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

Well, from what I read I see that we just need to make "easier" versions for those encounters and add them to a couple of tables with level checks ("tougher" variants will only be unlocked at certain PC level).
A bit of variety will be good too, I think.
 
The only thing is when you start doing level checks, you're going for balance over realism. I agree that the highwaymen/robbers are VERY tough for low levels (you pretty much just run every time)... but maybe that's how it should be? You're not a super soldier (yet), and fighting 5-6 armed men can't be an easy task. However, this may be one of those issues I would be okay either leaving as is or updated as you guys are suggesting. I'm somewhat indifferent towards it, but others may not share the same sentiment.

I think the rockets would be better if you just up the rocket launcher damage a bit. It's slower and heavier than the grenade launchers, but if it packs a punch then it's worth it. I personally upped it's base and max damage by about 10 points. It's quite devastating... as a rocket launcher should be.
 
^ It's one thing when you can't fight some guys that are in a direction where you don't want/have to go, it's a different thing when you can't fight any guys which are in every direction you got to go, and it's all mountains, and you don't have a realistic chance at having adequate gear. They're the most common encouter in the Den zone and in the Den to Modoc zone, and there's really not too much you can do about it. The Den is actually a huge anomaly in this regard, because almost all zones around it are loaded with those generic guys who you only have a realistic chance against much much later. And I figured out how it happened, too. And they DO have level checks on most encounters in the game (the idea that Fallout 2 doesn't have level scaling is a huge and fascinating misconception, it has both zone AND level scaling all over the place. Anyone seriously complaining about this doesn't know the game he's playing.).

a) The new content added by RP / ER bumped the expected level which was placed these guys. It used to be 6, but that's too low now, so they ussually spawn in greater numbers and with more ranged weapons than they're supposed to.

b) I think they added caravans to the game later in the development or something, and when they did they also added these clowns everywhere. I think that's also the reason someone slapped a Leather Armor in the Klamath shop for no good reason. We fix these guys to scale w zones and levels appropriately, you can probably remove that (as it's just baiting money which is better spent on learning crafts in the Den).

c) I made a more zone appropriate set with pipe rifles and zip guns for Highwaymen (keeping the melle weapons a step up from the Kalmath zone), and they can still f**k your s**t up just fine. The only way to get much better than those guys is to go to modoc and redding for the equipment there, but if you do you'll breach the level barrier which then changes those into hunting rifle + 10mm's, and for the return trip either to kill metzger or to VC after you've killed metzger, they get a grenader, and can still f**k your shit up. And there's still the slavers w stronger weapons around the den (but they normaly don't scale as stupidly).

c) Having a longer firefight is much, much better for the economy, because it makes you spend bullets and healing stuff instead of either running from encounters or finishing them in 2 turns.

Oh, and I made them take the Jet they are carrying, but I'm having trouble with animating it right, and they end their turn if they take it the way I did it, while if I change their AI packet they behave sort of oddly.ž




As for the rocket launcher - whatever you do to it won't make any difference to the player, and if you buff it you'll just make more reloady instagib encounters.
 
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Anyway, I reduced my lvl via save game editor to test these new guys, who I've set to appear below lvl 9.

; Tough Male Thug w/ Pipe Rifle, Stimpak, 10mm JHP, Jet
; Female Gun Thug w/ Zip Gun, 10mm JHP and Jet
; Male Gun Thug w/ Zip Gun 10mm JHP and Jet
; Agile Male Thug w/ Combat Knife and Stimpak
; Agile Female Thug w/ Sharp Spear and Stimpak

And they kicked my ass quite adequately, even though I was really lvl 10. And they didn't use the jet, which they will when I figure out exactly how. I even had a party of 4, a hunting rifle and an assault rifle (no grenades thoguh). And they managed to kill Vic and almost kill Miria, and I had to use healing stuff. And I had party controls on, lol.

