FO2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod

One thing I forgot about melee defense is that PE also plays a role in the form of a defense bonus based on unspent action points: if you are facing your opponent (you can now change your facing direction at the cost of 1 AP), every unspent AP functions as the "Evaluate" action in GURPS, with you trying to figure out your opponent's next move. This then adds to either the quality of your block or dodge.

Hopefully this'll also make a high PE melee build viable, primarily as a counter-attacker (as long as enemies aren't crowding you that is).

 

I've been going through all the weapon stats, systematizing every single one of them (again, mostly because I'm changing so many things that assigning arbitrary values would end up requiring so much balancing and endless reworking). As you might imagine, weapon prices were especially hard to get "right" (e.g. for ranged weapons this is based on a combination of damage per attack, damage per AP, range, mag size, and damage per burst taking into account strength required to avoid recoil).

If any of you has the time/inclination to go through them before I painstakingly run them through the item editor I would much appreciate it.

Just a bit of run down of the changes I probably only posted at the codex:

- AP is now a measure of time, and 10 (1 second or so per AP) for all characters. The old AP=AG system has started pissing me off more and more; it just doesn't fit in a turn-based game that turns get compressed to the point where un-agile characters become incapable of performing a whole variety of actions.

- Firing and aiming are now separate actions: each weapon has a base AP cost to rudimentarily perform (ranging from 2 for most knives, to 6 for miniguns), but do so at a very big THC penalty. You can then, a la JA2, spend AP to aim. Each AP adds AG*10% to your weapon skill, to a max of 200% added bonus (so, at 10 AG, you can spend a maximum of 2 AP aiming, for a bonus of 100% each).

- Damage ranges have become pretty important to keep sight of: like said before, wide damage ranges are beneficial for high Luck builds, but now the upper range is additionally what decides armor piercing (this allows me to regulate armor piercing on a weapon-by-weapon basis: AP ammo simply raises the upper damage range now). Lower damage ranges are a measure of a weapon's force (so strong characters with sledges, or pulse rifles have high lower damage ranges), and influence things like knockouts and knockdowns as a result.

Couple of new changes to keep in mind if you do: base AP cost (so before spending additional points on aiming) is based on a combination of weapon type and weapon weight (mainly to give more of an advantage to low weight weapons), and melee damage is no longer the tiered system I talked about earlier, but a (slightly) more simple universal value: each point of ST adds 10% of the melee weapon's weight to your max damage, and 7.5% to your min damage (it also adds 0.5 pounds to the "weight" of your unarmed attacks). So, with a sledge of 12 pounds, having 5 ST means that you do 8-12 damage.

Here's the excel sheet: https://app.box.com/s/08i9i5gcdsr2rwa2473r

 

Keeping up my perfect run of posting progress updates on a mod which hasn't seen an update in a long while, I think I've finally come up with a way to deal with PE and weapon ranges in a way that's intuitive. In vanilla, PE gives a flat bonus and long ranged weapons give a THC bonus for the first so many hexes, meaning high PE character with a long ranged weapon doesn't get bonusses based on range, but simply by virtue of attacking, which is boring and counter-intuitive.

Instead, I'm going to make it so that you have a penalty per hex distance (lets say flat 5% drop each hex), of which the weapon's range gets substracted as a percentage (e.g. if you have a rifle with a range of 50, then 50% gets removed from the distance penalty, making it 2.5 per hex). However, this is only the case with maxed out PE; every point under that reduces 10% from the weapon's range bonus (so, with a PE of 5 applied to the previous example, you get an "effective" range of 25, thus only removing 25% from the distance penalty). This means I don't have to do any of the stuff vanilla had to do with weapon perks giving bonuses for "long range" weapons: it's all included in the range itself. Having a weapon outfitted with a scope adds hexes to the range, and raises your PE (you can go over 10 PE this way: 15 PE would give you a 150% effective range bonus).

 

I'd love that, but you'd first have to abduct Timeslip and force her to make a version of sfall for it. Can't really do anything about its mechanics as it is, though it'd be awesome if you could.

 

Good point. Here's the new first post:

The goal of this mod is to address a number of systemic shortcomings in Fallout 2.

