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

@phobos2077 So far new update is great. I only noticed that the craft button is "fixed" but persistent in some screens like dialog/barter etc.
 

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Hey there, finished my first run with ecco last week and I really enjoyed it!

Already feels like starting again lol
I would like to try a pure throwing build, would this be viable under ecco? Is this going to scale well endgame?
 
I would like to try a pure throwing build, would this be viable under ecco? Is this going to scale well endgame?
I buffed throwing a lot, but not sure about "pure" throwing. End-game you'll have to rely on grenades but they aren't unlimited. Boomerangs can work as unlimited ammo ranged weapon but they are more for mid-game. But maybe you should try anyway. You can use party members as backup and come up with some good suggestions for a new throwing weapon.
 
Wow, I've stopped playing for like a month and we've already another new update. Thanks for the work!
The idea of buffing the first aid, doctor skill is really a great. In the vanilla game, they're simply not attractive with their neglectable amount of healing the over-abundance of money, loot and stimpaks in vanilla setting.
Adding the powerful final reward and the skill-scaling heal potential make them much more desirable, especially considering the scarcity of money and stimpak in EcCo mod.
I mean, with the buff you give to several skills they're now more like a skill that can be a real fortune that facilite the run at a daily basis rather than a hard number that grant access to a few dialogs or scenes in vanilla game.

Yeah, the buffing of healing skills is really cool.
It would be interesting to see Expired and Homemade Stimpaks from FNV's JSawyer mod added to the game.

come up with some good suggestions for a new throwing weapon.

It's a pity that bows would run into the problems of animations, because bows would fit perfectly.
Doing sum finking...
- How about Spear Throwers/Atlats?
- Blow Gun?
- Throwable darts
- Slings
- Throwing Axes
- Javelins
- Just cribbing from FOT could already get a lot more throwable weapons, grenades and otherwise.
- Some sort of Throwable Ripper?
 
- Throwing Axes
Already there.

Right now I got everything covered from early game up to mid game (boomerang, throwing axe), but nothing more powerful. Kinda unsure if this is really needed, since you have grenades using the same skill. And also with the buffed criticals, boomerang should be pretty powerful. Crits should also help with armor penetration, but someone need to test it. Maybe I'll do melee/unarmed/throwing build next time, but it's not gonna be soon.
 
I started a run with a throwing build. Not very far yet but for early game it’s extremely powerful.
I’ll keep you updated on my progress.
 
I've done multiple runs by this point, I have completed the game using an explosive build, sneak build, energy weapons build, small guns build, big guns build/badkarma.
I just wanna congratulate you on your tremendous effort of bringing more gameplay styles into fallout 2 and allowing for more roleplay styles, one question I have is the bounty hunter in vault 15, is it supposed to function similarly to how the sheriff is in NCR? or am I just stupid, iirc its a character in level 2 of vault 15 thats just called bounty hunter and has seemingly level requirements in its name, I'll edit this post with a screenshot if I find it again during normal gameplay. Also I'm the guy who suggested crafting gives you exp on moddb
 
I just wanna congratulate you on your tremendous effort of bringing more gameplay styles into fallout 2 and allowing for more roleplay styles
It matters to read this. I think about the Myth of Sisyphus a lot recently...

is the bounty hunter in vault 15, is it supposed to function similarly to how the sheriff is in NCR
Seems like I messed that up somehow, they were supposed to be normal gang members. I'll check it.

Is it the woman in the north room?

PS: I've been sitting on a new version for a while now. Nothing major this time, but a bunch of polishing and bug fixing. Not sure when to release it.
 
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It matters to read this. I think about the Myth of Sisyphus a lot recently...


Seems like I messed that up somehow, they were supposed to be normal gang members. I'll check it.

Is it the woman in the north room?

PS: I've been sitting on a new version for a while now. Nothing major this time, but a bunch of polishing and bug fixing. Not sure when to release it.

Yes, it is the woman in the north room, thanks for clearing this up because I would always come across her and I would just be really curious as I couldnt find much about her anywhere in the patch notes for rpu or ecco, keep up the amazing work btw! Cant wait for the newest bug fix because for some reason I cant stop playing older fallouts atm haha.
 
New version is up: v0.9.7

Mostly bug fixing and polishing as I'm going through my playtest. I'm at the late game now and I'm pretty exhausted for any big changes, so I expect this will be the last release before 1.0.0. The idea behind it is that I've played through the whole game and didn't find any game-breaking bugs or balance issues.

