Fallout Tactics mod Equilibrium (2.2)

raics

raics

First time out of the vault
Redux with Equilibrium (Fallout Tactics)​
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Name: Equilibrium (mod for Fallout Tactics)
Version: 2.2 (+minifix)
Language: US
Author: raics
Release: ~2014
Website: NMA || moddb
Copyright: Bethesda Softworks LLC.
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Description:
Redux - is a major revision of the Fallout Tactics from the ground up. Recruits and weapons are completely redesigned, maps offer better, more challenging gameplay as well as improved features and appearance, and new characters and narratives are explored. Original game content is also expanded and enhanced, and a significant amount of "lost content" written by the original developers of the game that could never previously be seen by players has been restored to full playability. All this is in addition to a thorough review of every nook and cranny of the game, which has resulted in hundreds of bugs squashed and errors fixed.

Equilibrium (BalanceDux) - The goal of the mod is to provide additional fixes and a thorough rebalance of existing ingame equipment, expanding equipment choices and providing more variety. Most stats were redone based on common sense or RL weapon parameters, however, if it stood in the way of the original purpose of this mod, common sense rules were bent without hesitation or completely broken. Additionally, the mod includes an extensive audio/visual rehaul to provide better immersion.
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Installation method:
Manual installation:
  • Install Fallout Tactics (v1.27).
  • Unpack the archive with Redux by Endocore (v1.3).
    - Copy the contents from the archive ("Core" folder & etc) in to the game directory, confirming the overwrite.
  • Unpack the archive with Equilibrium by raics (v2.2).
    - Copy the contents from the archive ("Core" folder & etc) in to the game directory, confirming the overwrite.
  • Start new game.
or installer (Compilation):
  • Install Fallout Tactics 1.27.
  • Install Unofficial Patch Plus (optional).
  • Install this mod.
    - Launch game from the mod shortcut.
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Differences from the original:
  • - Installer with mod selection.
  • - Included Redux v1.3 and Equilibrium v2.2 add-on.
  • - Makarov's pistol fix (for Equilibrium).
  • - Added FT Improver 2.0 by Jarekfall.
  • - Added HRP 1.0 by Mash.
  • - New image of the main menu and icons.
  • - Does not overwrite the original game (Installation to subfolder).
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Log versions:
General Changes
  • Hopefully fixed most of the instances where killing enemies in random encounters awarded unreasonably high amounts of experience.
  • Added more enemies to some random encounters, and made their level more consistent.
  • Fixed some of the inaccurate descriptions on stats and perks.
  • The ‘AntiPers’ short for ammo with high damage bonus and low penetration was changed to ‘SP’ and is used by all ammo variants with extra stopping power bonus.
  • Fixed some of the names on dogtags.
  • Added the Sniper perk fix to the executable, it was missing for some reason.
Recruit and Racial Changes
  • Super Mutants will now run at the same speed as humans, and dogs/wolves will run at the same speed as deathclaws.
Equipment Changes
  • Miniguns fire a bit more ammo per burst.
  • Weapons that use bolts, Bozar, Laser SMG, Tesla Coil and some high-end grenades are a bit stronger.
  • Added a unique rifle to the Reaver rescue mission, it should come in handy if you have a lot of .44 ammo leftover.
Perk Changes
  • Dodger now grants +15 to AC instead of +20.
  • Bonus Move also requires 6 EN.
General Changes
  • Added a supply crate in the first mission with several skill books on basic combat skills so the main character won't lag behind other recruits in terms of skill points.
  • That, along with a few changes outlined below should make the start of the game considerably easier.
  • Fixed a few leftover bugs, like the Quincy hostage bomb that would still explode even if disarmed on time.
  • Added some more info to the character status screen, including how to calculate the drug overdose threshold for your character, maximum base stat values for different races and details on drug mechanics.
  • Extended the bottom HUD to 2560p width to cover the black rectangles that appeared when playing the game in widescreen resolutions.
  • Added a bit more background music from Fallout 2 to some areas.
  • Added more ammo to early missions.
Recruit and Racial Changes
  • Recruits available after the first mission start at level 2 so they're much more useful.
  • All recruits have a small skill point bonus on account of special training, their skill investment is also more focused and consistent with the amount of skill points they would normally have at that level.
  • Reworked all recruits and levelled NPCs to have the expected number of stat points and perks, also changed their stats to reflect the changes made to perks.
  • Replaced the portraits for most recruits with new ones for consistency, altered their backstory to match their skills or portrait if needed.
  • Replaced the portraits available at main character creation.
  • Changed the maximum stat cap for some races.
  • Super mutants have 46 stat point total.
  • Ghouls get only Night Vision perk for free and Super Mutants get only Stonewall.
Equipment Changes
  • Multirocket launcher is available earlier, launchers are a bit more powerful.
  • Shotguns do less damage.
  • Some critter weapons do less damage.
  • Close combat weapons are slightly weaker.
  • Skorpion replaced with Grease Gun, it was a more common weapon and has lower fire rate which is a good news for your ammo reserves.
  • Minor adjustments to some other gear pieces.
  • Added any properties you can't see on the weapon right away to weapon descriptions, like lower accuracy dropoff over distance, crit bonuses or shape of area effect. If the property applies to only one weapon mode it will say so, if not, it applies to everything.
Item Changes
  • Added detailed descriptions for all drugs, food and drinks, including their full effect, durations, toxicity points and addiction rate (if any).
  • Drugs are less powerful in general, but should still be worth using, the toxicity level for most drugs is higher.
  • The duration of most items is measured in minutes or hours, it isn't days anymore. Those are real time minutes and hours so you can get a good idea about how long they will last.
  • Drugs that used to boost endurance will affect Hit Points instead, so you can't take drugs to raise your overdose threshold, which would allow you to take more.
  • Reworked the consumable system. As opposed to stimpaks that restore the full amount of Hit Points instantly, food and drinks restore a token amount up front and a higher amount over the next several minutes, drinks work faster and food restores more.
  • Added the skill books for Melee and Unarmed.
Perk Changes
  • The main idea behind the perk changes, aside from buffing underpowered choices and removing ones that plain don't work, was to give non-combat skills more value and making some of the more pacifistic recruit setups a bit less idiotic. That means you will notice some powerful perks with high requirements in skills which were mostly cosmetic before.
  • Previous goal aside, the requirements for most perks were altered to make more sense or just increased so that the Gifted trait is much more of a liability if you want a good perk selection.
  • Gain Stat perks were moved down to level 6 and more powerful stat perks that can even go past the racial cap were added at highe levels. However, as you can go only 2 points past it, they're more of an alternative for drugs than an extra boost.
  • Level requirements that were previously at odd levels are now set a level below to make it more friendly to characters with perk rate other than the default 3 (which also makes Divine Favor a bit more powerful).
  • For detailed changes refer to the table in the ‘More Information' folder.
So, after all the delays and derailment the big day is finally here and the long awaited version 2.0 is up for grabs, under a new name no less.

I was indeed fairly lazy with it but the amount of work was nothing to sneeze at, if we account for all the times I've redone a sprite from scratch because the result wasn't quite up there, I've probably made over 400 sprites total, which was a buttload of work. After that, every single enemy and container had to be manually checked for equipment errors because I've redistributed everything from scratch. As a result, enemies have always have up to date gear, which, coupled with stat changes promises a game more challenging than vanilla but still fair.