The first is the lack of useful skills, attributes and perks: It's obvious enough that INT and AG are king, there's only a couple of useful perks, and only a handful of skills are worth investing in at all. Here's a list of the changes that will be made to the attributes, perks and skills to alleviate this:

Spoiler

ST:
- Carry weight. This used to be a stat that was more about convenience than anything else: how much would you need to manipulate your mules in the game? Now it's limited to what you carry in your hands and wear as armor. Exceed it and you get movement and THC penalties during combat. This means that having a low ST character will be no more annoying than a high ST one, but you'll only be able to wear light armors and weapons without penalties.
- Weapon min ST reqs. This now only affects recoil: each gun has a min ST requirement per bullet fired, and if you already exceed this requirement for the very first bullet, the weapon costs additional AP's to fire as you spend time steadying it. For burst weapons, every additional round you fire adds up to the requirement, resulting in stacking THC penalties if you exceed it.
- Melee Damage. This is now based on a weapon's weight (or, if unarmed, the "weight" of your punches is determined by your strength): each point of ST adds 10% of the weapon's weight to its damage, making ST much more relevant for heavy weapons like sledges than knives.
- Blocking power. Against melee attackers, you can choose to block, adding to your DR based on how much higher your ST is than your opponent. Note that a sufficiently skilled opponent can find a way to circumvent this block.
- Resistance against knockdowns and weapon drops.

PE:
- Sequence. This was a largely irrelevant stat because you'd almost always end up getting the drop on your enemies anyway: the real sequence in combat almost always worked out in your favor. Now the character with the highest sequence always gets the first turn: try aiming your weapon at a character with higher sequence (who also sees you pointing that weapon) and that character initiates combat.
- Ranged Modifiers. Worked as a lame flat bonus in the original. Now each point of PE substracts 10% of a weapon's range from the per hex THC distance penalty. So maxed out PE with a 70 hexes range weapon gives a 70% lower distance penalty. Scopes additionally multiply your effective PE by 1.5.
- Unused AP's defence bonus. If you can see the opponent attacking you and he's standing nearby you, each unused AP is spent focussing on his next move, giving you a defence bonus.

EN:
- Hitpoints. This mod introduces fixed HP, meaning that you won't end up with as much of an infinite supply of HP you would regardless of your EN. A low EN character will be very vulnerable throughout the game.
- Rad resistance. This mod has radiation zones on the world map, and increases the effect of EN on rad resistance.
- Poison resistance. Poison now affects you every turn in combat and every few seconds outside of it, making it more of a short-term threat. Additionally, Needler pistols now do poison damage.
- Resisting knockouts, missed turns, and crippling hits.

CH:
- Number of party members. Same as always, but the Leadership stat should make them more interesting (see below).
- One minor addition is that it now affects the likelihood of characters accepting a drink or drugs from you (and the number of intoxicants they accept before turning hostile).

IN:
- Skill Points. Same as always.

AG:
- Aiming bonus. AP is now set at a constant 10, unaffected by AG. Unaimed and aimed shots cost the same amount of AP (unaimed shots are now simply defaulted torso shots), and you can spend additional AP's to increase your chance to hit. Each point of AG increases the percentage that gets added to your effective weapon skill by 10%, up to a maximum of 200%, meaning a maxed out AG character can spend 2 AP aiming for a 100% skill bonus per AP.
- Movement speed. AG now only affects the cost for the first hex moved. Every second point of AG reduces that cost by 1, going from 6 AP for the first hex moved at minimum AG, to 1 AP at max. The cost of the first hex moved is additionally raised by large weapons (1 for sledges/rifles, 2 for big guns), and for moving to a hex either diagonally or straight behind you. This of course all in all highly complicates the peak-around-the-corner exploit. Moving during your turn now also gives a defense bonus against ranged attacks.
- Dodge bonus. If you aren't blocking, you gain a dodge bonus against melee attacks based on your AG.