But people will be fighting those before lvl 9, with less equipment than I've had. And killing 7 of them gave me about 600 XP, so if you do easily kill a group or 2 you'll easily hit the mark where you get these guys:

; Female Gun Thug w/ 10mm Pistol and Jet
; Female Gun Thug w/ 10mm Pistol and Jet
; Tough Male Thug w/ Hunting Rifle, Stimpak, Money, Jet

Instead of the ones w Zip guns, and they WILL kick your ass or drain your resources, and there's a lot of mountains between Den, Redding and Vault City. And then when you hit... 12 I guess, there's also this lady:

; Female Gun Thug w/ 2X Home Made Grenade

Who basically adds a 2 shot rocket launcher to the encounter just when you're about to go back for the car. I think I should also add Jet to the melee guys, too.


So, now I just do the same thing for the other guys, but have them have less melle but at least one new SMG instead to begin with. I'm not sure how exactly the game calculates their numbers, levels have something to do with it, but it was set to 3-6 and there were 7 of them, so I think party size also affects it.

And figure the drug use, or at least an appropriate AI packet for them.
 
Well, drug use working. At least they use them, and it goes away from their inventory, not certain if it actually works on them.

I wanted to give the other guys a shotgun, but I can't. It went from 12-22 to 15-32 + burst. Dunno if there's something I don't know about its damage formula, but it feels more like a rocket launcher than an entry level ranged weapon... If I give it to Vic he kills 600XP Redding molerats, if I give it to an enemy I have to run from the encounter...

EDIT: Whoa, wait up, it has the same damage and single shot range as combat shotgun does? o.O
 
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Same ammo, same basic firing mechanism, and probably the same barrel length. I don't see why the damage wouldn't be about the same.

I prefer that the minimum damage increase more than max across the shotguns (though the min stat will experience diminishing returns). So it's something like this:
standard Shotgun : 15-28
Combat Shotgun : 20-30
H&K Caws shot : 24-32
Panc. Jackhammer : 27-38

Couple this with a greater range for each "level" and the shotguns are probably the coolest progressive weapon type in the game. I usually don't utilize them, but Cassidy sure does. And with slug ammo the Pancor isn't a bad late game weapon for John if 2mm EC ammo is running low. That's with the ability to single shot, not full auto.
 
^ You are in fact aware that people shooting at you also use these exact same shotguns and are liable to blow your head off with them? And that most characters before some point in the game don't have burst weapons because then they'd certainly blow your head off in every encounter? And that, if the basic shotgun and the combat shotgun have the same range and the same damage, they're efectively the same exact weapon? Since most NPC's and enemies can only shoot once and reload anyway? And that this means that after doing 3 towns, and all the quests in the fourth, you basically still have to run from enemies with the weakest weapons the game can give them? Yet if you ever buy/score those yourself you can kill enemies which give silly ammounts of XP but are harmless because you cheated you're way to a later game weapon? The difference between giving the enemies around the den combat shotguns right now is effectively nothing!

And buffing other shotguns wouldn't solve that issue, because you'd still be facing what is effectively the old combat shotguns, but you'd just get something that's stronger than CAWS when you get an actual combat shotgun.

And that if someone does this to all the entry level small guns it basically means that you're f**d in every direction you go from the den (or around the den), but particularly in what is otherwise the most acessible and indeed the intended one?

Enemies from den - modoc weren't ment to be bloody lethal, you HAVE to go there, you got nowhere else to go! And the path to Redding has the same exact enemies, mixed with even stronger ones. The game has combat shotguns on enemies in SAD, for crying out loud, and they hurt if they hit you even there XD

They don't use the same caliber because they're ment to do the same damage, but because they're ment to be easier to ditch when you find a stronger one XD Vic wasn't ment to be an early game combat shotgun toting monster he is right now XD

Ok, if there's one weapon change that you really need to get rid off, it's the basic shotgun change. It's also a perfect illustration of why fiddling w guns in general is a very bad idea, unless you mean to fill all the holes by adding new ones, and then adjusting all the encounters which involve weapons, which is a lot and lot of work for no good reason.
 
