Fallout 3 Compendium - Release 12 - Beta v0.6.0.2

[JayTheGay]

thanks, nice that u like it!

woah, ill be tracking that guy! he seems to put alot of effort and detail into his work!

 

[Dubby]

"User configurations which can be managed when Fallout 3 loads "
LOL pressure of community ^^

Pretty much. In later releases, when I have the new AI ready, npcs will also use some of those settings. Like, if the player has decided not to use run & gun AP, then the npc's AI won't use an AP system either... and likewise if the player does use run & gun AP.

@dubby, everythign sounds nice except one point: why force helmets?

the possibility to separatelly equip armour and its helmet was awsome!
also the fact that finding/buying an armour or a helmet didnt automatically mean finding its counterpart. makes perfect sence- a cheap merchant can possibly have some lousy combat helmet, but the shiny suit to it got lost or sold to another guy, whatsoever.

another point: if you are really into roleplaying your char, you would for example put off your helmet while in a secure city, talking to people. ESPECIALLY the PA helmet. in fallout 1/2 it was ok due to isometric, but i kinda cant have my char talking to friendly people with a bucket on his head :S

Actually it's because of how armor rating (defense) works. If you had a helmet on that had 80 DR, and wore nothing else, and got shot in the foot, you'd take only 20% of that damage. (that example is in vanilla, and there is no way to segment the defenses yet) However, given your points, the change to body armor will apply only to power armor. The other helmets won't provide as much defense as they do, and instead will probably help protect against critical hits. If I can figure out how to have it protect versus a headshot, I'll do that instead.

i would actually prefer the armour to be even more modular then it is. because its more realistic. not for PA of course, its a solid suit, but for example metal could be divided into right/left arm protectors, right/left shin protectors, right/left thigh protectors, torso armour, helmet.. crotch armour.. (haha, why they took groin aim away from the game?!)

...

post-apocalyptic world is all about scavenging stuff together, you seldom find a fully functioning suit of whatever, you are most likelly to make yourself shoulder protectors from truck tires, like the raiders got.

I think this might ACTUALLY be possible, but would require scripting to keep track of the equipment, since you would have to click on it to activate it, which would fire that item's equipping script, which puts the visual mesh on you and applies the defensive "enchantment", and then gets remembered in a script variable. It would require FOSE though, but I think it can be done. In order to make the damage calculations work -properly- however, would require the script to keep track of the defensive ratios on each piece, and monitor their health condition (which wouldn't be visible to the player anymore), and auto-equip/unequip an invisible body_armor piece to enact the armor rating definition. Technical and complicated, but as I said, twice, I think it could be done.

 

[JayTheGay]

uuh wait, i thought they HAD segmented the head out in vanilla :/
..they havent??

man, bethesda are such a disappointment

anyway, cool thing that it could probably be done! in case you can do that, MAYBE i will get better at 3d design by that time (learning it a.t.m.) and will be able to split the models into pieces and/or add new ones, but as they say in russia, "that is written with a hayfork on water"

 

[bhlaab]

I'd prefer if the helmets were an optional vanity that doesn't affect the armor rating even though that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

It's just... the helmets in fallout 3 are generally pretty fuckin ugly

 

[JayTheGay]

hahahaha you gotta point, yeah ..but it really makes too few sence :S

 

[Dubby]

GREAT UPDATE
-------------------

You guys are going to love this!

...

I have finally cracked and erased the vanilla damage calculations! I can now proudly announce that the next release will include realistic ballistic physics and realistic penetration physics! This is *infact* vastly superior to the original equations in Fallouts 1 & 2, and the equations in Fallout 3 by a great deal! The full breadth of these calculations will not be visible to the player, instead they'll only see a few of the key factors such as "Mod". For those with technical questions about how this will work, below is the actual equation for determining penetration that's being tested in-game right now:

[Penetration = ( (1/2 mv²) - ((((t/d -0.45) 6689.01888 +12192 ) H + Mod)² d² t 8.025) Cnd / 100 )]
A negative number means that the round has *failed* to penetrate the armor.

