Fallout 2 mod EcCo Gameplay Overhaul (new version for RPU)

[phobos2077]

So spent almost the whole day trying to figure out the damage situation in EcCo. Came up with this table:

Some might find it useful, even if not using EcCo. You can adjust the formula, copy-paste data from a different mod (I used Proto Manager's export to CSV function), etc.

I've seen somebody complain about Horrigan being unkillable. Apparently, you just need to use a Pulse Rifle

 

[phobos2077]

Don't get me wrong 30% cut in exp gain is dumb idea and on top of that it's not even working properly.

Why is it dumb? I remember planning to cut the experience gained from killing enemies by 30%. This was to offset the additional content you have in RP. How was it not working properly?

Burst size of most weapons reduced - Small Guns that used to burst for 10, now only fire 6 bullets per burst. Miniguns fire 20 (because 40 is just silly), while the HP 90k fires 8 (instead of 12). M60 unchanged.

I actually was considering doing something similar for a long time. But for a different reason. I didn't like how with the added ammo scarcity with the mod, burst become very wasteful. I still want my party member to use bursts. And so to balance the reduced burst sizes, I wanted to tweak the ComputSpray parameters in ddraw.ini to make more bullets go to the center. But this change is very risky, since it will make bursts less useful against large groups when e.g. using a Minigun.

Shotgun Slugs damage modifier changed from 4/5 to 1/1 - At 4/5, slugs were totally useless, since Buckshot was +50% extra base damage, with only 4 less ammo penetration. This meant that buckshot was better even against heavier armor, when it is not supposed to be.

I will take note of this.

Regular (DT 2) Needler ammo has damage modifier of 1/1, and AP (DT 5) version has 2/1: shouldn't it be the reverse?

This is weird. I see 1/1 for both.

This is the author's decision

Pure misinformation

 

[Gizmojunk]

Buckshot should be what Power Armored BOS use to clean their armor (of enemy raiders) in close quarter combat.

 

[phobos2077]

Time for more spreadsheets This time for barter formula. Vanilla formula, EcCo 0.6.2 and the one uploaded by lostabroad2:

 

[phobos2077]

If there is to be a bonus, (and I think there should be with Barter), then a proportion of the difference in values is the best way to do it.

I implemented the proportion of difference thing, but then I thought of what I think is a better approach.

Basically proportion of difference is this:

SkillBonus = IF HighestBarter > DudeBarter THEN (HighestBarter - DudeBarter) * DiffCoef ELSE 0

You still get a bonus for having a party member with higher skill, just like vanilla. But your barter skill still matters. However, I took issue that your skill starts to matter less. It de-incentivizes the player to invest into barter, unless coefficient is set to a very low value, at which point the bonus might not be noticeable at all.

So I came up with this instead:

SkillBonus = IF HighestBarter > BonusThreshold THEN (HighestBarter - BonusThreshold) * BonusMult ELSE 0

Where BonusThreshold and BonusMult are static values set in config. What this does is you get an invisible flat bonus to your barter skill when you get Sulik or Cassidy in party. So it solves both problems perfectly. You get full effect from dumping points into Barter AND your party members improve prices noticeably.

 

[lostabroad2]

I implemented the proportion of difference thing, but then I thought of what I think is a better approach...

Technically the original formula should be:

SkillBonus = IF (HighestBarter + INVERSE DiffCoef) -1 > DudeBarter THEN INTEGER [(HighestBarter + INVERSE DiffCoef - DudeBarter) -1] * DiffCoef ELSE 0

This is so you still get a 1 point bonus if Barter is 1 point lower than that of the highest NPC. If decimals are rounded up automatically then then it isn't needed. Apologies but my computer language skills start with Spectrum Basic and end with QBasica. I understand your post up until BonusThreshold and BonusMult. As I understand things If these numbers are fixed and constant then you are effectively adding a fixed and constant bonus to DudeBarter until BonusThreshold is reached. At that point the fixed and constant bonus is completely negated to 0. If Barter is 59 and BonusThreshold is 80 then bonus, (EG 15 points), applies and Barter is effectively 74. If Barter is 79 and BonusThreshold is 80 then bonus, (Again 15 points), applies and Barter is effectively 94. Add 1 more point to Barter and the bonus is reduced to 0 effectively dropping Barter down to 80. Obviously you could set Bonus Threshold to 301 so this would never happen, but you would then be giving a bonus just for having an NPC with you.