Equilibrium came to be mostly because some users, including myself, liked the general changes done in Redux but didn't really dig the balance and fully fictionized arsenal and felt it detracted from the otherwise great experience. The original intention was reverting equipment to vanilla and fixing some stuff, but then it grew a bit more ambitious.
The goal of this mod is mostly a thorough rebalance of existing ingame equipment, expanding equipment choices and providing more variety. Most stats were redone based on common sense or RL weapon parameters, however, if it stood in the way of the original purpose of this mod, the common sense rules were bent without hesitation or completely broken.

*** ATTENTION ***
This mod will not work properly without Endocore's "Fallout Tactics: Redux" mod v1.3. If you apply it standalone you will encounter issues.

Installation:
Follow the installation instructions for Redux and then just extract this mod over it, as simple as that.

General changes:
  • - Version 2.0 introduces a smooth equipment progression to the game, you will gain new items at a steady pace almost all the way to the final mission.
  • - Enemies are stronger than in vanilla game and much better equipped, each enemy in the game was manually checked and outfitted to ensure he's ready for you.
  • - Some ammunition types were changed, some were scrapped and some new ones were introduced, the system is probably more straightforward now.
  • - Armor was nerfed across the board again with special attention to reducing DR values because it messed up the damage calculation too much, as a result ammo modifiers work properly now.
  • - Fixed a lot of bugs related to weapon damage types. For instance, energy weapons were doing physical damage all along, pulse weapons now properly kick robot butt and suck versus organics.
  • - Added a ton of weapons with proper desriptions, some as replacements and some as additions to extend the gearing curve further, the game has close to 150 weapons in total now.
  • - Also added some unique armors to the game, usually offering some sort of twist rather than straight improvement, a good example is marksman armor with targeting assistance optics you might want to use on your sniper instead of power armor.
  • - Real life weapons are more realistic, they use proper ammo, have proper weight and fire rates. That means heavy weapons are really heavy, as they should be.
  • - Unarmed progression was reworked too for all the Bruce Lee fans out there, you get new moves at a faster rate, most were renamed and improved.
  • - All weapon and ammo sprites were replaced with high quality versions.
  • - Weapon sounds were also replaced and some bugs were fixed, a lot of weapons still share sounds but there should be much more variety now. For instance, in heavy weapon class, RPD, Bren, SAW, M60 and Browning all sound differently.
  • - Weapons were rebalanced again, including enemy weapons and defenses. The playing field should be more level than ever.
  • - Some of the races were modified, most wasteland animals are more deadly and some get free perks.
  • - Some recruit types were modified, super mutants and deathclaws should be much better now, ghouls aren't much different than humans so they weren't tampered with much.
  • - Added a special new recruit that was strangely absent from Tactics even though he appears in every other Fallout game. He's part of a story mission and has an accompanying npc that provides his backstory.
  • - You can still get decent stuff by stealing, but you won't be able to filch anything too good from BOS bunkers anymore.
  • - Quartermaster only sells armor, ammo and common weapons, but he gets it at a more steady rate. Some weapons or armor are more rare or even unique so you will have to find those yourself.
  • - Ammo is a bit more scarce so you might want to buy some.
  • - A few mission bugs or exploits were fixed, mostly related to enemy pathing or misaligned equipment, you won't get tons of free energy weapon ammo in Preoria mission anymore.
  • - Some projectiles are reworked and they're generally much faster, energy weapons don't have visible projectiles anymore because this isn't Star Wars, but you can still identify them by sound and impact effects.
General balance and weapon changes:
  • - There is more weapon progression now, weapons acquired later are notably better, it's therefore HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to do missions in their listed order.
  • - Damage ranges were adjusted per damage type or bullet power, for instance, blades have wider range than blunt and 9mm bullet damage varies more than for 7.62.
  • - Ranged weapons generally spend more AP, but are also stronger, no more firing a pistol for 1AP.
  • - All burst fire costs 6AP, number of bullets depends on fire rate and roughly corresponds to 1/10 of real world equivalent rpm. AP cost was reverted to 'ranged' type so it can be reduced with perks again.
  • - Lighter weapons have higher burst fire count than heavy weapons, if we divide the burst action into ready-aim-fire, lighter weapons would be easier to handle so they would squeeze in more shots in 6AP, that's also the reason their single shots are cheaper.
  • - Burst fire no longer has penalties to damage and range, but to accuracy.
  • - Ammo mods work properly so don't hoard that JHP ammo, spend it early on because it will do squat later and AP ammo will be much more effective.
  • - Melee weapons are MUCH stronger, such enemies don't often succeeed in reaching you but you will feel it if you get careless.
  • - More weapons have additional effects now, like knockdown, stun, accuracy or critical bonuses.
  • - Armor progreassion is more linear now and non-combat skill penalites are no more (except sneak).
  • - Many more weapons have alternate use modes, multiple shots, multihits, power hits, cone or radial sweeps and so on.
  • - Most close combat weapons start at 2 range, it's easy to misclick while moving your character so it feels much more comfortable that way, longer weapons like clubs and machetes have 3 range and spears have 4, some of the smaller critters retain 1 unit range but that's not a real problem on CPU side.
Recruit and racial changes:
  • - Deathclaws have higher innate resists (including radiation and poison), +4 stat points, two ranks of Bonus move perk for free to reflect their higher natural move speed and can use special armor in late game. They're much more useful overall, either as flankers or tanks.
  • - Super mutants are a bit tougher and more resistant to radiation, they also get +2 stat points like ghouls, Bonehead and Stonewall perks for free.
  • - Ghouls get Cancerous Growth and Nightvision perks for free and are fully immune to radiation, they are very similar to humans so they weren't changed much.
  • - Each of the four deathclaw recruits have a theme, Shaav is about stealth and agility, Krldraav is centered on crits, Mother is a tank and Shrike a generalist.
  • - Animals are more dangerous overall, they're tougher, have higher natural stats and hit much harder. Most are more resistant to radiation but very vulnerable to fire, that goes for deathclaws too.
  • - Robots get +8 stat points to compensate for lack of perks, their damage thresholds are lowered to mirror the rest of the game but their resistances and natural hit points are higher.
Specific equipment changes:
  • * Ammo - There are less ammo types in the game overall but more are useful.
  • Handguns use normal and JHP ammo, the ballistics aren't very good for penetrating armor so AP ammo for them is rare even nowadays, probably fully extinct in postapocalypse.
