Significant changes have been made to weapons in this overhaul. Some weapons have been drastically changed either to balance out progression or add utility to weapons that weren't very appealing/popular in vanilla. Base range damage is increased approximately 20% (with exceptions for balance).
Perks:
Weapon perks, such as Rifleman focus primarily on increased damage. I've added a sixth rank to weapon damage perks and changed the levels at which they unlock so that the increased damage output scales properly with health scaling and craftable weapon mods.
Rifleman and Gunslinger perks now affect semi-automatic and fully-automatic rifles and pistols respectively. Commando is much more of an optional, niche perk.
Gunslinger no longer affects pistol range. Since energy weapons could combine rifle barrels and pistol grips, allowing pistols to outrange all other weapons.
Rifleman no longer causes rifles to ignore a % of a target's armor.
Barrels: Short barrels have less range but very little damage falloff (you either hit
for full damage or are out of range and miss). They have less recoil so
are better choices for automatic guns. Long barrels offer longer ranges
but a larger portion of that has falloff (decreasing the damage you do
the further away you are). Long barrels have higher recoil, so are less
effective on automatic weapons.
Receivers: Light, heavy, hair trigger, better critical and armor piercing receivers have
been removed from world drops and crafting (essentially removed from the
game). Conventional ranged weapons will only have damage increasing
receivers. Energy weapons still have most options because "science".
Most of these options were poor upgrade choices and just served to
clutter the game and sometimes actually make NPC opponents weaker.
Additional late game "masterwork" receivers have been added to many weapons to further keep up with health scaling at higher levels.
Receiver Damage Calculation (general guideline)
standard 0.0 auto -0.15
hardened 0.25 auto 0.05
powerful 0.5 auto 0.2
advanced 0.75auto 0.4*
masterwork* 1.0
Gun Nut/Engineering ranks now unlock at level:
0, 14, 26, 44, 85
*added by Lunar Fallout
Energy weapons tend to be a little more interesting and have damage modifiers
split between multiple attachments, so calculations are tricky.
Weapon Damage Calculations: Weapon damage is calculated by the ammo type, general size of the weapon and when the
weapon/receiver is unlocked. So for example, a weapon that uses .38
caliber ammo and starts spawning in the world around level 26 will have a
base damage similar to a .38 pipe gun with a receiver crafted at level
26 with Gun Nut 3 (unlocked at level 26). It might also do a little more
damage because it is a higher quality weapon and or because it is
designed to be a longer range weapon. Ammunition type is the primary
balance target here, so that two weapons using the same type of ammo and
upgraded to the same quality level will do similar damage (but might
perform differently). All weapons have been balanced against each other
this way.
Drum Magazines: appear later in the game and increase the weight of weapons by more to make them more of a tactical
choice since they are a considerable force multiplier.
Grips: I standardized the weights of all grips and reduced the difference in weight between types. Pistol and short grips weigh less than full rifle stocks, but the difference in weight between different pistol grips or between different rifle stocks is less drastic.
Suppressors: now decrease a weapon's damage by 5%. This isn't a huge amount but is a deterent from putting
them on every weapon and encourages using them specifically for stealth
builds/sneak attacks. It is a tactical choice. This is a much higher
penalty for automatic weapons as it decreases their DPS, but generally
automatics and suppressors aren't a logical mix.
Weapon Ranges: Ranged barrel modifications have been rebalanced so that short barrels still feel viable even once long barrels are unlocked. Short barrels have a shorter max range, but much less damage falloff. This means with short barrels you are more likely to hit at full effect or not hit at all, while long barrels increase your effective range, but at higher ranges you get a damage penalty.
Pistols no longer get their ranges magically doubled by perks (many could already reach the same range as rifles with long barrels). Pistol strength is lower AP cost over rifles, making them ideal for Luck/Agility perks.
Ammo Conversions: There are a few more options for ammo conversions on weapons, and ammo types have been swapped in
some cases compared to vanilla. This is in order to give some weapons
more utility earlier or later in the game. Or to replace ammo
conversions that offered little to no utility in vanilla.
Ammo Types: .45, .44, 5mm, .50 and 2mm EC are now considered "armor piercing" rounds. These ammo types have "AP" or "+P" added to their name to make it clear in game. Any weapon that uses this ammo type (including if it is converted to do so) will have the armor piercing effect. Regardless of semi or auto fire mode. I did not include the "piercing" keyword in the weapon mods in order to de-clutter the weapon names. Once you familiarize yourself with the new ammo stats it's easy to keep track. Ammo choices were determined by balance and game logic over real world caliber stats (this is more realistic than weapon receivers magically making projectiles more or less AP). The actual benefit of the armor piercing stat is questionable, but the change should make weapon choices a little more interesting.
