Realistic Health, Damage, Carry Weight, and Feral Ghouls - DUST inspiredLight-weight changes to make the game more realistic - and more importantly, fun and balanced. Especially useful to those who don't want to play with many mods and only want one plugin that covers the "bare-essentials"

This is a light-weight esp that makes combat realistic, fun, with a believable carry weight for your character's stats and other small changes. Over-all makes it a better FPS experience. Many features inspired by the DUST survival horror mod.

TL:DR = More than half the changes here are lifted directly from DUST. Apart from those there's faster movement speed, over-head thirdperson camera, strength-based carry weight, and some more changes that makes playing with realistic damage actually fun.

This DOES NOT require NVSE, JIP NVSE, JohnnyGuitar or other such scary unknowable things to us plebs. There are no running scripts here. You can use this with your Potato-ware laptop with your mind at ease.

This mod is the result of weeks of playtesting which includes playing through the entire game and all DLCs with the mod. The goal I had in mind for this is if I only wanted to use one mod, this would be it. And I think I did it.

Because there are quite a few changes here, I have written a long description so the changes by this mod are actually explained instead of just taken on faith because we just love mods with one sentence descriptions, don't we? I hope you forgive me for this wall of text.

===
Intro
===

Have you ever played DUST and realized how fun combat is? It's really hard at first but once you get the hang of it, learn from your mistakes, make use of your own traps, you might realize it's one of the most fun combat you could have ever played. And when you return to playing regular New Vegas the game just feels stupid. Say goodbye to earned tactical ingenuity, and welcome back the bullet sponges and rail way shooting. You might as well be playing Fallout 4 (shudder)

And when you tried looking for a realistic damage mod, there isn't one out there that quite match the balance of DUST.

Sad.

Until I got off my ass to do it myself. Turns out it's surprisingly easy to do.

And when I pulled off the stuff I wanted from DUST I figured why stop there? I might as well check what other changes I can do to make my playthrough actually fun.


===
Realistic Health and Combat
===

This mod makes it so damage values reflect that of DUST. Unlike other mods like Cover Stealth, this affects the body part data itself instead of changing the global damage value. (Like x3 damage to all and such from mods like Cover Stealth)

This is because with changing global damage, it makes limbs injure too easily for the player and NPCs and creatures. Which doesn't sound like a problem at first but you'll change your tune once you see yourself visiting the doctor after every firefight since every stray .22 or 9mm makes you injure at least three of your limbs if it doesn't outright kill you. Good luck trekking across the DC wasteland scouring for Doctor's Bags and Hydras. I know I'm sick of it.

This mod doesn't do that. Damage is realistic but at the same time limb damage is more believable.

Another reason - since it's only the body part data that are changed, other creatues like radscorpions, super mutants, robots, and the like are still formidable against small arms fire as they should be.

It also changes health values for all NPCS and eliminates additional health per level. So regardless of level, player and NPC health will stay the same.

What realistic damage covers are the Player, NPCs, Ghouls, Dogs, Coyotes and Nightstalkers, and Tunnelers and Spore Carriers(wich uses The Pitt Trog body part data, so they're also covered for TTW).

If you're curious, here are the damage values for player and NPCs:

Head = x 10 damage ( x2 in vanilla )
Arms = x 2.5 damage ( x1 in vanilla )
Legs = x 3.5 damage ( x1 in vanilla )
Torso = x 5 damage ( x1 in vanilla )

And for the health values, the player and NPC has a base health of 100 (can't figure out how to change this yet) plus 10 hp for every point of endurance. A player with 5 endurance has a health of 150 hp. An endurance of 10, 200 hp.

Health (Player||NPC) = 100 + ( 10 x ENDURANCE )

As a reference: A standard 9mm pistol in game has 16 damage.

So unless you're fighting hardened legion veterans, Ulysses, or anyone with an endurance of 7 or more, it's gonna take two shots to the head from a 9mm to kill them. Not bad for a 9mm, right? I mean, you survived a shot to the head from one.