LU:
- Damage. There are no longer criticals in the form of damage multipliers. Instead, LU affects the likelihood of hitting higher values in your damage range (e.g. with a weapon that does 15-40 damage, a high LU character would have a higher chance of getting 40 than a low LU one).
- Armor Piercing. The same principle applies to armor piercing, which is now based on your weapon's upper damage range. There's always a roll made to see how much you actually pierce, and LU determines how high this ends up.
- Special effects chance (knockdowns, knockouts, cripplings, etc.)

Concerning skills, in general your starting attributes have a much greater effect on them: they all have a base value of 10%, to which 40% can potentially be added through relevant stats. Skills have also been capped at 200%, and the first increment of increased cost now comes from 75-100%, rather than the original 100-125%. Now for a list of the changed skills:

- The six combat skills have been changed to One-handed small arms (pistols and smg's), Two-handed small arms (rifles), Big guns, One-handed melee (clubs and knives), Two-handed-melee (spears and sledges), and Unarmed. Skill simply depends on which animation is used for the weapon, so grenades use the unarmed skill, and throwing knives the One-handed melee skill. You also get a defense bonus based on your "relevant" melee skill (so, if your melee attacked while carrying a rifle, your ability to use that rifle as a tool to block an opponent's attack depends on your Two-handed melee skill).
- Gambling has been changed to Leadership, which raises the skills party members gain per level. Party members no longer gain levels at random, but every time you level up.
- Traps now lets you set traps yourself by entering Sneak mode and dropping either a spear or an explosive on the ground. The value of the item used to make a trap and the type of material of the tile you're placing it on determine how much trap skill you need to place it.
- First Aid and Doctor have become more relevant with Stimpaks mostly healing temporarily, and automatic rest healing being removed. You now need either First Aid kits or "Improvised Healing Materials" to heal HP's during rest, and Doctors Materials to heal crippled limbs, also during rest.
- Outdoorsman now affects world map travel speed (mostly useful when traveling through rad zones), and the quality of the Improvised Healing Materials you find (which affects up to how many HP's you can heal with them during rest).
- Stealing has gotten an additional barrier: the more allies of the target can see you, the harder it is to even see inside the inventory of your target, let alone steal or plant.
- Stealth has additional uses because of how enemies will be on the lookout for assassins if their buddies step on your traps, and that all unlocked containers are now "guarded" by characters that can see them, and who will warn you not to touch them.


As to Perks, the problem was of course that the vast majority of them simply weren't viable as 1 per 3 levels picks. My solution will be to have perks every level, and nerf the more overpowered ones. Also, perks will no longer be tiered according to level (meaning you had an ever-increasing number of obsolete low-level perks populating the list): att. and skill requirements only govern which perk you can have. You can find a provisional list of perk changes here:
https://app.box.com/s/0eema1esji3omeurwbae

The second problem is the game's lack of combat difficulty and complexity. Before you ask, no the point isn't to make FO2 into JA2, just to give you some more options other than eye critting your opponents continuously. There's a couple of issues with combat this mod tries to address:

Spoiler

- Limiting inventory time. Ostensibly tough fights became a breeze once you have enough HP's because you can simply wait until low on damage, then enter inven and fully heal. However, Stimpaks no longer heal very much permanently, so should be used with care. Also, inventory use AP cost has been raised significantly, and you can only use one item in it before being forced to exit. Reloading now also takes substantially more AP's.
- Avoiding utomatic eye-critting. To avoid higher skill levels resulting in almost automatic hits on even the hardest targets, I've nerfed THC at higher values (going from 0-10% THC will be much easier than going from 80-90%, especially in the case of hard to hit bodyparts or burst attacks). Because the mod makes it so that missing a targetted body part can still score a hit on an adjacent bodypart, the base penalties for aiming for certain bodyparts have also been reduced, meaning you should be able to aim for different bodyparts throughout the game now.
- Giving more flexibility for bursts. As said, the amount you can stably burst depends on your ST, meaning you'll now be able to adjust the number of burst rounds through the interface.
- Giving more options during melee combat. You'll be able to choose whether to block or dodge, and in addition whether to attempt a counter-attack on a "succesful" block/dodge (to attempt to do so comes at a defense penalty however). Defense against melee attacks is now also partially determined by your own relevant melee skill.
- Adjusting how many AP's are spent aiming.
- Expanded secondary attack modes. All spears and knives can now be swung (for added base damage), thrusted (for more penetration), or thrown. Sledges can either produce knockback (swings) or not ("thrusts"). Laser beams can be concentrated to add armor piercing. And so on.
- Limited AI improvements. Not much I can do in this regard, but the AI chooses more smartly which bodypart to aim for rather than the random way it worked before.
- Working AP bullets. AP was always inferior to JHP in the original game. Now AP bullets raise your upper damage range (meaning an increase in penetration) at the cost of a general reduction in damage.

