Long-time Fallout Fan, never used a mod

[DrivebyMessiah]

Hello. I just now realized that there are all these great custom content files available for fallout 2. Unfortunately I'm going to be a total dunce when it comes to their use. I was hoping I could get some direction from one of the seasoned veterans on what files to try. First and formost, I downloaded the 1.05 patch, which, in reading about it seems it contains a lot of great fixes. I was wondering if this could be used in addition to some of the content adding/altering mods and also if many of these files could be used in conjunction.

If there is one particular recipe for a great gameplay experience that one of you has pioneered I'd love to hear about it.

Thank you.

 

[Silencer]

You can run multiple mods as long as they don't modify a same file. Such an occurrence will render one of the mods useless, or buggy at best.

Celestial's 1.051 mod probably contains all the worthwhile additions that the game should have had from the start- e.g. party members changing appearance, the mysterious streanger person improved, some of the unavailable game endings now possible. I recommend you stick to this patch. Or you may try the alternative Seraph's Patch.

Now, you may also want another kind of experience, for example, you may want to play a natural born leader and assemble a private army with the Cult of Personality mod (one allowing a person with the said perk to recruit all the NPC's at the same time). This mod will not work with the B-Team mod ( a constituent of the 1.051 patch) because they both work on the NPC's scripts. If you're a Miria fan, find the Miria mod - changes Miria into an actually useful NPC, - albeit not with 1.051 mod, for the same reasons.

You may want to drop the way of the lone Chosen One and have your faithful servant Klint (the Temple guard) tag along with the Friendly Klint mod. This one however is quite buggy, I found that my save games got corrupted a lot for no reason.

You may also try some other fun mods: Allowing you to play as the Pip-Boy (sorry, Vault Boy) or walk around in Frank Horrigan's armour. But these are more of a curiosity than a true experience.

Also, there are some mods that strip Fallout of all it's falloutishness, like the Second Apocalypse or Living Dead, which will appeal solely to primitive hack'n'slash games fans.

One thing you could really check out is Human Shield's total setting improvement mod, which changes the game a lot to be more in line with Fallout 1 and thus, darker.

At any rate, poke around the files section and I'm sure you'll find something of interest.

Also, keep an eye out for new mods, I've heard some quite large ones are in final development

 

[DrivebyMessiah]

1.051 doesn't fix what it says it does

I've been trying out the 1.051 patch and discovered that the improved flamer and [improved] laser pistol report damage numbers no different than their basic counterparts and as far as i can tell, in use, are no different. What gives? this was supposed to be fixed by the 1.05 patch. I was really looking forward to using these weapons as they were meant to be. I'm confused because the appearance of party members does change by armor - meaning that aspect of the patch is working while the weapon changes are not. Does anyone know why this would happen?

_________

Update: well i've found the problem for the guns not having the correct damage. I found out from a helpful post in the archive that the .pro files had to be changed to read only for a lot of the changes to stick - unfortunately, though, the damage on all the amunition types is completely fucked up - all of them doing way to much damage - double and triple damage mods across the board.

 

[DrivebyMessiah]

ammo/gun stat changes

I've been learning as I go and with the "read only protos for them to work" notion I just picked up i've decided to use one of the downloaded editors to revamp the stats on the ammunition and to a lesser extent the weapons. I dont understand why the stats were made so goofy for amunition damage mods in the 1.05 patch but I'm going to try my hand at some reasonable numbers. For one thing - I dont see why the whole AP problem couldn't be solved by only addressing AP ammo. say: -15AC. -15DR 1/1 on the damage. That and i'd be tempted to alter all the JHP ammo to a 3/2 instead of 2/1, alter the DR to make the damage increase more subtle. I know that against an unarmored living target a hollow point can do some gruesome things, but then again people can't get shot 20 times in one sitting and have the oomph left to jam a hypo filled with red goo into their chest. There's realism and then there's fun-ism. I'll post my findings..

