FO2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod

However I do hate the loot randomization, with a passion, and a vengeance. Is there any way to turn that off?

Not at the moment, but I could introduce such an option at some point. I'm wondering tho, why do you hate it so much? I've personally always felt that loot allocation was one of FO2's weakest points, it's kind of boringly homogeneous which results in a lot of weapons either not showing up at all or too late to be of any use, plus, this homogeneity (e.g. Metzger's 10mm pistol hordes), while making sense from a cramped development time, doesn't seem to jibe with a PA-setting built around scrounged together pre-war gear.

Oh it's not a bad idea at all, actually it's a very good one that fits the game perfectly.
It's just a very different approach to the original design, so I hate it and will never use it.
 
This should fix your issues @UniversalWolf (I tested it, and there was none of the self-punching).
Great! I'll give it another shot.

The self-punching was pretty funny. You might want to figure out a way to use that for some sort of comedy scene.

Wait for a bit tho, I'm working on a big new update and I just need to fix a problem with the item generating stuff and do some additional testing and I'll put it up.
 
Big new update up in the first post! I just did some testing going through all the motions in the temple and arroyo and checking out klamath and not a single hitch, so seems to be doing well. I'll try and finish the game once at least before releasing v. 1.0, but don't count on that being any time soon.


Also, small change at the end of the installation instructions.



Version 0.8:


Changes/Additions:


- Changed the way agility works in deciding aiming bonusses in a more intuitive way. Now it decides your base aiming bonus, which is set at agility*20. Each AP spent aiming raises that by 50 up to a maximum of 200 + perception*20 (so, e.g., a character with 6 Agility, spending 3 AP's aiming gets a bonus of: 6*20 + 3*50 = 270). P
- added perk pictures for all the new perks; rather than fitting with the theme of the perk, these depict the attribute or skill needed to get additional ranks for that perk (usually 4 + 2 per attribute, and 50 per skill; so, e.g., if the perk picture is the same as that of charisma, then you need 6 base Charisma for one rank, 8 for two and 10 for three).
- changed the way unarmed damage works; previously both the "weight" of the attack and the amount of that weight that translated to damage was determined by Strength, which stupidly caused an exponential effect that caused low ST characters to do close to no damage. Now the weight is a constant 4 (same weight as a club, though the club gets additional max damage), which can get raised through the "heavy hitter" perk.
- all critters that make unarmed attacks with claws and teeth instead of blunt force (i.e. all of them other than humanoids) now have 25% higher max damage and 25% lower min damage (which means they have less chance of causing knockdowns and knockouts, but higher penetration), the max damage additionally gets raised based on their experience value.
- removed the healing item collection mechanic that had still remained over from the old healing system. Pressing Q or the corresponding button in the UI now shows the chance of a certain status effect (knockdown, knockout, etc.) occurring for the bodypart of the enemy you last aimed at (previously this was under a different key).
-raised the amount of melee weapon weight that gets translated to damage per melee damage stat point to 25% for max damage and 20% for min damage (this way even a 1 ST character can at least potentially deal some damage with his fists, which have a weight of 4: 1*4*0.25 = a max damage of 1).
-Lowered the critical failure chance and made the additional roll tied to the Jinxed trait independent from the Luck stat.
-Added the Golden Gecko bartender in Klamath to the new merchant system.
- Removed the new blocking mechanic, which was simply too untransparent and didn't really add anything in the way of tactical options because of that.
- lowered the stats of the temple of trials guy; he was way too tough for a non-combat build under the standardized stat system, and wouldn't want to force you to tag speech or make a thief build just to get past him.
- simplified the defence mechanic to one based on perception and unused action points (if you can see the enemy attacking you, you get a defence bonus based on how many AP's you've "spent" concentrating on figuring out his move), and another based on hexes moved and agility (the faster and more you move, the harder you are to hit).
- also simplified/merged the armor and carry weight penalties. Given that carry weight now concerns only worn armor and weapon in the active hand, it was needlessly complicating to keep separate penalties. The penalty is now also directly visible by applying it to the aiming bonus you change by spending additional AP's through the UI or key bindings. The way it works is simply that the percentage by which you exceed your max carry weight is substracted from your aiming bonus (so, if you get an aiming bonus of 200%, and you exceed your carry weight by 10%, this aiming bonus is now 200*0.9=180%).The maximum penalty is 50%.
- the aiming bonus now also reduces the thc nerfing. bit of a complicated issue, but what this basically helps to avoid is spending additional AP's being only useful when bridging very low (and thus unnerfed) THC values.


