0 of 0
About this mod
Makes Ballistic Fists, Displacer Gloves and Zap Gloves use ammo. Prevents their regular effects from triggering unless you have ammo available for them, and upgrades these effects to be a bit more devastating.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
POWERED UNARMED
Fist Weapons use Ammo
Fist Weapons use Ammo
According to the man himself, Joshua Sawyer, Obsidian intended for those bulky ultimate Unarmed weapons to consume the ammo they appear to use, but the engine would simply not collaborate.
And I really can't blame them, because AFTER ALL THE HOOPS I HAD TO GO THROUGH AND CURVE BALLS I HAD TO DODGE, I have to wonder if this stuff is even remotely worth it. But maybe you want to give it a try...
This mod implements a scripted system for the attacks of the Ballistic Fist, Displacer Glove and Zap Glove to require ammo in order to trigger their additional damaging effects. This affects both you and your companions, but other NPCs are exempt from the ammo requirement. Without the proper ammo available in inventory, these weapons will act as a paperweight power fist, kinda on par with regular Brass Knuckles.
With the right ammo though, here's what each of these weapons now do:
BALLISTIC FIST
This weapon is quite peculiar because its model retains a semi-functional ProjectileNode, from before Obsidian gave up on the idea. So I've made good use of it. The Ballistic Fist will now fire two 12ga shells on impact, and it fires them for real. The shells do damage and fan out pretty much like a sawed off shotgun would, and you can even shoot at distant targets by e.g. punching a corpse with your intended target in front of you. The aim is terrible though, so you'll have a better time with the intended use of just blasting whoever you punch. Playing as Deadshot with precise wrist guns will have to wait for another mod.
You may miss your shot if hitting too far or too angled from the target's center of mass, and this can result in shooting someone standing behind your target. And since it's a multi-pellet shot, it is quite nerfed by DT like regular shotguns if you don't have the right perks (like Piercing Strike). But on the flipside, with a well placed punch, the damage and criticals of this thing can now get absolutely insane(r). The base condition of the Ballistic Fist is also doubled to sustain the buckshots, else it degrades too rapidly.
Do note, the Ballistic Fist only works this way for you, the player. Apparently its ProjectileNode doesn't work on NPCs when they have it readied, so for your companions and other NPCs, it will still do the regular weapon's damage in each hit and cause the black smoke cloud on impact. Though your companions will still need ammo for this.
The Two-Step Goodbye weapon from GRA doesn't use this system and keeps working like in vanilla, because it doesn't have a ProjectileNode and because I don't think 12ga are what it would chamber. 25mm grenades are too expensive and heavy for such an use, so I just write it down to it having an unlimited supply of unique plastic explosive chunks to dispense.
DISPLACER GLOVE (and Pushy)
These consume one Small Energy Cell (SEC) on impact, in order to trigger a much more powerful version of their prior effect. Targets hit by it will indeed be "displaced" and recoil several meters back from you. Perhaps not too practical, but it does help give you space. It will also send dead targets and inanimate objects FLYING back, so be careful if you want to retrieve them later.
ZAP GLOVE (and Paladin Toaster)
Like the above, these consume one SEC on impact, for it to trigger an EMP effect on robots. This weapon is of limited use against organic targets, but still I've given it a slight electrocution lingering effect against those, similar to the lingering burn from the Flamer. Consider that it causes an extra 50 EMP damage against robots for just 1 SEC in every quick punch, whereas the Pulse Gun needs 5 SEC to cause 250 EMP damage in a rather imprecise shot.
BONUS NERF (Malus?)
These weapons not only need the right ammo to trigger their effects, you also won't trigger them when using the Ranger Takedown, Khan Trick, Scribe Counter, or Stomp special unarmed moves. These moves don't even use the impact plate of these weapons (or even the hand when you stomp on someone), so now they'll only do nerfed impact damage when performing them.
Kind of a tradeoff, but then again all a standard power attack from any direction does is double the melee damage. So with those moves you kinda lose on a move angle for power attacks with these fist weapons, but you still trigger the move's special effects, so if you want to fire the fist weapon in the hit just be sure to use a standing or forward power attack. And don't use the VATS stomp with these weapons because chances are you'll be worse off than just punching the target while it's down.
This mod can also show a proper ammo counter when having any of these weapons drawn, with the UI extension provided AND UIO installed. Massive thanks to IntenseMute for teaching me how to navigate the XML to get what I wanted, and even providing the XML chunk ready with all the features I asked.
It works showing only a flat number of all the available ammo of the kind that the fist weapon consumes, summing all ammo types of that caliber. You can't nor need to reload, nor does the ammo type you spend make a difference (everything has limits), so the weapon will simply consume them in the order they appear on the ammo list. You will, however, still receive 12ga hulls and drained energy cells as if you'd fired a regular weapon.
With an exception, the techno-fist weapons will consume bulk SECs before resorting to other types, and if you have a mod restoring junk 12ga rounds, the Ballistic Fist will also use those before resorting to other kinds of 12ga.
NOTE: The ammo counter should work fine with the standard UI and VUI+. Unfortunately I am still not proficient enough to make it work properly with mods replacing the hud_main_menu.xml, sorry for that.
This mod should be compatible with other mods altering the listed weapons, because all changes are done by script. It is tested compatible with WMX, most important of any weapon editing mod would be that they keep that otherwise useless ProjectileNode in the Ballistic Fist model, if they add or replace it.
The leveled lists that these weapons appeared in are altered so that they can also roll the corresponding ammo. As stated NPCs don't need it nor use it up, but it makes sense that you can still find the relevant ammo together with the weapon in random loot and in corpses.
As another known issue, NPCs using these weapons need to score one first hit with it every time you restart the game, before the proper impact effects will begin to trigger for them, but that's just how it is. It should hardly be an issue for anything other than Legion Praetorians.
And as a VERY technical issue... when I was making this mod I had to decide between two methods to trigger the fist weapons firing. One was quite tight, but could only work if you hit an actor. The other works quite well no matter what kind of stuff you hit and frankly to me is just more fun having that kind of feedback (even if you burn ammo needlessly), which is what I've used, but there's a catch: If you begin an attack animation with the fist weapon, and some delayed explosive or the like of yours goes off before the attack completes (mines, grenades, etc...), you'll trigger the fist weapon's effect onto the first NPC hit by that explosive, even if you don't hit it with the fist weapon proper. This is so specific that I doubt anyone will be able to trigger this problem in normal circumstances, but I might have missed some common situation that fits this.
Enjoy, if you can.