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Well if you think that burst fire for doublebarrels are making them OP, just disable it (this is separate option in the installer and will stay that way). I'm personally ok being blown off with shotgun at blank range. As for their higher damage, as far as I remember, I only upped their max damage. AND, decent armor should still make buckshot utterly useless. As for the bullet ammo type.. all new items are added as experiments. Word "BETA" in mod description for a reason :) I guess I should adjust ammo AP values across the board.

To be honest, buffing early shotguns was one of the first things I made for weapon rebalance. It was like one of the main reasons I started this mod :D
 
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Well, I'm sad to report it caused a mess XD You probably know better by now. I'm not going on about it because of subjective reasons but because I spent 3 days learning to edit encounters and testing and stuff just to learn that the problem is kinda unfixable unless the early weapons are mostly reverted to what they were. It's not just the burst.

Zones_zps52da16eb.jpg

Anywho, there's a map of the current, E&R situation. Reads like this:

Green - you can actually fight stuff. No ranged enemies besides thrown spears, either.

Red - Same enemies in every tile, and they're the only enemies in the tiles w X, and probably more tiles. Robbers and Highwaymen, a too strong variant going north, and a "you're kidding, right?" variant going south.

The X's going south have New Reno level equipment ("regular" shotgun, throwing axes, revolvers, smg's, FAL's and grenades) - they might as well be enclave troupers in practice.
The X's going north have "easier" equpment which will still makes any fight tougher than Metzger, who you leave for the return trip as you're not ready for it.

Blue - The effective Den area, where you're limited to the equipment from the green and blue zones. Which means that if you run into anything armed you have to run.

Sand and Brown - ironically easier to move around in because of less hostile encounters, allthough ones you do get in around redding will probably get you killed fast (even stronger equpment than the strongest highwaymen). Getting Redding on your map is obscure, and realizing that there is a safer long way around is also impossible in game.

So if you fiddle with entry level weapons, what you get is basically this:

Zones2_zps66b6a83c.jpg

And if someone bumps outdoorsman enough to cheat his way through that, he might as well just go to Navarro.

And that's not really playable. And you can't fix it, because there is no zone appropriate weapons to give to the den encounters, if, say, the regular shotgun is the same in practice as a combat shotgun (when used against you). You can mod for realism, or you can mod for balance and playablity, very rarely if ever both. If you do anything to the den area weapons, you're likely to have problems here, and the player isn't really supposed to.

(In case it's too small to see, those are Navarros).



EDIT: Can someone actually disable all the weapon changes in the mod? How to go about that, fw2edit or something? Or rather, all the small guns, big guns and laser weapon AP, range and damage changes? I'm actually interested to see now that I've played it a few times how it plays without those (and possibly some ammo changes). Did you make more detailed notes about it than ones in the OP in case it's a matter of doing it one by one?
 
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@phobos2077 and lujo

If you are using the YAAM damage formula then you must have modified ammo (from what I remember).
If you are using the original damage formula then you must have modified ammo, otherwise JHP is overpowered and FMJ and AP are broken.
If you use my damage formula then the ammo issues go away.

None of the damage formulas immediately bring balance; I'm not trying toot my own horn, but at least my damage formula gets the game closer than any other before modifying any weapon, ammo, or armor values.

I urge you to take a look - http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?200361-F2-damage-calculation-change-a-FIX-(v3-by-my-count) - NovaRain helped me over many weeks to get the formula to a place where it is predictable and can be used with either original weapon, ammo, and armor values, or any modded values you want.

Then as you are figuring out what should be where and with whom in the game, you can have a bit more predictable testing experience.

Side note:
lujo, you experience with an npc/critter being able to do more damage to you with a shotgun then you could to it can only be due to the DT and DR values the critter has to resist normal damage.
 