Energy Weapon Splitters: less spread, more range, added "WeaponType_shotgun" keyword for perk effects. This type of weapon mod should be a little more viable than in vanilla.
Automatic weapons: base damage has been increased significantly compared to vanilla. Automatic damage is only
slightly lower per shot than single fire receivers (and this can be
brought up to about equal with Commando perks). The counter balance to
this is that ammo is generally more scarce and NPCs with automatic
weapons are significantly more of a threat. I removed "Rapid Automatic" receivers from the game as they were just a poor upgrade choice and just cluttered the crafting menu.
Damage/Crafting Perks: I added an additional rank to Perks that affect damage (like Rifleman) and crafting (Gun Nut, Science). Then I added new weapon upgrades requiring those perks. This means the player can continue to increase damage output much later into the game in order to keep up with health scaling.
Slower Leveling: I've slowed down the rate at which the player levels, making it much harder to reach that breaking point where your damage plateaus. It also means you spend more time playing the game at earlier levels where fewer weapons are available. You might actually be forced to use pipe guns and double barrel shotguns for a while, making obtaining new weapons and upgrades feel all the more satisfying.
NPC Only Weapons: I've rebalanced all NPC weapons along side player weapons. Creature melee attacks, turrets,
robot weapons, etc. are all included and balanced through out the game.
Not only were they scaled up to match weapons, but many were adjusted to
pose more of an appropriate threat when I felt they did not in vanilla.
Since I've shifted a few weapons to different Perk classes, I've decided to list them all here for clarity. You can see how moving 2 weapons from Rifle to Heavy has helped fill out that class while Rifle options are still robust. I'm not listing explosives or melee as there should be no confusion as to their placement.
Heavy Weapons (11)
- Minigun: damage increased and more barrels added to the game to make this weapon viable for much longer.
- Fatman: fixed bug where firing the MIRV while pointing down (like on a roof) would instantly explode projectiles and kill you. Unique "Big Boy" fires a single projectile with a wider blast radius and more damage instead of firing two projectiles.
- Missile Launcher
- Flamer: another lackluster weapon turned into a beast. Base damage is increased. Range is increased. And the napalm canister greatly increases the
damage once you can build/find it. - Harpoon Gun
- Junk Jet: barrel mods increase damage considerably so that it remains a viable option longer
- Cryolator
- Broadsider
- Gatling Laser
- Machine Gun (vanilla assault rifle): I Renamed this weapon to Machine Gun and changed it to a heavy class weapon. It further rounds off the heavy weapons pool, making a pure Heavy Weapons player build more viable. It's also literally a heavy, bulky weapon in the game.
- Gauss Rifle: I set this as a heavy class weapon. It's large, it does a lot of damage and I felt it rounds off the short list of heavy weapons in the game.
- Pipe guns
- Double barrel shotgun
- Laser gun
- Plasma gun
- Hunting rifle
- Combat rifle
- Institute gun: Institute pistol and rifle does slightly more damage than laser weapons, but has a shorter effective range.
- Handmade rifle
- Lever action rifle
- Radium rifle
- Railway rifle
- Submachine gun: I've made this weapon use .38 ammo by default instead of .45 as the player usually doesn't have enough .45 ammo to use it when it first
becomes available, but they probably are beginning to build a surplus of .38 ammo. The higher level receivers convert it back to .45 about mid way, making it still viable for mid/late game also. - Syringer: Effects of syringes drastically improved and can be crafted in bulk with Chemist Perks. While this is still a niche weapon, it's a little more interesting and viable.
- Combat shotgun: automatic receivers have drastically increased rate of fire and work correctly in VATS. Range increased and spread decreased (especially longer barrels).
- Pipe guns
- Double barrel shotgun: I made the short stock convert the weapon into a pistol class grip, simply because pistol only players don't have a shotgun option otherwise besides energy weapon splitter barrels which are fairly high level to acquire.
- Laser gun
- Plasma gun
- Institute gun
- .44 revolver
- 10mm pistol
- Deliverer: Optional version here that converts it to a .38 pistol and gives it a different Legendary Effect
- Alien Blaster: It has the highest base damage of any pistol weapon but no way to attachments to increase that damage. This means at level 10 it is extremely powerful, but by around level 40-50 it gets outclassed by other options. This gives a unique weapon a unique role. While the ammo is finite, being too frugal with it can be a waste of potential. I also,changed the ammo conversion upgrade to use plasma rounds and do more damage to make the weapon comparable to a plasma pistol late game so it isn't completely useless once the ammo is depleted.
- Salvaged Assaultron Head: Increased damage, increased range and reduced radiation to player slightly so that it is a more viable pistol class weapon.
- Gamma gun
- Acid soaker
I will try to get in depth here and cover everything I can think of to make it easier for people to make patches for weapon mods. Both from a technical point of view and an artistic/balance perspective. Some of this information will be more than you need, as I'll try to cover everything I've learned and why I did what I did.
