Fallout 2 mod EcCo Gameplay Overhaul (new version for RPU)

While I love the idea of repeatable random encounter quests, you might want to rethink that particular one. Two reasons:

1) Redding has the majority of it's quests concentrated on the Sheriff. It has 2 maps, but the one with the mine owners is severely underutilized, so much so that it's probably the worst designed town in this regard (most uninteractive / leads nowhere stuff per capita/building in the game), or so it seems.
2) I'm ambivalent about the Frog Morton quest, and have been for several walkthroughs now. He (and his henchmen) are easy enough to kill right after doing everythign in the Den, and what this leaves you with is a really powerfull SMG (reward for becoming Captain of the Guards in VC!), at least one Combat Shotgun (also likely out of sequence) and it also leaves you with "Morton brothers coming after you" quest chain. These are impossible to know about in advance, and either very tough to deal with or just an overload of loot (you can get the light assault weapon and the best SMG in the game from these guys which sort of flat out breaks weapon progression).

I've experimented with the "proper" timing of doing Frog in, and the best one is ussually after having done the whole VC bussiness, some NCR, some New Reno and EPA (If I'm able to do EPA, then I go do Frog and the Wannamingo's). Doing either of those sooner overloads you with XP. The point I'm trying to make is that if you're going to have a repeateble quest in Redding, maybe it shouldn't be tied to killing Frog.

3) Redding doesn't seem to have a clear "hook" about the time you're supposed to go there. It's got 3 sheriff quests which can be done at any point, the wannamingo mine which takes quite a bit of firepower, the casino you can rob which leaves you with more loot than you know what to do with (which is why I don't rob it anymore), and the frog quest which seems to be "loot" compensation for spending ammo on the Wannamingo's (and sets you up for more late game gear on his brothers). There's also the jet antidote quest which assumes you've done stuff in VC or found San Fran, and the cheapest implants which also assumes you've started finding Combat Armore everywhere. It's sort of an end game town, really.

What I ussually do with it is finish up the main quest (sans vault 15), do EPA and go to NCR to sell of the loot and then take the Duppo Brahmin Drive to Redding and then do it and mop up all the quests left in that area. There's not much to do in Redding before that which isn't either too difficult or gamebreaking.


Conclusion: What that place needs, if it does need anything, is quests for people who go there earlier. The first 3 sherif quests are fine, how about giving the repeatable one to someone else? There's Atabaska Slim standing there for no good reason, he's some sort of trapper.

Ok, for constructive ideas on where to put repeatable quests, depending on what you want to do with them (ideas! just ideas!):

- A scorpion tail collecting quest could also have a Venom Antidote collecting quest. You could be collecting tails for someone who's making poison, too.


As for a town by town thing:

- Klamath - Bring spears and knives slim picket (guy with key to trapper town), he teaches you traps in exchange. You could also make him a Spike trap teacher in case someone missed mynoc. *Or he could teach you to make improved spike traps with sharpened spears if you want to have those.
- Den - Bring food to Mom. Bring crowbars, hammers, and police batons to Smitthy in excange for Junk and he teaches repair (or it just makes him a better vendor).
- Modoc - Either a repeatable quest to make the mayor a better vendor, or something in the Ghost Farm which teaches stealth, or creates a new vendor. Collecting leather jackets and/or booze. This could simply epand vendor stock/god reserve. And extends to collecting rope and gecko pelts to craft jackets.
- Gecko - Give one to the rat brain which has you chasing feral ghouls.
- Redding - Give one to Atabaska in Redding which has you chasing Fire Gecko's (they're challenging but easy enough to kill)

- Broken Hills:

- Once you turn the crooked long hair guy in to Marcus for fraud, you can't do any more caravan jobs. You can add a collectable quest to the caravan driver (there are plenty of scorpions around, so something with them it you can think up what).
- You can add a poison delivery repeatable quest to the racist female shopkeeper

- New Reno:

I'd really love it if the various gangs gave you repeatable combat encounters, but all they could be giving would lead to fights with armed humanoids. You could, however, use the armed humanoids allready there ^^

- Give one to Little Jesus Mordino for killing Yakuza's and turning in their Wakizashi blades
- Give one to the Wright brother in the train station which lets you trade flamers (you get them from gangs around New Reno) and he trains you in Big Guns. Wrights are looking for guns anyways.
- Give one to Bishops Daugther about collecting large ammounts of Jet (she wants to start an operation of her own)
- Give one to Mason in the Salvatore Bar for collecting Tommy guns off mobsters around New Reno (they want to cripple other gangs). Otherwise you could be fighting tough stuff towards the sout-west if it's laser resistant, since they can't.