Again, I apologise if I misunderstand the post. Game examples where SkillBonus = IF HighestBarter > DudeBarter THEN (HighestBarter - DudeBarter) * DiffCoef ELSE 0 where HighestBarter is 80 and DiffCoef is 1/6:
If DudeBarter = 20 then SkillBonus = 10
If DudeBarter = 21 then SkillBonus = 9 and the 1 point raise is effectively wasted.
If DudeBarter = 22 then SkillBonus = 9
If DudeBarter = 26 then SkillBonus = 9
If DudeBarter = 27 then SkillBonus = 8 and the 1 point raise is effectively wasted.
If DudeBarter = 74 then SkillBonus = 1
If DudeBarter = 75 then SkillBonus = 0 and the 1 point raise is effectively wasted.

If I misunderstood it would help me if you could post the different results with your formula.

 

[phobos2077]

If Barter is 59 and BonusThreshold is 80 then bonus, (EG 15 points), applies and Barter is effectively 74. If Barter is 79 and BonusThreshold is 80 then bonus, (Again 15 points), applies and Barter is effectively 94. Add 1 more point to Barter and the bonus is reduced to 0 effectively dropping Barter down to 80. Obviously you could set Bonus Threshold to 301 so this would never happen, but you would then be giving a bonus just for having an NPC with you.

No, with new formula, Bonus Threshold and Multiplier are applied only against party member's skill, excluding player. This way every point you add to your own Barter Skill always gives bonus.

If DudeBarter = 75 then SkillBonus = 0 and the 1 point raise is effectively wasted.

Yes, that's how "proportion of difference" works and why I didn't like it.

Now after your post I've found a bug in my (unreleased) code and thinking about a further tweak: instead of party members (namely Sulik, Cassidy and Lenny) changing your effective barter skill (which affects prices non-linearly, so higher difference at lower levels), maybe they should give a separate price multiplier altogether, just like how dialog_barter_mod or Master Trader perk works.

Solution #3:

Spoiler

price = base * Bias
* (1 + arctan(ArctanCoef * party_barter) * DudeSkillCoef) // dude skill multiplier (arctangent)
* (1 + MerchantSkillCoef * merchant_barter) // merchant skill multiplier (linear)
* (1 + DudeCharismaCoef * dude_charisma) // dude charisma multiplier
* (1 + TownRepCoef * town_rep) // town rep multiplier
* (1 + BarterModCoef * barter_mod) // barter mod multiplier
* (1 + PerkCoef * master_trader) // perk multiplier (on or off)
* (1 + PartySkillCoef * MAX(party_skill - PartySkillThreshold, 0)); // party discount multiplier

where "party_skill" is the highest Barter Skill amongst party member, NOT including player.



; If one of party members (not player) has barter higher than this, then multiplier as applied
PartySkillThreshold=30
; Party skill coefficient
; With threshold of 30 and mult of -0.005, you 10% discount for having Sulik ((50-30)*(-0.005) = -0.1) and 25% for Cassidy ((80-30)*(-0.005) = -0.25)
PartySkillCoef=-0.005

I've updated the spreadsheet in previous post with new formula and values for 0.9.


PS: I find your feedback and settings you uploaded back in 2015 to be very useful. Although my current settings are different, they were partly inspired by yours

 

[phobos2077]

After a lot of struggle and internal debate, I came up with a custom script-based damage formula. It's not final, but wanted to get some feedback (if any).

Basically it's YAAM but with a few twists, inspired by burn's damage formula:
- All calculations are in float and rounded once per bullet using probabilistic rounding.
- Critical damage multiplier and armor bypass is only applied to the first "round".

This reduces the vast difference in damage between a critical and non-critical burst. So you can make bursts somewhat more powerful without criticals being completely OP. And in a way it seems more logical. Maybe burn's solution (rolling critical for every bullet) also good, but I wanted to try something more simple first. I might also change the amount of bullets in burst to be affected by criticals from 1 to some other number, a static fraction of all rounds or based on some stat, like weapon skill... But simplest solutions are preferred.

Here's a log of how I still managed to defeated Metzger with just one critical burst from 10mm SMG with JHP rounds (total damage is like 50% of vanilla):

Spoiler

YAAM: AmmoDT=0, DT=0/2, DR=5/25, staticMult=1.33333, criticalMult=1.50000
YAAM: Bullet 0 dmg=23
YAAM, consequitive: DT=2, DR=25
YAAM: Bullet 1 dmg=8
YAAM: Bullet 2 dmg=9
YAAM: Bullet 3 dmg=10
YAAM: Bullet 4 dmg=8
YAAM: Bullet 5 dmg=8
YAAM: Bullet 6 dmg=8
YAAM: Bullet 7 dmg=6
YAAM: Bullet 8 dmg=6
YAAM: Bullet 9 dmg=9
COMBATDAMAGE amountTarget = 183, amount = 95

 

[Gizmojunk]

This reduces the vast difference in damage between a critical and non-critical burst.