  • Rifle ammo is available in normal and AP flavor, except for 7,62 ammo which doesn't really exist in significant quantities, 50cal has a bit more modest HEI variant as DU doesn't exist in a caliber of that size.
  • Normal buckshot shells are JHP now, it isn't really correct but it's effectively similer enough. It also has incendiary and EMP variant, slugs were done away with because you can't remove the cone spread for only one ammo type.
  • More weapons use Bolt and Needler ammo now, bolts are naturally AP and hypodermics are JHP. There's also a very rare explosive bolt variant.
  • Gauss ammo is AP.
  • Rockets now come in Explosive, Incendiary, AP and EMP flavor.
  • 40mm EMP grenades added as a rare ammo type.
  • Normal energy and powered weapons like lasers, plasma or power fist use Energy cells and EMP weapons use Electron packs which are more rare. It was done because damage type is tied to ammo so this was the only way to have tham deal proper damage.
  • Ball ammo has no bonuses or penalties, JHP and AP have their usual bonuses, HEI ammo has 60%dmg/20%pen bonus, Corrosive has -10%dmg/30%pen, Explosives have 15%pen, Flame has 20% pen and EMP ammo variant has -10%dmg/-20%pen.
  • All ammo has realistic weight.
  • * Unarmed weapons - many reskinned and new weapons with alternate use modes, their late game damage is lower than melee weapons becase it is assumed you will use Slayer perk.
  • Most weapons are historically realistic or at least plausible, if we ignore the top end. You aren't killing an armored mutant with nail extensions anymore.
  • All unarmed weapons have a range of 2, there are also a few new wepons after Power fist.
  • A good damage output in this weapon class, though some are heavy so they will require high strength.
  • * Blades - many weapons were updated or replaced, there are better options than Ripper in endgame.
  • All weapons have a range of 2 except Machete with 3.
  • Most bladed weapons have a high damage variance and critical chance bonus.
  • * Hafted - also many adds and replacements.
  • All weapons have a range of 3 units and cost 4AP to swing except plunger, more weapons have knockdown or armor piercing.
  • Cattle Prod has lower damage per AP than other powered melee weapons but it now properly does electric damage, it uses Electron packs instead of Energy cells.
  • * Spears - have a proper progression now as most weapons were very similar previously, there are high tech spears at late game and most are armor-piercing
  • All have a range of 4, throw range got increased to 16.
  • * Thrown weapons - they are much stronger than before and range is higher.
  • Most are much lighter to carry.
  • They cost 4AP now to avoid 1AP use but do more damage to compensate.
  • They have a white outline on the ground so they're hopefully easier to spot and retrieve.
  • * Pistols - they have short range, low AP cost, a small accuracy and high crit chance bonus.
  • Some weapons have Double shot mode which can also be aimed but has a medium accuracy penalty and no crit bonus.
  • Revolvers and Desert Eagle have higher range and damage but same AP cost as others.
  • Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
  • * SMGs - short range but lower damage per bullet compared to pistols, they have very high burst fire count though
  • A few weapons from this category have the same bullet damage but differ in burst fire rate
  • Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
  • Burst fire accuracy penalties differ depending on ammo used.
  • * Rifles - a middle road, they have greater range and do more damage per bullet than SMGs and have medium fire rate
  • Bolt-action rifles have 6AP cost but do a lot of damage and get a high accuracy and small crit chance bonus
  • Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
  • There are rifle class weapons that use bolts and hypodermic needles now.
  • * Shotguns - range and damage is slightly higher than vanilla game
  • Pump action shotgun has 6AP cost but is powerful in early game
  • Beretta replaced with sawed-off double barrell which has lower AP cost and can fire both barrels at once but has lower range and capacity
  • Neostead (which shouldn't have full auto fire either) replaced with a semiauto SPAS-12, no burst mode but lower AP cost than pump-action
  • AA-12 replaced CAWS as a short ranged auto shotgun with high capacity and rate of fire
  • CAWS replaced Panzor as a long range high damage variant due to its bullpup layout (both were prototypes but this one seems more likely, not many auto shotguns to pick from in that era, sadly)
  • * Heavy weapons - range is still there, damage per bullet is high, capacity is even better than before but burst fire rate is low
  • Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
  • Flamers are very effective to offset low range, projectile is faster and can hit multiple enemies when grouped together.
  • Gamebreakingly good weapons were significantly toned down or replaced if there was no way to balance them properly as was the case with Gauss Minigun.
  • * Energy - lasers excel in range and accuracy, plasma bolts do high damage but dissipate fairly quickly so range is low, pulse weapons do good damage only versus robots but are very rare, ammo is scarce and their capacity is low.
  • Lasers and plasma propery do energy damage and pulse does electric.
  • Some more weapons added.
  • Plasma and Pulse rifle use heavy weapon sprite so they're usable by mutants along with Gatling Laser.
  • * Grenades - distributed properly this time, more grenades are effective.
  • Smoke grenade replaced by Gas grenade.
  • * Punches and kicks, critter weapons - generally boosted across the board
  • Punch and kick progression was reworked, names were changed, damage and bonuses raised and wuxia-approved descriptions for each of the seven stages added.
  • In addition to meeting level and unarmed skill requirements you need 4 STR and 6 AGI to unlock the 3rd stage, 5 STR and 7 AGI for stages 4,5,6 and 6 STR with 8 AGI for the last stage.
  • * Armor - progression was made more linear, making a stronger distinction between armors would require a much better selection, as it is we can't have both progression and options.
  • As a direct consequence some armors are more powerful, and environmental suits are only a step below power armor.
  • Non-combat skill penalties were removed for convenience, not that they played a major part in balance anyway.
  • Sneak penalty on heavy armors was increased.
  • Lugging the armor around is different than wearing it, so most of them will provide you with a bonus to carried weight to compensate.
  • Power armor is extremely heavy, but it's essentially an exoskeleton so it supports itself and encumbers you less than most armors when worn.
  • Damage thresholds are now calculated as 1/10 of respective resistance value, which is also the case on critters.
  • Some uncommon or unique armors were added to every variant, including armor for mutants and deathclaws.
Click to expand...
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Helpful links:
raics said:
Never thought I'd go back to this one, however, turns out it's good to have a relaxing side project to take a little break when the main one becomes a bit tedious so I've been slowly cracking on this for the last several months. There's some QoL, some tweaks to items and early game difficulty, some cosmetics & flavor and I also tried playing around with perks a bit in the attempt to hopefully give utility skills a bit of combat value and maybe expand the choices somewhat.