- NCR - the doctor creating the anti-mutant serum could have a repeatable quest which has you collecting stuff from either floaters or centaurs
- The NCR rangers could have an anti-slavery repeatable quest

General:

- You could give the BoS bunker guys before the one in San Fran repeatable quests

If these at least sound ok, I'll try to think up a few more for other towns (including monster hunts). I'll have to study the encounter map a little better.

 

Sorry for idea textwall, I didn't mean that I think you should implement ALL of those

Just possibly the ones you like.

As for Frog, I was just saying, sorry if I'm uncapable of making things short.

Anywho, the Atabaska (or whatever he's called), he's the guy in the alley between the casino and the malamute saloon in redding, he's god metal armor and can tell you a bit about wanamingo's.

 

Never ment you to redo the quest, just move it like you said you did glad I made a possibly proper contribution there.

- Feral Ghouls - Well, the Brain (silly as he is) is the center of the renewal cult which is terribly underdeveloped but plays a part in the Vault Village quest. I figured they'd be the ones pissed off at the feral ghouls because not only can the brain not pacify them (so they're useless to him), but they're also creating trouble by attracting the wrong kind of attention from VC, and generally harrasing the peaceful Ghouls. Problem is, ghouls are hard to tell apart, and Harold is a talking head, Lenny's an NPC... Wooz makes no sense, Festus makes no sense, Smitthy makes no sense - only Gordon Gecko and the survival locker merchant might make sense.

As for the item, hmmm... Well, if it's Gordon Gecko (yeah, a silly movie reference I know), you could bring their corpses (use the biology corpse graphics). He could tell you something like "don't go killing any proper folks, cuz I'll know". The brain, if taken seriously, actually WOULD know.

- Killing Fire Geckos - in game? Bragging rights. Those buggers are nasty. Or just security for caravans, hunting or travel with fewer firebreathing gecko's running around.

- All my New Reno ideas are more about having something to do for various mobsters apart from their boss quests. You could get jet from anywhere (I generally trade for any chems any vendor has when I have a bunch of loot). There's about 58 (or more) jet on you if you kill all the Mordino's (including stables) - and there's tons of it around. If say, Bishops daughter just took big quantities of you for a decentish price, that'd still be something. Idk. You wouldn't need to code an entire quest for it, Jet piles up, and just having the option there would give you an in game "put 2 and 2 togather" angle for wacking the Mordino's.



Whole separate question:

Have you ever considered maybe making stimpaks radiate you upon use? If doctor doesn't remove radiation too.

 

Doctor Troy from 1st level of the Vault in Vault City and Doc Johnson from Redding.

 

I think the question was controversial and discussed by Jim the dinosaur a longish while ago, when he was looking for a way to reduce the power of stimpaks. Tbh, I'm not entirely sure what it would acheve, because I'm not all too sure how radiation even works - I've played the game for, what, a decade or so now, and never got properly radiated to death.

The thing, however, is that I do remember acidentally healing my radiation by using the Doctor skill - but I'm not sure if it works like that all the time or just if you get the Vault City Medical Training perk. Boosting the Doctor skill is allready worthwhile as a prerequisite for the living anatomy and a few other things, and it's also always preferable to stimpaks if possible, but having stimpaks and super stimpaks radiate you (depending on how that works) would actually make rad-aways important.

I'd deffinitelly put in another playthrough just for that (and you've allready introduced a ton of stuff since I started this one And I allready did one with your mods before And by the time I'm done there'll be even more stuff! Yay! )

 

In case you're interested, phobos, right now I have all drugs working in a way that they can't be stacked (you can only use a certain drug again after its initial effects wear off). In the case of stimpaks, I've made them heal the HP they always did, and in addition raise EN (1 for stims, 3 for super) for 30 mins (so after which you can use a stim again). So this also raises the max hp temporarily.

 

Say Jim, was having them irradiate you discussed and if so why was it scrapped?

My suggestion about it is that I'm sort of sick and tired of rad aways and rad-x being completely and utterly useless all the time. Also, this would actually have you buy and use something rather expensive on a regular basis creating a sorely needed gold drain. Depending on how radiation works it might also incidentally impose restrictions on overstimming yourself all at once (I suspect this might've been the original intention but was scrapped at some point which would explain why there's no radiation anywhere - the game sort of assumes you'd be radiated all the time from stim use). Also, if the cummulative radiation hit was significant enough, then healing powders could be a nice rad-free alternative throughout the game.

