Bigger fights?

D

DForge

Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Is it possible to make encounters bigger? I.e. three packs of six aliens instead of one pack? That would please all combat fans, since killing six aliens or claws ain't a big deal, but killing 20 or 30 may start to be tricky.

Of course it would be great if there was a Char level limit for this - two groups at, say level 18 and beyond, three at 25... for instance. So that a 10th level character isn't forced to battle 24 aliens.

I know that the game occasionally spawns i.e. an encounter with 6 aliens and 6 deathclaws, so I'm sure it's possible.

It would be fun to add some, i.e. 6 tough deathclaws (the big ones) instead of 1 big, 5 small. Or runaway robots from SAD around New Reno areas. Or wanamingo queens around Redding (yeah I'm aware there should be only one.. but just for fun). And an enclave assault group (6 members with heavy weaponry, like plasma rifles and miniguns; hard to avoid) for extra difficulty.

I'd try to mod this myself if given some instructions.. :P

edit: oh wait, I found this great tutorial. Well, gotta get to work then:)

So far I planned:

1. "swarm of aliens" - up to 24 aliens.
2. "tough deathclaws" - 6 tough deathclaws.
3. rare - "herd of deathclaws" - 6 tough deathclaws, 6 small deathclaws.
4. Extra rare - "band of deathclaws lead by alpha male". 9 tough deatclaws lead by alpha male (Will put an extra critter here. Most likely a deathclaw with double HP and double damage/massive crit chance).
5. Nightkin assassins - 9 nightkins with laser guns lead by a nightkin with (turbo) plasma rifle.
6. Wannamingo queens - 6 wannamingo queens. Iirc they are tougher then normal aliens. If not, gotta create a powerful alien-type using the silver alien model.
7. Gecko herd - 12 fire geckos, 24 gold ones. That would be annoying, lol.
8. Runaway robots (weak) - 5 melee bots led by a brain bot.
9. Runaway robots (medium) - 5 brain bots led by sentry bot (the one with rocket launchers)
10. Runaway robots (hard) - 6 sentry bots.
11. Runaway robots (insane) - 6 melee bots, 6 brain bots, 6 sentry bots.
12. Enclave assault team - 5 enclave dudes armed with plasma rifles led by a captain armed with gauss rifle.
13. Enclave executioner squad - 12 soldiers armed randomly with gauss rifles, pulse rifles and vindicator miniguns. THE encounter of the game (character level 40+ :D)

Would be happy to implement more ideas.


Most of those would be conditional (based on character level) and/or rare to avoid frustration. For enclave groups, I'd have to make custom AI for them to go for the strongest party member (that is you) to avoid them having a 99.999% chance to murder your NPCs every encounter (which isn't fun or challenging, merely annoying. Making your NPCs survive 3-men enclave patrols is hard enough...).

And yes, it's doable. Take two jets to have 8 gauss pistol shots per turn. With two instances of lifegiver backed up by a big enough level, you can take all the punishment before sending them to hell, since your HP is like, 500 and you can survive multiple grade 5 criticals. Unless they score a knock-out critical, which screws you up, but well, this is meant to be hard, isn't it ^^
 
13. Enclave executioner squad - 12 soldiers armed randomly with gauss rifles, pulse rifles and vindicator miniguns. THE encounter of the game (character level 40+ Very Happy)

Imo, it would be better to change the level req to 30+, bicause most of the time I end the gime with 33+ level.
 
Well, the final encounters would be aimed for a char that kept playing after the finish.

There's pretty much no way you can beat such a force legit without scoring a row of instant crit-kills. They will tear you to shreds if you aren't heavily drugged (jet..) and having like 500 HP with a ton of luck.

Might as well not give the players the frustration of having to run from them :))

Seeing that most people follow Per's guide and get 4 EN and no Lifegiver levels - they have like 100 HP at level 30, which would mean death in 1st turn. (Not to mention that Per's build also lacks perception for enclave hunting... you need 9 or 10 to be able to avoid them acting twice in 1st turn).

