Fallout rebalance Mod - Metathread

Hm I still dislike the idea of the bobbleheads, feels way overpowered to me.

I haven't tried your mod, but I'am playing with several balancemods, like sagers, were my HP is dramatically lowered and the vatsdamage is 1:1, but I am still able to gather a good amount of equiment and lots of stimpacks very very fast. I am level 7 atm and I have already all I need to finish the game and nothing can scare me anymore. Thats kinda dumb I think. I will finish the mainquest quickly and then check out your mod to see how that works out.

What do you think about the stims not healing cripples and only usable during realtime and not while using the pipboy?
 
Roflcore said:
Personally I dislike the ideas about bobbleheads. So doing nothing sounds good to me. Maybe we can add a new npc later who will buy them for a huge price. But a plus in stats is imo very unbalanced.

1.) lower the amount of stims, 50% or even less? and make them much more expansive?
2.) it should not be possible to use stims while you access the pipboy, only in real time. I dunno if you can hotkey stims, but if so it would work really great. this way you can't pause the game and heal yourself fully again but have to take cover and don't have time to use several stims. Just like in f1/f2. in addition this way we may prevent the healing of crippled limbs? I think a single stim to heal that is way to easy. Stims should not heal crippled limbs, instead your medical skill and maybe additional items (doctors bag or a bandage?) should be needed.
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I think your idea of increasing the sell price of bobbleheads to give the player another option is very good. The same could be done for skill books.

The stimpacks are powerful in Fallout 3, but they depend on the medical skill and if we increase the overall combat difficulty changing the effects, price or availability of stimpacks could make the game too difficult.

How can you use stimpacks in the VATS mode? I have only figured out how to put them on a shortkey as my other weapons. Instead of removing the ability to use them in VATS it could be possible to increase the action point cost for healing, but with the increased damage the player takes in VATS i think using stimpacks in VATS will be required to survive.
 
I don't know if or how you use the stims during vats, but currently everybody waits in a fight till they are extremly low on health, and then just hit tab and take as many stims as needed without any danger. thats kinda silly and it also means, once you obtained enough cash/stims you are virtually invincible. So I guess the best method would be to block them during the pipboy, but I do not know if this is possible and how to use stims during realtime.

The skillbooks are fine with me. Maybe add a cap to the skillsbooks, like in the old fallout titles, were you didn't learn anything from books if you already had 80% skill? Except make it 40% or 50% skill in F3. This way you can't collect/use allt the books in the game and roleplaying is more important instead of maxing everything out. Dunno if this is possible though.
 
Roflcore said:
I don't know if or how you use the stims during vats, but currently everybody waits in a fight till they are extremly low on health, and then just hit tab and take as many stims as needed without any danger. thats kinda silly and it also means, once you obtained enough cash/stims you are virtually invincible. So I guess the best method would be to block them during the pipboy, but I do not know if this is possible and how to use stims during realtime.
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Ah ok, but if you increase the VATS damage over 100 %, for example to 500 %, this tactic will be very dangerous and it will be much better to make one or two attacks and than use a stimpack.

I think we should only change the game were it is needed and we should be careful how all changes affect the difficulty setting together, because if the game is too hard it will be probably no fun.
 
Dubby said:
1+2: I have been rigorously testing the formulas and timing before releasing it to the public, and so far the "first person shooter" combat is still very much active and a strong focus - only because of how damage and defense are balanced with combat tactics, ai behavior, healing usage, etc. Taking cover to play shootouts tactically is not only a smart decision FPS wise, but also a -very- smart decision when using the changes to vats & AP. And, the npcs will be using cover to their advantage as well.

4: Has been rigorously tested along with 1&2

5: Has also been rigorously tested along with 4, 1, and 2.

17: Also been tested and found to be balanced.

18: Autoaim actually causes more harm than it helps. Autoaim can cause a shot from a gun to veer drastically off course, to try to hit an enemy in a random body part - even if it is obviously obscured by terrain or objects. Without autoaim, gun combat is much more enjoyable. It has not been fully disabled, because there are a few cosmetic reasons to keep AA enabled - but the effects it can have on projectile trajectory (gun spread) has been completely nullified.

12: No, skills can't work like that yet - but at the very least the tagged skills work correctly. However they do not gain twice the bonus from skill points given by perks. As for the skill points... that will need community testing to best balance. The object is to avoid the "jack of all trades" symptom that plagues every single bethesda game.

14: Actually as I have been playing on normal - just normal - I have had to rely heavily on food for healing... reserving the precious stimpacks for serious injuries and immediate mid-combat emergency h ealing. I am still low on food & stimpaks. It is very possible for a careless player to end up... 'starving' their health in the wasteland just because they ran out of healing resources.
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Wow its very good if all these changes work good together, but i think without the increased cost of skills beyond a certain point there is no need to increase the effect of tags, because if you reach the maximum skill level in these skills very fast you can spend all your points elsewhere.

