Party Combat Control - 3 major quirks, some info, and bugfixing discussion :)

[lujo]

First of all, the ddraw.ini for RP is still wrong on how to enable party control, you have to replace the line it suggests with:

ControlCombat=2


This will allow you to control party members in combat, have them use both hands, and allow you to do some more usefull time saving stuff (like stimpak and drug use) if you open combat, pass turn to them and open their inventory. You can also use their skills manually this way, and if you have, say, radiating stimpaks, you can get them radiated.

Now, the implementation wasn't the most sucesfull (or easy I suppose), and they have a few bugs, and I'm very much interested in fixing any of them, because I use them all the time*.

1) When swapping between characters the game keeps the same hand active for all characters. So if you swap hands on one, they all swap hands, but only the active one changes the animation. So when the next persons turn is on, they have to switch hands back to adjust the animation.

This one could actually be fixed if the script which allowed a party member to have an active turn called a separate script which stored info on his active hand from the previous turn / beggining of combat. It's possible it would only need to have one array in it - all possible party members, and their active hand. So if the combat control read from it when a comba turn begins, it could set the active hand to be what it was last time, and when the turn ends set the active hand for that carracter to what it was at the time the turn is ended.

I have the code for the script, could someone knowledgeable confirm or disprove this and tell me what I would need to do/edit in the combat control script make this happen?

2) You can acess the NPC skill screen while in combat, and it displays base attributes properly but the skills displayed are messed up. No idea why.

3) It seems to apply all the dude perks to the NPCs which is making the script possibly overy powerful (not really, if you have a good economy balance mod installed and crank the combat difficulty up it's actually fine, if you're playing vanilla the game balance is messed up anyway).

I'm not sure how this one would be fixable, but it might, considering that there are npc perks mods out there (Nirran made one I think). Again, if the function simply called an outside script such as the ones used to disable vanilla traits like Nirrans mod does, it could probably be adressable.




I would very, very much like to see at least one of these adressed, even if just the first one, by me or anyone, and any help and info would be much appreciated.

 

[naossano]

I don't add anything to what you are saying, but since your are talking about party members control, shouldn't something be done for making that feature more visible ?

I am sure that 80% of the players that legally buy the game on steam aren't even aware that by changing a single line, they can control all their followers. Not by using a mod, a trainer or an hexadecimal editor. No, just a single line, using the notepad on a file that is already there, on the main folder. The feature in right under their nose, and yet, they are unable to see it. I am sure a lot of them would enjoy it if they knew it.

Shouldn't this also appear on an ingame menu ? (if Beth automatically add sfall updates)

 

[lujo]

^ Well it takes an engine mod, sfall, to do it, so it's not in vanilla, but my guess is that most people who do modding are really personally against the idea of controlling NPCs because it makes you "more powerful" and "breaks balance". Howvever, my personal experience is that the game is terribly balanced without a good an thorough balancing mod and that the having combat controlls makes the game so much more playable (even in this buggy state) that for the 95% of the people it's the only reason to even try a 15 year old game.

I know it brought me back after a slump, and everything I've done since then on analysing, playtesting mods, modding and stuff is the direct result of it existing, it also makes several great mods like traps and many other features work etc. etc.

As for balancing it and making it not break the game - fixing those three things and then just tweaking the base stats of Sulik and possibly a few other NPC's is basically all it takes for it to not break the game. The lack of respect and attention that feature has been getting is astounding to me too.

A modder who I will not name is personally hugely against it, and a bunch of stuff he has in his mod only really works in a user-friendly fashion if you enable it. And he has a hard time figuring out why he's only getting feedback on those features from me.


Otherwise, yeah, fix those issues by any means necessary, tweak the base stats on a few NPC's and post in big red letters "YOU CAN ACTUALLY CONTROL NPCS NOW", and you'd have a lot more people rainstalling, that's for sure XD



*in the same vein I know a big bunch of people who immediately went to reinstal Fallout 1 when I told them you coud tell NPCs to step aside with a modification like in fallout 2. Just that little bit more controll was enough. lol.

 

[naossano]

Sfall is included when you buy it on steam. You don't have to install anything other that steam already installed.
As it is currently the only way to get them, every new buyer have that option, but don't know how to enable it or aren't even aware that it exist.

About breaking the balance, as long as it remains an option, not the only way to play, i am okay with that.
I could even accept if they implement a real-time mod, as long as it remains optionnal, not the only way to play them.