An overview of the new options integrated into a (temporary) UI made by the FoN team:

The third problem is that of weapon progression/variety. Replaying FO2, you notice that you always get weapons in more or less the same order, with many hard-to-find weapons showing up too late to be of any use. Too many weapons also play too similar, with no considerable difference between a sledgehammer or a knife, and a rifle or a pistol.

Spoiler

My solutions to this are:
- Gear randomization. You can probably already dream the place you're first going to encounter the Bozar by now, and this mixes it all up, generating weapons based on location, attributes and experience level. There's also more variation in terms of ammo load-outs, with powerful characters in rich regions having more chance of having more, and more powerful, ammo, while poor characters often have only a single round in the chamber.
- More distinctive weapon types. Fallout 2 has a lot of different types of shotguns, but they're mostly indistinguishable from other rifles. So I introduce different types of shells which spread out in a "shotgun-y" way. Lasers will penetrate targets and potentially hit targets next in line. Plasma rifles do splash damage to nearby targets. Cattle prods produce more knockouts. And so on.
- Non-linear weapon progression. Having you automatically gravitate towards the pulse rifle is quite boring. Instead, different types of characters should benefit from different types of weapons. High ST likes sledges and heavy/burst guns, high AG likes pistols and knives, and high PE scoped rifles. Different weapon types should remain viable, rather than becoming irrelevant as the game progresses.
- Less linear armor system. Having bigger armor should not be a no-brainer; it now costs you in terms of agility and (if you're not strong enough) combat effectiveness. The armor system has also been changed so that DT doesn't (nearly) automatically takes off a huge chunk of your damage: it is now purely a threshold which gets ignored if your armor piercing roll (again, based on your weapon's upper damage range) exceeds it. So, almost all weapons and ammo will rarely do any damage against the strongest armors at full strength because they won't pass the DT. Characters with fast and weak weapons (knives, pistols) will therefor be required to aim for bodyparts that give higher chances of penetration. So the goal is that there aren't any "hard counters": if you can't pierce, there's always a way to bypass - it's just harder. Similarly, going around with a combat leather jacket shouldn't be impossible, just very hard because you'll need to place the emphasis on dodging attacks, and taking out enemies quickly.
- Differences between one- and two-handed weapons. You'll now generally be faster both in movement and attack AP cost with one-handed weapons and be able to cheaply switch between hands (now takes 5 AP to do with two-handed weapons) to compensate for the shorter ranges and lower damage outputs.
- Systematized weapon upgrades. Instead of having just a couple of different weapons that can have one type of upgrade, each weapon type can get a certain upgrade. So each rifle can be outfitted with a scope, each pistol with an enlarged magazine, etc. All of these upgrades will now have potential drawbacks attached as well: an enlarged magazine weighs down your weapon, possibly making it cost more AP to use, etc. You can have upgrades done at the usual suspects, but also yourself: Guns 'n Bullets magazines now increase the skill you have at improving weapons in combination with either Repair (for most guns), Science (energy weapons), or Outdoorsman (for most melee weapons).

Finally, there's the issue of the economy. Like with combat difficulty, this starts out fine, with you scrounging for nickles to pay for that first leather jacket. It just goes off the rails pretty quickly, with barter becoming absolutely irrelevant soon enough.

Spoiler

To fix it I've put together a pretty complicated economic system. As I see it, the problem is that you always end up amassing a lot of inferior items to buy the superior ones you actually need: you convert a stack of deagles into that plasma rifle you really want. Problem is, why does that high tec trader want all those deagles in the first place? I introduce a demand system based on different zones: certain wealthy zones just want premium goods and won't give you squat for inferior stuff - they also charge more for the stuff that's in demand in their zone. Same works vice versa: tribes won't trade all their livelihood for a plasma rifle they don't need.