But why do that? (The vast difference in damage—is the point of critical hits.)

 

[phobos2077]

But why do that? (The vast difference in damage—is the point of critical hits.)

I just find the implications of burst critical to be too extreme with other changes to bursts I planned. I will probably make it configurable through combat.ini - a percentage of bullets that keep critical damage & bypass from the attack settings. Will need playtesting.

 

[lostabroad2]

Time for more spreadsheets This time for barter formula. Vanilla formula, EcCo 0.6.2 and the one uploaded by lostabroad2:

From memory the original ECCO trade formula started at 15% which meant the traders charged you 6.666 X the price for an item and offered you 1/6.666 of the value for your item. If you offered a merchant 44 guns for 1 identical gun the merchant would decline because the trading price was 44.444 - 1, (6.666 X 6.666). The net result was to replace a flawed trading system with a no trade system. If the new start point is 25% then the trader offers you 25% of the value of your item and sells at 400% of the item's value. Changing from 44.444 - 1 to 16 - 1 would still be a no trade system. I wouldn't bother playtesting a system with a trading floor below 37.5%. At that level you're trading 7.111 items for an identical item.

 

[phobos2077]

If the new start point is 25% then the trader offers you 25% of the value of your item and sells at 400% of the item's value. Changing from 44.444 - 1 to 16 - 1 would still be a no trade system. I wouldn't bother playtesting a system with a trading floor below 37.5%. At that level you're trading 7.111 items for an identical item.

If you look more closely at the numbers, you won't be trading at 0 barter skill and against Master Trader immediately. More realistically, you'll get 300% price modifier at the beginning locations (which is only about 10-15% higher than vanilla game), and around 30% selling prices, which I think is more than fair, considering to balance the huge amount of loot you get, and it's balanced out by demand system (that you outright disabled in your config) and price increases for specific items.

In your original config from 2015 you basically reduced the steepness of selling curve, thus making the whole idea of the curve pointless. At that point you could just set the price to a constant value. The main thing I took for inspiration from your ini is to stick buying prices to vanilla prices. After playing some other similar games and rebalance mods, I realized there's no point in making things more expensive in monetary terms, when you can instead reduce the overall loot to achieve the same goal while keeping scripted monetary rewards relevant.

In short, you shouldn't jump to conclusions based on extreme numbers on the spreadsheet. I'm actually a bit concerned 30%-50% selling prices that you'll see might be too high/easy. I've seen some players on another forum asking for even more hard core settings

I wouldn't bother playtesting a system

Then don't bother. Nobody forcing you to play

you're trading 7.111 items for an identical item.

Which, in itself, is not a bad thing. If you look at any other game in a similar genre (like New Vegas or Stalker and it's mods) you'll see similar ratio, especially for guns. It make sense to have enemies drop damaged guns, but alas, the game has no condition mechanic and I don't intend to add one. So seems like a viable alternative.

At some point wanted to implement separate sell-multipliers (biases) by item type. Which isn't trivial for technical reasons. But then realized that actually for most item categories (guns, drugs, armor) you want lower selling price because they are all looted in excessive quantities in this game (even with loot reduction scripts in EcCo). The exception is most of the Misc section. But then for a lot of these items you wouldn't bother about their price since they cost like 1 to 10. That leaves us with just a few small categories of items that are not abundant and have noticeable price: explosives, books, devices and animal parts. So I decided to just address these items individually. For things you only sell and never buy (like animal parts) I increased their base price to compensate for lower selling price. For other stuff I kept their price mostly as is (so you can still buy them at normal price).

Maybe I'll revisit this idea later, it just requires yet another rewrite of the barter price script.

 

[phobos2077]

Progress report.

Added 2 new guns to make .44 and 14mm calibers more useful:

Learned how to make sprites using 3D meshes and Blender. So also updated graphics for existing items:

For ammo items, just made some manual sprite edits:

On other fronts:
- Finally replaced YAAM with a new "vanilla+" formula, explained in this thread.
- Rebalanced all ammo and armor stats for new formula and good damage curves.
- .223 Pistol was made unique, only found in 1 place now. It's back to it's full power (maybe esp. with the new .223 AP ammo). 14mm pistol will take it's place (I pushed it away from earlier locations to account for it's power).
- Better integrated Zip Gun, Pipe Rifle and 9mm SMG into early areas of the game (random encounters and select critters on maps).
- Swapped some weapons in Slaver's Guild and Raider hideout for more variety and better representation of new guns.
- Rewrote some scripts to be hopefully better reusable.
- Added optional feature for unspent AP to carry over to next round.
- Reloading from inventory now costs the same AP amount as normal. Also set reload cost to 4 by default.
- Fixed several serious issues with critters not being able to use assigned weapons.
- Fixed some issues with crafting system and added a button to main UI panel to open crafting (idea from Lexx).
- Numerous other smaller changes and fixes.