I think if you find the game already challenging on normal it can be perhaps too hard on higher difficulties. As i wrote before, i think we should be careful how all changes affect the difficulty and if the game is too hard it will be probably no fun.
 
Roflcore said:
I don't know if or how you use the stims during vats, but currently everybody waits in a fight till they are extremly low on health, and then just hit tab and take as many stims as needed
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when scripts can be compiled, this will NOT be possible. ;)
 
Wizard1200 said:
Roflcore said:
I don't know if or how you use the stims during vats, but currently everybody waits in a fight till they are extremly low on health, and then just hit tab and take as many stims as needed without any danger. thats kinda silly and it also means, once you obtained enough cash/stims you are virtually invincible. So I guess the best method would be to block them during the pipboy, but I do not know if this is possible and how to use stims during realtime.
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Ah ok, but if you increase the VATS damage over 100 %, for example to 500 %, this tactic will be very dangerous and it will be much better to make one or two attacks and than use a stimpack.

I think we should only change the game were it is needed and we should be careful how all changes affect the difficulty setting together, because if the game is too hard it will be probably no fun.
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I haven't tested the 500% mod version, but it sounds very hard and also very unrealistic. A bit above the 100% is okay I guess, but 5x times?
Nevertheless, whats the gain in this when I can simply hit the tab button and instantheal?

@Dubby
So this is only possible with the cs? No workaround possible?
 
Wizard1200 said:
Wow its very good if all these changes work good together, but i think without the increased cost of skills beyond a certain point there is no need to increase the effect of tags, because if you reach the maximum skill level in these skills very fast you can spend all your points elsewhere.
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I'm sorry to say this but please do the math! :\

Skills start at 5~7 in F3C, 25 lvls, even given absolute optimal settings, a player can end up with the highest intelligence possible, a player is going to only be able to get around 6 skills to 100 on their own by level 25. Please note there are -13- skills. The four tagged skills [granted they choose Tag! later] easily reach 80-100, leaving them with 200~ (209) left over skill points to allocate anywhere else. Even for the idiot character with 2 or 3 intelligence, they still get enough to max out their tagged skills. (Granted, an idiot can only get three tagged skills that high, but 'nuff said.)

@EDIT@

It's not "just" only possible with the CS... it's only possible with a valid script -compiler-. Folks in the community are working on one, and everyone seems to think bethesda has already caved to the community and is working on releasing a cs anyways.
 
Regarding those bobbleheads, in case they will not be removed they should be on randomized locations so that every playthrough is kinda different. Randomisation is what this game also lacks, stuff in boxes should be randomly generated and some of it should be affected by your luck. The higher the luck is, the more caps you`ll find or ammo/etc.

Here are some more suggestion from a thread i once made, some of you(roflcore) might remember:

-You can`t sleep on beds by different people
Solution: Make it possible to sleep on all beds. Further ideas: If somebody finds you in that bed or if it gets night, you get thrown out of the door(without a popup). HP should be decreased per sleeping hour, not per sleep.

-You can`t sleep where you want (outside, etc.) So the idea is that somehow you can adjust a alarm bell like in the old Fallout but your sleep can get interrupted by encounters. The difference between a bed and sleeping somewhere would be the HP healing rate and the danger.

-Another one: There`s much food around there(mostly unneeded), so to spice things up a little bit FastTravel should cost a small amount of food, depening on how far you want to FastTravel.

-I noticed that you can`t open doors by blowing them up(using explosives for example). Doors which are made out of wood or poor locks should have hitpoints and be destroyable.

-When you shoot somebodys head off you still can loot his hat/mask/glasses/whathaveyou. Shouldn`t be possible. Same goes for different body parts/armor parts/etc.

-Landmines shouldn`t be so easy defusable. (Skillcheck would be great.)

-Minigames requirement are usually 25, 50, 75, 100. Everything in between means you can`t hack/open it. Obliviously it`s bad design.

Good luck at modding, unfortunately i don`t have the time.
 
Dubby said:
I still like the bobbleheads. Infact, I'd like for them to keep their bonuses - but only on one very strict condition. To get the 7 core stat bonuses, you have to collect *all seven* of those bobbleheads... and likewise for the skill bonuses - not the teeniest bonus until you collect all of them. I didn't want the bobbleheads having their bonuses "ready available" because that leads a player who already knows where one is to focus on that one
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ok. i can agree with this idea. i like that angle.



also: can we just mod the damn fatman out of the game?
 
I like both of those ideas.

The bobbleheads seriously affected my enjoyment.