As mentioned before, creatures like insects and super mutants still can take enormous damage. Insects are tough in real life. I mean by their scale, of course. Short of stomping on one, they're quite resilient. If you're not convinced then you haven't seen a bed bug or a horned beetle in your life. Just take my word for it. This is a game with giant fire-breathing ants, scorpions, and radioactive cockroaches - subcutaneous armor isn't a stretch in the insect kingdom.

Lore also states Super Mutants have resilient skin like sub-dermal kevlar or something like that. A couple of headshots with an 9mm isn't going to bring one down, but you should already know this if you remember your days from Fallout 1.

* I also removed weapon skill being part of a weapon's damage. Even low-skill characters can make use of a weapon's full firepower (with respect to its condition) but they will still suffer the other effects from using a weapon below it's requirements like less accuracy or slower speed.

>>> RECOMMENDED MODS for Combat:

Cover Stealth, DX Spread = Bashur did an excellent job on these. Highly recommended. If you're going to use Cover Stealth, don't bother using the extra damage option. There's no need to change the global damage, it's going to make everything easier and also harder. Also with DX Spread, set a light handicap to NPC aiming so the game is not such a suicide drive.

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Optional File - Combat - No Mininum Combat Damage, and Realistic Armor Penetrating Energy Damage.
======

Basically makes armors with high DT actually matter, which energy weapons can fully penetrate. Mainly inteded to make Power Armors realistic.

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This is an optional file because (particularly for DUST players) this will make you change your playstyle and plan against enemy DT unless you're using energy weapons. For people used to DUST, it will nullify even headshots when the enemy has enough DT and same goes for you (unless you change a setting in JIP nvse, more below). Although, this makes sense if you think about it. And while it will make you pay attention to enemy armor, the change of pace will take some getting used to.

If you prefer an experience closer to DUST, don't load it but I still encourage you to try it.
--------------------

In the vanilla game there is a mininum damage of 20% to bypass any DT. This means that with a 16 damage pistol against someone with an armor of 26DT and another person with 17DT, they would both still receive 1.6 hp damage per shot which is... something.

This formula does trivialize having stronger armor in-game. For example, if you're going to still receive 20% of every damage why bother wearing power armor when a medium armor like riot gear will cover the maximum damage reduced for most weapons?

This may not be a big deal in vanilla Fallout, but not with this mod. Or even DUST actually, it's pointless to wear strong armor there either. Anything can put you down in 5 hits or so regardless of what you wear.

Well this isn't DUST, and Power Armor should be as tough as it looks. In Fallout 1 and 2 you can't finish the game without wearing one. A mutant could launch a missile in your face and you'd receive precisely 0 damage. The only way to penetrate Power Armor is with energy weapons.

This mod tries to bring back that armor balance by setting the mininum damage to 0, but at the same time giving all energy ammo very high armor piercing capabilities like they should.

>> Only the ammo effects are modified. This means no weapons and armor are changed, it's quite compatible with other energy weapon mods. <<

And that shield next to your health will actually mean something. Same goes for the enemy, of course.

The AP changes are as follows:

Normal Energy DT Bypass - (From -2DT to -60DT)
Over Charge, and Optimized cells DT Bypass - (From -5DT to -80DT)
Max Charge cells DT Bypass - (From -10DT to -100DT)

This might seem high to you folks but try to keep in mind that these things disintegrates people to ash or melt them into puddles, and DT does not go below 0.
Also with these settings it would be compatible with DT and DR adder's default values.

One other point: In vanilla New Vegas, an assault carbine with standard 5mm has stronger damage, more armor piercing, and less than half the strength requirement than a gatling laser. And it's easier to find, so which are you going to use?

