Idea for a combat overhaul

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

I’ve been thinking of a way that could make FNV into more of an RPG and less of a shooter, by which I mean making combat more reflective of the character’s skill than the player’s skill. For the record, I lack the modding experience to make a mod like this, so this is all theoretical. Just thought I’d share the idea here.

The first part of this mod would implement some kind of auto-aim lock-on feature, similar to games like GTA. When you hold the aim button, your crosshair locks on to the nearest enemy’s torso (or center of mass in general). And by nearest I mean nearest to the center of the screen, not the distance between the enemy and the player. Another button(or joystick) would be used to switch between targets. Perhaps the speed at which you can switch between targets could be affected by your Agility. The use of V.A.T.S. would be required to (intentionally) target the head/limbs. Guns could still recoil, with the crosshairs gradually returning to the starting position after each shot, the speed of which would depend on the character’s weapon skill. I’m gonna be honest, I have no idea if any of this is even possible for a mod to achieve.

The use of free-aim would still be possible while not pressing the aim button, but as with the base game this would be less accurate.

The next part of the mod would be changing weapon spread. Spread will be much more heavily affected by the player’s Guns/Energy Weapons skill to simulate the chance-to-hit system of the original games. At low skill levels the spread will be ridiculous and unrealistic, making it almost impossible to (intentionally) hit a target. At high skill levels the spread would be reduced to near zero. This part I actually think I could do on the GECK, but I know it would take a lot of annoying math and balancing to make work.

For cosmetic purposes, iron sights should be disabled and bullets should be rendered invisible, so we don’t run into the issue of seeing the shot lined up perfectly but still missing, or seeing your bullets fly off in wildly unrealistic directions. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this last issue when it comes to Energy Weapons or Explosive weapons.

Melee weapons would remain unaffected by this mod for obvious reasons. I don’t think thrown weapons could be affected either.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

On a related note, does anyone happen know how the “Melee Lock-On” mod works?

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Ok so just in case anyone cares, I have successfully created a script that allows you to lock on to a target’s torso while aiming, so step one of this mod is complete. Implementing the ability to cycle between targets to the left or to the right with the press of a button (or flick of a joystick) is still beyond my scripting abilities, but I’m sure it’s possible.

 

[laclongquan]

I would advise you to test playing the total conversion project of Obscurum Pandemic for Fallout New Vegas. It change FNV to beyond recognition, with some features sound much like your idea
- Spread and sway of weapons are MUCH affected by skills and/or stat. We are talking about swaying rifle or missile launcher like a motherfucker. You can aim at the ground and 1 sec later you are swaying to look at the sky. So you can loot much higher level guns, but still choose to keep the lowly 10mm pistol (or Glock, or HP Browning) because it's low skill req and less sway.





Side comment: Your idea sound like an autoaim hitscan mod for Doom, Quake and the like. I am damn sure the Chinese has some (many) mods for that, even for FNV. The problem is that I dont know Chinese to ask over there.

 

[Gizmojunk]

I once asked the Bethesda developer Ricardo Gonzalez whether it was technically feasible (and possible) to implement tactical turn based combat in FO3 via script, by setting the PC & NPC AI states to idle, and incrementally activating each actor in turn.

He said yes, that that could probably work (paraphrasing). He said that Bethesda would never do it officially, nor spend the time [money] testing it; near exact words were, "never sign their name to it".

I suspect that it's also possible to use the mouse for point & click; perhaps some use of racasting to work out where the mouse clicked in perspective, and command the actor to move there.

Spoiler: I remember playing around with —fixing— FO3, for a while... but took a break from it... and apparently never resumed work on it.

*One of the issues was the need to alter all interior ceilings (with all those plenum conduits); that and so many of the buildings didn't have roof tops.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

I would advise you to test playing the total conversion project of Obscurum Pandemic for Fallout New Vegas. It change FNV to beyond recognition, with some features sound much like your idea
- Spread and sway of weapons are MUCH affected by skills and/or stat. We are talking about swaying rifle or missile launcher like a motherfucker. You can aim at the ground and 1 sec later you are swaying to look at the sky. So you can loot much higher level guns, but still choose to keep the lowly 10mm pistol (or Glock, or HP Browning) because it's low skill req and less sway.





Side comment: Your idea sound like an autoaim hitscan mod for Doom, Quake and the like. I am damn sure the Chinese has some (many) mods for that, even for FNV. The problem is that I dont know Chinese to ask over there.

See, I was more than happy with weapon sway being increased back in the day, and I would frequently play with mods that do that. But I realize now that weapon sway is affected too much by player input. I would find myself simply overcoming weapon sway with my own skill. Just wait until the sights line up with your target then pull the trigger (much like real life, lol). My idea for the mod would take player skill out of the equation entirely, making your chance to hit unable to be affected by player skill at all.

I’ve since abandoned this mod, partially because I don’t have time to waste and partially because I’ve played NV too much to really enjoy it anymore. But I still think the general idea would be interesting to see in a real-time shooter RPG.

 

[laclongquan]

I once asked the Bethesda developer Ricardo Gonzalez whether it was technically feasible (and possible) to implement tactical turn based combat in FO3 via script, by setting the PC & NPC AI states to idle, and incrementally activating each actor in turn.

He said yes, that that could probably work (paraphrasing). He said that Bethesda would never do it officially, nor spend the time [money] testing it; near exact words were, "never sign their name to it".

I suspect that it's also possible to use the mouse for point & click; perhaps some use of racasting to work out where the mouse clicked in perspective, and command the actor to move there.

Spoiler: I remember playing around with —fixing— FO3, for a while... but took a break from it... and apparently never resumed work on it.

*One of the issues was the need to alter all interior ceilings (with all those plenum conduits); that and so many of the buildings didn't have roof tops.

There was a mod just last month doing fake TB for FNV. A very boring name like Classic Combat. Good luck finding it in Nexus.