Now that I think about it I REALLY want to try this out.

Also, the problem with stims currently isn't so much that they're making combat too easy, because they sort of aren't - I'm not even using them all that much. I'm not using doctor, either. It's that there's very little damage coming at you once you got power armor. I've got a hugeass stack of stims, and stims on everyone in a party of 5. It's the old "there's no endgame to this game" problem, but I've yet to clear the hubologists (+stash), Navarro, and this time around I'm shooting up the Oil Rig too just to see how much stuff I end up with left.



Unrelated but possibly interesting:

Also, even with the new ammo reduction on death formula, if you wack either the Bishops or Mordinos there is apsolutely no way in hell you're running out of grease gun or H&K 10mm shooting SMG ammo. Those guys need a special measure of their own. I've yet to clear the Wrights to see what they drop, but I suspect I'll be swimming in JHP and shotgun shells.

Additionally, I've yet to find the JHP shooting big black pistol, two playthroughs in a row. Wonder if it's intentional (I sort of half-remember you mentioning it somewhere)...

 

@lujo
If you check out Jim's thread --- http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?200002-Jim-s-Mods-Discussion-amp-Bugreports --- then you'll see how he's decided to balance things out.

 

Huh? Never even thought about that, no clue why they should do that. Maybe you're thinking about the radioactivity zones I'll have in my mod.

 

I've seen the zones, and liked that thought. Curious as to how it pans out, and I do allready owe you a playthrough

Thanks for the tip Glovz, but I did check it out many times. I just though that there was a discussion about it waaaay back before and since he decided to go a different route it was scrapped so I though it might've been bogus for some reason. Looks like I was wrong

So, more reasons to try it out Am perfectly willing to test it out if phobos adds it as an optional installer feature, outght to shake up the game and the economy quite nicely. As I've said, the game allready sort of plays like it assumes stimpaks irradiate you, the more I think about it.

Can anyone clarify exactly how radiation works? Please?

 

^^ Yay!

And I can wait, I was just... well... expecting someone to come out with a really simple but unobvious reason why it's a bad idea. I'm a bit surprised noone didn't. All this time I thought it's not in one of the mods because it's been tried and scrapped

Dunno about healing over time, as in, don't know how it would work out. My main use of chems is burst healing after a critical to put me out of insta kill range. I don't mind being able to do that as it wastes a bunch of stims and thus resources. I'll try to see how it works out if it makes you glow in the dark as well

 

Maybe make some food like jerky meat temporarily increase your HP by value equal to EN and ST by 1 (double on critical success ) just like in real life but for 1 hour only?
It should be an unstackable drug (it is possible now thanks to JimTheDinosaur).

 

Feedback

Feedback on "Economy and Combat Rebalance mod" v0.5.

Some drawbacks:

1. Give the mod's texts to native English speaker for error corrections.
2. Remove ability to buy gecko pelts from trappers in random encounters via dialogue (easy method) or recalculate their dialogue prices according to the economy settings. Right now the difference is more than 5 times (for "Harsh" setting and 0% Barter skill) between dialogue and barter options.
3. Something must be done about Algernon and his free weapon upgrades. A nice idea (not mine, actually) would be to require 2 Flowers per upgrade. Of course, they shouldn't be stealable back.
4. [not a real drawback, but, since this mod tries to improve the game] Change Beer's weight from 0 to 1 (it always bugged me, that unlike Booze, Beer was weightless).

Some new propositions (starting with most important):

1. Make all stats retroactive: permanently increasing
   1. IN+1 - should give Lvl*2 Skill Points;
   2. EN+1 - should give Lvl*1 HP (if EN becomes an even number) + 2HP (Initial bonus at character creation).
2. Make all quest bonuses give maximum reward (Outdoorsman from Smiley - always 6 instead of 1-6; z-scan - always +2 LK).
3. Lower (first aid, doctor, lockpick, repair, outdoorsman) tools bonuses from 25-50% to 10-20%.
4. Remove ability to bypass perk requirements using temporary stats changes (drugs).
5. Add ability to temporarily raise stats beyond 10, but only with the help of drugs or devices (for example, Power Armor).
6. Remove randomness from using medicine and make its effects be based on the endurance (to make high EN a bit more important):

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 600, align: left"]
<tbody>[TR]
[TD="align: center"]Medicine
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Effect[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]EN 01[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]EN 10[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Old value[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Type[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Healing Powder[/TD]
[TD]

10+EN
​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]11[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]20[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]10 - 20[/TD]
[TD] HP[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Stimpack[/TD]
[TD]