To make this work, I also had to deal with money: you could just sell your deagles for cash in one place, then exchange the cash for the plasma rifle in another. So I implemented inflation zones separate from the demand zones: here track's kept of the cash in the zone, and cash prices are adjusted accordingly. Here's a map of the various zones:



Another "issue" was store inventories: they become a bit dull after your second playthrough, and have now been randomized based on the demand zone of the store/caravan/trader. Stores also now "realistically" restock based on the amount of cash they have and the cost of the items they want to buy.

A final issue for the economy was random encounters featuring two opposing factions: you'd have free reign to finish of the weakened victors. What I'll do is have enemies appear after so many turns during random encounters: basically the scenario of you stumbling upon two fighting factions will happen to you as well.

 

Should be.

The idea is to severely nerf the go-to perks like sniper, increased rate of fire, action boy, etc. and keeping the crappy ones you'd normally not consider, like snake eater or whatever, more or less the way they are. Perks shouldn't end up overpowering.

As I have it right now you enter sneak mode and drop the relevant item on the ground, "making" a trap. But I'll try and integrate it into the UI.

I removed the previous version because I didn't want people to give me feedback on that one. I've been working for months on this new one, and the list I gave wasn't a definitive one (I've got about 2/3rd of it done at this point), just something for people (Glovz) to give feedback based on.

I don't agree: in vanilla, you effectively can't have AG below 6 (or maybe even 8) without entirely gimping your character because you can't do anything. Now you can have low AG, but you'll just be slower and need more time to aim or take a lot of high risk shots. You couldn't have ST below 4 because you would be forced to spend all your time juggling with your mules and wouldn't be able to wield any useful ranged weapon. Now you still have a variety of viable ranged (and, even, melee weapons), and don't have to juggle. Though you will have to have light armor to go with your light weapons, making you rely on dodging. There was no point in having CH above 6 because you really only had 3 early-mid game good npc's - now with the leadership skill you can potentially have more than enough quality npc's to make max CH worthwhile.

Anyway, I can go on, but I think the system should work out for both exceedingly low stats and high stats in different combinations.

Heh, I think the removal of throwing is one of the least controversial things I've done. It's the only almost exclusively secondary combat stat: it's meant for those couple of times you want to throw a grenade or a spear, and not worth investing in over your primary combat skill. I like becoming better in all aspects of, e.g., spear fighting a lot better.

Yeah, I think I forgot to look at the traits again, will have an updated one up tomorrow.

Hmmm, might be a good idea. Thanks.

Not sure what you mean, sorry.

 

Ah, you mean if the damage ranges stay the same during the game? They do, unless you use AP ammo (which widens the range by raising the upper damage range while reducing damage as a whole; e.g. a 20-30 weapon with AP ammo would raise the upper damage range, and penetration along with it, by 50%, while also dropping damage by 50%, effectively making it 10-22 (50% of 20-45) against unarmored enemies).

 

@lujo, dude, appreciate you taking the time to put all that down on paper, but at this stage I really don't have a lot of use for criticisms of the way vanilla works given that 99% of the stuff you criticize I've already changed. Just check the introduction I've posted chief.

Interesting... though I originally did it as a bit of a boost for the unarmed skill, giving it a unique one-up over the other melee skills... I'll have to think about it, because I'm still not sure about separating grenades from skill.

Yes on the increased damage, not too sure about the increase for close range. You already have the increased THC for close range, and adding damage on top of that would give you the perverse incentive to only use throwing up close. Unless you have an idea how to get around that, I think damage has to stay constant over distance.

In unrelated news, I think I'm going to try and change the way addiction works. The random factor always brought out the OCD save scumming crowd, and I think it'd be more interesting to have it work over time instead: low resistance to addiction (based on EN?) means you can only use Buffout once every two weeks without becoming addicted. I'll also try and make it so the effects don't stack, which was always a bit lame; that way I can add some perks/traits that raise drug effects without that becoming superfluous.