 

[lujo]

Well, it's a matter of putting that command into ddraw.ini, as that hasn't been updated for ages. And advertizing it's existance.

Fixing the bugs, however is something that really ought to happen, and what I need to make that happen is info from more experienced people, as usual.

If there is a way to track which hand is being used at the moment, and someone knows where and how to insert a call to a separate, regular script keeping track of this, one major usability affecting bug could be solved.

If someone knows exactly how the mods blocking out the core perks and traits work, creating one with the regular perks which work the same way and get called by this script after it reads who's turn it is could be a solution to the 3rd, balance affecting bug.

Solving those 2 things would make the feature, well, really, really usable.

 

[J_Fred]

Just something I've noticed...

Not all of the Hero's perks carry over. Action boy doesn't seem to work for some reason, along with strong back and a few others.

 

[lujo]

Just something I've noticed...

Not all of the Hero's perks carry over. Action boy doesn't seem to work for some reason, along with strong back and a few others.

Yeah, true. Well, I've sorta come to think of the carryover perks as "team" perks. Bonus rate of fire, for example, isn't all that broken unless you stack it with the trait that does the same thing, and it's kind of a progression point of sorts for me these days. Honestly, it's not all that broken all togather if you're in the right areas at the right time. And I'm playing a character with Bruiser and only 7 AP (8 agi bruiser, immagine), and having fun. And I only got Sulik, Vic and Miria (for real), feels like a great road movie.

Honestly, if someone helped me fix this thing as much as possible, I'd probably tweak suliks stats to account for the ability to control him (he's actually given unreasonable stats to balance the fact that you couldn't). Marcus seems too powerful if you can controll him, but that's just because the guy can use big guns -.- He's actually not very good at all, slow, low armor... Cassidy seems overpowered if you can control him, but he's like that anyway and he's waaaaaay too easy to get (and it's more about the crit mechanic than "him" he's just a guy with high small guns and a lousy progression). Most of the others are just usable instead of wholly unusable, and NPC's gotten past a certain point in time are inherently bad compared to the ones you've leveled up anyway, so having additional trouble keeping a low level melle-only guy in late game is just an excercise in masochism. And it's also the only way to use throwing and grenades at all...

Meh, it's wonderful, and if it were just bugfixed and developed propery, someone would've coded all the wonderful peculiarities of independence like berserking, cowardice, tendency to use drugs and stuff into it allready.

 

[naossano]

IMO, like Cassidy, Sulick was already one of the most efficients followers.
There are usually the core of the team. (especially taking into account that my PC sucks in combats)

 

[lujo]

IMO, like Cassidy, Sulick was already one of the most efficients followers.
There are usually the core of the team. (especially taking into account that my PC sucks in combats)

What I ment is tweak them to be less eficcent. Most of the OP'ness of combat control actually comes from a few party members being too good by default, and certain mechanics never really being ment to be used by the player before very late game (big guns, for example, is what the game uses to make enemies "invincible" up to a certain point).

 

[J_Fred]

I think the right combat mods (weapons redone, or Phobos' weapon/ammo changes) coupled with upping the combat difficulty to the highest level keep the game fresh and challenging even if you are controlling your companions.

I run a full party most of the time (based on my CH), and by level 20+ this is my usual set up:
Hero in PA, good with energy weapons (usually a laser rifle can be had by this point)
Cassidy in combat armor with a Jackhammer or M72 Rifle (if I'm lucky and can afford the ammo)
Vic in combat armor with a Sniper Rifle
Cat Jules (from RP) in combat armor with an M60 or Light Support Weapon

With the economy mod and the Weapons redone mod, this is quite a formidable team, no doubt. However keeping armaments up is quite cost prohibitive, as one brick of ammunition (5-8 rounds in my play through) can be nearly 1000 caps. Even at this pace and level of firepower, I may opt to run from a Super mutant encounter or an Enclave patrol, since laser rifles and rocket launchers are still an issue (2 hits from a Nightkin usually results in death for most critters - hero included). It always requires a risk/return analysis from my perspective. Sure the loot and ammo are nice, but I don't like losing a personal super soldier (any NPC at that point) if I can help it.

So I prepare for the worst, but generally run from conflict or use side arms until I can get my team out of harm's way. I only use the Laser Rifle, M60 and M72 when I'm backed into a corner, or a mission requires heavy firepower. (which I think fits the wasteland survival attitude).


