raics
First time out of the vault
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Redux with Equilibrium (Fallout Tactics)
__________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.
- Install Fallout Tactics 1.27.
- Install Unofficial Patch Plus (optional).
- Install this mod.
- Launch game from the mod shortcut.
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).
Log versions:General Changes
Recruit and Racial 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.
Equipment Changes
- Super Mutants will now run at the same speed as humans, and dogs/wolves will run at the same speed as deathclaws.
Perk 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.
- Dodger now grants +15 to AC instead of +20.
- Bonus Move also requires 6 EN.
General Changes
Recruit and Racial 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.
Equipment 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.
Item 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.
Perk 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.
- 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:
General balance and weapon 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.
Recruit and racial 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.
Specific equipment 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.
- * 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.
Helpful links:
- Link: Redux mod theme on NMA
- Link: Equilibrium add-on moddb v2.2 (Original)
- Link: FT Redux with Equilibrium v1.3+v2.2 plus (Compilation)
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
Recruit and Racial 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.
Equipment 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.
Item 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.
Perk 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.
- 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.
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