So far late game balance is a little rough, but still somewhat better than I remember from my vanilla runs. But between manual loot reduction, weapon destruction on death, lower selling prices and corpses loot reduction, the only thing I have up my sleeves is reducing map loot by script. I already implemented several iterations of this script but wasn't satisfied with results and decided it's too risky and not really needed. In the end, if you complete most of the content in RP, you're supposed to be OP gang of monsters, stomping all opposition and wielding the best guns and armor in the wasteland with hundreds of cartridges of every caliber in your trunk. Despite all this, I can still die pretty quickly, even in my Power Armor that I bought with my hard-earned loot money.

What I'm really satisfied so far is:
  • Damage formula. Really stable across all my tests since last year, never had to do any more changes to it.
  • Crafting. It feels almost polished now. The only thing missing is maybe a few more late game schematics and ability to choose which component to use among the alternatives (this sometimes is an issue with how it now takes from the whole party AND car trunk, although you can still manage by dropping some items and running away from the trunk... not perfect but works).
  • Traps. Same as damage formula. So much time spent on it, several iterations and now it seems stable. Traps work reliably, NPCs get hurt and die when they should. The only issue is luring enemies into your traps. Now it's a very risky tactic and sometimes doesn't even work when you e.g. have party member (like Marcus) who just charges into enemies instead of going back and letting them go into your traps... but all can be worked around. Being able to lure "intelligent" NPC's might be too OP, so maybe as it is now is fine.
 
Good work on the insane amount of work into perfecting your absolute miracle mod! I'm so stoked about all the newest additions, such as making First Aid directly affect the potency of Stimpaks (and maybe Healing Powder, unless that's covered by Outdoorsman or something).


I honestly wish I replied to your last reply regarding my suggestions, even if they are merely food for thought. I want to thank you for giving me your side of the Desert Eagle & 14mm SIG Sauer question regarding their AP cost. With that said, I think you should still reconsider my suggestion of lowering the AP cost of both DE and 14mm SIG Sauer down to 4 to keep them consistent with other pistols. You said you want to maintain a balance between the pistols themselves, but I think it's more important to establish a distinction between weapon types, especially weapons that share the same ammo pool, I wish to provide more thorough arguments. But for now, I want to ask a few questions about your EcCo mod, as it will help me make my points better and maybe provide weapon sandbox suggestions if you don't mind.


1) Where did you put the 9mm Mauser? I want to ask because I want to factor in the 9mm Mauser to the equation. Is it still a unique weapon?

2) What did you do with the .223 Pistol? It's no longer a common weapon, did you turn it into a unique weapon or simply lowered their numbers?


3) Would you be willing to take suggestions for specific weapon placements on town maps (namely the 9mm Mauser, 10mm Pistol, and Taser) and/or make alteration buffs of some kind to the Zip Gun and Pipe Rifle to make them more viable for the beginner stage? When it comes to the Zip Gun, perhaps add the same reduced AP cost to reload perk as the Magnum speed loader? And maybe for the Pipe Rifle, you add a weapon-accurate perk? Those two weapons could use a bit of a leg-up they get replaced quickly during or after Klamath, it's very hard to make use of those low-damage weapons even with a small-gun skill-tagged character. Thanks.
 
dang, my only suggestion for the next update was gonna be add an option to the installer which would make you able to add more functionality to the hint book, in specifc regards to the fact that I wanted it so that when you use it, it gives you the more op perks in the game. I also thought about what the guy above me was talking about and was wondering if you have ever considered having a weapon that takes more action points to fire than reload, or a weapon that takes more action points to fire than reload, take for instance one large damage hit for an entire turn using most action points then next turn having to reload and then not having enough action points until the next turn to fire again. Idk this might be a dumb suggestion haha.

1 last thing, if you want to do something with the 223 pistol, make it a reward for finding the bodies for marcus, I saw in the todo.txt you have been wanting to replace it and it might be your best bet considering during that quest you might end up asking for money instead, and you can already upgrade the hunting rifle at multiple locations.
 
I saw in the todo.txt you have been wanting to replace it
You must confuse it with something else. I never wanted to replace .223 Pistol. I did make it "unique" in 0.9, as in you can only find it in one spot in the game. Maybe it needs to be in another place though.

ever considered having a weapon that takes more action points to fire than reload, or a weapon that takes more action points to fire than reload, take for instance one large damage hit for an entire turn using most action points then next turn having to reload and then not having enough action points until the next turn to fire again.
Did you mean the other way around? More AP to reload than fire? Right now it already takes more AP to reload than base game (4). So for one-shot weapons like Grenade Launcher you need to skip turn sometimes for reload, unless you have 9 AP or use AP reservation.