Still on the same address
http://www.moddb.com/mods/balancedux/downloads/equilibrium-v20-final

General Changes
  • Hopefully fixed most of the instances where killing enemies in random encounters awarded unreasonably high amounts of experience.
  • Added more enemies to some random encounters, and made their level more consistent.
  • Fixed some of the inaccurate descriptions on stats and perks.
  • The ‘AntiPers’ short for ammo with high damage bonus and low penetration was changed to ‘SP’ and is used by all ammo variants with extra stopping power bonus.
  • Fixed some of the names on dogtags.
  • Added the Sniper perk fix to the executable, it was missing for some reason.

Recruit and Racial Changes
  • Super Mutants will now run at the same speed as humans, and dogs/wolves will run at the same speed as deathclaws.

Equipment Changes
  • Miniguns fire a bit more ammo per burst.
  • Weapons that use bolts, Bozar, Laser SMG, Tesla Coil and some high-end grenades are a bit stronger.
  • Added a unique rifle to the Reaver rescue mission, it should come in handy if you have a lot of .44 ammo leftover.

Perk Changes
  • Dodger now grants +15 to AC instead of +20.
  • Bonus Move also requires 6 EN.

General Changes

  • Added a supply crate in the first mission with several skill books on basic combat skills so the main character won't lag behind other recruits in terms of skill points.
  • That, along with a few changes outlined below should make the start of the game considerably easier.
  • Fixed a few leftover bugs, like the Quincy hostage bomb that would still explode even if disarmed on time.
  • Added some more info to the character status screen, including how to calculate the drug overdose threshold for your character, maximum base stat values for different races and details on drug mechanics.
  • Extended the bottom HUD to 2560p width to cover the black rectangles that appeared when playing the game in widescreen resolutions.
  • Added a bit more background music from Fallout 2 to some areas.
  • Added more ammo to early missions.
Recruit and Racial Changes

  • Recruits available after the first mission start at level 2 so they're much more useful.
  • All recruits have a small skill point bonus on account of special training, their skill investment is also more focused and consistent with the amount of skill points they would normally have at that level.
  • Reworked all recruits and levelled NPCs to have the expected number of stat points and perks, also changed their stats to reflect the changes made to perks.
  • Replaced the portraits for most recruits with new ones for consistency, altered their backstory to match their skills or portrait if needed.
  • Replaced the portraits available at main character creation.
  • Changed the maximum stat cap for some races.
  • Super mutants have 46 stat point total.
  • Ghouls get only Night Vision perk for free and Super Mutants get only Stonewall.
Equipment Changes

  • Multirocket launcher is available earlier, launchers are a bit more powerful.
  • Shotguns do less damage.
  • Some critter weapons do less damage.
  • Close combat weapons are slightly weaker.
  • Skorpion replaced with Grease Gun, it was a more common weapon and has lower fire rate which is a good news for your ammo reserves.
  • Minor adjustments to some other gear pieces.
  • Added any properties you can't see on the weapon right away to weapon descriptions, like lower accuracy dropoff over distance, crit bonuses or shape of area effect. If the property applies to only one weapon mode it will say so, if not, it applies to everything.
Item Changes

  • Added detailed descriptions for all drugs, food and drinks, including their full effect, durations, toxicity points and addiction rate (if any).
  • Drugs are less powerful in general, but should still be worth using, the toxicity level for most drugs is higher.
  • The duration of most items is measured in minutes or hours, it isn't days anymore. Those are real time minutes and hours so you can get a good idea about how long they will last.
  • Drugs that used to boost endurance will affect Hit Points instead, so you can't take drugs to raise your overdose threshold, which would allow you to take more.
  • Reworked the consumable system. As opposed to stimpaks that restore the full amount of Hit Points instantly, food and drinks restore a token amount up front and a higher amount over the next several minutes, drinks work faster and food restores more.
  • Added the skill books for Melee and Unarmed.
Perk Changes

  • The main idea behind the perk changes, aside from buffing underpowered choices and removing ones that plain don't work, was to give non-combat skills more value and making some of the more pacifistic recruit setups a bit less idiotic. That means you will notice some powerful perks with high requirements in skills which were mostly cosmetic before.
  • Previous goal aside, the requirements for most perks were altered to make more sense or just increased so that the Gifted trait is much more of a liability if you want a good perk selection.
  • Gain Stat perks were moved down to level 6 and more powerful stat perks that can even go past the racial cap were added at highe levels. However, as you can go only 2 points past it, they're more of an alternative for drugs than an extra boost.
  • Level requirements that were previously at odd levels are now set a level below to make it more friendly to characters with perk rate other than the default 3 (which also makes Divine Favor a bit more powerful).
  • For detailed changes refer to the table in the ‘More Information' folder.

So, after all the delays and derailment the big day is finally here and the long awaited version 2.0 is up for grabs, under a new name no less.

I was indeed fairly lazy with it but the amount of work was nothing to sneeze at, if we account for all the times I've redone a sprite from scratch because the result wasn't quite up there, I've probably made over 400 sprites total, which was a buttload of work. After that, every single enemy and container had to be manually checked for equipment errors because I've redistributed everything from scratch. As a result, enemies have always have up to date gear, which, coupled with stat changes promises a game more challenging than vanilla but still fair.

Equilibrium Mod v2.0
by raics

Equilibrium came to be mostly because some users, including myself, liked the general changes done in Redux but didn't really dig the balance and fully fictionized arsenal and felt it detracted from the otherwise great experience. The original intention was reverting equipment to vanilla and fixing some stuff, but then it grew a bit more ambitious.
The goal of this mod is mostly a thorough rebalance of existing ingame equipment, expanding equipment choices and providing more variety. Most stats were redone based on common sense or RL weapon parameters, however, if it stood in the way of the original purpose of this mod, the common sense rules were bent without hesitation or completely broken.

*** ATTENTION ***
This mod will not work properly without Endocore's "Fallout Tactics: Redux" mod v1.3. If you apply it standalone you will encounter issues.

Installation:
Follow the installation instructions for Redux and then just extract this mod over it, as simple as that.

General changes:

- Version 2.0 introduces a smooth equipment progression to the game, you will gain new items at a steady pace almost all the way to the final mission.
- Enemies are stronger than in vanilla game and much better equipped, each enemy in the game was manually checked and outfitted to ensure he's ready for you.
- Some ammunition types were changed, some were scrapped and some new ones were introduced, the system is probably more straightforward now.
- Armor was nerfed across the board again with special attention to reducing DR values because it messed up the damage calculation too much, as a result ammo modifiers work properly now.
- Fixed a lot of bugs related to weapon damage types. For instance, energy weapons were doing physical damage all along, pulse weapons now properly kick robot butt and suck versus organics.
- Added a ton of weapons with proper desriptions, some as replacements and some as additions to extend the gearing curve further, the game has close to 150 weapons in total now.
- Also added some unique armors to the game, usually offering some sort of twist rather than straight improvement, a good example is marksman armor with targeting assistance optics you might want to use on your sniper instead of power armor.
- Real life weapons are more realistic, they use proper ammo, have proper weight and fire rates. That means heavy weapons are really heavy, as they should be.
- Unarmed progression was reworked too for all the Bruce Lee fans out there, you get new moves at a faster rate, most were renamed and improved.
- All weapon and ammo sprites were replaced with high quality versions.
- Weapon sounds were also replaced and some bugs were fixed, a lot of weapons still share sounds but there should be much more variety now. For instance, in heavy weapon class, RPD, Bren, SAW, M60 and Browning all sound differently.
- Weapons were rebalanced again, including enemy weapons and defenses. The playing field should be more level than ever.
- Some of the races were modified, most wasteland animals are more deadly and some get free perks.
- Some recruit types were modified, super mutants and deathclaws should be much better now, ghouls aren't much different than humans so they weren't tampered with much.
- Added a special new recruit that was strangely absent from Tactics even though he appears in every other Fallout game. He's part of a story mission and has an accompanying npc that provides his backstory.
- You can still get decent stuff by stealing, but you won't be able to filch anything too good from BOS bunkers anymore.
- Quartermaster only sells armor, ammo and common weapons, but he gets it at a more steady rate. Some weapons or armor are more rare or even unique so you will have to find those yourself.
- Ammo is a bit more scarce so you might want to buy some.
- A few mission bugs or exploits were fixed, mostly related to enemy pathing or misaligned equipment, you won't get tons of free energy weapon ammo in Preoria mission anymore.
- Some projectiles are reworked and they're generally much faster, energy weapons don't have visible projectiles anymore because this isn't Star Wars, but you can still identify them by sound and impact effects.