For reference, these are the standard DT of vanilla armors:

NCR Trooper and helm - 12 DT
NCR Ranger Combat Armor and helm (Riot Gears) - 24 DT
Legion Centurion Armor and helm - 23 DT
T-45d Power Armor and helm - 27 DT
T-51b Power Armor and helm - 31 DT
Remnants Power Armor and helm - 36 DT

A normal laser pistol has 12 damage. With this mod's realistic damage and energy weapon's armor pierching it's enough to kill almost anyone with two shots to the torso. Three shots if they're Prime Legionaires. Not bad for a laser pistol.

Because of the removed mininum damage, fighting enemies with the wrong weapon is going to be tough, but you can literally walk into Gomorrah with your T-51b and slaughter all the Omertas without taking any hits. Although, don't be overconfident in big battles like Hoover Dam - Anti-Material rifles will still penetrate your armor.

Word of caution - you'll find that most shotguns won't do damage to light armored targets since NCR, and legion armor starts at 10 DT while Riot shotguns have 7 damage per pellet (sure there's 9 or so of those pellets, but it's still below enemy DT). Using shotguns sounds bad unless you specialize on it by switching to flechette ammo and perks like shotgun surgeon.

In case you don't know, in the vanilla game DT is applied to the whole body. Although there's a multiplier for headshots, DT is still applied even if the NPC is not wearing a helmet if you shoot them in the head.

If it bothers you I highly recommend downloading JIP nvse plugin if you haven't yet, and change this setting:

Go to your Data\nvse\plugin folder and open jip_nvse.ini
Find this value: bLocalizedDTDR=0 and set it to bLocalizedDTDR=1.

This makes it so headshots only use the armor value of the helmet or none, same with body armor. Project Nevada Rebalance already has a similar effect but JIP nvse doesn't use a game script meaning there's less performance hit and less incompatibilities with mods. Such as Tale of Two Wastelands.

Something like this is more of a personal preference though since it'll make Power Armor folks still take damage by small arms headshots. 

I have included an additional file to change the DT of Power Armor helms to match their armor counterparts so fully suited Power Armors will remain bullet proof playing with this setting. Needless to say this only affects vanilla and dlc power armor helms.

>>>> Recommended Mod
DT and DR adder = Works for all kinds of armors but particularly pretty useful to make Power Armor indestructible to most guns, except high caliber rifles, when combined with this mod.

====Power Armor Classic Stats, and scaling
====

Power Armor stats matches those in the classic Fallout games and also upscales height of the player and NPCs.

You probably never noticed, but Power Armor stats is really nerfed in New Vegas compared to Fallout 1 and 2. This is probably because they just derived the stats from the original Fallout 3. This mod brings back the correct buffs the Enclave and T-51b power armor has back in Fallout to New Vegas, and buffs the other vanilla Power armor in a comparable way, while at the same time increasing the height of the player and NPC when wearing them.

The scaling is a modified script based on Bwones' original Power Armour Scaling mod - His mod scales them up too much IMO, anyone wearing Enclave armor is only a foot away from being Frank Horrigan.

I made the power armor scaling just overt enough to be really noticeable when standing next to an NPC to show the difference, but not so much that you can't fit through doors and such.

This scales up even the NCR Salvaged Power armor to match it's height with the normal T-45d Power Armor. This puts the heavy trooper's strength in perspective, donning them without training.

To summarize the stat changes, the T-51b gives a +3 to strength instead of just 1, and the Remnants Power armor and Enclave power Armor gives a +4 to strength instead - just like back in Fallout 2.

The T-45d is left alone, as it has good stats by itself I think, despite the Agility -2.

Power armor is also given unarmed and melee damaged boosts to give them that final feel that you are wearing a formidable piece of equipment.

The Gannon Tesla armor is also changed to be heavy instead of medium armor, but provides a speed boost when worn to match vanilla intentions. This is so if you have the Jury-rigging perk, you can't repair the armor with NCR or Legion medium armor :p

A speed boost is included to offset turning it into heavy armor as Obsidian probably intended it to be faster than other Power Armors and is the strongest medium armor in the vanilla game.


