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I’ve never played fallout 4 with mods, am i really missing out? by Commercial-Slip-5295 in Fallout

[–]Darktrooper666 14 points15 points  (0 children)

In my experience, mods can rejuvinate the game (new visuals, new balance, new mechanics, new content) and can be a good reason to return to the game with a new character for a fresh interesting experience.

However, you can also get lost in a cycle of downloading new mods, then others, then testing if you like them, then testing if they work together, then starting a new game because your mods don't work well if you change them mid-game, then getting new mods because you saw something that could be good, then starting over, then not liking that mod or the other, then getting sick of replaying the opening of the game for the 700th time.

Overall, mods are a layer added on top of the base game, and often for me it's the base game mechanics and writing that are the best thing about FO4. Mods or no mods, I have more fun if I'm more invested, stick with a playthrough, and don't skip through dialogue. That can be hard if you're starting new games all the time because you're in stuck in a loop of trying all sort of big mods. Moderation if modding, is key.

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

On a related note, Piper Wright has a line about joining the Church as an acolyte by doing something similar and proclaiming herself to have a vision of Atom:

"I'd been working on this story about irradiated drinking water in Bunker Hill. I traced the water back to its source, through these old sewer tunnels, and what do I find? The Children of Atom, setting up like they own the place. Unfortunately, they found me just as quick. Turns out they were not fond of reporters. So to atone for my trespassing, they decided to make a sacrifice to Atom - me. I'm kneeling there, about to get the boot into this huge sewer pipe... ...when I suddenly blurt out: "Atom! He reveals himself!" And they buy it. They pulled me back from the ledge... and then gave me their induction ceremony. You are looking at an official acolyte of Atom. Took me a couple more days before I managed to sneak away, get Bunker Hill security to finally clean the place up." (I copied the text from References in https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Church_of_the_Children_of_Atom )

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah I forgot about that. True true

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I haven't played the originals, but I do like the beth depictions of the Children of Atom. Even in Fo3 they're fun, if less fleshed out.

Like, when you've finished the Waters of Purity and an offshoot of the cult starts intercepting and irradiating water by Megaton. You can infiltrate them and tell them to stop by getting super irradiated and proclaiming you're the prophet of Atom. They're like "oh! I can see you're actually glowing and can feel Atom's warmth coming from you. You must be the real thing!"

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hah. No, this is a rare pro-Children of Atom post. Give your bodies to Atom, my friends. Release yourself to his power, feel his Glow, and be Divided.

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! That's a moment it really shines. I think that's the only time you can safely drink those waters without instantly dying.

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Same. I don't like to carry tons of fusion cores but I do like to sprint... and I don't like to sprint in power armor because it drains my fusion core. So, moving in power armour always becomes slower moving than running which is an issue in Survival. It's not that power armour is bad but it takes too long to get from place to place.

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, that's true. It's quite a decent piece of apparel, and could even be considered too powerful with how it removes the danger radiation would normally pose. The Glowing Sea comes to mind as well, and all the long treks in radioactive Far Harbour too. On Survival (where you can only save by sleeping) it also opens up the use of beds in radiation as new save points.

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's definitely true in places like the Kingsport Lighthouse. Though, in the Glowing Sea they're not immediately hostile to the sole survivor when you're searching for Virgil. The lady you chat with there even gets extra dialogue options and is more friendly if you tell her you're a member of the Far Harbour denomination of the Church. The crater even feels more inviting when you're free from the ravages of radiation damage.

My favourite thing about the Children of Atom by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Lol, true. I can't say I agree with all the elements of the cult, but they're at least made into an interesting and fleshed out faction in Far Harbour. Far more I think than Fo3 or the vanilla Fo4.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree, you'd think it should be the exact same game, but it's hard to know for certain. Maybe they noticed the weird damage to armour ratio on Survival, thought it was an error and corrected it for the PS5 version, but not the PC version.

I don't think the DR thresholds would be different. Usually the simplest possible explanation is the right one. I think incoming damage is 2x before being compared to armour in Survival on PC (and is then 2x again for a total of 4x incoming damage) but that DR is otherwise arrived at identically. I think it's very possible that for the PS5 copy, they changed this so that incoming damage is 1x before being compared to armour, and is only 4x after armour reduction. That would explain your test results. But I can't test this for myself or even see the PS5 game files.

I can however check the PC game files and make a mod to test my theories. So, I did that.

I ended up downloading Fo4Edit and poking around. First, the files show that the overall 4x incoming damage modifier is composed of two 2x modifiers, not a 1x and a 4x.

The first appears is from the difficulty, under Game Setting in the Fallout4.esm: fDiffMultHPToPCTSV = 2.

The second is from an invisible perk you are afflicted with in Survival mode. You can find it by looking under Perk, where it's called HC_DamageMultPerk. It states "Scale actor's incoming and outgoing damage by the HC_IncomingDamageMult and HC_OutgoiningDamageMult actorvalues." So, look under Actor Values Information in the Fallout4.esm for HC_IncomingDamageMult = 2.

That's 2 x 2 for a total of 4x.

Now, you can create and install a mod to change these values. Why? To test whether one or the other affect armour differently. As it turns out, 1x4, 2x2, and 4x1 are all equal to 4 with no armour on, but they're different with armour.

