be tough with all those robots and Turrets, and you might end up going near Old Olney, which is one of the toughest areas of the game. If some Deathclaw spots you as you're heading for that bottle of Quantum, you could be done for.

I totally agree with Belanos! Some of us actually enjoy the non-combat type quests . . . and there are not nearly enough of these in FO3. RPGs traditionally are as much about completing quests, and solving challenges, as combat. What really, really bums me out is that from what has been released so far on FO New Vegas, is that it will be perhaps even more focused on combat than FO3 is. I'm expecting that their so called "hard-core" setting is going to need a LOT of tweaking before I'll consider it to be a hard-core RPG.

BTW SteveDog. I'd like to change the values slightly in my probabilities. The Unfound Grub is pretty easy, I can just change the global value, but I'm a bit confused about the others. I'm currently using the Low versions but I would like to change it from 10% per Luck skill point to 8%. Since I always start the game at 5 Luck, that puts the odds slightly against me at the first part of the game, but after I get my Bobblehead and that Lucky 8 Ball they will be slightly in my favour. What value would I change the scripts to in order to accomplish this? I see you have Random Variable values of 1, .2 and .1 but I can't quite grasp how that translates into 1%, 5% and 10%. Would I go with .08? Bear with me, I svck at math. :facepalm:

Arwen

I hardly call the Nuca Cola Quest a non-combat one. The Nuca Cola plant can be fairly challenging with all those robots, turrets and Nuca Lurks. But it would bug the hell out of me if I couldn't complete it simply because I didn't find enough Quantums in my travels.

This is why I have gone to great lengths to ensure that all aspects could be dialed way up or down or even turned off completly. Different players have different tastes and visions of how Savage the Wasteland should be. From my own vision the entire town of Girdershade seems odd and out of place considering how many other settlements have barricades and armed guards.

I wholey agree with Arwen on the lack of non-combat quests, but I also think there is more to non combat than just gathering random stuff (Cola, Scrap, Breakfast Cereal...) From the old days of Fallout we could go under cover for the local law enforcement, get a job shoveling brahmin dung (Expert Excrement Expeditor!!) or find missing persons (Holy Crap thats Woody!!). These are fun types of quests (and many more) that would have really added to Fallout 3.

the Random Variable is a number between 0-99, multiplied by one it rolls your Luck against a number from 0-99. Multiplied by 0.2 its a randum number between 0-19.8 and by 0.1 its between 0-9.9. The narrower the spread the greater the chances of finding the item. I used multipliers because my mind works better when I think backwards, the easiest way to get each point of luck to count for 8% (which equates to 8%-80% depending on Luck value) would be to either change the multiplier to .125 or divide the Random Variable by 8. Mathmagically it works out the same either way, but for odd numbers like 7 or 3 its easier to divide by 7 or 3 than multiply by 0.142857 or 0.3333333.

But the quest itself is not a combat quest, as it you do not have to specifically kill anyone to complete it. And you can get through it without much killing at all if your sneak skills are high enough (at least I can with my Realism Tweaks installed).

OK, thanks. I tried the High version and didn't really like it. Scrounging is part of the fun for me in the game and things got a little boring not finding anything in the areas I went to. 8% per Luck sounds about right to me, that gives me a fairly even spread of odds between against me and for me. 40% against at the start of the game, 56% in my favour by the time my Luck has gotten as high as it's going to be. I hope your next version uses a global for everything, it's much easier to adjust. I have a bit of script editing ahead of me now.



True, but I prefer blowing up robots. :gun:

So going through the gun scripts, I notice that you have alot of different versions of each type representing different states of health. Why not just include a random variable for health in the script so you can just use the same object and script for each location they're placed in? You could again base that on Luck; the lower that SPECIAL the more chance you have of finding a weapon that's in poor repair.

The reasoning behind that was partially to keep track of the vanilla stats for each location in case someone wanted to turn off an Unfound catagory, like Guns or Melee, when all the mods were combined into one. The other functionality that comes from this is the option to set how you want weapon health determined. I have 4 catagories, Game Design (this is the vanilla health), Weapon Skill, Repair Skill and Luck/Chance and each one can be set to No Influence, Minor Factor, Contributing Factor or Major Factor. Depending on how much importance you place on each catagory sets a multiplier to 0 for None, 0.5 for Minor, 1 for Contributor and 2 for Major. The formula then for determining the weapons health looks a little like this:

(WARNING: Complex mathematical equations ahead!)