Fixes:


- fixed a huge bug in the damage formula that caused unarmed and melee damage in all cases to nonsensically depend on the player.
- Cleaned up some of the formulas and especially the damage formula so that it rounds the outcome both up and down rather than only down as it does in the original formula (given the relatively low damage outputs in the game this makes more of a difference than it would seem).
- fixed an oversight in the damage formula not being completely up to date for additional targets in a burst.
- Fixed a couple of issues with critters not properly getting the right stats under the new systems (namely melee damage, sequence and crit chance).
- Fixed an issue with several traders still carrying endless amounts of first aid kits and doctor's bags under the old healing system.
- Fixed an issue in the new burst system which was a result of an sfall bug that has since been fixed: previously all hits were dealt as "extra targets" meaning no status effects like knockdowns could occur, this has now been fixed and one of the hits is automatically treated as the "target".
- cleaned up a lot of scripts to be "safer" so as to prevent any potential bugs (debugging FO2 isn't exactly an easy job so tbh I'm not even sure to what degree this was necessary; it couldn't hurt at the very least). Also optimized a few to improve performance (especially the two handed switching script was needlessly bulky).
- fixed a problem in the loot generating script which caused ammo on your person to change amounts when first entering a map.
- fixed a bug in the container overseer system which caused the script to be attached to all ground items rather than just containers.
- fixed two potentially game crashing errors in the gear generation script and made it work properly for containers on the map, which wasn't happening previously.
- fixed a huge bug having to do with a version switch in sfall changing the way arrays work. Note that this has also resulted in a slight change in the installation instructions (found on the first page or in the zip file).
 
Hey. I'm in the last level of the fallout 1, and I've gotten quite annoyed with the balance, so I'm thinking of using a rebalance mod for the second game. Would you recommend using this for a first play through?
 
Hey. I'm in the last level of the fallout 1, and I've gotten quite annoyed with the balance, so I'm thinking of using a rebalance mod for the second game. Would you recommend using this for a first play through?

I would always play a game vanilla first run through (so also no RP), but maybe that's just me. Besides, FO2 slightly addresses the balance issues of FO1 by nerfing higher skill amounts (you'll get to 200+% combat skill much, much slower than in FO1), though of course it's still p. much a disaster. Still, a great disaster, so might as well give it a try.
 
Hey. I'm in the last level of the fallout 1, and I've gotten quite annoyed with the balance, so I'm thinking of using a rebalance mod for the second game. Would you recommend using this for a first play through?

I would always play a game vanilla first run through (so also no RP), but maybe that's just me. Besides, FO2 slightly addresses the balance issues of FO1 by nerfing higher skill amounts (you'll get to 200+% combat skill much, much slower than in FO1), though of course it's still p. much a disaster. Still, a great disaster, so might as well give it a try.

Thx, I usually don't play through games more than once (with a few acceptions), so I'm always looking for the best experience possible. But I think I'm going for RP and then your mod, if I'm up for another run through.
 
and of course I left a display message in at the very beginning because I'm an idiot. It's just on map start up (it shows the amount of items in a set of arrays), I'll have it out next version which'll be pretty soon (just figured out how to do some interesting things).
 
You know how the RP has the little rock on the ground behind Klint, so you can put the pointer on it and see that the RP is installed? You could add something like that for your mod, but make it force the character to punch himself and say, "Now I know what it feels like to be a modder!"
 
@phobos2077 @Sduibek, just to move the off-hand discussion from the manual thread, and given that it is (for the moment) only possible in my mod, might as well put it here.

Right now I'm still working on the intricacies of correctly determining the off-hand (harder than it seems with nightmarish actions like switching your armor for the armor you're carrying in your invisible off-hand being possible), but here's the plans for my mod:

Flare in hands: light radius (player light source disabled by default) of 8 hexes, which is treated as daylight for THC (so not a good idea when dealing with enemy snipers).

Radio in hands: if a teammate also has a radio in inven, you transfer part of your unused AP defense bonus (which in my mod is multiplied by Perception, so denotes the amount of time you spend "concentrating" on an enemy attack a la GURPS) to that teammate. The amount transfered is decided by your Leadership skill.

Motion Tracker in hands: while this "concentration" defense bonus only applies to enemies you can actually see, the motion tracker extends this to all enemies. So in my mod you would be able to larp a commander with radio and motion tracker giving instruction to his troops, might be amusing.
 
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Okay, I spent about an hour playing around with this yesterday, and I couldn't get it to run without crashing on the first screen. I suspect it may have something to do with Klint, but I can't be sure. I'm running it on XP, in case that's an issue. It's possible I may have done something wrong (because I was tinkering with the sfall settings and stuff before getting it all settled), so I'll try installing it again and give it a go. The regular RP3.3 version is working fine, however.

I'm impressed by how significant your alterations are. New buttons all across the bar on the bottom: very interesting. My character was/is a martial arts expert, FWIW.

I was planning to look for some sort of crash log to upload, but I didn't get to it before I left home today.
 
Okay, I spent about an hour playing around with this yesterday, and I couldn't get it to run without crashing on the first screen. I suspect it may have something to do with Klint, but I can't be sure. I'm running it on XP, in case that's an issue. It's possible I may have done something wrong (because I was tinkering with the sfall settings and stuff before getting it all settled), so I'll try installing it again and give it a go. The regular RP3.3 version is working fine, however.

I'm impressed by how significant your alterations are. New buttons all across the bar on the bottom: very interesting. My character was/is a martial arts expert, FWIW.

I was planning to look for some sort of crash log to upload, but I didn't get to it before I left home today.

Thanks dude, but it's clear there's just something deeply wrong with the installation; either I'm giving wrong instructions or there's something crucial missing in the files. I'll do a fresh FO2 install before uploading the next version (something I should have done a long while ago of course, so apologies for that).
 