Basics:
Ranged weapons: Increase damage 25%
Melee weapons: Increase damage 80%
Below is a rough chart of the main ammo types of the game. I've listed the base damage of each ammo type, when the ammo starts to spawn in ammo boxes and about when guns using that ammo first start to show up. You can use this as a rough guide to decide when a new weapon should be added to the game. Damage is also determined by the quality of a weapon. For example a .38 submachinegun does more damage than a .38 pipe gun. Depending on how common a weapon is and how late into the game it shows up, as well as the lore/logic of the weapon, you have some flexibility. However it makes sense to stay close to these numbers.
AmmoType Damage AmmoBoxSpawn GunSpawn
.38 19 1 1
shotgun 62 1 1
10mm 27 1 1
.308 64 4 7
fusion cell 30-35 5 11 (or quest)
Gamma round 120 Rad 7 15
.45 40 9 21
.44 70 12 10
plasma cell 25+40energy 12 24
.50 160 18 44-65
5mm 15 10 1
.45-70 80 16 16
5.56 52 18 37
7.62 52 28 30-45
2mmEC 180 28 45
AlienBlaster 150 20(unique drop)
Technical
Weapon Damage:
Here's the basic framework for Receiver damage calculation:
standard 0.0 auto -0.15 rapid 0.1
hardened 0.25auto 0.05 Improved 0.2
powerful 0.5 auto 0.2
advanced 0.75 auto 0.4*
masterwork* 1.0
*added by Lunar Fallout
I've removed many of the ballistic receivers from the game (like light, heavy and critical boosting). You can do the same for a modded weapon by removing the item created out of the crafting recipe (if a recipe doesn't craft anything it won't show up in game) and removing those weapon mods from the appropriate modcol files under Object Modifications. You may also need to check the weapon in Creation Kit and click on it's "Object Template" to see if changes need to be made. Each sub-template is a pre configured loadout with selected weapon attachments and or modcols. They also have a keyword that leveled lists use to spawn specific types of weapons. For example "if_tmp_pistol" will force the weapon to spawn with a pistol grip.
For receivers you will likely need to add the ones unique to LFO (Masterwork and Advanced Automatic) you can take a look at the ones I made for vanilla weapons to see how I set them up. Generally you want to keep to the calculations above and let the base damage of the weapon itself do all of the work.
The main exception here is for ammo conversion receivers. For those, unfortunately it is trial and error. Basically, if a receiver changes the ammo type I try to get the damage to be similar to another weapon that uses that ammo type while also calculating the level at which that receiver is craftable. For example, if a gun has a receiver that changed the ammo type from 10mm to .38 and that receiver is craftable with Engineering 3 (unlocked at level 26), I would go and see how much damage a pipe gun with a receiver crafted with Engineering 3 does and try to bring the damage close. However, if it's a higher quality weapon (which it likely is) I'd make sure the damage is close, but slightly higher than the pipe gun.
The other exception here is energy weapons (and some exotic weapons). Energy weapons typically calculate the damage between the capacitor and the barrel (and sometimes other parts of the weapon). So getting the damage balanced and right is more tricky. Again, this often leads to trial and error.
I recommend having a calculator to do rough estimates of the math and then test it out in game to make sure your changes work as intended.
You can make the first few receivers of a gun use one type of ammo, then the 2nd half of the list use another. I did this with the submachine gun to make it an early game (.38) and mid game (.45) weapon. I also did this when I modified a weapon mod that added the gun far too early in the game than I would have liked. Just set the crafting requirements and modcol(S) to levels that gate higher damage versions to unlock at the right time.
Weapon Range/Barrels:
I recalculated ranges modified by barrels. Most weapons use hitscan instead of simulating projectiles with bullet drop. Unfortunately adding that tends to cause performance issues (lots more calculations in big fights). So I stuck with the vanilla mechanic.
fmaxrange: sets the maximum range at which the weapon does any damage
fminrange: sets the range at which damage begins to drop.
Pistols tend to have a max range of 11 with long barrels (and 8 with short barrels) but the minimum range tends to be only a 20% reduction.
Rifles tend to vary more depending on their role (largely depending on if it is designed mostly as a semi or automatic weapon). A submachine gun's effective range is much shorter than a hunting rifle. Max range for rifles is about 18-20, but the minimum range setting tends to be a 30-45% reduction.
The idea was to make rifles have a longer range but more damage falloff, while pistols have less damage falloff and range so you either hit your target for full damage or miss.
The range units are engine specific (I believe) and I don't know the conversion. The easiest way to test this is to create a turret in a settlement and target it in VATS. If you are within the "fminrange" you will do full damage (as seen on it's health bar) as you move further away between fmin and "fmaxrange" you will do less damage per hit until you can't hit it. I believe this also affects %chance to hit. I haven't done this in some time.