If GameDesignMultiplier + WeaponSkillMultiplier + RepairMultiplier + LuckMultiplier > 0
Set WeaponHealth to ((DefaultHealth * GameDesignMultiplier + Player.GetAV SmallGun/BigGun/EnergyWeapon * WeaponSkillMultiplier + Player.GetAV Repair * RepairMultiplier + (GetRandomPercent/10) * Player.GetAV Luck * LuckMultiplier) / (GameDesignMultiplier + WeaponSkillMultiplier + RepairMultiplier + LuckMultiplier))
else
Set WeaponHealth to 0


This foumula gives a weighted average of all 4 factors depending on the level of imprtance assigned by the individual player. Setting them all to No Influence results in only finding broken weapons. In case someone felt like setting all the stats to Major in hopes of doubling the health of all weapons found, it won't work that way. It may look complicated but ti is a solid formula, I've played with it quite a bit and have'nt found a way to break it yet.

Totally agree that different folk have different desired playstyles, but it seems to me (correct me if I have misinterpreted, Steve) that the primary stated purpose of 'Savage Wasteland' was to make the wasteland more barren and challenging. To make it a place filled with starvation, pestilence and fear.
@Arwen

I also love a good non-combat quest, but I don't think the Quantum one is good. Quite the contrary - it struck me as extremely ill-concieved, implausible and frivolous. The idea that Sierra and Laren are living in the backside of nowhere with no reasonable means of sustenance and yet she has the free time to collect soda memorabilia is just silly. Don't get me wrong, the fallout series is rightfully known for its quirky sense of humor, but it always has tended to stay consistent with the grim, sparse, merciless setting. This comes of as neither funny, nor consistent with the setting. I think its just poorly written and the game would be better if it were excised.
Frankly the whole Girdershade thing strikes me as not well thought out. The Grady's package setup I thought was excellent, but the ending was more than anti-climatic.

Sorry, not sure how your comments on 'hardcoe RPGs' and non-combat relate to this mod. In my experience removing guns, food and ammo make the game less combat oriented, not more. You just don't have enough bullets to spray and pray, and are forced to do more sneaking and running away.
If the mod is set up correctly, every encounter should require a strategic decision balancing ammo expenditure/chance of injury vs potential gain.

Wow, that's a very interesting approach. You have some good ideas for this mod. :thumbsup:

Yeah tahts pretty much how I first imagined it, but I've always wanted to add customability to it for the the less sadistic player out there. Also I am very interested in trying out your weapons, have you put them out on the Nexus by chance?




Ideas I got! Time to implement them all... not so much :sadvaultboy:

Hopefully if I keep plugging away at it some day it will be done. Although I heard that a super genius modder may have found a better way to implement Unfound Loot with some creative use of FOSE commands. I'm pouring though all the documentaion I have on FOSE to see what I can figure out, if it works it would be both more stable and easier to update. It could also cut weeks (months at the rate I'm going) off of the development time. Keep your finger crossed!

In the meantime, do you think you could release an Unfound Weapon Components and Unfound Explosives version as well? It sounds like you pretty much have those done. While your customization menu would be nice to have, it's not really necessary to get things to work for the time being. You have all the rest covered already, you may as well fill out those items as well.

Actually the Unfound Explosive part is already done, I just need to go back through all the scripts and change the multipliers for the various rarity levels, I'm actually hoping to get that piece out on the Nexus this weekend, I spent last weekend working on tweaking an old script from another modder and never got it working right. This weekend I'll start with the new Unfound Loot and see how far I get.

Ha ha, You would think the name of the mod would frighten away the softies!
I'm thinking there are already more than enough mods for the hair extension and fashion crowd. Your true following is with the hardship, famine and pestilence maniacs, mate!

Anyway, I haven't uploaded the weps, but I have sent you a mail with some screens/descriptions of the set. Have a look, and if you are keen I would be happy to let you have them for your mod.

Okay I was able to take a bit of time this weekend and I'm very close to a more bug free version of Unfound Loot. This next version combines all the unfound items in a single plugin. There are 3 pligins for the High, Med and Low settings. Though I was tempted to rename them Savage Wasteland, Uncomfortable Wasteland and An Inconvenient Wasteland, after reading Gurachns post. I'm working on the menu options for the release following this one that will let you set different item catagories at your prefered rarity setting.