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@Glovz:

My experience isn't that a critter can do more damage to me with a shotgun than I can do to him with a shotgun, but that if you make a basic shotgun do 15-32 damage and have 16 range, what's shooting at me is a combat shotgun. If it's also being shot at me between Klamath and Modoc by the same guy shooting at me beween Modoc/Redding and Vault City, and if it also has a potentialy damage doubling burst, then it IS a bloody combat shotgun. Which I'm not only not ready for, but shouldn't even be ready for if the economy is supposed to work. And since it actually DOES work in this mod, being shot at with combat shotguns anywhere between Klamath and Modoc is out of the question.

And what I'm also experiencing is that if you give this combat shotgun in disguise to Vic, instead of a "crouching moron hidden badass" character he's supposed to be if you patiently level him up, he's a combat shotgun toting maniac from the get go, which allows me to tackle non-armed stuff that gives experience under the assumption that I'll meet it without a combat shotgun instead of WITH one.

What's funny is that the sawed off shotgun is (12-24) is now 15-39, but Cassidy comes with a free one... It has range 7 for regular and 2 for burst, and the reason I'm asking about the damage formula is because I'm interested in what exactly determines how high the damage goes in practice (as being critted with one of these things is incredibly silly).

EDIT: Additionaly, if I'm looking to tweak an encounter to have more appropriate weapons for the Den zone, and want to give a guy something less dangerouns than a hunting rifle, not being able to give him a basic shotgun due to it technically being an upgrade is v. frustrating. Heck, you can meet dudes w shotguns between klamath and the den, it's actually supposed to be the first ranged weapon you get besides 10mm pistol and pipe rifle and otherwise suck balls, not be about as good as something you loot off robots in SAD.

Essentially it's a byproduct of random personal fiddling in an otherwise well thought out and well tested mod which looked harmless when it was being done, but actually isn't, which is in general the case with most gun modding in my experience. And the more actual problems you fix, the less place there is for such stuff, at least as core features.


Oh, and since the 10mm pistol, which is probably the best ranged thing I have has had it's range nerfed, anything that makes the early enemy weapons more deadly is a problem, as I have to get closer to hit them, making stuff with burst on early enemies quite a bit silly.

Having said that, I'm going through the protos, for the early stuff, and there are some nerfs I like, like the burst range nerf on the 10mm SMG.

(I'm also a bit puzzled by the idea of the sniper rifle needing a damage buff from 14-34 to 28-34. Never was under the impression it needed any kind of buff, let alone one like that o.O That's some serious sniper rifle undervaluing there, or I'm missing somethig...)
 
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@lujo:

I don't understand why are you creating a problem from this situation? You already explained how some weapons are OP in some places, I got that. Why do you need to repeat yourself a hundred times?
You keep telling that I was going for realism regardless for balance - it's insulting actually, because my intention is to keep balance under control, while slightly improving realism. If you see balance broken in your opinion in some place - just report it, make a suggestion, I will consider it. I just don't understand what are you trying to achieve repeating the same criticism over and over again. As I said in previous post, this is BETA, it means the balance is not final. I add some stuff in, play it (or someone else play it), get feedback, balance it, etc.

What exactly did you find out during your worldmap experiments, is it possible to fix random encounters you referring to with what was previously discussed (lower level encounters)? To the point please.


On the subject. Sniper Rifle was critically underpowered originally. I've played this game through about 7-10 times and whenever I manage to find sniper rifle, I couldn't use it. It has high AP requirements and not so impressing damage. And considering original damage formula - utterly useless against armored opponents. In most cases, you see close combat in this game. What I wanted to change is that whenever there is a (rare) opportunity to use sniper rifle - it should be actually useful, killing SOME enemies from long range with 2 shots (or 1 if you're lucky). Rechambering it to 7.62 just made it useful against armored critters.

About the damage formula. As I said before, I'm perfectly fine with YAAM formula, don't see any reason to use something else. There is not many ammo types in the game, it's not a problem to adjust all of them for the given formula. And, most importantly, YAAM is very simple and does exactly what it need to do - make AP ammo work. What else do you want?


PS: it's not that I personally hate your verbosity, you have to understand - it's not efficient because when I read it, it's hard to keep track of the subject.
 