• t = the thickness of the armor in meters
• d = the caliber of the round in meters
• m = the weight of the round in kilograms
• v = the velocity of the round in meters per second
• H = the ratio of hardness of the armor relative to steel (steel would have an H of 1.0), this also represents how well the material absorbs impact energy
• Cnd = the condition the armor is in out of 100%
• Mod = the Damage Mod on the round; ie: 1/2, 2/1, 3/2, etc.

A round that hits armor will cause two forms of initial damage. The first, is called Blunt Force Trauma (BFT). The second, is called Armor Damage (AD). BFT is the energy transfered to the person inside the armor (their organs, for instance) just from the *impact*. AD is applied to the armor's health as a percentage of decay per impact, and is calculated differently depending on if the round penetrated, and if it did - on the degree of penetration. Example: A high velocity armor piercing round that zips through body armor is going to cause little damage to the armor's condition, while a round that "barely" penetrates will cause much more damage to the armor's condition.

This is just the formula for the degree of penetration, and not the formula for the actual damage.

This is version 1 of the damage calculation, and does NOT take into account the distance the round traveled, the wind resistance encountered, or the angle of impact. Version 2 of this calculation WILL INCLUDE THESE, but may not be available for many months. Version 1 however, will be available in F3C's next release!

Edit: I almost forgot to mention this... but the calculation will take into account which body part was struck.

 

[pk1]

Badass! When do you think that your next release will be out. I'm looking froward to playing it.

 

[Frederic]

Great read.

 

[JayTheGay]

BADASS dubby! keep up the good work!

so you managed to make helmet only protect from headshots, do i get it right?! so from this point of view, it is now possible to make modular armour pieces for every body part?

IS there even wind in f3?
------------------------------


thoughts about limb damage and cripple system:


now that i played a cripple/healing reballance mod ( http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2210 ) for a bit, i have some ideas:

1. in real life, if you got lets say your chest already broken by a sledgehammer, and the damn supermutant keeps hitting it again and again, it will SURELLY hurt very very much more then after "just" being crippled.. in vanilla it DOESNT have any even further effect, while in reality it would be the most damaging thing - to poke in your opponents wounds. so how about adding a script which makes hits to crippled limbs really tear on your HP and/or give some other bad penalties? or a cripple level system, like crippled level 1, crippled lvl 2, crippled lvl 3 etc?

of course this should apply to everyone, not just the player.

2. when you crirple someones arm causing him to drop his weapon, he will pick it up after a short while, and shooting him in his already-totally-torn-apart arm wont do anythign except regular HP loss. kinda silly. you could maybe fix that, too.

if you make that "level 1 cripple, level 2 cripple, level 3 cripple"-thing, you could make also "level 4 cripple" which means losing a limb (everyone except player), with a dismemberment animation, while still being alive, under pain shock or whatsoever.. well, i dont know if limb loss on alive creatures really works in the F3 engine, and if its not too much work for a small part like this, but the cripple-on-different-levels thing would surelly rule!

after all, having your leg broken with a sledgehammer in one place is not the same thing as getting it chewn and spit out by a deathclaw

3. also, its not a health issue, but if you hit someones weapon and it flys away, sometimes u see stuff like huge miniguns flying all over the place, like they got a rocket engine gone mad or something.. its ok for a small pistol hit by a shotgun shot close-up, but bigger guns really fly like they weight nothign in vanilla.. not good..

----------------
some more spectacular battles:

check this out,
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2897

that mod aint perfect, since there are 3 meter tall ghouls and 5 meter tall muties, but generally, adding alot more NPCs to some points like the battle at the citadel would sureally make the things less boring.. alot better then the two muties + a centaur fighting some guards in vanilla

anyway, those are just ideas i had, hope i could help you somehow!

 

[big brother]

Seriously dude, stop calling it vanilla.

I like vanilla.

Now you make me feel cheep to eat ice cream.

Also, I am thourougly impressed with the amount of work done here. I haven't installed the mod, just read what you've done and I am really impressed.

However, I asked a question and I am not sure if you saw it or just didn't know what to answer: how sure are you this mod will be compatible with any DLC to come out. Don't hate me, but I like the game and I entend to play the DLCs too (man everybody on this board will hate me now that I say I love the game).

 

[Dubby]

so you managed to make helmet only protect from headshots, do i get it right?! so from this point of view, it is now possible to make modular armour pieces for every body part?