Currently on TODO list before 0.9 (and first playtest):
- Finish new item integration into the game.
- Finish reviewing/fixing weapon distribution throughout the game. Make sure new weapons feel like part of the game and not a "mod". Make sure weapons are found in areas according to their actual tier (power).
- Decide on final INI file and global script structure.
- Some final balance passes around weapon classes and armors.
- Some other final polishing.
- Russian texts update.
- Update readme, prepare mod package.

 

[Chosen Chad]

Im very interested by this mod, I needed a bit of challenge on my usual F2 runs, might be what Im looking for!
Any plans on changing some perks? I have a few ideas.

 

[phobos2077]

Im very interested by this mod, I needed a bit of challenge on my usual F2 runs, might be what Im looking for!
Any plans on changing some perks? I have a few ideas.

Ideas are always welcomed. But I'm no wish granter)) no plans on the perks currently. I try to stay focused on the core goals of the mod this time around (economy and combat). I need to finish 0.9 ASAP and see where it goes from there. Life is so unpredictable these days...

 

[Chosen Chad]

No problem, you already have a to do list and goals, I just had some ideas to bring more balance around some perks. At the top of my head :

• Sniper

Instead of the insane luck based boost, what I think :
- an accuracy bonus on the head and eye shots with ranged weapons
- a tougher perk requierments like 8 Perception and Agility, and 120% in both small guns and energy weapons
- a formula that only improve crits on normal/torso shots with ranged weapons Luck*3 = BonusCrit%

My way of thinking is that Sniper should only be seriously considered for crit builds, lets say a character has 10 Luck, 2 ranks of More criticals and Finesse. He has a base crit chance of 40%, not bad, well with sniper, this character has 70% for a crit with body shots. Should happen more often, but not too often.
Eye shots are already well beyond powerfull with a base crit of 60%, add Finesse and 10 Luck and you're already at 80% crit chance.

• Slayer

Its a perk even more unbalanced than sniper, since it doesnt rely on luck. Its basically the "Sniper" of melee on steroids. My idea :
- Keep the crit on all attacks, but make it like vanilla Sniper where it relies on Luck.
- a tougher perk requierments like 8 Strength and Endurance, and 120% in both unarmed and melee.

You might think its OP, but to land melee hits in the first place, you need to be upclose and personal.

• Adrelaline rush

This perk is crap, but can be improved greatly by making you a glass cannon like the perks originally means :
- A bonus of 2 AP in combat when under 50% HP
- A 25% attack increase on all weapons under 50% HP
- A bonus of 30 AC under 50% HP
- A +2 DT on all resistance under 50% HP
- A sequence bonus of 10 under 50 HP

The way I see it, it basically does what it advertises, you are in an adrelaline rush, you become a glass cannon. A new way to play and enjoy Fallout 2.

• Stonewall

Not a bad perk, but can be slightly improve by making you immune rather than resist and getting up faster from knock downs and KO. Level 15 requierment and having 8 Endurance should be reasonable for such a perk.

• Bonus HtH/Ranged damaged

Just improving their utility by doubling their effects.

• Toughness

Instead of the flat 10% increase DR, I suggest a +2 DT on all resistance.

• Dodger

Buffing this perk from a +5 to +10 AC



Thats all the ideas I have for now, feel free to change or do nothing. Once I finish my exams, I will be starting your mod and giving you feedback!!

 

[phobos2077]

Thats all the ideas I have for now, feel free to change or do nothing. Once I finish my exams, I will be starting your mod and giving you feedback!!

Well, because it's been many years since I really played this game (and I really forgot all about perks), I can only really judge these ideas from a technical point of view. At quick glance, some of these suggestions are straightforward to do with either a script or a perks.ini edit, you could probably do it yourself easily. Everything that changes level, skill or stat requirements or changes the affected stat - is a matter of changing a parameter. Some of these might require scripting.

Anyway, I will keep these ideas in mind during my playtest. And if you want to test the mod - I suggest waiting until version 0.9, it is basically a new mod at this point.

 

[phobos2077]

EcCo 0.9.0

Some comments first:

• This release comes with pre-release copy of sfall v4.3.9. Mod currently doesn't support any other version of sfall.
• There are currently some issues with how mods are loaded in sfall that result in sub-optimal installation experience. Hope this gets improved later.
  