So what I'm getting at is that the combat companions don't need to be toned down if the other aspects of gameplay difficulty (loot, armor, weapon/ammo availability) are toned down to compensate. That way, you can have those moments of bad assery with a full squad and take down a roving band of mutants, but having to take down 2 hordes back to back may stretch your resources thin... and usually only result in surrender or defeat.


Just my take on the situation. As always Lujo, I'm with you on the end result. It would be nice to see this option implemented in the preferences section of the main game, rather than hidden away in the config file that so few utilize, and even fewer understand. I recall only having heard about it in passing, and had to ask a few of the kind folks on here how to implement it. Such a game changing feature shouldn't be so esoteric.

 

[J_Fred]

Another point to mention...

The Bounty Hunters are probably the most difficult enemies in the game (I swear if they had Advanced PA they could make an Enclave patrol look like a group of molerats). They make aimed shots (and hit hard!), have 10 AP, 20 sequence (as fast as a deathclaw!) and don't seem to be fazed by crippled arms when wielding two handed weapons (You have to injure both arms or turn one into a "bloody stump"). If we can keep it so the player's party AT BEST can obtain that level of lethality (we are talking at level 25+), then I think the game is balanced enough. On my last playthrough I would lose 1-2 party members about 80% of the time when dealing with Bounty Hunters. No other group of enemies had that success rate.

 

[lujo]

Well, when I mean tone them down, I don't necessarily mean make them useless - Sulik is just a tad too good at the beggining (which is adjusted to be somewhat melle friendly anyway and he's a melle god, basically). He'd still be really good if he was just a little less good. Stuff like that, moderate things.

And yeah, you crank phoboses mod up high enough (well, actually, funny story, if you crank the shop prices TOO high you turn the game into a point and click adventure, lol), but if you do use the severely reduced loot drop rate from enemies, severly low buying prices (what you get payed for loot), take the moderate option of selling price increase - running a large party becomes an investment. The ammount of gear you need (armor especially) in various zones raises the overall money you need, not to mention guns and ammo. As long as you don't force a huge crit build the only thing that isn't legit is getting Marcus (but that's more of a general issue, simply because getting someone a minigun / decent laser weapon before Redding / Mariposa / San Fran is just broken by default).

My own setup is generally Sulik - Vic - Miria. I could push for more, and sometimes I bring one more along, but I kind of find they cover everything except big guns, and big guns are broken by default. I ussually go with whatever on CO, heavy traps for every fight where you can use them, Vic turns into a great sniper eventually, Miria works whatever I have loads of ammo in a zone for and later picks up an energy weapon, and sulik is melle - smg - grenades. If I'm looking to pick a fight with something nasty (like try to snipe a few missle bots in SAD or early EPA or Redding, or just need carry space, I can bring Marcus along).

The fun thing though, is that with the upped resource drain and increased controll over the party inventory (lol, they can use both hands and stuff), you tend to use more weapons, and carry a few on each member including grenades and stuff. Theres "save ammo!" fights, and there's "get that one guy asap" fights, and there's "spray and pray" fights and there "GTFO Alive Everyone!" fights, and the incredibly fun "trap everything play it smart" fights... And you need more ammo, more chems, more stimpaks, more everything...

Taking on the Mordino's in the casino after very carefully placing explosive mines in the right places before you go up, lay a few inconspicious spike traps, down a jet and some rad-x, and let it roll (metal armors, one combat shotgun, one assault rifle, desert eagle and magnum on miria, and an smg + molotovs on sulik). Against a bunch of pi**d off Mexicans who shoot through walls? Priceless!

Also, I've brought lenny along on occasions. If it was easier to "draw aggro" with him he'd be great, and I load him w drugs and use him as an actual medic.

 

[J_Fred]

You may enjoy this game more than I do. haha.

I agree that having Vic, Cassidy, Cat Jules, Sulik and Marcus would be a bit overpowered. Especially if you put Cassidy and Vic in Power Armor and give them energy weapons (the animations allow for it then). Turbo Plasma rifles, a Bozar here and there, and a Gatling laser or Vindicator for "oh shit" moments... You could probably be quite deadly in the wastes.

But maybe just tone down the first few levels of each companion? That seems to be the issue, as they become balanced in late game escapades.

 

[lujo]

You may enjoy this game more than I do. haha.