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^ Sorry, I was just trying to make it absurdly clear to Glovz that I'm not complaining about damage calculation issues, afterwards I went and studied his damage calaculation formula and wrote a sentence-by-sentence anaylsis of it just to show that a lot of his assumptions can still be interpreted as a bit subjective, without really bashing the formula. But my comp crashed before I could post it, which is probably a good thing as it might've made the poor man sad, and he was only trying to help.

As for the worldmap:

Easy way to fix it

-nerf shotgun damage back, and see if there's something about ammo and max values
-Add chem_use=always to [Tough Guard] in ai.txt, and give jet (259 I think) to everyone who doesn't have it (most do, you can edit first, add later).

Then take DMRV Highwaymen and Robbers, and make them

Group 1:

Shotgun (nerfed back) (<9), 2X Pipe Rifle (<9), melle (no check), 2X 10mm AP (>8), Hunting Rifle (>8), Weakest grenade (>11).

Group 2:

9mm smg, 2X Pipe Rifle (<9), melle (no check, ratio) 2X 10mm AP (>8), 9mm SMG (>8), 2XShotgun (>11)

Would be a good start.

If you want Redding to be acessible, replace the DNRV with DMRV tiles around the Den, and if that doesn't mess up the caravans, good.

Then you'd have to make the molerat encounters about the same around redding and modoc, and what to do with claim jumpers I'm not sure. I think they're the only hostiles, but they are nasty.

That would probably do it.



Here's the DMRV Highwayment, I've tested them like this and they seem to be ok (not sure about ratio's, and it's 3 pipe rifles, because shotgun is silly right now). Might be a smarter way to script it, though.

[Encounter: DMRV_Highwaymen]
type_00=pid:16777246, Item:299(wielded), Item:40, Item:(2)29, Item:259, Script:626, If(Player(Level) < 9) ; Tough Male Thug w/ Pipe Rifle, Stimpak, 10mm JHP, Jet
type_01=pid:16777253, Item:299(wielded), Item:29, Item:(2)29, Item:(0-10)41, Item:259, Script:626, If(Player(Level) < 9) ; Female Gun Thug w/ Pipe Rifle and Jet
type_02=pid:16777252, Item:299(wielded), Item:29, Item:(2)29, Item:(0-10)41, Item:259, Script:626, If(Player(Level) < 9) ; Male Gun Thug w/ Pipe Rifle and Jet
type_03=ratio:25%, pid:16777250, Item:236(wielded), Item:(0-10)41, Item:40, Script:626, ; Agile Male Thug w/ Combat Knife and Stimpak
type_04=ratio:25%, pid:16777251, Item:280(wielded), Item:(0-10)41, Item:40, Script:626 ; Agile Female Thug w/ sharp spear and Stimpak
type_05=pid:16777253, Item:8(wielded), Item:(0-10)41, Item:259, Script:626, If(Player(Level) > 8) ; Female Gun Thug w/ 10mm Pistol and Jet
type_06=pid:16777253, Item:8(wielded), Item:(0-10)41, Item:259, Script:626, If(Player(Level) > 8) ; Female Gun Thug w/ 10mm Pistol and Jet
type_07=pid:16777246, Item:10(wielded), Item:40, Item:(0-15)41, Item:259, Script:626, If(Player(Level) > 8) ; Tough Male Thug w/ Hunting Rifle, Stimpak, Money, Jet
type_08=ratio:20%, pid:16777253, Item:(2-3)613(wielded), Item:(0-10)41, Script:626, If(Player(Level) > 12) ; Female Gun Thug w/ Home Grenade
position=wedge, spacing:2
 
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Oh, about the sniper rifle - I don't think it was MENT to be used against armored opponents, except via critical hits which were ment to bypass armor (as far as the original formula is concerned). They kinda nerfed shotguns and sniper rifle coming from fallout 1 to fallout 2 to make room for other weapons, as combat shotgun and sniper rifle kinda drowned everything else out in that game (as they generally do, this might also be the reson the burst forumla seems illogical, when it fact it isn't).