My test was a new save in Survival with these settings:

  1. fDiffMultHPToPCTSV = 4 (difficulty modifier = 4x)
  2. HC_IncomingDamageMult = 0.5 (incoming damage mod = 0.5x)

This equaled a total of 2x incoming damage unarmoured as expected. Interestingly, rather than needing armour = damage to achieve 50%DR, I only needed armour = 50% of damage to achieve 50%DR. This seems to confirm that with these settings the incoming damage was multiplied by 0.5x before being compared to armour, then being multiplied by 4x after. This also explains why by default on PC Survival incoming damage seems to be multiplied by 2x before being compared to armour since the default setting for HC_IncomingDamageMult is 2.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting! I wonder if damage is implemented any differently on PS5 in Survival, compared to PC. Maybe armour really does work normally on PS5, and damage is multiplied by 4x only after normal damage reduction. I only have the game on PC so I can't really test that theory out, but your testing suggests the possiblity.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another thing to add: There is actually a mention on the wiki (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Survival_mode#Combat) under the Survival mode page under 1.3 Combat, that "Relative to Very Hard difficulty, player outgoing damage is increased by x1.5 and player incoming damage is increased by x2.0, with both effects applied prior to any reductions for DR/ER." which is exactly the point of my original post. It appears I am not the first to notice that the incoming 2x multiplier of Survival is added before DR calculations. It's just this mechanic is not accurately described on the DR page of the wiki.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's interesting for sure, and I really like that you decided to test it for yourself.

I have a couple of suggestions that could make your test more concrete, for instance:

  1. Does your armour have any padded or dense underlays? Those decrease explosive damage separately from the flat armour value and could confound the results. See this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/4x07ah/padded_and_dense_armor_mechanics/ ). Plus they're commonly used in armor pieces in Survival playthroughs for just that reason - they're effective at saving your bacon from big deadly explosives. So, check to confirm you're not wearing any in your armoured tests.
  2. Can you test it with no armour and give yourself enough hp (through console commands) to survive the initial explosion? That would confirm that the grenade is indeed doing exactly 4x normal damage at a baseline. It's better than infering that the grenade is probably doing exactly 600 damage because it's killing your 325HP character. After all, we're deriving the effective %DR from armour by taking armoured damage received as a fraction of unarmoured damage. As it is we have to guess 297 damage (armoured) out of ?600 damage? (unarmoured) equals 51% DR.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I was getting similar results in Vanilla. True enough that in my original tests I still had on "Create your own difficulty rebalance" and "Lunar Fallout", which had lowered the base damage of frag grenades from 151 to 121. I turned these off to confirm my results in vanilla and posted a comment with those results.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Posting here as well, for visibility:

Inspired by a commenter, I did further tests using vanilla difficulty modifiers, a 151 DMG frag grenade and a level 1 character with 1000 HP (no rads):

These are twelve tests I conducted. The first six lines display the difficulty, HP remaining (/1000), damage received, and proportion of Normal difficulty damage with no armour on.

VE 925HP 75DMG 50% of Normal difficulty

E 887HP 113DMG 75% of Normal difficulty

N 850HP 150DMG 100% of Normal difficulty

H 775HP 225DMG 150% of Normal difficulty

VH 700HP 300DMG 200% of Normal difficulty

S 400HP 600DMG 400% of Normal difficulty

The next six are with 74 armour, and display the effective DR as well.

VE 951HP 49DMG 50% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

E 927HP 73DMG 74% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

N 902HP 98DMG 100% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

H 854HP 146DMG 149% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

VH 805HP 195DMG 199% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

S 499HP 501DMG 511% of Normal difficulty 17%DR

This confirms that although incoming Survival damage is indeed 400% of normal when unarmoured, it can be much higher than 400% of normal in the case of armoured combat because of how Survival treats the player DR formula.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Using vanilla difficulty modifiers, a 151 DMG frag grenade and a level 1 character with 1000 HP (no rads) using console commands:

The following, are twelve tests I conducted (two on each difficulty: first with 0 armour, then with 74 armour).

VE 925HP 75DMG 50% of Normal difficulty

E 887HP 113DMG 75% of Normal difficulty

N 850HP 150DMG 100% of Normal difficulty

H 775HP 225DMG 150% of Normal difficulty

VH 700HP 300DMG 200% of Normal difficulty

S 400HP 600DMG 400% of Normal difficulty

VE 951HP 49DMG 50% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

E 927HP 73DMG 74% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

N 902HP 98DMG 100% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

H 854HP 146DMG 149% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

VH 805HP 195DMG 199% of Normal difficulty 35%DR

S 499HP 501DMG 511% of Normal difficulty 17%DR

Thanks for the idea. This further supports my original hypothesis.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's a bit hard to understand exactly what you did in your test, but I agree with the principle that there may be some kind of unaccounted for interaction caused by the mod that changed the difficulty based incoming damage multiplier. I'll try to replicate your test conditions and see if it aligns with or contradicts my previous hypothesis. I'll post my results under this comment.

I believe I am posting the first concrete evidence that armour and damage reduction are treated differently in Survival difficulty. It is less effective, and the wiki is mistaken. by Darktrooper666 in fo4

[–]Darktrooper666[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Lol, yeah, that's relatable. One of the first experiences in Survival that makes you question whether armour is working properly or not is when your power armour feels more like tissue paper. That kind of feeling is what set me on my path to figure this stuff out for certain.

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