 

[dude_obj]

I took a look at what everyone did with ammo changes in the various patches, there is a comparison here ( I recently added the ammo stats from the Team-X mod to that comparison). The numbers on the right are changes from the FO2 original values. I spent a lot of time looking at the ammo stats, while trying to fix the old AP problem, and setting up stats for new ammo types that are being added. I passed my numbers on to Corpse, who knows a lot about weapons, and he made some adjustments. The numbers we have now are these. A weapons/ammo FO2 add-on mod is forthcoming that will add a whole lot of new weapons, this is the list of new weapons. More info on this FO2 weapons add-on soon.

 

[DrivebyMessiah]

right direction but

I generally agree with where you're going on the ammo changes in the final table listed there. But I think its a bit overly friendly to the conventional ammo and I say this with energy weapons in mind. If anything I think the small guns skillset has it a little too good in F2 considering they're the first weapons available and arguably also the best with the additions such as guass and caseless.

The only round I was really that sympathetic to was the 7.62 considering the fact that its really a monster, slugs being a tad over twice the mass as the .223 ammo [which i guess is supposed to be a 5.56 variant. (which i'm guessing the 5mm essentially is akin to)]. I'm furthermore able to live with a small buff to 7.62 because its very expensive and rare in the F2 nearly as much so as our futuristic super ammos 4.7mm caseless and 2mm EC. The tradeoff, in my changes, for minor improvements to the 7.62mm round is an increase in the str requirements of all 7.62mm weapons. There aren't many after all, and besides I don't think 8str is unreasonable for gingerly holding an m60 machine gun.

In the changes I made to ammo I geneally tonned down the JHP rounds to 3/2 [with the exception of the .44 round. remaining 2/1 though offset by a bigger DR boost. Perhaps a 5/3 would be better]. And in addition gave JHP +10 ac, after all a hollow point is more likely to be defeated by armor - think this would be an obvious tradeoff or the damage. Then I gave the AP a 1/1 damage and reduction to ac reflecting its armor piercing quality.

Oh, and reduced the -20 ac and -20 DR figures of .223 significantly, which i think the game is overly friendly to. It really hit home when I read: "In most States, the .223 Remington cartridge, the commercial version of the 5.56 x 45mm NATO, is outlawed for use against deer-sized or larger game. This restriction even includes the explosive hollow-point versions using 68-grain projectiles. Years of hunting experience has shown that the small 5.56 x 45mm cartridge is incapable of consistently stopping deer-sized or larger game. Consequently, this cartridge is limited to game such as woodchucks, gophers, turkeys, and prairie dogs. Is this cartridge really adequate for human-sizes targets?" My recomended reduction to the .223 ammo takes down the effectiveness of the bozar considerably, and its just as well in my opinion. The god of all big guns should be the vindicator minigun with its ridiculous rate of fire and astronomical cost of feeding it 4.7mm caseless "super-future-ammo." I'm further motivated to take down the damage of the bozar itself and tune up the M60 swapping the two making the m60 the super weapon in the bozar's place. I think its a better fit because 7.62 is more expensive, more rare, a more powerful heavier round making the change especially justified with an 8str requirement. In some ways the m60 can be even more rare than the bozar in game.

Getting back to energy weapons - laser pistols really suck. For being the great source of fear in Reno, the Salvatores claim to fame - they just don't have the damage figures to back it up. That, and it seems all it takes for near 50% protection of this sci fi super weapon is wrapping oneself in aluminum foil. I refer to the silly metal armor which gives extreme laser protection. Beyond that, all the super armor types - combat armor and up offer extremely good laser protection, if i remember correctly often better protection than to normal damage further establishing the place of low tech arms with lotech ammos like the .223 pistol as far superior. The .223 pistol is the ultimate sidearm next to anything short of the gauss pistol in F2. I'd be tempted to swap its place with the 14mm pistol in terms of damage if not for the fact that the .223 has its history. There was only 1 of them in F1 and it was the reward for a quest that took a long while to be of the level requirement to be considered "strong enough." But really, the 14mm pistol is a better fit for the ultimate pistol because of the ammo cost, rarity, and its the only weapon to use 14mm ap cartridges, which i assume is supposed to mean "really fucking huge pistol ammo."

