Difficulty setting - specifics? (also balance related stuff)

[Aeqvinox]

Hi,

I'm pretty sure this has been asked and answered before, but i find the search tool on these forums not particularly helpful... so bear with me.

What does the difficulty setting switch do exactly? I managed to find a partial answer, that it modifies combat skill percentages, but not much specifics.

So, for Easy, Normal, Hard and Insane, what are the stats?

Also, is the skill modification the only thing, or are there other things like bonus/reduced damage or critical hit chance/failure also factored in? Cause it sure feels sometimes that they are, but i can't be sure.

Any clues will be much appreciated, thanks.




This is somewhat of a crucial thing to research for me right now, upon checking out the Redux mod i realized how balancing the difficulty for a campaign might be a considerable challenge.

Primarily, setting the challenge level of enemies may have varying results whether you play on CTB or the turn based modes.

CTB seems like it makes the game much easier, because you don't suffer from overwatch of enemies (in STB you get instant, certain returned fire when you attack, in CTB you fire continuously or with several characters, so enemies get interrupted), and you always have the AP to fall flat on the ground, hide or run away. So my train of thought is, if one would want to create a stable balance for an entire campaign (the original FOT campaign for example), he'd have to make the game difficult enough for CTB/Normal primarily. However, if you'd balance the game to make it difficult with STB/Hard in mind, CTB/Normal would be far too easy and possibly game breaking.

So that's the main reason i'm asking for specifics on the difficulty setting, i'm trying to figure out a way to minimize the gap between TB/Hard and CTB/Normal, and that would help me out greatly. Thanks!

 

[Vault Maker]

There may be more info to be found in the Fallout Tactics Help & Tech section. A quick search turned up:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7507

I don't really do CTB for 2 reasons: 1) being an old wargamer I prefer Squad TB, and 2) memories of FO2 and Marcus with any burst weapon. But, I thought it was regarded as more challenging overall, though that might be an adrenaline thing (like what you feel when Marcus uses burst weapons). For some missions (Peoria, Quincy) that have timers, CTB can make it easier to achieve objectives, since timers don't deal with TB properly.

I'd like to throw in a related question, which I didn't find with search. I recently noticed in bos.cfg is a line:
{game.opponentLevelOffset} = {0}

I assume setting this to "2" adds 2 levels to opponents, and can be used with any positive number (since "-1" would set some enemies to Level 0, which sounds like a game-crasher to me). I've been to busy/lazy to try it myself...

shudder FO2. Marcus. With burst weapons. crawls under desk

 

[Aeqvinox]

Thanks for your input Vault Maker, for a moment i thought this place is desolated. Well... it kinda is, at least FOT modding section but what can you do... Late is late.

I tried searching before and the link you gave was one of the results, though it only confirms the skill modifications, which by the way are listed on fallout wiki.

I'm more interested in damage and possible other modifications, since when using weapon damage as a balancing feature for a mod (like Redux), difficulty setting must be considered somehow, if it does modify damage dealt/received.

opponentLevelOffset - interesting find, but i don't see how it would benefit a balancing work for a mod. Setting the levels manually in map editor gives greater control.