General balance and weapon changes:

- There is more weapon progression now, weapons acquired later are notably better, it's therefore HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to do missions in their listed order.
- Damage ranges were adjusted per damage type or bullet power, for instance, blades have wider range than blunt and 9mm bullet damage varies more than for 7.62.
- Ranged weapons generally spend more AP, but are also stronger, no more firing a pistol for 1AP.
- All burst fire costs 6AP, number of bullets depends on fire rate and roughly corresponds to 1/10 of real world equivalent rpm. AP cost was reverted to 'ranged' type so it can be reduced with perks again.
- Lighter weapons have higher burst fire count than heavy weapons, if we divide the burst action into ready-aim-fire, lighter weapons would be easier to handle so they would squeeze in more shots in 6AP, that's also the reason their single shots are cheaper.
- Burst fire no longer has penalties to damage and range, but to accuracy.
- Ammo mods work properly so don't hoard that JHP ammo, spend it early on because it will do squat later and AP ammo will be much more effective.
- Melee weapons are MUCH stronger, such enemies don't often succeeed in reaching you but you will feel it if you get careless.
- More weapons have additional effects now, like knockdown, stun, accuracy or critical bonuses.
- Armor progreassion is more linear now and non-combat skill penalites are no more (except sneak).
- Many more weapons have alternate use modes, multiple shots, multihits, power hits, cone or radial sweeps and so on.
- Most close combat weapons start at 2 range, it's easy to misclick while moving your character so it feels much more comfortable that way, longer weapons like clubs and machetes have 3 range and spears have 4, some of the smaller critters retain 1 unit range but that's not a real problem on CPU side.

Recruit and racial changes:

- Deathclaws have higher innate resists (including radiation and poison), +4 stat points, two ranks of Bonus move perk for free to reflect their higher natural move speed and can use special armor in late game. They're much more useful overall, either as flankers or tanks.
- Super mutants are a bit tougher and more resistant to radiation, they also get +2 stat points like ghouls, Bonehead and Stonewall perks for free.
- Ghouls get Cancerous Growth and Nightvision perks for free and are fully immune to radiation, they are very similar to humans so they weren't changed much.
- Each of the four deathclaw recruits have a theme, Shaav is about stealth and agility, Krldraav is centered on crits, Mother is a tank and Shrike a generalist.
- Animals are more dangerous overall, they're tougher, have higher natural stats and hit much harder. Most are more resistant to radiation but very vulnerable to fire, that goes for deathclaws too.
- Robots get +8 stat points to compensate for lack of perks, their damage thresholds are lowered to mirror the rest of the game but their resistances and natural hit points are higher.

Specific equipment changes:
* Ammo - There are less ammo types in the game overall but more are useful.
Handguns use normal and JHP ammo, the ballistics aren't very good for penetrating armor so AP ammo for them is rare even nowadays, probably fully extinct in postapocalypse.
Rifle ammo is available in normal and AP flavor, except for 7,62 ammo which doesn't really exist in significant quantities, 50cal has a bit more modest HEI variant as DU doesn't exist in a caliber of that size.
Normal buckshot shells are JHP now, it isn't really correct but it's effectively similer enough. It also has incendiary and EMP variant, slugs were done away with because you can't remove the cone spread for only one ammo type.
More weapons use Bolt and Needler ammo now, bolts are naturally AP and hypodermics are JHP. There's also a very rare explosive bolt variant.
Gauss ammo is AP.
Rockets now come in Explosive, Incendiary, AP and EMP flavor.
40mm EMP grenades added as a rare ammo type.
Normal energy and powered weapons like lasers, plasma or power fist use Energy cells and EMP weapons use Electron packs which are more rare. It was done because damage type is tied to ammo so this was the only way to have tham deal proper damage.
Ball ammo has no bonuses or penalties, JHP and AP have their usual bonuses, HEI ammo has 60%dmg/20%pen bonus, Corrosive has -10%dmg/30%pen, Explosives have 15%pen, Flame has 20% pen and EMP ammo variant has -10%dmg/-20%pen.
All ammo has realistic weight.
* Unarmed weapons - many reskinned and new weapons with alternate use modes, their late game damage is lower than melee weapons becase it is assumed you will use Slayer perk.
Most weapons are historically realistic or at least plausible, if we ignore the top end. You aren't killing an armored mutant with nail extensions anymore.
All unarmed weapons have a range of 2, there are also a few new wepons after Power fist.
A good damage output in this weapon class, though some are heavy so they will require high strength.
* Blades - many weapons were updated or replaced, there are better options than Ripper in endgame.
All weapons have a range of 2 except Machete with 3.
Most bladed weapons have a high damage variance and critical chance bonus.
* Hafted - also many adds and replacements.
All weapons have a range of 3 units and cost 4AP to swing except plunger, more weapons have knockdown or armor piercing.
Cattle Prod has lower damage per AP than other powered melee weapons but it now properly does electric damage, it uses Electron packs instead of Energy cells.
* Spears - have a proper progression now as most weapons were very similar previously, there are high tech spears at late game and most are armor-piercing
All have a range of 4, throw range got increased to 16.
* Thrown weapons - they are much stronger than before and range is higher.
Most are much lighter to carry.
They cost 4AP now to avoid 1AP use but do more damage to compensate.
They have a white outline on the ground so they're hopefully easier to spot and retrieve.
* Pistols - they have short range, low AP cost, a small accuracy and high crit chance bonus.
Some weapons have Double shot mode which can also be aimed but has a medium accuracy penalty and no crit bonus.
Revolvers and Desert Eagle have higher range and damage but same AP cost as others.
Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
* SMGs - short range but lower damage per bullet compared to pistols, they have very high burst fire count though
A few weapons from this category have the same bullet damage but differ in burst fire rate
Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
Burst fire accuracy penalties differ depending on ammo used.
* Rifles - a middle road, they have greater range and do more damage per bullet than SMGs and have medium fire rate
Bolt-action rifles have 6AP cost but do a lot of damage and get a high accuracy and small crit chance bonus
Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
There are rifle class weapons that use bolts and hypodermic needles now.
* Shotguns - range and damage is slightly higher than vanilla game
Pump action shotgun has 6AP cost but is powerful in early game
Beretta replaced with sawed-off double barrell which has lower AP cost and can fire both barrels at once but has lower range and capacity
Neostead (which shouldn't have full auto fire either) replaced with a semiauto SPAS-12, no burst mode but lower AP cost than pump-action
AA-12 replaced CAWS as a short ranged auto shotgun with high capacity and rate of fire
CAWS replaced Panzor as a long range high damage variant due to its bullpup layout (both were prototypes but this one seems more likely, not many auto shotguns to pick from in that era, sadly)
* Heavy weapons - range is still there, damage per bullet is high, capacity is even better than before but burst fire rate is low
Many weapons were replaced and some new ones added.
Flamers are very effective to offset low range, projectile is faster and can hit multiple enemies when grouped together.
Gamebreakingly good weapons were significantly toned down or replaced if there was no way to balance them properly as was the case with Gauss Minigun.
* Energy - lasers excel in range and accuracy, plasma bolts do high damage but dissipate fairly quickly so range is low, pulse weapons do good damage only versus robots but are very rare, ammo is scarce and their capacity is low.
Lasers and plasma propery do energy damage and pulse does electric.
Some more weapons added.
Plasma and Pulse rifle use heavy weapon sprite so they're usable by mutants along with Gatling Laser.
* Grenades - distributed properly this time, more grenades are effective.
Smoke grenade replaced by Gas grenade.
* Punches and kicks, critter weapons - generally boosted across the board
Punch and kick progression was reworked, names were changed, damage and bonuses raised and wuxia-approved descriptions for each of the seven stages added.
In addition to meeting level and unarmed skill requirements you need 4 STR and 6 AGI to unlock the 3rd stage, 5 STR and 7 AGI for stages 4,5,6 and 6 STR with 8 AGI for the last stage.
* Armor - progression was made more linear, making a stronger distinction between armors would require a much better selection, as it is we can't have both progression and options.
As a direct consequence some armors are more powerful, and environmental suits are only a step below power armor.
Non-combat skill penalties were removed for convenience, not that they played a major part in balance anyway.
Sneak penalty on heavy armors was increased.
Lugging the armor around is different than wearing it, so most of them will provide you with a bonus to carried weight to compensate.
Power armor is extremely heavy, but it's essentially an exoskeleton so it supports itself and encumbers you less than most armors when worn.
Damage thresholds are now calculated as 1/10 of respective resistance value, which is also the case on critters.
Some uncommon or unique armors were added to every variant, including armor for mutants and deathclaws.
Click to expand...
 
