1 items
About this mod
Overhauls encumbrance and carry weight into more interesting mechanics.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
- Spanish
- French
- Changelogs
It's widely agreed that Fallout's Over-Encumbered mechanic is terrible. If you pickup 1 gram too much, suddenly you can't run or fast travel, and you're forced to drop something to be able to move again. The penalty here is taking the game's most boring mechanic (movement) and making it even more boring. This is just bad game design, particularly in an open world game where you can just come back for things later. It doesn't force the player to choose between one thing and another, it just forces the player to waste time.
The primary design goal for this mod is to make Encumbrance a manageable state, and to introduce player choice around when the player chooses to be encumbered, and how much to risk being encumbered. The player has less carry weight and so they will be forced to choose more often, BUT dipping into over-encumbrance is now manageable, especially with the strong back perks, and traveling while encumbered back to base should be possible, as long as you keep your weapon holstered. The end result is that the player is forced to choose how far to push their luck carrying loot home.
This mod also is designed to allow players to add Backpack mods to their games without blowing out carry weight balance, by changing how backpacks and carry weight buffs interact with the players strength bonus.
Mod Features
Carry Weight and Max Carry Load
What this means in practice, is that at the start of the game, you get a base carry weight of 75 (just like vanilla survival), BUT you don't get any bonus from strength until you manage to find a backpack or some pocketed armor. This only effects the player.
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Equipped Armor and Clothing
Despite having lower overall carrying capacity with this mod, you can still use heavier armors. As long as you have the strength for it.
Strong Back Changes
Lone Wanderer Changes
Over-Encumberance and Fatigue
The primary penalty for encumbrance now, is fatigue accumulation. This can be easily cured once you're back at base, however it does make combat significantly more challenging. I highly recommend grabbing Fatigue - Enhanced Combat Realism, especially if you don't use VATS.
- Companions
Because the over-encumbered status is now pretty manageable, your companions expect you to carry your own crap. They have enough carry weight to manage their own gear.
Compatibility
This mod is designed to work with a backpack mod - all of them should work out of the box without needing any patches
Any mod that changes the Strong Back or Lone Wanderer perks will need a patch (I've provided a patch for my recommended perk overhaul, True Perks)
Any mod that alters how carry weight works won't be compatible.
Under the Hood
Known Issues
- When you first load the game, you may get a "You are encumbered, running will drain your AP" message. It takes a second for the mod's effects to kick in and recalculate carry weight.
Other Recommended Mods
Fatigue - Enhanced Combat Realism: Makes AP matter for players who don't use VATS
Companion Inventory Monitor: Fixes a vanilla exploits with companion carry weight
Whisky's Survival Mods
Feast and Famine Overhauls food availability, makes water and sodas not heal
Less Dungeon Loot - Makes statically placed food and chems more rare.
Stimpacked - A Survival Healing Mod: Changes food healing to only heal up to certain thresholds
Food Healing Doesn't Stack - Makes food healing not stack
Loaded Out: An Encumbrance Overhaul: Reworks encumbrance mechanics
Barter - An Ecomony Overhaul - Overhauls the game economy
Degrade and Salvage - A crafting overhaul - Adds weapon degredation, and overhauls crafting
Home Unimprovement - Survival Settlement Crafting - Turns settlement building into camping
The primary design goal for this mod is to make Encumbrance a manageable state, and to introduce player choice around when the player chooses to be encumbered, and how much to risk being encumbered. The player has less carry weight and so they will be forced to choose more often, BUT dipping into over-encumbrance is now manageable, especially with the strong back perks, and traveling while encumbered back to base should be possible, as long as you keep your weapon holstered. The end result is that the player is forced to choose how far to push their luck carrying loot home.
This mod also is designed to allow players to add Backpack mods to their games without blowing out carry weight balance, by changing how backpacks and carry weight buffs interact with the players strength bonus.
Mod Features
Carry Weight and Max Carry Load
- Fundamentally changes how bonus carry weight from equipment and strength bonus work.