15+EN​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]16[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]25[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]10 - 20[/TD]
[TD] HP[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Super Stimpack[/TD]
[TD]

45+EN*3​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]48[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]75[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]75[/TD]
[TD] HP[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Hypo[/TD]
[TD]

60+EN*4​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]64[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]100[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]75 - 100[/TD]
[TD] HP[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Antidote[/TD]
[TD]

-(15+EN)​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-16[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-25[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]-25[/TD]
[TD] Poison level[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]RadAway[/TD]
[TD]

-(15+EN)​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-16[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-25[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]-25[/TD]
[TD] Radiation level[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Rad-X[/TD]
[TD]

30+EN*2​

[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]32[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]50[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]50[/TD]
[TD] Radiation resistance[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]

 

I'm not a native English speaker (Russian, actually), so there won't be a lot of help from me here, unfortunatelly. But I'll try to note as many as I find... Or maybe you could put the textfile with all new text from your mod somewhere to download/view to speed up the checking?

Sorry, can't find it.

I guess, it has more to do with my OCD in rpgs than with actual balance. Nevertheless, it's all about "HP per level" and "SP per level" lost because of the wrong (from the powergaming point of view) order of taking stats or stat increasing perks. A small but very obvious example. There are 2 possible and mutually exclusive stat increases in the game: z-scan in NCR (+2 LK or -1 LK) and in San Francisco (+1 IN, +1 LK). All of them give 2 stats, but it's unwise to take the second one, because right now raising IN by 1 doesn't give skill points retroactively - they are wasted. Another example: there's a possibility to raise IN by 1 using a medical computer (in BOS bunker); it's possible, although very hard, to get there and use it as early as Level 8; let's say that in a normal playthrough, players get there by level 20, then that would mean that they lose (20-8)*2=24 Skill points because they didn't haste to get this bonus.

As you can see, it's better to raise such stats as IN and EN as high and as early as possible instead of raising them later. This necessity to do things in some specific order to gain max (or, should I say, not to lose potential) bonuses leads to minimizing player's freedom. And although powergamers may be just a minority of Fallout 2 gamers, they too are gamers.

In short, I would be really happy if you included this option (maybe as an optional option ) in your next release.

There's a number of bonuses present in the game that reward player with free skill, stat or derived stat increases. For example, after rescuing from Toxic Caves, Smiley (in Klamath) can increase Outdoorsman skill by 1-6% (it's pure random). Now, considering that majority of such rewards don't have randomness in them, and to gain the best result player is forced to just load the game until he gets max reward instead of, maybe, redoing the rescue quest more efficiently (without getting Smiley be hurt by geckos, maybe?), all this sounds pretty silly. Another example of random reward is NCR zeta scan: it can give +2 LK or -1 LK. I just don't see the point in the negative rewards, if the only thing that's needed not to get them is reloading.

It's similar to the nice change that Jim's implementing in his mod considering drug addiction (if I'm not mistaken) - player will always become addicted if he exceeds some daily/weekly drug consumption volume - thus eliminating randomness and power of saving/loading type of gameplay.

Well, you could lower them in a less harsh manner. And the main point here is that, together with huge skill bonuses from books, it becomes an overkill. There's just no point to invest in those skills (especially in first aid, repair and outdoorsman) during the playthrough, since player can pass relevant skill checks with ease using books and tools only.

It's possible to temporarily increase (or decrease, if needed) stats (and, through them, skills) with drugs, meeting some perk requirements that way and taking that perk. Perk is a permanent thing, therefore, only permanent (not temporary) stats and skills should be checked.

I'm not a modder, sorry. The main idea here was to increase the importance of drugs and taking high (7-10) ST and EN at character generation. Well, that's a pity.

Usually, medicine is used during the combat, sometimes bringing the player from the brink of death. I believe that combat should be more about calculation, not relying on randomness, especially in the early part of the game (that's why Super Stimpacks are so valuable - they are reliable). Besides, I also proposed the effect of the medicine to be influenced by EN here to accomplish 2 tasks that influence the early (and most fun) part of the game:

1. players with higher EN will not only have more actual HP, but will be able to, potentially, soak up to ~2 times more damage (with EN 10 compared to EN 1) with the same amount of (rare) stimpacks, doubling their chances of surviving tough battles;
2. since high EN character will heal more HP per stimpack, they won't need as many of them as characters with low EN, saving a lot of money (especially on "Harsh" economy setting).

Well, I can't wait to try the final release, honestly. Pity it's not done yet.

P.S. Do you have an approximate date of release of the next version of your mod?