It's a shame my comp crashed and prevented that enormous post in Glovz thread, because it explains my view on some stuff that I consider common misconceptions involved all the weapon/damage reconfigurations (including his, not that I mind any of them as long as they don't mess stuff up). I'd rather not debate it in this thread, and glovz seems like a nice guy too, so I'd rather not debate it in his thread either. XD
 
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@lujo just stop and make a mod of your own. you say you don't want to bash anyone but you do it anyway. using a huge wall of text just to say one thing is already an insult. and now you say, that glovz' (the poor guy) formula and basically all other damage mods are results of common misconceptions.
 
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^ If there's 15 unintended concequences of something, and it's not clear why I'm suggesting it, then enumerating them isn't an insult. CHANGE SHOTGUN! is an insult and can be interpreted in to many ways to be taken seriously, change shotguns because a) b) c) d) e) f) h) is much more solid grounds for actually doing it. And as I said, it's working at odds with the very good other stuff in the mod, otherwise who cares?

And I'm not suggesting to phobos to revert the Sniper Rifle change, for example, not enough enemies use it to make it too disruptive, I was honestly curious about why he did that, and whether he had considered the viewpoint by which it's unnecessary. I am curious how the game plays with the rest of his mods features other than some gun changes applied, as if some of those guns did have objective issues it might not have had anything to do with their statistics (or thier ammo statistics).

A glovs' formula isn't a bad formula. How he got there is questionable, and what it actually causes is also questionable, and the assumptions he put behind his changes are also potenitaly way more subjective than he thought. Pointing out that an assumption is wrong, or potentially wrong, isn't bashing, if it's wrong it's wrong, anyone can make a wrong assumption. And his formula could support a fine game, but applying it to Fallout 2 and then making it work "close to the original intentions" would take more modding than just having the ammo have stats which conform to it. It's not necessarily just a "plug-and-play" miracle fix.
 
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Lujo, you have to make your choices... do you want balance or realism?

I prefer realism. I think it makes sense to die if you take buckshot to the face. You prefer a more balanced, goal oriented gameplay approach. Neither are wrong, just different opinions on what makes this game so great. I think phobos has a good balance of both realism and game flow, as I usually make most weapons a bit more powerful than he does.

You've done a lot for the game and this forum over the past half year or so... but I get the feeling your critique is heading towards belligerence. Though I could be wrong, as it's hard to detail emotions via text. However, don't be so upset when people critique your methods on game methodology, it makes you come off as being somewhat petty.

That's all good critique I hope, as your mod was an excellent addition, and your commentary and opinions are always well supported.
 
Hi there,
I was testing your mod and i've bumped into some problems with mr. fixit i'm not sure if it's a bug because you don't give any details about mr. fixit features.
val and skeeter did not teach me anything after paying them, message box says "You've learned new ways to craft ammo" but when i press ctrl+c nothing shows in fixit dialog except food, drugs, explosives, traps, armor, weapons. Weapons menu has only spear, sharpened spear and zip gun, am i missing sth like i need to have some tools or i need to use a workbench to have them activated?

My skills
Small Guns: 145
Energy Weapons: 10
Traps: 17
Science: 94
Repair: 89


My game and mod versions
Fallout II 1.02.31
RP 2.3.3
SFALL 3.3a
Economy and Combat Rebalance mod v6.1
 
Edison Trent Hawkins said:
Hi there,
I was testing your mod and i've bumped into some problems with mr. fixit i'm not sure if it's a bug because you don't give any details about mr. fixit features.
Click to expand...

Thanks for you report, that's a bug. Try this fix and tell me if it fixes the problem with skeeter (copy to data/scripts folder, overwriting old file, then reload older save and try paying Skeeter again).
Val should teach you sensor mine schematics which show up under "Traps" category.
 
I guess fix worked, now i can craft 4 different ammo types. For the Val i thought she could teach me at least how to make electronic lockpicks. Thanks for the great mod and the fix.
 
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