I think you should still reconsider my suggestion of lowering the AP cost of both DE and 14mm SIG Sauer down to 4 to keep them consistent with other pistols. You said you want to maintain a balance between the pistols themselves, but I think it's more important to establish a distinction between weapon types, especially weapons that share the same ammo pool, I wish to provide more thorough arguments.
I'm planning to take a look at it. As always with changes like these, they effect many things you don't immediately think about it. I understand the idea because this is how it was in earlier EcCo versions. But when I was re-balancing everything for 0.9 I decided big pistols should be as "slow" as rifles.

1) Where did you put the 9mm Mauser? I want to ask because I want to factor in the 9mm Mauser to the equation. Is it still a unique weapon?
It was never unique in FO2 IIRC. It can be found in a few random encounters. It's intended to be a rare weapon though. Stats-wise it's a 4-AP alternative to .44 Magnum (cheaper ammo, more range, bigger mag, but slightly less dmg).

When it comes to the Zip Gun, perhaps add the same reduced AP cost to reload perk as the Magnum speed loader? And maybe for the Pipe Rifle, you add a weapon-accurate perk? Those two weapons could use a bit of a leg-up they get replaced quickly during or after Klamath, it's very hard to make use of those low-damage weapons even with a small-gun skill-tagged character.

In my 0.9 run, I used both guns in early game and they felt fine honestly. Fast reload doesn't make sense for Zip Gun. If anything, it should be slow reload :D

I just checked, Zip Gun has more damage than 10mm pistol, so what else do you want? :D
 
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You must confuse it with something else. I never wanted to replace .223 Pistol. I did make it "unique" in 0.9, as in you can only find it in one spot in the game. Maybe it needs to be in another place though.


Did you mean the other way around? More AP to reload than fire? Right now it already takes more AP to reload than base game (4). So for one-shot weapons like Grenade Launcher you need to skip turn sometimes for reload, unless you have 9 AP or use AP reservation.

Yes, I meant more ap to reload than fire, but decreasing the ap cost to fire, again, I could be suggesting something dumb haha, also yeah if you could find a new spot for the 223. pistol that would be awesome! Seriously continue with this amazing work man, you have people out here who eagerly await the next update not just me (:
 
I have used the zip-file for installation.The new drugs.ini is not mentioned in the readme. I guess it should be linked in ddraw.ini as all the ini-files.
 
I'm planning to take a look at it. As always with changes like these, they effect many things you don't immediately think about it. I understand the idea because this is how it was in earlier EcCo versions. But when I was re-balancing everything for 0.9 I decided big pistols should be as "slow" as rifles.


It was never unique in FO2 IIRC. It can be found in a few random encounters. It's intended to be a rare weapon though. Stats-wise it's a 4-AP alternative to .44 Magnum (cheaper ammo, more range, bigger mag, but slightly less dmg).
:D

I understand part of where your coming from, especially since I would not give the 'lower AP cost treatment' to the .223 Pistol because it's busted for such a simple weapon, with very high damage while also having armor-piercing capabilities. As I said before, I think a balance between weapon types should be prioritized first before then tuning them more between the weapons within said type (Pistols, Rifles, SMGs, Small/Big Auto-Rifles, non-single shot Big Guns etc.) but I understand you know much more than I do and have an objective that goes beyond mine.

Still grateful you are willing to take a look, considering what I said about the balance between the DE and Magnum, disregarding any others. Both appear as early as The Den (DE a potential store item and the Magnum sometimes a store item for another merchant, or held by the same jerk-wad merchant using kids as pickpockets that no one would even miss if raided and killed) but because the Magnum costs the same AP as most other pistols, while doing more damage and only having marginally worse range, again the DE falters.


I'm also noticing that my suggestion seems to have funny results in of themselves, making me question if they would had been balanced satisfyingly. My suggestion essentially just turns them into twins that accomplish mostly the same thing but have minute differences small enough for me to wonder why both had been included, to begin with, other than flavor. It's funnier when taking into account that both pistols have upgrades that specifically make reloading less of a hassle, Magnum w Speed Loader makes reloading AP cost halved for both vanilla and EcCo, while Ext Mag Desert Eagle makes you reload less as a whole (in vanilla the Ext Mags increase the clip from 8 to 20, EcCo reduces said upgrade to only 14).


The Magnum has six rounds, so 24 AP is used to empty the handgun, then 4 more is used to reload it (or 2 with Speed Loader), so 28(26 SPLD) to empty then reload magnum. Repeating the process to have the Magnum fire 12 rounds and reloading twice subsequently means that 56 total AP is used (52 w SpeedLoad).

