Necessary technical prep for New Vegas

[Master]

Been droning about broken PE for some time. Frankly I find it beyond belief. Codex should've come down hard on them for this.

 

[Blaine]

Well, they were limited by Bethesda's engine and general game design. That fact isn't a blanket excuse for all of Obsidian's mistakes with New Vegas, but I think it fits here.

Thinking outside the box created by the game engine and design, a good and Western-themed use of high PE would have been to notice signs (as in droppings, tracks, etc.) of enemy presence before encountering them, wisps of campfire smoke over a ridgeline, the glint of a scope in the sun, etc. Unfortunately the game's old and janky, textures are muddy, view distances are limited, and also it's quite a small and compact game world and there are enemies pretty much everywhere you turn.

 

[Master]

Those are nice things they could've implemented if they had the time. But we are talking about BASIC SHIT, ticks showing up on the radar at a certain distance depending on stats, something easy to do and actually implemented except, it's completely fucked up and might as well not be there at all.

 

[Blaine]

The game's entire IFF system is a simplistic piece of shit anyway. Every NPC who considers the Courier an enemy makes a beeline for the player as soon as you enter their awareness range, even if they can't see you and can only hear footsteps. The player too always knows whether or not NPCs are hostile, either via the radar or through some HUD element.

It's a shame, because Bighorners are territorial and familial, and broadcast warning signals if you get too close. Some enemies will flee if you get the better of most of their comrades, notably Legion hit squads and Scorpions. You can be "forgiven" if you holster your weapon after attacking, but I'm not sure I've ever seen that in action personally. I've seen normal geckos cower or choose not to attack when the player is higher-level, but I have to wonder if that's a bug.

The kernel of something more sophisticated is there, but only a kernel.

 

[Average Manatee]

Perception actually harms you indoors IMO, since rather than seeing enemies in the next room you'll have enemies from the whole area clouding your radar and confusing you in what's where. Outside you can just hit 'v' once in a while to auto-aim at anything in sight.

 

[fantadomat]

Meh radar is useless,just shoot what you see with your eyes.

 

[unfairlight]

What the illiterate said. Radar only has use for making combat music end and killing that fiend that clipped inside a rock.

 

[Athos]

The game's entire IFF system is a simplistic piece of shit anyway. Every NPC who considers the Courier an enemy makes a beeline for the player as soon as you enter their awareness range, even if they can't see you and can only hear footsteps. The player too always knows whether or not NPCs are hostile, either via the radar or through some HUD element.

It's a shame, because Bighorners are territorial and familial, and broadcast warning signals if you get too close. Some enemies will flee if you get the better of most of their comrades, notably Legion hit squads and Scorpions. You can be "forgiven" if you holster your weapon after attacking, but I'm not sure I've ever seen that in action personally. I've seen normal geckos cower or choose not to attack when the player is higher-level, but I have to wonder if that's a bug.

The kernel of something more sophisticated is there, but only a kernel.

They were more ambitious with their scripting than Bethesda, at least in their intentions. I think New Vegas is the first gamebryo game where animals in some areas follow daily routines and are not simply spawned critters ( you can see easily geckos hunting roaches). Also a lot of NPC routines, NPC "extras" and pieces of landscape had to be disabled with patches because of performance issues on consoles. Mods like Mission Mojave uncut restore anything salvageable still in the GECK.

 

[Blaine]

Gotta love the empty streets, empty casinos, and empty stores because consoles can't display more than 4-5 NPCs without dropping to 15 FPS and/or running out of memory. There are of course mods to restore or add some of them, but it's an annoyance either way.

Anyway, my current playthrough came to an abrupt end when I realized that the Dam would very soon be the only thing left to do, and that I already had all the cool stuff in the game... I've yet to complete the Dam. I'm saving it for the ultimate final playthrough someday in the future, preferably before New Vegas becomes unplayable/too annoying to play on modern systems.

I tried Autumn Leaves, which I know was made by a Codexer. I'm not a fan. For one thing, it's way off tonally compared to the rest of the series; for another, it's overly verbose, contains way too much tryhard intellectualism and thesaurus vomit, and the grammar and sentence structure are extremely wonky, even setting the other issues aside. Considering that the setting is a huge library full of books, that's a pretty damned big downside, and it's a lot harder to forgive language barrier issues. Also, many of the bonus perks you can receive, which are separate from level-up perks, are super-overpowered (+5 DT when wearing medium or heavy armor, for example).

 

[2house2fly]

You can be "forgiven" if you holster your weapon after attacking, but I'm not sure I've ever seen that in action personally.

i saw that once, in the quest where you find out the two guys in Westside are selling kids to the child rapist. I shot them one time each with Dragon's Breath shells and then put my gun away. They immediately forgave me and the fire damage stopped with a few HP left, and we all just stood around awkwardly until I chopped them up with a fire axe.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finally finished up all the DLCs, some thoughts to get out:

Honest Hearts: Liked this quite a lot. Felt the most Fallout-y, with settlements of friendly NPCs, distinct quests, some "living off the land" feel that New Vegas provided mechanics for but never really forced you to use.