All that - I think, is my reasoning as to why buffing the damage/penetration on the conventional ammos is a bad idea.

 

[dude_obj]

Re: right direction but

I generally agree with where you're going on the ammo changes in the final table listed there. But I think its a bit overly friendly to the conventional ammo and I say this with energy weapons in mind.

Energy weapon damage is specified in the weapon proto. The energy ammo is also batteries for geiger counter and such, and I think its settings 0,0,1,1 (no change) needs to remain as it is. There is also a weapons spreadsheet with adjustments and many new weapons. These items will be available as an FO2 add-on very soon. The weapons and ammo are untested at the moment. Perhaps the energy weapons need some adjustment, I agree some are too weak.

The only round I was really that sympathetic to was the 7.62 considering the fact that its really a monster, slugs being a tad over twice the mass as the .223 ammo [which i guess is supposed to be a 5.56 variant. (which i'm guessing the 5mm essentially is akin to)]. I'm furthermore able to live with a small buff to 7.62 because its very expensive and rare in the F2 nearly as much so as our futuristic super ammos 4.7mm caseless and 2mm EC. The tradeoff, in my changes, for minor improvements to the 7.62mm round is an increase in the str requirements of all 7.62mm weapons. There aren't many after all, and besides I don't think 8str is unreasonable for gingerly holding an m60 machine gun.

There are multiple 7.62mm ammunitions in this new configuration:

.303 (7.7x56mm)
.30-06 (7.62x63mm)
.308 (7.62x51mm)
7.62mm (7.62x39mm)

These are more powerful than 5.56x45mm (.223) ... right?
Most big guns now use the .303, .308, and .30-06 rounds.

.223 <snip> Is this cartridge really adequate for human-sizes targets?"

Again, most large guns will use a 7.7 or 7.62 shell in this mod.

I'm further motivated to take down the damage of the bozar itself and tune up the M60 swapping the two making the m60 the super weapon in the bozar's place. I think its a better fit because 7.62 is more expensive, more rare, a more powerful heavier round making the change especially justified with an 8str requirement. In some ways the m60 can be even more rare than the bozar in game.

See the weapons spreadsheet. I'm sure many people would argue over what exactly all these stats should be. But I think we're going to try out these numbers for both weapons and ammo and see how they work. We'll make changes based on feedback from experience of people actually using the weapons and ammo in the game.

I refer to the silly metal armor which gives extreme laser protection. Beyond that, all the super armor types - combat armor and up offer extremely good laser protection

We also have some armor adjustments and new armors, although the first FO2 add-on will be just the weapons. The new armor information is here. The "silly metal armor" is better than it was, the combat leather jacket is now between leather jacket and and leather armor, and well, look at the whole lot of them ...

 

[frosty_theaussie]

So does Cult Of Personality not work with the unofficial patches? Also, do I have to install 1.04 patch before installing the 1.05 patch?

 

[Silencer]

So does Cult Of Personality not work with the unofficial patches?

I'm positive it doesn't work with the B-Team mod, and Celestial's 1.051 patch contains the B-Team mod. Hence, CoP'll not work with the 1.051 patch.Also, it'll not work with any other mod that changes the NPC scripts (I'm pretty sure it would conflict with the Miria mod, for instance)

Also, do I have to install 1.04 patch before installing the 1.05 patch?

If you're referring to versions of Celestial's patch, then no, 1.05 already contains 1.04 (and the official 1.02, too, for that matter.)

 

[frosty_theaussie]

Ah alright. Thanks for clearing that up mate.

Having fun playing through Fallout 2 at the moment 8)