*Note - A reminder that Arcade Gannon's vanilla height is higher than normal. Which is noticable in this mod if you are both equipped with Remnants Power Armor and compare heights. The way the script works is that it scales up the height from the NPC's existing height, so anyone taller than normal is scaled up even more with Power Armor than someone of average height.

Other than Arcade though, every other companion seem to be the same 1.0 scale so everyone else should line up if you're using companion commander and have a death squad all donned in power armor.
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Feral Ghouls - Headshot only, Radiation melee damage, and no more loot.
=======

Feral Ghouls are a missed opportunity in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. They should've been a terrifying undying mob that would've ramped up the horror in the DC metros and the Mojave Vault 34. The creator of DUST saw that opportunity and made feral ghouls into hordes that can only be killed by headshots that gives radiation melee damage. Which is AWESOME!

Like DUST, Feral Ghouls can only be killed by headshots like the brain dead zombies that they really are. Feral Ghouls, not normal ghouls! Their melee attacks will also give radiation damage same way Golden Geckos do, much like in DUST. But they're not so powerful that you have no hope fighting one. They're still weak with piddling melee damage. Unless you're a bad shot and are surrounded by ten or so with only a pistol, then they're a problem and you might experience dying of radiation poisoning for once.

Another thing that always bothered me: Ghoul loot. Why does this exist?

Why do feral ghouls always have that few bottlecaps or so on their bodies when they die? It's annoying, unrealistic, and what they do have is basically nothing anyway it might as well have been empty. This mod remove the Death items for every in-game feral ghoul. Except for Vault 34 ghouls.

This way your OCD will curb a little and you don't find yourself staring down every ghoul corpse and hate yourself for wasting time picking up 3 to 10 caps and the occasional empty syringe inside every dead feral ghoul. It'll work wonders, trust me.

Lastly, their alignment is set to Neutral so killing one doesn't count as good Karma.

>>>> Recommended Mods for Ghouls:

IWS - Increased Wasteland Spawns covers generic NPCs and creatures but has a special multiplier for ghouls that ramps up their number much more. I highly recommend it. The Mojave feels bare-bones all around without this mod. If you're playing that with this mod, prepare for a challenge worthy of the veteran player.


====
Realistic Carry Weight
====

In case you don't know (because you've been playing with Project Nevada since time immemorial) on regular New Vegas, with an average strength of 5 you have a carry weight of 200.

That's 200 pounds! That's the weight of two people!

Almost nobody can even bench press 200 in real life, let alone carry 200 pounds around them all day! And this is the average strength in-game!

And even if YOU or someone you know can bench 200, can you imagine living your life carrying a 100 kg bar bell all day? No you can't.

With this mod carry weight is calculated only by strength. With each point of strength, you can carry 10 pounds.

With a strength of 1, you have a carry weight of 10. With 5, it's 50 lbs. With 10, it's 100 lbs.

100 lbs might seem a lot to some hardcore players (these definitely aren't DUST values) but I think it's fair for an RPG perspective. I settled with this instead of default DUST values, because playing DUST I'm sick of boosting strength by drinking alcohol so I can carry at least 70 lbs. I always thought if the wasteland and insanity didn't kill my character first, the liver damage will.

And since there aren't any backpacks in New Vegas (without mods) an average character is stuck with 45 lbs with DUST carry weight. I tried playing with it in NEW VEGAS - It's NOT that fun. I ended up being stuck with two to three light weapons and very thin armor.

This way, your character can literally carry at least their own weight (or until a hundred pounds) so it's actually possible to wear medium and heavy armor with these values, while at the same time allow a low strength character to reflect a believable carry weight making it still viable to place SPECIAL points on other stats - and playing with backpack mods doesn't feel cheap.

* The perks Strong Back and Burden to Bear are changed to balance the weight changes. Instead of 50 pounds, they would give 20 pounds of extra carry weight instead. Their descriptions are also updated to reflect this.