To be able to have a little comfort against such an encounter you'd need a lot of levels (to have a lot of HP) and PE of 9 and 10. Probably a stash of drugs (jet, hypo) too.
 
I think you meant 200 hp, not 100...100 hp usually are for 12+ level character with 6 endurance, or something like that.
 
a character built like Per suggests (and like most people do) would have 144 HP at level 30. It's not enough :)

level 30 lifegiver build would have 276 HP (much better but still tricky, depending on luck).

level 40 lifegiver build would have 396 HP - much better!

assuming Enclave soldiers do like 30-40 damage to you per turn, and that you can kill max. 6 in the first turn (all insta kills), there's still 6 guys remaining that will do about 200 damage to you, assuming nobody crithits..
 
Oh, you got the point :). But still, 12 enclave soldiers encounter at level 30 would be totally different game for me (big success).
 
Asmodan said:
This sounds great. I missed the challenge, later in the Game.
Click to expand...

Take off your armor and fight hand to hand with a pack of Deathclaws. After the halfway point the game does suffer somewhat - too much stuff. IMO it's better just to finish the game and start the adventure all over again with a different approach. :P
 
If doable, and you do it, perhaps you should consider making things more interesting position-wise on the encounters, especially at those like that 'enclave executioner squad' or 'alien swarm' where the player would be facing a dozen or more tough enemies...

What i mean is that, instead of an empty desert encounter map where everyone just meets face to face, things like bulding ruins, or desert shack ruins, or whatever, and the enemies all alerted but positioned to allow some movement, so the player's group encounters a few head-on when the encounter begins, but depending on how fast they're disposed of, the player may have a chance to cut off the others at some corner, or move behind some wreckage to heal while avoiding the next guy coming at him with a vindicator, etc, etc.
 
It is doable, it's not even that time-consuming, albeit there's a few places where you have to address the new encounters, especially if with custom AI.

I like the scenario suggestion with abandoned buldings and stuff, that would make cool custom encounter, but it might be slightly above me, I'm a crappy modder. Perhaps in versions above 1.0 which will contain only "typical" desert encounters (with Enclave squads I might add a vertibird on the map so that it seems the Enclave was specifically looking for the chosen one. Perhaps navarro reputation = villified as a pre-requisite for Enclave Assault teams (in vertibirds?) should be doable)
 
Of course killing all those Enclave Patrols will mean tons of Gauss rifles, and other goodies...and the imperfect barter system falls through the floor, unless these super encounters only occur after the main mission finishes.

You could design strategic maps where you have to fight your way across a map, from the south to the north for instance, and wipe out the enemy in between. Therefore the maps could be long and narrow, with the sides blocked off, with heaps of buildings, and other goodies... 8-)

Fighting 50 Hubologists would be fun...fuck you AH9. :twisted:
 
With some help, I probably could. As I said before, I'm a crappy modder ^^

As for the barter system, well, it's broken beyond salvation anyway, so no biggie. A limit on gambling (max 10000$ total winnings) per casino and a 1/10 or 1/20 price offered for guns and armors would solve things though.

If we start balancing things though, we may as well balance other things. Such as limiting armor piercing criticals (should be eye shots and maybe grade 5 and 6 torso shots only) and removing easy-to-steal-or-take gear for free, bugfixing Navarro quest, removing super stimpack assassination method... and so on.

I can't do such a massive project alone, I'm afraid ^^
 
I've been messing around with some of the random encounter numbers - they have been practically doubled...and the results have been somewhat crazy - see below.

034crazyencounters.gif


Normally the numbers are between 4-6, or 3-6, etc, but here they range from 8-12, all the way up to 5-15, etc. If people want to test this with their game just copy the "WORLDMAP" file into the Fallout/data/data folder...remember to backup the original file. (This file was taken from the RP version of Fallout 2). Grab the file here - Extra Large Encounters

This is the text you need to adjust - below is just a small sample from the 75 encounter tables. I'm sure someone can fine tune this better than my 3 minute effort. I used the replace feature in notepad ++. :wink:

Code: 
; Encounter area types:
; Individual Encounter Tables
[Encounter Table 0]
lookup_name=DstN
maps=Desert Encounter 1, Desert Encounter 2, Desert Encounter 3
   ; WIP! scenery:Normal, ; Custom:Caravan
enc_00=Chance:50%,Enc:(8-12) Raiders AMBUSH Player,Scenery:Normal,If(Player(Level) > 4)
enc_01=Chance:25%,Enc:(8-12) Rad_Scorpions AMBUSH Player
enc_02=Chance:15%,Enc:(5-15) Giant_Rats AMBUSH Player,If(Player(Level) <9> 3)   ; >1% chance
   ; Actually, Special is > 100% because Luck adds into this roll

;enc_03=Map_Script:rnddsrt
;enc_02:Chance:15%,Check (Survival:Hard)  ; Lose time/hit points


[Encounter Table 1]
lookup_name=DstS
maps=Desert Encounter 1, Desert Encounter 2, Desert Encounter 3
enc_00=Chance:20%,Enc:(8-12) Raiders AMBUSH Player,If(Player(Level) > 4)
enc_01=Chance:10%,Enc:(8-12) Manti AMBUSH Player
enc_02=Chance:10%,Enc:(8-12) Easy_Gecko AMBUSH Player
enc_03=Chance:10%,Enc:(8-12) Easy_MoleRat AMBUSH Player
enc_04=Chance:25%,Enc:(8-12) Rad_Scorpions AMBUSH Player
enc_05=Chance:15%,Enc:(5-15) Giant_Rats AMBUSH Player,If(Player(Level) <9> 3)   ; >1% chance

Would it be preferable to have tougher enemies over more enemies, let's say 150% health, and +2 extra APs. :shrug:

EDIT: It doesn't seem to effort all of the encounters (animals)...maybe someone can work out why.

..................

I worked out what the problem is - the encounters come in a number of patterns -

:Huddle - (Deathclaws)
:Cone - (Robbers)
:Wedge - (Robbers)
:Surrounding - (Moonshiners)
:Double_line -
:Straight_line - (The Enclave)

Huddle is restricted to 6 critters (think of a merchant and their guards, and Deathclaws), surrounding is typical for Moonshiners, cone and wedge for bandits...so if you change the pattern you allow the game to use the higher random numbers - see below.

036scr00005z.gif
 
Now this looks like Fun. ;)

I like the Idea with the tougher Enemies instead of more Enemies.

Btw. i played Fallout 1 recently and i recognised that there a much more Hits to Legs, Arms and Heads made from the NPC's Ian and Tycho in the Game. In Fallout 2 the NPC's dont shoot at the Limbs and in both Games Enemies dont shoot at my limbs to cripple me. It would be nice if the Computer take more advantage of the aimed shoot feature to make the Fights more difficult or at least more Funny. :)
 
Yes it can, as Pixote noted there are patterns in which the monsters are spawned, setting it to "surrounding" does that little effect.

@Asmodan

there's a probability to use an aimed attack (represented by 1/N). I wonder if I could set N=1 so that the enemies use only aimed attacks. Sniper squad encounter, anyone? :)
 
During a test I encountered approximately 20 Aliens and Deathclaws...well most of my team were slaughtered, but I did receive 19,000 experience points for the victory - in other words this version of the encounter boost is completely impractical. I suggest an increase of 2 to 3 extra per encounter, and not 8 or 9, as I currently have. :mrgreen:

Critters like Deathclaws should be be left in the huddle formation...while merchants and geckos could be given the surround formation. I don't know exactly how the spacing function works, I tried various combinations without any obvious result. It seems that spacing might only effect the surrounding formation...

Code: 
; Grouped|Surrounding, Spacing:# = hexes between them (spread/density)
position=Surrounding, Spacing:5, Distance:Player(Perception)  ; This is the default Distance
   ; Note: Engine can make a perception check (awareness counts as automatic
   ;   success) to determine distance.

   ; WIP! team:#  -- Note, this is partially inherited?


I did witness an epic battle between 12 Deathclaws and 18 merchant guards - the Deathclaws won and I fled for my life. :wink:
 
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