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Good job. :clap: My hope was always that my Redux mod would be a starting point for a community effort, and I'm glad to see you taking up that challenge.
 
Thanks, it was meant for strictly personal use, but I saw other people are interested in something like this in your mod feedback thread. Sadly, it's not really building onto your base as much as providing a slight variation of that base and some small fixes, nothing more than a modest addon.
 
Hello
I am playing your mod so I have couple of questions.
1.On normal dificulty on first mision enemy deals about 30-40 damage with hunting rifles. That means they just one-shot me. Its nearly imposible to outshoot them(hunting rifle has range 40). I play tough guy mode so its really frustrating. I was trying to sneak close to the enemy but its not working either considering its first mission and I have 1 level.
2.I remember that tough guy mode gave 100% percent more exp. Now I get only 30% more.Is it a bug or a feature?
 
Thanks for checking it out and sorry I saw this so late

I don't think it's possible to change the experience bonus without some advanced tools which I didn't use, no idea what caused it.

Many weapons deal more damage than they did before (though some also do less) so it's easy for things to go downhill fast, I assume playing in tough guy mode would get very frustrating fast, cant' recommend it. Yeah, it sucks but that's the side effect of making the game harder. I'm going through the weapon list one more time and plan to rework the weapon progression so it might be resolved in next version, whenever that may be ready.
 
good to see a focus on keeping vanilla stuff, do you intend in the future to release an unofficial combo of patch/restoration mod like killap does? I mean, without changes to weapons and stuff, just fixing and restoring vaniilla stuff, adding support for newest windoses, adding hi-res patch from mash into it, etc.
 
In current version it wouldn't be hard to do even by yourself, you would just have to skip extracting weapon entities, sprites and actors and then revert their descriptions and names in item list to ones from the copy in items.txt, I think that would be pretty much all. Unless Endocore tampered with some non-vanilla enemies and gave them different weapons and ammo to use, it might not match and fixing it would require going through all missions and checking them one by one.

Redux 1.2 introduces much more extensive changes to the game, so once I base the next version on that it will require too much elbow grease to revert everything.
 
The weapons and such still do too much damage.
I thought the idea was to keep the beneficial changes of the Redux mod but roll back the game balancing back to the standard FOT? Thats what the mod description seemed to suggest.
(that means average damage for most starting guns should still be like around 10 or 15, we shouldnt be getting average stuff in the 20s or better until at least Quincy if not St. Louis)
 
Not exactly roll everything back, in late game we only used energy weapons and heavy, miniguns were crap, a lot of weapons we get later on are weaker than earlier acquisitions. So some things are more powerful, like unarmed/melee, handguns, snipers and SMGs, some are about the same, like assault rifles or energy weapons and some, like heavy weapons are weaker. To compensate, armor is also better and scales more linearly so environmental armor is just a step away from power armor and most are better than their vanilla counterparts. The version I'm working on currently will handle gear progression better and adds a lot more weapons so you will find new, powerful doodads almost until the very end.

For instance, you don't have a powerful bolt action rifle in the beginning anymore, long range enemies use grandpa lever actions in .44 caliber which have less range and power, don't have 'long range' property and eat weaker ammo than FMJ .308 that most single shot rifles later on use.
 
Im making a mod overlay over redux to set things roughly back to normal, change weapons and ammo to reflect more historical fallout 1/2 equivalents.

I dont like jacking up the damage on melee weapons, but I do think they should cause a different kind of damage than bullets. FOT provides an excellent way to do this via that Gas damage type (which I change to Ballistic) because it has the same death animations as normal. That way armor can be good against Bullets/Knives but not so great against Clubs. And for the most effective Melee and Unarmed weapons I believe they should focus on Armor Penetration rather than damage . . . that way you can still pommel people for 15 or 25 damage in late game. And since it Knocks People Down its still effective against well armed foes since they never get a chance to shoot. As it always is with Melee it takes longer to put people down than shooting them, but it doesnt cost any ammunition.

Im a firm believer in arms escalation in games, just about everything a later thing does will be better than an earlier one, and early weapons are Supposed to be ineffective or even useless against later enemies. In fact thats a story plot, thats why the robots are sweeping across the plains even against the super mutants.

Best armor in the game should make you nearly invincible against earlier threats. Everything from pistol shots to shotguns should bounce off of power armor harmlessly. The only reason you should take damage sitting in a can is if its an enormous amount of force (some robot melee weapons do that) or it has good penetration (rifle bullets or just really strong hits).

But as you mentioned, some of the later game weapons are crap compared to the early game ones, and I would edit the maps to replace them with nicer or at least more useful things (like a crate full of 40 rockets).

Energy weapons . . . And Explosives are king, even with the best armor in the game you shouldnt be able to take more than a few hits and live, and even the weakest of those (lasers) should still hurt you.

The way I reason it Energy Weapons were built out of a need for being able to hurt people wearing Power Armor. Even though it helps with logistics, the real reason driving such a strong need to invest resources in inventing them is to have portable firepower capable of taking down walking tanks. Explosives will do the same job but energy cells dont weigh much and missiles weigh 3-8 pounds a pop. When used against anyone else yeah - they'll just blow them to pieces and pretty much kill anything, but thats a waste of valuable resources. Energy cells take advanced technology to produce and thats rare in the wasteland.

Heavy weapons (including miniguns) are only a second best, compensating for penetration with ammo availability (and more dakka). They'll shred just about anybody you point them at, but against a worthy opponent they'll only damage them (barely, if your burst was off aim).

None of the armor except Enviro or Power armor is worth a dam, and thats the way it should be. Leather armor should only shave a little damage off. Metal armor should only stop the weakest hits and slow down pistol shots, however it should stop Knives very well. Environment Armor (eg, combat armor) should be invincible against pistol shots except the strongest ones, and it should stop alot of rifle damage too. And Power armor should be like Iron Man invincibility, only something in the same ballpark can touch it (literally as tough as a tank, a Humvee will die before Power Armor will).

But then again except for the occasional Shotgun or Grenade most of what anybody throws at you before St. Louis is crap... so before then its just a Stimpack match. Ill be making the AK47 assault rifles into the AK112 ones from Fallout 1 so their damage is nerfed.

Accuracy for bad guys isnt a bad thing, thats why its called Tactics, you dont charge into enemy fire - and you take cover when they're shooting. They'll get up to chase you, or crawl closer, and then you have the Grenader blow them up. Or you have an ambush set up and then they're suddenly exposed to burst fire at close range. Or you Out Range them with your own sniper, wielding an actual sniper-worthy rifle not a hunting rifle. These are real world Tactics.

I like having small damage numbers for common weapons, with the bigger damage being in the heavy weapons and energy. For example the starting rifles and pistols will do just like they did in vanilla and even worse - the .32cal ammo (replaces 9mm) is going to go 5-10 across the board. Its got spam worthy smgs that spit out 12 or 15 shots, but against good armor thats still not much damage. The 7.62mm is now 5mm AP and it only does 8-20, but it has a penetration bonus.