Cool. Will this include Unfound Explosives and Weapon Components as well or is it just a rework of what you've done so far? Unfound Clutter might be a good thing to have as well, though that would no doubt require a huge amount of work on your part.



It can get boring always playing a tooth and nail game. Sometimes it's nice just to be able to take it easy and have a leisurely look around. There's also other ways to make the game more challenging as well. Between your mod and the changes I've made, the game plays out much harder than the default. BTW, if you really want to make it Savage you might want to consider having a look at the various containers in the game. When was the last time you came across an empty Ammo box? I removed all ammo from desks and filing cabinets, and that alone has made a difference.

It will include Explosives and Melee weapons, but not component parts. I have also not yet addressed the issue with owned items.



Individual definitions of "fun" and "boring" differ greatly between some people, thats part of reason my wife and I have never gone camping together. Her "fun" is my "boring" and my "fun" to her is.. well.. not so much "boring" as .. "Savage"?

Individual playstyles aside I hope that this mod can cater to more than just the hardcoe survialist types and can be used to give a little extra spice to the more casual players. In a bizzare way I think the final product could even be used by those who want more of a FPS type of gameplay with a little bit a RPG thown in.



When I create the menu system for Unfound Loot I plan to address the containers. Containers will actually be really easy, I had some idea about how to deal with containers and initial play testing went well. Then I heard that the FWE team was making thier own changes to containers so I decided to take a look at thiers to make sure there would be no conflicts. While the numbers were a bit different the machinations were exactly the same, to ensure compatability I'm basically copying the FWE system and adding a single script to translate FWE settings to SW settings. This way if you use both you don't have conflicts and if you only have Savage Wasteland you don't lose out on anything. I'm planning on making the containers' spawn rate derivative of the Unfound Loot spawn rates to keep the item rarity in line with your Luck and rarity settings.

That's too bad, there's so many of those things around. That would go a long way to reducing the amount of caps the player has to work with, which is my main reason for using your mod. I want to be forced to scrounge for the entire game, not end up with 20,000 caps sitting in my desk at home like I did in my first play through. It got kind of boring when I no longer had to pick stuff up in order to finance my adventures, since I had more caps than I knew what to spend them on.



I though you were just going to revert them back to default?



It also appeals to those of us who feel that it's way too easy to get wealthy in the game. Plus having a random element for hand placed loot is nice too, it adds more unpredictability.

So is there any sort of ETA for a new release? I was thinking of starting a new game as I've added a few mods that add new areas to the game, like DC Interiors, and I might be better off just waiting awhile for your mod.

I hear you on that front. Being filthy rich tends to negate any realistic drive to go and put yourself in harms way.
An alternative suggestion to dealing with this is to alter the fbarter* numbers.
I have dialed mine down so that I pay more and get less for the junk I sell. It has the effect of making it not worthwhile to pick up 10 tons of leaf blowers and other crap, which makes total sense to me.
You ever see Mad Max filling his pack with busted junk?

Anyway, I use these numbers and find they do the trick:
fBarterBuyBase: 5.0
fBarterBuyMult: -4.0
fBarterSellBase: .1
fBarterSellMult: .7
You will find a huge difference in your finances. I have even found myself putting the odd point in Barter at lower levels!

Another suggestion is to reduce the ridiculously large carry weight. That stops you from grabbing every damn thing that isnt nailed down and becoming a pack rat. I currently use a base weight of 60 and augment this with a backpack. When I loot its mainly looking for the odd rare bullet to supplement my meagre stock.
Using a bullet weight mod is also a big help. No more hauling around thousands of rounds of 5mm that I don't even use!

These changes will go a long way to ensuring that you don't get stupidly rich.

I do plan to remove those items, it just not there yet.



I do. It'll just take a little more time.



How about http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9022?

Well I'm using Arwen's Realism Tweaks (with optional less is more module) and i never seem to have enough caps or bullets or stims. i have to drag every piece of sellable equipment back to town just to have enough caps for the doctor to patch my broken body up just so i can go out and do the same thing all over again! Arwen's mod already makes the wasteland much more savage than vanilla. and her mod only changes the loot in containers and inventory (i think) to spawn relative to LUCK. not the placed loot.

masochist that i am, im eagerly following this mod to make placed loot even rare (and yes deliciously unpredictable) to punish myself even more. the way i see it, the tougher time i have, the better the sense of accomplishment after.so yes this mod's market is really the gluttons-for-punishment.im glad you decided to continue with this after posting a while back that you might not!