I'm telling you, phobos' mod on top of RP, as many flow fixes as possible applied (the core important ones are allready in there so more people would playtest them while playing the mod, as the mod is mostly mechanics and economy only anway), lowest drop rates, lowest cash return on loot, moderate barter difficulty, stick miria for real on top of it, combat control, perk per level - best fallout 2 there is. Yet. Still needs a bit playtesting and ironing out the dialogue kinks, some RP dialogue textwall smoothing, tweaking loot in a few more places, designing a bit better random encounters and caves (at least a few trap friendly ones), and adding a late game "dungeon" or two. Then all that's left is linking up all the stuff that was ment to comprise the den-redding-nr path, and potentially coming up with an actual use for science (like he did with traps and throwing) and that's it - game fully developed.

Oh, and full set of tribal graphics animations, when everything else is done, I've got half a mind to move the temple of trials out of Arroyo, and make it a super early game dungeon ^^ But that's another story.

But maybe just tone down the first few levels of each companion? That seems to be the issue, as they become balanced in late game escapades.

Yeah, that's the idea, the inital levels on some (well, only Sulik tbh) of the guys is a bit on the way too good side, even if your CO is purely a non-combatant, otherwise they're fine. Any big gun user is kinda terminaly unfixable anyway, because as I said, even the basic big guns are way more power than you need for 95% of the game. Some of them do eat ammo like mad though, so with very low drop rates and stuff that's kinda the only way to fix it.

Decking everyone in power armor with advanced big guns and laser weapons is necessary for the oil rig and navarro (or cleaning out SAD for the XP) but is kinda overkill in terms of any numbers but ammo scarcity by default. There's simply is not much proper "endgame" combat in Fallout 2, so once you've got everyone fully decked out, chances are there's not much more to fight anyway. Fallout 1 kinda had the right idea about this with the invasion.



Also, incredible fun to be had with traps and party control

- metzger fight on the "get car" return trip (phobos has beefed the slavers stats up a bit). Go from the east side ruined building, trap the approach with all you got, and have a crazy firefight through the window as the guys come rushing (still quite a resoure investment in those traps, but awesome and fun)
- hunting geckos! (place a bit of meat on a spike trap and watch them rush into it and then run in with sulik and the clumsy chosen one to wack them further, makes toxic caves and trappign grounds v. fun)
- raiders (provided you don't get spotted, lol)
- SAD (if you play it smart you can play a number on at least a few missle bots )
- Bishops and Mordions are EPIC, as allready mentioned
- Navarro (you can do prepwork when you infiltrate by placing mines in key places, then sneak in with your dudes, down chems, shoot someone in the head and get it on!)
- Vault 15 - talk your way in, trap the place up so you don't get jumped from all directions at once easily, loads of fun
- EPA, if you're sneaky enough, dig in on the terrace, and play king of the hill!
- Mariposa, Oil rig, any San Fran big fight...

Places which would also be awesome but I really have to figure out how monsters aggro are wanamingo mines and the abbey fight - those things have way too high aggro ranges. You can still have a blast and a chance in the abbey but you have to set the traps in gecko (lol) because those creeps are psychic.

Anyway, with party control, and especially with party control, traps and all the assorted fixes, I'm having fun with a low ap character, so much so that I think on my next playthrough or one of them I'll go for a 5 AP chosen one just to see how it works out

 

[lujo]

And one more thing I wanted to mention - I don't use party controls for more power, I use it for more versatility and more use out of NPC skills (like sneaking and throwing - sulik is great at those, but you just can't give him a grenade) or the ease you get from not having to manually pick bursty and explodey loot out of the NPC inventory, or the fact that you can loot containers with an NPC instead of having to manually transfer loot when you're CO is full.

This allows me to see the bright side about my companions, what they're good at, best at, and it's easier for me to develop an attachment for them when they're not a cause for constant interface and artiicial stupidity related frustration and I don't have to groom them like mentally handicapped children. I still take Vic and Lenny along and enjoy having them in the party immensly even though for a long while they're useless in combat, I don't take Cassidy because if I wanted what he does I'd be going for an eye crit build on my CO and I can even pick up the late NPC's late and not have them be a lethel burden while they catch up in levels a bit.

Taking out a New Reno casino in the midgame, with enough people that you don't need gear on yourself which doesn't take the challenge out of a fight, fighting back to back with your crew - it's marvelous! You can still all get brutally killed, but the loss of one of your dependable and respect worthy companions is way more of an emotional hit if they did their best and still got killed by a nasty mexican with an smg! Which makes a self-imposed "iron man" policy on NPC's something I deffinietly have to try one time.