The energy weapons do a hell of alot more. Compensated by needing rare ammo that you can only pretty much get from the QM. And all of the freebie energy gun ammo (like the kind the game refuses to make non-lootable from the turrets in Preoria) will be unusable in normal energy guns.

Lasers and Plasma both do Explosive damage too, so they blow people to pieces, and armor tends to be weaker against explosions. All energy weapons of a certain kind share the same ammo as opposed to weapon class. So their damage numbers are relatively similar, the difference being in range and accuracy.
Lasers: average 50 or 65
Plasma Guns: averages 75 or 90 and has Blast 1 (and will use a small green exploding effect)
Gauss Guns: averages 50 or 70 and has no projectile (instant hit)
Pulse Guns: averages 150 or 200 and has Blast 2 (and uses emp explosion impact effect)

In fact Pulse Rifle has a Triple fire mode that spits out 3 blasts at full strength. But you dont get much pulse ammo so abusing that will drain the supply and leave you empty handed at the end of the game. Because of the area effect its not that safe to use the Triple anyway.


This being compared to normal guns that do...
12 Gauge: 30-50 (no cone, bad penetration)
20 Gauge: 20-30 (no cone)
10mm: 10-20
.50ae: 18-36
45-70: 25-45
.338 Norma: 35-60 (sniper) or 16-50 (for machinegun) since it replaces .50cal
 
It's a good concept, we're doing totally different things so there's plenty of room for both mods.

I was also thinking about going in the opposite direction and making weapons weaker and armor crappy across the board, that would solve some problems, like deathclaw recruits being generally useless and minigun bullets feeling like rubber against tougher targets. The problem with that right now is Endocore making enemies tougher in last version, increasing health pools and giving robots a sizeable amount of DR so it's perfectly possible even my jacked-up weapons won't be strong enough, that would require going through all default and mission-specific creatures and reverting his changes back. Of course, I would be much happier if his mod had two versions, the one with just fixes and the one with balance changes too, but yeah, be happy with what you got is the mindset of the day. On the other hand, I will still have to do the creature-by-creature run to check the ammo types and implement the weapon progression properly so I just might go the crappy route eventually.

I also thought about doing the balancing business just with ammo and weapon type, however that would result in fewer or way too similar weapons, too much ammo variants and possibly too strong weapons in mid-early game to avoid them being useless later on, so I decided to skip the reality check there and have a good weapon selection with only the most popular ammo types surviving the war. Of course, I'm not crossing the sanity threshold here, in current version there are no 9mm pistols in upper part of the table and an improved AK in later game only does some 6 points of damage per bullet over the basic variant which can be interpreted as general advancement in weapon design resulting in easier weapon handling, less malfunctions, increased burst length, in some cases greater muzzle velocity because of longer barrel, improved machining and such.

I was never really too fascinated with 'fantasy' regular weapons in settings similar to fallout universe, it's just something you do to avoid paying licensing rights to gun companies. As it's only a semi-alternate reality universe that diverged at some point and still uses same location names and events for some of its background it would be more logical if the game prevalently used the existing real-world 20th century weaponry in addition to power armor era ones. I'm gaining no profit from this and can use whatever the hell I want so I'm thinking of it as setting the arsenal to what it should have been originally.
 
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I'm looking forward to the next BalanceDux editions.

I too love using rl weapons and appreciate it if they are made to work similarly to real world counterparts. That adds an extra layer of fun, I love learning about weaponry, or imagine getting similar results in rl as in a game (doesn't matter if the portrayal is not 100% accurate, the effort itself counts).
And I agree with fantasy weapons not making huge sense - I doubt we'll just throw away perfectly fine and common AK-47s in the future or not develop any of the current rl weapons just because of a mid 20th century timeline divergence.

Can you advise which Redux version the mod works best with?

(Also, will you be planning updates for future releases, or updates to the current version release?)
 
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I tried making these weapons as close as I could to their real life counterparts, for instance assault rifle bullet count in burst fire is around 1/10 of real world rpm number and SMGs get a bit more because they're lighter and easier to handle so positioning and aiming should be faster and an SMG user should be able to squeeze a few bullets more in same timeframe. Also, one of the changes in new version is doubletap alternate mode exclusive to some of the lighter pistols like Beretta or CZ, unlike triple shot from the original it has no spread and should be a good alternative to aimed shots for 1AP more.

Version 1.0 was built upon Redux v1.1 (11.7), which was the last stable version before 1.2 release, it isn't compatible with 1.2 but the next version will be.

I've been working on a new version which should be replacing all weapon and ammo sprites in the game which is unfortunately taking longer than planned, not only because there are a lot of them but also because I'm trying to give them a similar tone and feel, going back to some I wasn't too pleased with and so on. There will be a lot more rebalancing done, of course, and most weapon firing sounds will probably also be replaced by something more realistic. Quartermaster will also be reworked into the item progression and offer only ammo and basic gear so you will need to find more exotic articles in the field, ammo will generally be more limited, in Redux you soon run out of locker space to stash it. It will also include around 50 new weapons, some in fresh progression spots and some as replacements, there will be some FO3 staples like Shishkebab and a few entries from other games and popular culture.
 
I wouldnt say im necessarily a fan of the firearms in the fallout universe, some of them do things right, others could be better.

But im not a fan of RL firearms either . . . there's alot of things that could be done better across the board with real firearms that are just plain missed, or impossible to do (in the united states) because of that pesky NFA law.

For example have you heard of the .460 Rowland? Its a high pressure .45acp cartridge that hits like a .44 magnum. But you can still load .45acp (+P I think?) and it will chamber those just as well. It requires a muzzle brake but who cares, that makes it even easier to handle. There's more firepower and flexibility there than most of the common pistols. Only catch is that the ammo is rare, but that could be fixed in a theoretical world by mainstream manufacturing. Just one example.

Another example - its becoming widely known that the 6.5mm caliber is the perfect balance of firepower and ammunition size for an assault rifle. With longer boat tail bullets they have accuracy that touches .308 levels and it would be easy to make a Tumbling round that does the kind of damage the original 5.45mm 7N6 did. But yet all we get are half baked compromises to it like the 6.8mm SPC or .300 blackout. Dont get me wrong I do like the .300 but it serves a specific role, and I think it should only be used for its subsonic properties.

List goes on... the 10mm Auto had a .357sig equivalent called the 9mm Dillon. Now thats all fine and well to create a 9mm Magnum bottlenecked cartridge... but Just Imagine how effective it would be firing a Sabot armor piercing slug at 2700 feet per second. Out of a P-90, with a 50 round capacity. Or a battle rifle designed like the P-90 with a larger magazine.

In all fairness they Are catching onto creating a medium man portable machinegun, packing some of the same capabilities as a .50bmg but into something a guy can actually use (the LWMMG). But I saw the need for that years ago - take something in the .38 caliber range with 5000 to 6000 foot pounds of force - turn it into a 6mm or 7mm APFSDS and send that puppy downrange. It'll turn a man inside out, after shooting through his armor plate, and probably after shooting through his vehicle too. And while the ammunition would weigh an extra 50-100% as much as the .308 thats still tolerable compared to the recoil and weight of a .50... and even out of a rugged machinegun you could still snipe people at 800-1000 yards with it.