Ammo count/Magazines
You can adjust the balance of a weapon by increasing or decreasing its base ammo count and the amount magazines modify this number. So if you want to, you can lower the ammo count of a weapon, lower the amount that magazine mods increase ammo count and maybe even increase the base damage to make it more of a single fire weapon. However keep in mind other factors, like what type of ammo it uses and how rare the ammo is in the world.
The main change I've made to magazines is I have increased the weight and reload speed of drum magazines.
When making or rebalancing ammo conversion receivers, consider adding an ammo count modifier if you are switching to a larger or smaller ammo type. This will be calculated with any magazine mods so each clip can hold more or less ammo.
Grips
I didn't change grips too much. I did make some of the late game grips lighter instead of heavier, since they tend not to affect performance that much.
You can copy the laser gun and move the weapon type keyword to the grip mods instead of the base weapon. This is how laser and Institute guns can shift between pistol and rifle class. I did this for the double barrel shotgun.
Silencers
I changed silencers to reduce damage by 5% to encourage players to only use them for stealth builds or on only a select few weapons. I also made pistol suppressors craftable with GunNut 2 and Rifle suppressors craftable with GunNut 3 to make them harder to come by early game.
Beam Splitters
I buffed the beam splitters quite a bit. Increasing the damage, reducing spread and recoil. I might have done more. Vanilla beam splitters were garbage.
Modcols
Modcols set up a list of weapon mod types and the level at which they can spawn on a weapon in the game. You will need to adjust these to match the new levels at which crafting skills are unlockable in LFO. I like to have mods spawn a few levels after the player can craft them. So if the player can craft a new damage receiver at level 26, I'll set it to have a chance to spawn in the world after level 30.
Placing Weapons in Game
Here is where things get less structured and more artistic. This is probably the hardest part of making a weapon patch for LFO.
There are several problems you are likely to encounter. The primary one is that the original weapon mod likely put some effort into placing the weapon into the game. The challenge is deciding if that method is correct and changing it if it isn't. What you want to do is consider what level the weapon will start showing up in game, how common it is, which faction(s) use it, and the pace at which upgraded versions of the weapon spawn on NPCs.
Script injection into vanilla leveled lists is probably the most popular method and greatly improves compatibility. Unfortunately not all script injectors are the same. What you want to see ideally is an injector that controls what leveled lists to add the item(s) to and at what level. Without being able to control what level it spawns, you can end up with late game weapons right from the start. Default settings for most mods that use script injectors tend to place weapons and items in many inventories which creates a lack of rarity. I've found the Creation Club shop items to be the worst culprit here.
Depending on your modding skills this may not be a big problem, but worth considering.
Some times mod authors hand place unique variants of weapons in the world. It is up to you to decide if that gives the player access to a weapon too early or creates a possible mod conflict. Some times this actually works very well for adding an appropriate reward to an area. Some times you might want to disable that spawn and remove all changes to a cell.
Some mods manually edit leveled lists and NPCs to add weapons and items. This also sets a high chance of conflict and is generally not ideal. However, sometimes it's the only option due to your skill set (certainly mine) and allows for a lot of control over how and when the item shows up in game.
NPC Weapons
I have edited all NPC only weapons like turrets, creature melee attacks and companion weapons to have equal stats compared to player weapons.
So for creature melee attacks I increased their damage by about 80%.
Special Cases/ Final Thoughts
I have made changes to some weapons outside of the calculations I have shared above. This is usually for balance reasons. For example, the Nuka World Disciples blade was a ridiculously powerful weapon in vanilla. I changed it's damage so that it fit within the class of small one handed melee weapons. Some times you have to actually reduce a weapon's stats so that it fits in with everything else.
When considering whether to patch a weapon into the game I usually ask these questions:
Does it fill a role that vanilla weapons don't? Vanilla weapons are highly configurable. A shotgun weapon mod might look cool, but will it offer any performance difference that the combat shotgun can't?
Does it out perform a vanilla weapon? A modded shotgun that does more damage and is obtainable at the same time will make the combat shotgun less appealing.
Is it fun to use? How does it handle? Does it have strengths and weaknesses that make it interesting?
Can NPCs use it (in a balanced way)? Some weapons just can't be used effectively by NPCs for one reason or another. If opponents spawn with weapons that make them easier to fight because they can't hit targets, that's a problem. If NPCs spawn with weapons that make them too powerful, that's a problem too. Sometimes it's still okay to add weapons that are specifically for the player, so this doesn't have to be a deal breaker.
Is it lore friendly (matter of taste)? Does it fit with the theme of the rest of the mods I'm adding to the game?
5 comments
Edit: WHOOPS found the issue. True perks patch put the rifle tag on the short stock instead of pistol. Carry on :)