Thanks dude, but it's clear there's just something deeply wrong with the installation; either I'm giving wrong instructions or there's something crucial missing in the files. I'll do a fresh FO2 install before uploading the next version (something I should have done a long while ago of course, so apologies for that).
No worries. There are a few observations I can share.

First, the MOM mod doesn't appear to use the same screen resolution I've set the RP to use. This despite the fact I'm using the exact same sfall configs (except for enabling your mod files).

During character creation I can't alter the "style" of the PC. So I can't select Long-Haired Dude or Bald Dude instead of Generic Dude.

Let's see...oh, the one other comment I would make is about the "Good Immune System" trait. That name is simply too long to fit properly in the UI. I suggest "Altered Immunity," or "Enhanced Immunity," or simply "Immunity" instead.
 
Hello Jim!
Tried to play with the new 0.8 version, installed several times according to instructions, but the game crashes on the first screen before temple when I right-click to change cursor. The character creation works fine though, and I like very much new/changed traits and skills.
The new tactical features in this mod are very interesting for me, but currently I'm unable to play :-(
I also wanted to ask if it's possible to add more advanced tactical features like suppression autofire, cth penalty from directional movement and ability to use cover from various obstacles, for example reduce cth if target hides behind the tree or table.
Thank you.
 
I've been thinking about a reworking of the way hostility works in Fallout. The biggest problem with it is that it's extremely unnuanced and silly:


- there's almost no gray area between being neutral and full on suicidal town warfare: you could be a town's hero, but the moment you try to steal a beer they will all collectively suicide rush you to the last man, woman and child. Instead, there should be gradations in how hostility works: being caught stealing a flower (or merely being suspected of having done so) or grazing someone with a stray bullet should have less of an impact than minigunning down the mayor or robbing the town bank. Every "team" (i.e. those who will join each other in a fight) will have a hostility meter that'll gradually fill up as you're suspected of thievery, etc., or very rapidly with more egregious acts. This way you can also reduce the chance of hostilities erupting through certain acts.


- There's no chance for surrender. People can run away, sure, but they'll often never end hostilities, reinitiating combat until you finish them off. Which is very annoying. I feel something interesting could be done with this: enemies (or the player?) offering their possessions (and xp value?) in exchange for being kept alive, which also takes away their hostility. Killing them anyway costing karma/rep or something.


- many forms of hostility are "blind" to each other. For instance, during combat, the engine doesn't check whether or not a certain script wants to engage the players (this means that if you're encountering a caravan fighting raiders, the raiders will only notice you and attack you after they're finished with the caravan).
 
I would be really happy if you could (maybe you already are?) make your changes modular. For instance, if you want to address some very specific gameplay aspect which doesn't involve adding new items or stuff (only scripts), you create one or two global scripts (maybe a bunch of changes to existing scripts) and make it self-contained, so other people could then use it to easily integrate into other gameplay mods. That would be awesome.
 
I would be really happy if you could (maybe you already are?) make your changes modular. For instance, if you want to address some very specific gameplay aspect which doesn't involve adding new items or stuff (only scripts), you create one or two global scripts (maybe a bunch of changes to existing scripts) and make it self-contained, so other people could then use it to easily integrate into other gameplay mods. That would be awesome.

Yeah, I'm definitely doing this more now that your register_hook_proc thing allows you to do this so easily (I'm really only just starting to realize the full brilliance of it, awesome job man). However, in some cases, such as where I need to override an entire formula (damage, to hit, etc.), I still need to use the more clunky regular hookscripts which complicate modularization as far as I can tell.
 
But this particular example, namely hostility, shows another limitation, because I would have to use mass compile to change all instances of attack(dude_obj), self_attack_dude, and attack(source_obj) (the attack_setup ones seems most deliberate) into a procedure where I can override them, and then need to make a number of exceptions (boxing, etc.), which all in all makes modularity hard to accomplish (though I could of course do so within this procedure, but I still detest having to work with normal scripts for this reason).
 
Eh, fuck it, now I'm starting to think I should really keep this mod in the realm of global/hookscripts for now. Even I can tell that this shit has feature creep written all over it.
 
Having some fun with energy weapons. I talked a while ago about how I wanted each energy weapon type to have its own distinct mechanics, which I'm now finally able to do animation-wise as well.


For lasers, I thought it would be interesting if they could pass through targets if the armor didn't stop it (so the damage value of laser bolts decreases with every obstacle they pass through). Also, I thought it'd be amusing if they could ricochet off of walls (maybe just metal walls and metal armors, tho I'm not sure which direction they'd bank when hitting a critter, maybe just random?). The wall ricochets don't work for corners (yet), but north/south and east/west walls work nicely:





For plasma, I wanted to have splash damage, but I'm still not sure how to do it animation-wise (so for I've tried just have it split into difference plasma balls on impact, but that looks a bit weird). In the meantime, I also put together something like the shockrifle in UT, with a really wide cone effect for testing:








Next up, I'll try and do some fun stuff with explosives (wall bounces for grenades, doors and containers flying around crushing people, fun!).
 
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