I think 20 pounds is fair. Have you ever held a dumbell? A 10 pound dumbell is nothing, it's for chicks and little kids to struggle for. Twenty pounds is where you first feel weight. So if I had a stronger back for some reason or other, I feel like I'd be able to carry at least another 20 no problem.

* Also for those that know: There's an in-game effect for companions like Boone, Arcade, ED-E, etc. where their carry weight is reduced when recruited by the player. This is most noticable if you use carry weight changing mods like this one. This is because in vanilla their carry weight is reduced by 75 with the Companion Suite Perk. With this mod I removed that effect from the perk so their carry weight will not be reduced, otherwise they won't be able to trade with you.

====
Stealth, and Overhead Thirdperson Camera.
====

There are some light-weight changes here made for stealth to make it a little more believable compared to vanilla. These only change in-game settings, so stealth mods like Cover Stealth will work just fine if you decide to use them.

* NPC Detection view cones are 160 degrees. (190 in vanilla. That's not humanly possible unless you literally have four eyes like some kind of spider.)
* NPCs take 25 seconds to search for you when hiding from combat (10 in vanilla)
* Sneak Attack criticals are disabled. (You already have realistic damage. Normal critical hits are guaranteed during stealth anyway. Sneak Criticals are applied on-top of normal criticals, it's why stealth is so easy in Bethesda games.)
* Changes the thirdperson camera to an overhead style. It's more tactical to play with this I figured, and it's annoying to see only one side anyway - what is this, Resident Evil 4? As an alternative, I recommend using Cover Stealth for stealth gameplay, but it's too easy once you reach 100 sneak and silent running. Everyone is literally invisible to each other and super-near sighted at night, it's crazy!


====
FPS-like Movement Speed
====

For years I've always felt... like Fallout 3... and New Vegas... moves slow... I thought it's just because the game engine is shit, but after tinkering in the game settings I realized the movement is slow by design!

To drive this point, try playing a different FPS game like Counter-Strike, or Call of Duty - or any FPS that FEELS great to play - and compare your movement speed, turning, and jump back to Fallout. Fallout movement is lacking - and it's not just because the animation is slow.

As you'll soon realize with this mod the animation is actually fine - it's the actual movement settings that are slow! Maybe it's made this way because of bullet-sponge gameplay but now that with this mod you have realistic damage, it stands to reason that you should have realistic (not slow!) movement.

Well, maybe not "realistic". This change is more of a gameplay tweak to make the game more fun, and it's quite a sight to see your character ACTUALLY running. It'll make vanilla movement look like you're coasting underwater or outer space.

I had Counter-Strike in mind as a basis for these changes. To summarize the changes, the over-all movement speed of the player and NPCs are increased by 10%, and the jump height is increased by 20%. Unholstered two-handed rifle types slows down movement only by very little (half the value of vanilla), but heavy weapons like miniguns and launchers slows you down enough to actually feel that weight but still feel like you're running.

Armor still weighs you down. As a reference, heavy armored movement with this mod is as fast as unarmored/light armored movement in vanilla.

>> Recommended mod: Stewie Tweaks - Choose the option that scales down movement speed by agility. Much more fun, and RPG based, perfect with this mod.


===
Better Skill based Weapon Spread
===

With a weapon skill of 100, the base weapon spread is reduced to 90% (50% in vanilla) to the mininum spread of your weapon to balance fighting against really accurate NPCs. NPCs with low skill will also miss more often, but chances are you're not gonna find some. Be prepared to fight accurate NPCs.

Think of this like playing STALKER on master. Except in vanilla Fallout, NPCs are super accurate regardless of skill and your aim is worse than everyone elses.

(I can recommend using Bashur's weapon spread mod instead as an over-all better alternative to weapon spread for both the player and NPCs. It's a little performance intensive for my aging laptop so I sometimes opt to not use his mod.)