Yep!! A guy wearing a vault security vest will be very resistant to ballistics on the torso only - and that depends how many shots the ballistics protection has absorbed. The limbs are only clothes, and unprotected.

IS there even wind in f3?

YEP! There is, but nothing actually -uses- it. Search the console help for the word wind, or wind speed, to see what I mean.

1. in real life, if you got lets say your chest already broken by a sledgehammer, and the damn supermutant keeps hitting it again and again, it will SURELLY hurt very very much more then after "just" being crippled.. in vanilla it DOESNT have any even further effect, while in reality it would be the most damaging thing - to poke in your opponents wounds. so how about adding a script which makes hits to crippled limbs really tear on your HP and/or give some other bad penalties? or a cripple level system, like crippled level 1, crippled lvl 2, crippled lvl 3 etc?

I am still working on the damage formula, but the way it works is it calculates a Force Factor, a Penetration (in inches), and a Cavitation element (in inches). Like real wound ballistics. Damage dealt is actually a weird kind of percent, and very very difficult to "properly" illustrate to the player with just a single number. This is because those factors I mentioned depend on a lesser known mechanic of ballistics called the Meplat Diameter. Armor Piercing rounds are hard cast, or jacketed, and have a very small Meplat. This gives the round a very deep penetration, but a much narrower Cavitation. On the other hand, soft bullets designed to damage tissue have a much larger Meplat, -and- they expand on impact much faster and broader than the armor piercing rounds would. This slows the penetration, and increases the cavitation effect. The Meplat is represented in the armor penetration formulas as the Dmg Mod value, but in the damage formula the "Dmg Mod" represents the softness-hardness of the round. In the damage formula, the actual Meplat Diameter & Area is used. So when you get down to it, the actual damage dealt is a factor of bullet diameter, bullet velocity, bullet weight, bullet density, and the bullet's meplat. Impacts also have an effect called "Stopping Power". If the force is severe enough, and strikes the head or torso, it can cause a person to simply keel over - whether or not the attack was actually fatal or for that matter, that damaging at all. Another term for this is Blunt Force Trauma. That sledgehammer has an enormous Meplat, and a low velocity. It won't penetrate much, if at all, but distributes the energy over a very large area - and therefore has an enormous BFT value.

 

[JayTheGay]

ok, dubby, as i said, if you can make the scripts for modular armour pieces, then i can try and make some new pieces + split old suits where it makes sence, and also maybe fix some serious design-sins bethesda made, if you agree (e.g. wtf are those lamps on the shoulders of tesla?). edit: im currently reading about all that .nif stuffs, hope it aint too hard

i got a bit of experience with modelling stuff in cinema4d, and it will not hurt me to have some practice, since i wanted to extend my 3d skills anyway


@ big brother: yeah, i disliked people calling that "vanilla" too, at first. now got used -.-

 

[starbork]

WOW!! That ballistics and damage info - incredible. Keep up the great work - I'll jump in with the next release and help beta test.

Huge props to everyone involved with this amazing mod.

 

[Oddball_E8]

wow... this mod actually made me download the game again...

keep it up and i might even buy it!

 

[JayTheGay]

better pay dubby lol

 

[Yazman]

you need to fix the power armour strength bonuses. Make it like in the first two, where it does +3 or +4 depending on what sort it is.

 

[Oddball_E8]

you need to fix the power armour strength bonuses. Make it like in the first two, where it does +3 or +4 depending on what sort it is.

the problem is (as i understand it) that you cannot have values over 10 in any of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. values...

 

[Yazman]

Oh ok... doesn't it automatically limit it though? Like in the first two it would always cut off at 10.

 

[Dubby]

Oddball is correct. 10 is the maximum for stats. While the effects of a stat such as 11, or 12, could be -emulated- with scripts to some degree, it's more of a hassle than just having the power armors raise the strength a certain number regardless of what your own physical strength is.

 

[Yazman]

I understand that but there's always been like a hardcoded "deadline" where, even if you had 9 STR and put power armour on, it would still only max out at 10.

I'm not saying we should be able to have higher than 10 STR from the armour, I'm just asking if you could make it like in the first two.