• Mod was developed for yet unreleased RPu v27, more accurately for updated maps by Pixote (as well as other fixes and improvements by NovaRain, that haven't yet made it into RPu main branch). This was one of my motivations for creating this and thus is a hard requirement at the moment.
• There is still no installer, sorry. Maybe later.
• This version haven't been play-tested at all. All changes and features where tested individually using save editor and mechanic changes were compared to original game's code for any potential issues. But of course there are bugs and issues. Hopefully less than in 0.6.2.
• Some new changes and features might be controversial. You can tweak or disable them by editing INI files found in "mods\ecco\" folder.

Changelog:

Economy:

• rebalanced barter - buy prices aligned with vanilla prices, sell prices higher at low skill and differ less between merchants
• party members with high barter now give simple discount to prices, instead of overriding player skill
• added more items to town demands
• reduced base price of some high-tier weapons and armor
• massively increased base price of pelts, hides and other animal parts to make trapping and hunting more viable
• reduced price to learn gecko skinning and leather crafting

Combat Mechanics:

• new script-based damage formula (based on vanilla, with few important improvements)
• throwing skill-based damage bonus replaced with a big critical chance multiplier
• added armor penetration based on attack types for melee weapons (thrust vs swing)
• up to 2 unspent AP carry over to the next round (optional)
• bonus move points now awarded to player and NPCs with high AG, adjusted AG of some critters to take advantage (optional)
• added option to have opening inventory cost no AP, but every action cost 2 AP in combat (replaces "drug free uses")
• added script to differentiate bullet distribution (spray) in bursts between weapons
• EMP grenades now stun PA users for 1 turn instead of damaging them
• added kill EXP points reduction based on number of kills per kill type

Combat Balance:

• armor and ammo stats revamped for new formula: AP ammo will now do better against late game armor
• nerfed burst criticals: only a fraction of bullets will retain critical effects (optional)
• rebalanced shotgun shell types to make both crafted types useful
• removed duplet mode from regular shotgun (reserved for Sawed-off variant), but kept the high damage
• new guns: 14mm SMG and .44 lever-action (in shops and on some enemies)
• new ammo types: 7.62mm AP, 12ga Incendiary Shells (replaces "Buckshot" from 0.6.2)
• .223 Pistol is now unique (can only be bought from one person and is back to it's full power)
• Zip Gun, Pipe Rifle, 9mm SMG are distributed in early game
• added Weapon Penetrate to XL70E3
• removed HK G11E & Pulse Pistol from random encounters
• small adjustments to ammo&weapon stats based on data analysis
• revamped bursts: lower burst sizes for most weapons, but damage and spray settings tweaked to compensate
• reverted flamers to use both fuel types and rebalanced them
• rebalanced armor AC and added script to auto-correct for changed armor protos in existing saved games
• slight buff to Dogmeat agility and melee damage
• buffed AG, melee dmg and skills of some melee-oriented human NPCs
• rebalanced melee and throwing weapons, thrust attack costs 1 AP more

Other:

• replaced art of most new items with higher quality rendered original sprites
• crafting system: new UI art, button on main panel, full keyboard navigation, close window button, various bug fixes and improvements
• rebalanced many crafting schematics and added Metal Armor to craft
• added back Russian translation
• replaced all human NPC armor changes with a script (and fixed several issues of wrong armor being applied)
• rewritten most global scripts: fixed some issues and improved compatibility
• all mod configs moved to "mods/ecco" folder

Download link and installation instruction here: https://github.com/phobos2077/fo2_ecco/releases/tag/v0.9.0

 

[MorpheusBlk]

I have a problem with the crafting system, the trainers wil not teach me anything, in the previous version they would have an option to teach, for money, or after a quest. Now they dont have that option anymore, did that change and i;m too blind to see it or that should not happen?

 

[phobos2077]

I have a problem with the crafting system, the trainers wil not teach me anything, in the previous version they would have an option to teach, for money, or after a quest. Now they dont have that option anymore, did that change and i;m too blind to see it or that should not happen?

Did you by any chance install the Talking Heads addon? It has a compatibility issue with my mod, I'm working on it now.

Also 0.9.0 has some critical issues rn, so I would recommend to wait until I get this sorted. Playtesting now, it took me 2 days to just get to the Arroyo bridge issues in various places as well as some obvious improvement opportunities. I've changed some starting skill calculations, craft schematics and added some items to the Temple so now you can start crafting and trapping right in the Temple. Which also makes the otherwise boring experience more varied.

There was no comments or reactions so I assumed nobody on this forum plays it now, so I didn't bother with hotfixes