====
Miscellaneous Changes
====

There are also some additional changes here. Mainly they're here to provide less annoyances for me and add more realism to the game, but some things are additional features to make playing the game more rewarding. I try not to add too many, but just enough. Some are also taken/inspired from DUST, but not all:

* NPC tick marks on the compass no longer appear. Rely on your senses to place your enemies.

* The string texts for hardcore needs: Stuff like "You feel less hungry" instead of "Your Hunger level has decreased"

* No auto aim / or bullets magically hitting the enemy off-crosshair. Where you point your scope is where you shoot (barring weapon-spread). This is most noticable with sniper weapons.

* The recipe for Weapon Repair Kit has been changed to only require one of each: (Scrap Metal, Wrench, Wonderglue, Duct Tape, Hammer) and only requires a Repair skill of 25 (Vanilla is 50). The Hammer and Wrench are also returned to you after crafting.

* Camera no longer shakes when near explosions. It's just annoying.

* The price for repairing items by merchants will only cost just the value of the item. In vanilla, it's twice. Meaning that if you had a pistol worth 100 caps repaired from 0% to full, it would've cost you 200 caps to repair it. Pretty steep. Now it will only cost 100 caps.

* Limb Dismemberment is disabled. Dismemberment always bothered me anyway, the game doesn't distinguish between melee and ranged attacks for this value and I'm tired of seeing heads fly off from the base of their necks from a 5mm. Heads will still explode but they are rare. And besides, they're not "realistic".

====
Optional file - Nuka Colas, Sarsaparillas, and Alcohol.
====

There is an attached additional plugin that adds more changes to fit well with the player returning from DUST. This is an optional file because they are not compatible with DUST. This way you can load the regular mod with DUST with no problem.

* Nuka Colas, Sunset Sarsaparillas, and various alcohol match their values in DUST. Sodas quench your thirst, and Alcohol removes small amounts of rads from your body. Unlike DUST they do not restore sanity (or technically add Karma) when drinking.

* Killing evil and very evil NPCs do not give good Karma. Earn it by doing quests. Two wrongs don't make a right but they can at least cancel each other out, I think. Bad Karma gained by stealing is also reduced to half to balance this change.

====
Is this compatible with...?
====

DUST - Yes, and fully compatible if you load it before DUST. Half the changes in this mod are directly from DUST anyway.
If you only want the miscellaneous changes like the no camera shake and auto aim, you can load this before DUST. If you want EVERY change here to override DUST like the carry weight change, well just load it after.

Reminder: Do not load the optional file with DUST!

Project Nevada - Yes, but not Rebalance. This will override the Rebalance values for carry weight, I think or it may not. I actually don't use the Rebalance module myself anymore because the changes in it are not all to my preference and I only really want a few. Another downside is it's incompatible with TTW.

TTW - Yes. Ghouls will still drop loot though.

Other Realistic damage mods like Realistic Headshots - No. Either use this or another mod, but pick only one.

Feral Ghoul mods that changes stats like damage and whatnot - No, but go ahead and put them in a lower load order than this mod so only their mod changes reflect on your game.


====
Other Recommended Mods
====

IWR - This gives about 100 items realistic weight. It's quite an excellent work and a perfect companion for this mod and DUST.
Digital Nightmare - I swear, this is the best piece of gameplay music I have ever heard. It's perfect for DUST, and with the overwhelming odds you'll be conquering this will set quite the mood.
DT and DR adder -
FOV Slider
Zoom Adjuster
Alcohol Radiation Tweak - Like STALKER and DUST, this mod makes drinking alcohol remove rads from your body. This is a great alternative to the optional file I included. Don't load them together.
More Realistic Aiming - This is something that can't be explained but should be felt. You should really download it.
Diagonal Movement - Here's something you didn't even realize you needed until someone made it.
Ragdolls - So much better ragdoll physics. Yet another excellent mod.