Maybe one mod to require all of them be collected to gain the stat boost, and one to eliminate them entirely?
 
Pope Viper said:
and one to eliminate them entirely?
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well, Makagaguliaatedafullzzziele already made a mod to render them powerless. i don't mind them being there, i just think they add yet another element of "easy" to the game. it's just way too simple to build a supergod character.
 
Agreed, I think I had a supergod character by like level 9-10 in my first run through, so I started # 2, and deliberately refused to use any of the stat boosters.
 
How about opening pipboy takes away all your AP? And using binds for meds take some APs too?
Or opening pipboy doesnt pause game (in combat atleast) - to remove the pipboy healing exploit, wich makes it impossible to die, like noted already
 
Roflcore said:
I haven't tested the 500% mod version, but it sounds very hard and also very unrealistic. A bit above the 100% is okay I guess, but 5x times?
Nevertheless, whats the gain in this when I can simply hit the tab button and instantheal?
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It is very hard in my mod, at least on the very hard difficulty setting, but VATS slows the time for the enemies and reduces the attack rate of them, which is very unrealistic, too :) I think it works great and forces the player to choose carefully when he uses VATS, but you are right using tab makes it easier, but at least the higher damage increases the amount of used stimpacks. It would be better if healing could be only done in VATS or out of combat.

Dubby said:
Skills start at 5~7 in F3C, 25 lvls, even given absolute optimal settings, a player can end up with the highest intelligence possible, a player is going to only be able to get around 6 skills to 100 on their own by level 25. Please note there are -13- skills. The four tagged skills [granted they choose Tag! later] easily reach 80-100, leaving them with 200~ (209) left over skill points to allocate anywhere else. Even for the idiot character with 2 or 3 intelligence, they still get enough to max out their tagged skills.
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You are right, but i think intelligence will be perhaps too important. The difference between intelligence 1 and 10 will be huge (11 to 20 skill points in Fallout 3 vanilla: roughly 100 %, 6 to 15 in my suggestion: 150 % and 4 to 13 in your suggestion: 225 %).

Additionally skill perks like gun nut in tag skills will be not very useful, when the bonus of the perk is not doubled, too, and i thought the point of this balancing mod is make more things useful.

Further i thought that each skill is based in your suggestion on Luck + (the other ability x 1), which would result in an average starting score of 10. It seems you have removed the luck bonus from the skills completly, which makes luck too weak in my opinion.
 
If possible, make it so that you can't fast travel on escort quests. Found that to be extremely cheap once I realized it was an option.
 
remove scaled NPCs

What about removing the vast majority of leveled enemies? I hate how an assault rifle or SMG tears through the Super Mutants in DC. I'm level 8 and I fucking _know_ that the super mutants are scaled to be fairly easy to kill at my level.

In fallout 1, when you get to the water shed in the Necropolis, those super mutants are hard as hell using small gun SMGs from further than a hex or two away.

It bugs me that I feel like every enemy is just about tailored to my level. In fallout 2 you knew the raiders near VC would be well equipped and harder to kill (the mountain caves encounter), while the Slavers near klamath were your normal leather/metal pistol punks. Press Gangs near San Fran were static, hard if you were lower level, fodder for higher.

Perhaps it's nostalgia, but I miss that kind of structure. Right now I feel like the enemies are always very easily killable. Aside from some truly random encounters, I wish each area had its own suitable NPC difficulty ala Fallout 1 / 2.
 
good job all so far, i kind of like bobbleheads but something definetly needs to be done about them.
 
My real problem with FO3, and technically FO1/2 is that from a gameplay perspective there has never been incentive to play an extreme stat character. ( Other than perhaps INT extremes for skill points or funny low-INT dialogues.

Derived statistics that grow linearly but are easily buffed later in the game to a maximum that is no higher than a value achievable at character creation creates no incentive to play characters with such extreme choices.

I postulate and submit to the group here, that derived stats should be determined in a method that grows exponentially ( or close to ), based on the primary stats distance from the mean. Which should be 5.5, not 5.

Additionally, drugs and temporary buffs should allow for over 10 stats temporarily.

Along with supporting over 10 stats, we could revise NPC stats to give muties and others appropriate SPECIAL that would make them more threatening.

Lastly, my Bobblehead suggestion is to allow them to buff a stat but weaken another. Effectively creating no net change. Additionally, perhaps give them a value that perhaps makes them lucrative as a sell item; but the stat benefit is lost if sold. Perhaps this is best accomplished by making the bobbleheads a consumable with a permanent effect.

Some thoughts on previous suggestions:

Careful about increasing the value of stimpacks, as PCs get 10 while leaving Vault 101; its essentially giving them 1000 bottlecaps if you make them FO1/2 priced. Could easily distort the low-level economy.


Thoughts?
 
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