As you might have inferred, I started a new game to run the Nos' Adventures series. My previous game is backed up should I want to just play, but at 68 odd hours, so much had been done and so many NPCs killed, that the world was not really suitable to the whole storytelling thing.
One of the changes I made was to keep it from being too easy. Even larger mobs were total pushovers in previous games.
I added FWE to try out, and MMM's increased increased spawns - the standalone, without all that extra "improvement" from the main MMM package that is so wonderfully framerate destroying and game breaking in general.
FWE isn't too bad thus far, although it did take me twenty odd minutes to turn off the useless shit that's included. For instance: "sprint key" replacing the move forward key? Dumbest shit I've ever seen. Whoever did that? You should be ashamed of yourself. Since that portion of the mod wouldn't switch off no matter how many times I told it to uninstall, I ended up switching the keybind to something I never touched. Backslash, I think.
I'm also not thinking highly of the "combat AI improvements" in FWE. I was able to sit with an unsuppressed pistol and pick people off for almost five minutes, with no one coming to see who that was shooting at them.
I'll say this for Arwen: I may hate her stealth modifications, but her AI work is top notch, and if running her tweaks the raiders would have been on my ass after shot number two. Three if I was lucky.
As it was, they never noticed us until we moved in close. Was at the Springvale school. After picking off all I could through the windows, we worked around the back side of the hill, and into the playground. I ascended the ladder on the slide, and tossed a frag into the midst of three raiders who had come that direction.
That, they noticed.
Quite a fight, it turned out. Ria and I had our pistols, Silver's revolver, and three frags I had found in a mail box. Ten or so raiders to start, I think I got five of them from my sniper's perch through the windows.
Which brings me to my own point about AI...
See, I had based the whole "Pair of travelers" thing on the fact that any one of my special companions - even solo - is fucking death incarnate. They're expert pistoleros, burst fire assault rifles with the best of them, and can one-shot your ass with anything scoped from seventy-five yards out (which is impressive, for FO3 NPCs).
...Trouble is... I forgot Ria is a new NPC. Assaulting the school was only the second combat she had been exposed to - the first being Silver. I didn't actually drag her through the tutorial with me; although in retrospect I think I should have. Stomping those guards would have helped...
So, we get an interesting side to the story, that being that she really is still learning to be a killer, and I'm having to pick up a lot of the slack in the interim.
Unfortunately, I'm at like 4x normal spawns, extra weapon damage, and more 'realistic' crippling and medical stuff.
This is gonna be interesting.
Even more so, since I'm not allowing myself access to Vault 1 and my stash of weapons lockers and ammo cans. Or the super-merchant.
Ah... I didn't realize you were denying yourself access to V1 and Chloe. That indeed will make things a lot tougher. But, as you said, it should also produce a lot more stories to tell!
ReplyDeleteWell, see... one of the things about me? I screw the system.
ReplyDeleteSeriously. It's a natural instinct. I learn the bounds and how to cross them from within the rules.
My trick in Oblivion was to enchant four pieces of armor with Chameleon magic and wear the Ring of Khajiiti. 105% Chameleon = full time unbreakable invisibility = full time stealth and no enemy under level twenty-five will be able to find you to attack. Ever. God mode for killing and stealing without "cheating" in the least.
The way FO3 is written, it's all about guns. Since there are no level requirements on weapons, if you can come by a high caliber rifle; you're damn hard to stop and with good aim can steamroll just about anything. Part of my special companions pack is a slight mod to Chloe's inventory, so that she always carries a couple of 50BMG sniper rifles and ammo. Since in real life there are no skill tests required to buy such a rifle, I didn't like being beholden to them in the wasteland, either. So, much like here in the real world, if you can lay down the cash, she'll sell the rifles and ammo gladly. Trouble is, an AI 50BMG with a sneak critical bonus will kill anything in the game with one shot up until about level 15, except the Behemoth. Even after 15, if you take your time and shoot for the head it'll still take out just about anything.
To make things more interesting this time, I decided to combat my natural cheating instincts, and relegate us to whatever we can get in line with the story.
The characters are leery about entering Megaton, and don't know about Vault 1, so no merchants there. They haven't run into a caravan, either. So it's just what they can get off of dead enemies, or out of containers they run across.
Same with outfits. No tricky spawning plugins or additem codes - just what we run across in the course of the story; until they meet merchants.
I'll confess it's extremely annoying. I miss my fifty, damn it. Also miss my shotgun.
I have read and kept up with the stuffies and I do like what I have seen and read.
ReplyDeleteBut question, what do you mean on the new Npc vs Old npc when you talk of them like that?