Plus, if this thing was properly developed and bugfixed, with combat control, stuff could be done to the enemy AI to make it less dumb and not make the game way too hard. There's just so much potential in it!

 

[J_Fred]

I use companion controls because the companion combat AI is fucking retarded.

Sure Marcus, go ahead and fire 80 minigun rounds down this small corridor at that wounded golden gecko. I'm sure every bullet won't fly into the back of my head, but instead will miraculously navigate around me and only hit that lizard with 10 hp.

Hero was hit for 120 hitpoints and was killed. God damn it, Marcus.

 

[lujo]

I use companion controls because the companion combat AI is fucking retarded.

Sure Marcus, go ahead and fire 80 minigun rounds down this small corridor at that wounded golden gecko. I'm sure every bullet won't fly into the back of my head, but instead will miraculously navigate around me and only hit that lizard with 10 hp.

Hero was hit for 120 hitpoints and was killed. God damn it, Marcus.

Yeah, originally I turned it on because I just wanted to be able to use Marcus in an inteligent fashion ONCE to check it out. Then I discovered that Sulik actually throws stuff really well, which led me to discover grenades as a concept, which then led to the discovery of "utility" in combat, and then I discovered that it greatly reduces inventory fiddling and that I can keep anything on anyone and after that I tried to play without it and it just once and spent more time playing around the hassle than playing the actual game that I turned it back on and never shut it off.

 

[J_Fred]

I probably couldn't play FO2 without party control anymore. Entirely different game. But, as we mentioned earlier, the difficulty does have to be bumped up.

 

[lujo]

Well, I'm just at the end of a harsh/max diffiulty/criminal prices/crimminal return for loot/almost no loot drops playthrough, and this is phobos' best version yet. I have Wanamingo mines, EPA, Mariposa, San Fran and Navaro to do and I only have about 50 000 gold, I've only bought 2 implants (vanilla RP it's ussually all + all that gold), I don't have combat armor on everyone (vanilla RP by this point I've traded a few for implants, but I modded the implants to take metal armor (currently for myself only) so phobos could reduce the number of free combat armors lying around to a sensible 5-6), and I've actually spent about 30 000 gold on a flamer and that 10 mm SMG when I didn't find any and was done with NCR.

I haven't been stealing much, though, allthough I have been indiscrimantely looting shelves.

Oh, and most important - I don't have a bajilion stimpaks, either, just 30 or so all in all.

This is when you set the game to only drop weapons off enemies about once in a blue moon, almost never drop stimpaks, and severely reduce loot. I still have everything you'd want at this stage, and I've goot more loot to find / earn / buy. And when a stimpak costs 800 to buy, a flamer 10 000, and the highest you can hope to get for most items is a hundred or so, except late game stuff the game becomes pleasantly playable and you don't get bored with power so easily.

And I still have enough stuff to equip a party of 4-5, 2-3 weapons on each, long range, short range, AoE, grenades, varied ammo, traps, chems, solutions to any problem, trunk full of junk, you name it. And I haven't even been playing conservatively at all. No steal, no doctor abuse...

So yeah, party controls or no party controls - vanilla (RP) difficulty, bartering prices, drop rates and loot distribution are ludicrous. There's about 5X more in every direction than you really need, and I've got 5 people bursting away ammo and burning through stimpaks, armored and geared up and I'm still comfortably well off. And that's with technicaly skipping Redding for most of the playthrough and doing EPA after everything (which isn't the most satisfying option). And only making about 10 super stimpaks via Myron.

If you're playing phobos' mod (which has all the fixe included as an instal option), do take the balanced option on metchant selling prices though, if you can actually afford to buy stuff I think the situation is a bit better.

 

[J_Fred]

I just went with the harsh barter option! haha. So maybe I should tag barter just to make up for it?

I usually mod a few things myself. I don't mind good loot - if it's hard to find. So I place about 5 sentry bots outside the SAD, and a plethora of aliens/wanamingos on the EPA main level (which makes sense since that is where they originate from).

I'm starting on a new play through with phobos' latest update, your mod included. I'm going from the Weapons Redone mod to whatever phobos has implemented, so I hope I like it. I really didn't want to give up Magnus' mod, but I had to if I wanted your changes and the economy mod.