- Your bonus carry weight from strength is unlocked by gear. You get 10 carry weight per strength, up to the maximum total carry capacity granted by your backpack and pocketed armor mods.
What this means in practice, is that at the start of the game, you get a base carry weight of 75 (just like vanilla survival), BUT you don't get any bonus from strength until you manage to find a backpack or some pocketed armor. This only effects the player.
.
Equipped Armor and Clothing
- Weighs 5% less per point of Strength
Despite having lower overall carrying capacity with this mod, you can still use heavier armors. As long as you have the strength for it.
Strong Back Changes
- You get the Run While Encumbered effect of vanilla Strong Back 3 for free
- SB1 Now heavily reduce the amount of AP required to run while your weapon is holstered
- SB2 +25 Max Carry Load
- SB3 Runninq while encumbered no longer costs AP while your weapon is holstered
- SB4 +50 Max Carry Load
- SB5 In vanilla you can fast travel, in survival you no longer take periodic fatigue.
Lone Wanderer Changes
- Lone wanderer no longer grants a carry weight bonus
Over-Encumberance and Fatigue
- Being over encumbered now damages your Fatigue, instead of your Health and Limbs.
- This fatigue will last until you next sleep.
- How much fatigue damage you take scales with how encumbered you are. The more you're over the limit, the more fatigue damage you take.
- When you hit minimum fatigue, it will start to damage your health.
The primary penalty for encumbrance now, is fatigue accumulation. This can be easily cured once you're back at base, however it does make combat significantly more challenging. I highly recommend grabbing Fatigue - Enhanced Combat Realism, especially if you don't use VATS.
- Companions
- Humanoid companions now have a base carry weight of 50 (down from 100), this should be enough to manage their gear
- Non-humanoid companions (Codsworth, Dogmeat) now have a base carry weight of 10, they don't have much gear to equip.
- The vanilla bug where companions randomly get a huge boost to carry weight has been fixed
- Backpacks and Pocketed armor mods should work the same as they do in vanilla on companions.
Because the over-encumbered status is now pretty manageable, your companions expect you to carry your own crap. They have enough carry weight to manage their own gear.
Compatibility
This mod is designed to work with a backpack mod - all of them should work out of the box without needing any patches
Any mod that changes the Strong Back or Lone Wanderer perks will need a patch (I've provided a patch for my recommended perk overhaul, True Perks)
Any mod that alters how carry weight works won't be compatible.
Under the Hood
- This mod uses perk entries to override how vanilla carry weight works
- This makes a modification to the HC_Encumbrance script, which is responsible for calculating and dealing the scaling component of the fatigue damage. Users wanting to tweak this can edit either the multiplier variable or the timer variable on the script in fo4edit.
- This mod uses the GetInventoryWeight F4SE function, run on a default 45 second timer. In my limited testing, I didn't notice this causing any script lag. But if you get a weird delay in fatigue damage, then it's likely the result of running script heavy mods, and having a ton of crap in your inventory requiring extra calculation.
Known Issues
- When you first load the game, you may get a "You are encumbered, running will drain your AP" message. It takes a second for the mod's effects to kick in and recalculate carry weight.
Other Recommended Mods
Fatigue - Enhanced Combat Realism: Makes AP matter for players who don't use VATS
Companion Inventory Monitor: Fixes a vanilla exploits with companion carry weight
Whisky's Survival Mods
Feast and Famine Overhauls food availability, makes water and sodas not heal
Less Dungeon Loot - Makes statically placed food and chems more rare.
Stimpacked - A Survival Healing Mod: Changes food healing to only heal up to certain thresholds
Food Healing Doesn't Stack - Makes food healing not stack
Loaded Out: An Encumbrance Overhaul: Reworks encumbrance mechanics
Barter - An Ecomony Overhaul - Overhauls the game economy
Degrade and Salvage - A crafting overhaul - Adds weapon degredation, and overhauls crafting
Home Unimprovement - Survival Settlement Crafting - Turns settlement building into camping