Old World Blues: Writing was a bit of a slog to get through. But this is probably my fault, I'm sure I would have liked it a lot more back when Big Bang Theory was still somewhat amusing rather than the cringeworthy crap that causes intense barely controllable rage for me to hear people reference nowadays in 2018. Gameplay-wise it was really lacking, just drops the player in the center of a circle and dumps a bunch of power creep bonuses around the perimeter with a bunch of overly-similar interiors. Whole damn DLC was power creep honestly. I know I'm walking around with 50k caps by the time I'm level 20 but at least in New Vegas you have troubles finding 100s of stimpacks to buy. Also is it just me or are Radscorpions the hardest enemies in the game due to the lack of a weak point? Well fuck robo-Radscorpions with lasers and explodey shit.

Lonesome Road: The story of this DLC really annoyed me. The whole deal with New Vegas was to start you out as a blank slate, then they go and make some horrible backstory with nukes and shit? It's like if you're playing Baldur's Gate 1 and then for the last 10% of the game you play Planescape Torment. Also the idea of still having working nukes, Ulysses inviting you there just so you can interfere with his plan of nuking the NCR, and you yourself having the option to just outright nuke people is a bit absurd. The linearity of it didn't bother me too much and I liked some of the verticality stuff and area design, so generally alright on the gameplay. I like a lot of sniping.

Dead Money: Was a real slog. Stripping weapons wasn't huge problem, one the the melee weapons decapitated everything in 1 or 2 VATS attacks. But the F3/NV engine has always sucked in close quarters action and this is all close quarters, with additional annoyances of mines, collar exploders, and a generally tedious to navigate environment. It's also sort of the opposite of the other DLCs in that there's no payoff or power creep at all which is even more problematic.

Overall the DLCs pretty uniformly managed to surpass most of the comparable areas and characters in New Vegas, but there's still the problem of "why am I even supposed to be here?", which really messes with me and brings them all down. Aside from LR the DLCs are all advertised in-game like a theme park attraction, which makes no sense for the Courier to visit since he's supposed to have a damn job to do. They'd fit more in as what a NWN module is: separate and not "intended" for the Courier since the Courier wouldn't realistically do them. LR is just funky, it should be held back as post-dam content since the choice of what to nuke should IMO just cut to an immediate set of game ending slides rather than travelling back to see not much changed, but then that would mess with the tone even more to have the Courier go from triumphant winner at the Dam to "look what you did, asshole"-ville that is The Divide.

Also I really hate how F:NV's armor threshold system makes high level combat 99% about crits. It's faithful to FO 1/2, but that's not a good thing when you have way more combat and are solo most of the time. You'll just be walking around with Power-armored 50 DT and things generally glance off but then lose50% of your HP for no discernible reason. Crits should really be an after-DT multiplier or something. Even for enemies (like robo scorpions) its annoying when the exact same enemy can take 20 shots or 3 shots with the same weapon. Have to wonder whether Light Touch and Light Armor is actually the best defensive strategy.

 

[Master]

back when Big Bang Theory was still somewhat amusing rather than the cringeworthy crap that causes intense barely controllable rage for me to hear people reference nowadays in 2018.

What ? It was always cringeworthy crap.

 

[aweigh]

doesnt Perception increase the numbers in VATS percentages/

i think the strongest burst-damage possible is by using CZ Avengenr minigun with best ammo (i think for Avenger minigun it was probably AP rounds) with Trigger Discipline trait and PE maxed

Trigger Discipline boosts all VATS percentages by a flat amount (25% if i remember correctly) which allows for ((sniping)) from long distances with low-accuracy weapons (like the CZ Avenger minigun) and while it theoretically lowers DPS due to slower rate-of-fire in actual game application it turns out that inside VATS the increased accuracy ends up mattering much more than the RoF loss which becomes negligible due to:

VATS Critical Hit Rate/Chance!

TLDR: Max Perception + Trigger Discipline + Critical Hit perks/gear + bust-DMG weapon with low accuracy (negated by TD trait) = Legendary Deathclaw goes down in 1 VATS attack to the head.

 

[aweigh]

Trigger Discipline trait also (ironically) kind of renders Perception even more of a dump stat if youre gonna focus on high-Accuracy weapons: with the +25% flat bonus to VATS percentages given by the trait you can snipe headshots from miles away from very beginning of the game with like 4 or 5 PE.

 

[Infantry]

Put this together in late 2016. Feedback at the time was pretty good. Should still be relevant for those who want to go a bit deeper into modding F:NV.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/new-vegas-mods.70323/page-12#post-4769990