Now the Magnum, it would cost 32 AP to fire all rounds before having to reload, plus 4 to reload, for a total of 36 AP used for base DE. To fire twelve bullets, the total AP loss would be 52.

The DE would be worse off than the magnum AP cost-wise, even if the AP cost to shoot the DE was the same, since it costs more the situation is even more dire. With Extended Mags (I also suggest, beforehand making the DE Ext Mags have 12 clip capacity rather than 14 honestly as it is in EcCo) it would cost 48 AP + 4 AP to empty those twelve bullets and then reload, only having to reload once rather than twice for the magnum to fire the same amount of shots as the Ext Mag DE.

So with both the upgrade versions of the DE and Magnum, if they cost the same amount of AP, they would end up costing the same amount of AP. This is if my suggestion was taken: Magnum costs 24+2 (26 total) AP to empty then reload, 52 total AP to do it twice to match the bullet amount fired as the Ext Mag DE. Extended Mag DE would likewise cost 48+4 (52 total) AP to fire twelve bullets, and then reload once.

So after all that, and if the ext mag is reduced to 12 rather than 14, the two pistols would be neck-to-neck, and the determining factor would be based on whether you want better raw damage or range (which can only be taken advantage of with higher Perception). I can see the result making them truly balanced, rather than the Magnum just being better cuz of it's higher dam while costing less AP than the DE in your current EcCo, again the DE as of now is just a weaker, less AP cost-effective loser brother of Magnum.

But enough of all that, if the DE will remain as a Big Pistol, either the Magnum will have to follow suit to prevent it from being the flat-out better choice, or perhaps make the DE do more damage to make up for the extra cost in AP. In most games, revolvers tends to be portrayed as the slower, wonkier but harder-hitting counterpart to modern swift pistols, but I think if following reality they would have the same damage output if not worse, and worse reloading mechanism, the lower AP cost of the Magnum to match small pistols would make more sense there and help the big pistol DE that's buffed up a bit in the EcCo meta.
 
Yes, I meant more ap to reload than fire, but decreasing the ap cost to fire, again, I could be suggesting something dumb haha, also yeah if you could find a new spot for the 223. pistol that would be awesome! Seriously continue with this amazing work man, you have people out here who eagerly await the next update not just me (:
I have found an issue that if you use wipe_inventory option in upu.h, you most likely will never see that unique .223 Pistol... I added a work around that will come in the next version. Also the pistol itself gets a slight buff and the return of original BLAM sound from FO1 (slightly remastered).

I have used the zip-file for installation.The new drugs.ini is not mentioned in the readme. I guess it should be linked in ddraw.ini as all the ini-files.
Good catch, thank you.

Still grateful you are willing to take a look, considering what I said about the balance between the DE and Magnum, disregarding any others. Both appear as early as The Den (DE a potential store item and the Magnum sometimes a store item for another merchant, or held by the same jerk-wad merchant using kids as pickpockets that no one would even miss if raided and killed) but because the Magnum costs the same AP as most other pistols, while doing more damage and only having marginally worse range, again the DE falters.
After reviewing, as promised, I decided to revert DE to 4 AP but adjust it's damage accordingly, so dmg/AP stays the same. Now the distinction is simple - if pistol uses SMG character sprites - it's 5 AP.

About the Magnum - it is harder to get in Den. It has low chance to spawn and it gets deleted if you kill the merchant, so you must pay for it.


So after all that, and if the ext mag is reduced to 12 rather than 14, the two pistols would be neck-to-neck, and the determining factor would be based on whether you want better raw damage or range (which can only be taken advantage of with higher Perception). I can see the result making them truly balanced, rather than the Magnum just being better cuz of it's higher dam while costing less AP than the DE in your current EcCo, again the DE as of now is just a weaker, less AP cost-effective loser brother of Magnum.

I appreciate such a deep analysis. In current (unreleased) version, upgraded DE still has 14 rounds. I think this makes it slightly more competitive to the Revolver as a backup gun. At low tier, players will likely prefer the Revolver once they get their hands on it, due to higher DMG. But later, as a backup gun (to conserve more expensive ammo for other guns), DE might be a good choice against rats, dogs, etc.
 
Hi Phobos, I made an NMA account to thank you for the mod and provide some feedback from my experience with it.

I really enjoyed my playthrough and the changes EcCo brought improved the Fallout 2 experience overall. I tried to utilize the crafting system as much as possible and started off using Throwing and Melee as my combat skills, eventually using Small guns and Energy Weapons by the end of the game. I found the balancing was well done; Melee and Throwing seemed to be buffed significantly which were previously weak options compared to Unarmed and Small Guns.