This is crap people missed, could have did 20 or 30 years ago, or did do decades ago but it never caught on. The kind of tweaking we'd expect from Zorg or the UNSC or Shadowrun defense contractors.

For that matter we could have Binary Propellant caseless firearms by now, there were some people who had the idea back in the vietnam war. Take a gun and use the same basic principals as an internal combustion engine, except instead of pushing a cylinder piston you're pushing a bullet out the barrel. Binary Propellant canisters could be good for several hundred shots each and could be inserted lengthwise down the gun. Heck even the ignition spark could start out with a Peizoelectric sparker, and use regenerative circuitry to charge a battery from every shot fired - the thing can always shoot at least semi automatic, no replacement batteries required. Even in case of an EMP its probable the weapon would still "work".

It also solves the problem of ammunition cook-off with standard caseless ammunition because there's no propellant in the chamber until the trigger is pressed, its just a slug sitting in an oven.

I think if anyone was ever going to create a real working M-41A Pulse Rifle (as in electrical pulse ignition) I think this is the way you'd do it. Then you really could have a Quad Stack magazine full of 100 bullet slugs, inherently caseless since its only a slug and the explosive force is provided externally.

Just imagine the logistics boon that is, the propellant canisters would be standard and even if you had different types you could transfer the gel between them with a converter. And the bullets? If the magazine fits and the bore is the same those would probably be interchangeable too.

Wouldnt say it would necessarily be a straight shot (pun) to making that tech work in our world in RL but any problems it had could probably be solved by innovation, since the principals arent that different from a car engine and we've perfected those. All of this innovation lost because of back room deals and defense contractor favoritism.
 
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Sorry, can't say I'm getting overly concerned about the whole innovation in firearms thingy, nor do I consider myself a gun enthusiast so I'm probably not competent enough to discuss it seriously.
 
I'm loving the +1 range on clubs & hammers. I don't know if it was expected to matter this much, but it does. Now I want it to be in every FO:T mod please.

I barely paid attention to this weapon type before, in Redux the default knife was for some reason given better stats than any other melee weapon. In BDux though I switched over from knives to clubs pretty soon because the added range feels fantastic. It makes it much easier to catch and reach enemies in real-time moce, and I expect the same is true in turn-based mode (you need to waste less AP to reposition yourself).

Redux did good to personalize pistols & rifles and the difference between the two, but did little to add diversity for melee weapons too, so I'd say this is a must have.

---
My only complaint (after the 1st level) is that BDux did not undo the horrible recruit pool changes (which is the only deal-breaking part for me that I can't accept in Redux).
 
Yeah, positioning in melee can be awkward, you sometimes lose points in turn based and more range makes real time more comfortable too. I'm seriously thinking of making 2 minimum range, giving clubs 3 and 4 to spears, you aren't supposed to stand like a statue and swing just your arms anyway so you should be able to get some range even with bare fists, I'll give it a shot and fit it in if it doesn't look too bad, FO2 had much better animations.
Of course, small critters like cockroaches will keep their 1 range because size matters after all :)

Recruit changes should be easy enough to revert and I assumed most players these days would be making their team from scratch or tweaking them to their liking with an editor so I haven't really looked into it much.
 
Nah, I think blades=1, clubs=2, spears=3 is ideal. I did not mean to imply that I had any difficulty with close combat in the original game or the mod (heck, my last characters were a slasher, a puncher, and a deathclaw). Just that it feels right and adds variety. And, if you want to slice throats up close, you should pay for it.
(I wonder if the Razor Claws should get the 2 range tho, since they look like they would.)

raics said:
Recruit changes should be easy enough to revert and I assumed most players these days would be making their team from scratch or tweaking them to their liking with an editor so I haven't really looked into it much.
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I should probably be getting into modding more eh?
I never did figure out where a bunch of things are stored, like the character names/pics/desciptions.

PS.
I mentioned this in the Redux thread too, but my pet wish for throwables is to get improved range.
Throwing distance in FO 1-2-T is calculated from 3x Strength, ie. a max 15 or 16 range caps this at 5 ST , making any character with the skill an expert thrower regardless of specialized stats and rendering the Heave Ho! perk near-useless.
A max range of 25-35 for grenades would actually make ST matter (and it'd make Big Guns and Throwing match up nicely, same as how Small Guns/EW and Unarmed/Mellee do).
 
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Great discussion! I will really try to work that out too for my mod. I love the 1-knives 2-clubs 3-spear solution! I'll test that out!
 
Vree said:
Nah, I think blades=1, clubs=2, spears=3 is ideal. I did not mean to imply that I had any difficulty with close combat in the original game or the mod (heck, my last characters were a slasher, a puncher, and a deathclaw). Just that it feels right and adds variety. And, if you want to slice throats up close, you should pay for it.
(I wonder if the Razor Claws should get the 2 range tho, since they look like they would.)

raics said:
Recruit changes should be easy enough to revert and I assumed most players these days would be making their team from scratch or tweaking them to their liking with an editor so I haven't really looked into it much.
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I should probably be getting into modding more eh?
I never did figure out where a bunch of things are stored, like the character names/pics/desciptions.

PS.
I mentioned this in the Redux thread too, but my pet wish for throwables is to get improved range.
Throwing distance in FO 1-2-T is calculated from 3x Strength, ie. a max 15 or 16 range caps this at 5 ST , making any character with the skill an expert thrower regardless of specialized stats and rendering the Heave Ho! perk near-useless.
A max range of 25-35 for grenades would actually make ST matter (and it'd make Big Guns and Throwing match up nicely, same as how Small Guns/EW and Unarmed/Mellee do).
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Sure, I could give some off-class weapons more range instead, machete has 2 from blades category and ripper probably should too, it looks a lot longer on new sprite. There are no Razor claws anymore, the weapon is honestly too ridiculous for me, blades of that size couldn't be fitted onto a leather glove and provide any kind of leverage, actually most claw weapons are either ornamental or kitchenware crap they sell to emo kids :)
Thought about Deathclaw gauntlet from FO3 but Deathclaws would have to suffer from one hell of a rigor mortis for that to be effective. I don't mind fantasy in Fallout, but I like to keep it in tech area, like inner workings of Power armor and Plasma rifles instead of invading the area of common sense. Anyway, Katar fills that progression slot and could get 2 range, though.

Reverting recruits should be easy, you would just need to unpack Redux, remove everything from \core\entities\recruits and pack it again. The only issue might be portraits, but they also might not, depends on what exactly Endocore changed. Stitch and Farsight will stay the same, though, you need to edit them with mission editor, but, again, you'd probably be better off to just use a save editor and tweak your team to you liking.

I read somewhere something about 16 being the hardcoded maximum range fro throwables, I'll have to play with it a bit, though weapon range in the game is generally scaled down a lot (as in most games except some like arma or battlefield where it isn't so severe) and a sawed-off shotgun has only 12 range, making ~30 somewhat unrealistic for a spear. There are a few ways to make throwing weapons better, for instance small ones like shuriken could be tweaked to not get consumed on throwing, which would assume you'd buy a box of those in bulk and retrieve them afterwards (reflected by price and weight), I played once like that and it was kinda nice to use darts and whatever, they would have to be a bit weaker then I made them to reflect for de facto infinite supply. Something I planned on doing is reworking ground sprites so they get more noticeable, giving them a yellow outline or something so you'd pick them up easier after battle, that could work too, nothing worse than picking through the mush, pixel by pixel.
 
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