For context I completed my playthrough a few months ago and I used version 0.9.3 so I could also use Companion Expansion since it hasn’t been updated for the newer RPU versions.


One visual bug I ran into was the Brotherhood armor gives male companions the shirtless sprite instead of the combat armor sprite. Works normally with dude sprite and female companions. I’m thinking it was a conflict with companion expansion or NPC armor mod.


Items & Crafting

Only place I found Mk2 combat armor was at SF vendor once. The Toxic Caves mk2 was replaced with mk1. Not really an issue per se but kind of a missed opportunity for armor progression/variety. Once you are at SF, its not a difficult endeavor to head up to Navarro and get the APA, so no point paying for mk2 in my opinion.

Mk2 leather armor did not seem worth crafting. You get more $ by selling the pelts. Maybe reduce # of pelts needed to craft, or reduce their $ value.

Here are some of the ideas I came up for crafting or other uses for many of the misc items:

1. Firewood - can craft into sharpened poles

2. Tesla armor - Craft from mk2 metal armor + EC/MFC + motor/small piece of machinery/robot motivator + rubber boots. Potential ways to acquire the recipe could be from Dorothy in NCR, or from the Shi or Hubologists in San Francisco.

3. Water flask - can use for food recipes (Meat Stew/Fish Soup) as an alternative to beer/nuka cola to give them some purpose since they have $0 value anyway

4. Howitzer shell/Oxygen tank - May be used for an explosive trap? I think they are worth a few $ but hardly worth picking up

5. Drill - useless, value 0. Remove from locker, give it some value, or give Valerie in Vault City a quest where she asks for it for some reward (maybe some schematics).

6. Pop rocks - craft nuka cola bombs? Theres only a couple of these so doesn’t matter much either way.

7. Nuka cola - useless besides as a crafting component. heal slightly + slight radiation like the later games?

8. A more reliable way to get empty hypodermics. I don’t know how problematic it would be to have a script that gives the critter one every time it uses a stimpak, super stimpak, poison, or psycho. Could be a % chance instead to account for the needle breaking, or otherwise not reusable. Maybe more as random loot or at vendors instead if that’s too problematic.

9. Craft expanded lockpick set from 2 or 3x lockpicks (the icon even looks like 2 lockpicks combined).

10. Shovel - can craft into spear or at least sharpened pole. Or make shovels have a chance of breaking like Fallout: Nevada so there is a point of keeping more than one.

11. New item -Cosmetic Kit - craft with cosmetics case + Flower + shampoo from EPA. I was kind of inspired by a similar item from Fallout Nevada. When used, it toggles on/off the sex appeal trait. Player doesn't need to have the trait previously. Learning the recipe from Ms. Kitty makes the most sense to me.

12. Craft stimpaks from healing powder, or at least a way to dissassemble powder into broc + xander.

13. Biomed gel - 0 value, serves no purpose besides a single use to build Skynet. The extras could be used to craft ESRI containers at Mr. Chemmie thru dialogue or he can give you the recipe. High science required. It would enable you to recruit more than one EPA companion.


Perks

A lot of useless perks in vanilla. I know you have already addressed this problem somewhat. I think maybe simply combining weak perks could make them worth consideration.

Ex:

Presence - does not need 3 ranks. 1 rank that gives +30% initial reaction

Scout - combine with cautious nature
...
Etc.

Other ideas, may be beyond the scope of this mod
1. Build robot companions out of things like robot parts + junk + robot motivator + energy ammo. Need high science and repair.

2. NPCs with no items should refuse to barter instead of a blank barter menu. Just a minor grievance of mine.

3. More radiation sources. Outside of a few enemies/encounters, the player rarely accumulates enough radiation throughout a playthrough to even feel threatened. Despite collecting dozens of Rad-X, RadAway, and geiger counters during my last playthrough, I never had to use them to avoid radiation sickness. In contrast, something I liked about Olympus 2207 was how I was constantly using my radiation chems to avoid sickness, even buying them when I ran out a few times. While I think the way that mod handled it would be too excessive for Fallout 2, I wish it was a bigger threat.

This can be accomplished a couple of ways:
a. Using consumables (drugs, food, stimpaks, etc) give +1 or +2 rads each.
b. Add +rads for every x hours/days passed, like in Olympus

I can also see if DeKRuS could implement this instead if you are not interested. Admittedly this would be more up his alley, but it would be good to hear your opinion regardless.
 
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