Game Skyrim Forum

yes, i edited my post so when converting ammo would be using energy from one Cell into another, and that half of one MFC could fill an entire SEC

I am contmplating changing it so the MFC has 240 Energy, a SEC has 120 energy, an an ECP has 60 energy.

I'm trying to keep the MFC at a multiple of 12

Yes, you are right. Sorry.

Lord Vukodlak.
How do you handle partial magazines for Guns? It's a moot point. Lets chalk it up to the PipBoy redistributing the energy, as it seems to do with bullets.
EW Batteries = Gun Magazines
Gun Bullets = EW Battery Stored Energy

Plasma defender before the patch, wiped out every single deathclaw in the Deathclaw sanctuary, two mothers, alphas and loads of ordinary and baby ones.
Though it's not a true plasma pistol it is a middle tier weapon, a 12.7 is a much later gun and has a high strength requirement at least for a single handed pistol.




I sneak attacked most deathclaws with this at long ranges within quarry junction with a strength 3 character plus weapon handling and buffout, it's not inaccurate far from it imo.

Cells with, for example, half energy would be at that, half energy, even if you change weapons. It makes sense, but you would have to switch between cells manually. You could just press square or whatever to change the cell out for another one, and it should even be that you are switching to the one that has the most energy in your inventory. It wouldn't be like it is now, with all the ammo being combined into one giant mass of ammo that all magically fill into fill cartridges, but each cartridge would be separate from another one.

so you would have many MFC's in your inventory, some that say MFC (240), MFC (60), MFC (120) etc. They would all be unique depending on the energy amount in them. Cells with the same amounts of energy would be stacked on top of each other tho, like MFC (240) x5, to reduce clutter.

This is also where combining used cells to fill them up comes in handy, to fill used cells to full energy

Well there would be way around perhaps. If cells would not power weapon directly but rather "charge" or "recharge" it. You would be able to use several less than full cells to recharge weapon.

That's how it works NOW, but when you try and have the energy cell function as a single item that provides multiple shots is when you run into issues. Its just easier to divide the weight down.

There is however one problem with this concept. And that is what to do with partially depleted cells inside inventory. With say max 60 energy cell and 5 energy per shot, your inventory could get flooded with cells in different stages of depletion.

Perhaps easiest solution would be to force player to deplete current loaded cell completely before reloading. With generally fast reload times of EWs, that would not turn out too big discomfort.

Hruza Omega, your overcomplicating it, partial cells in an EW are like a partial magazine in a Gun. Simple as that.

Slightly revamped energy option

------------------------ Option 1, Energy -------------------------

- MFCs contain 240 energy, SECs contain 120 energy, and ECPs contain 60 energy.

- The energy weapon used detemines how much energy is used in one shot

- For Example: The Plasma Rifle uses 20 energy a shot, making one MFC amount to 12 shots. The Plasma Defender uses 6 energy a shot, allowing it to fire 20 times with one SEC. The Laser RCW uses 1 energy a shot, allowing it to fire 60 times with one ECP

- MFCs, SECs, and ECPs would all be heavier then they are now and be rarer and more expensive (one MFC being equal to 24 MFCs now or something)

- Each Cell remembers how much energy it has left, so if you switch which gun is using that Cell the energy drainage is changed but not the overall energy

- You could mix together Cells to add their remaning energy amounts together (60 energy SEC + 60 energy SEC = a full SEC)

- Converting Ammo would would not be completely switching the ammo, but would require somewhat or fully spent cells. For example you could have one full MFC and one compltely empty SEC. you could fill the SEC to full with 120 MFC energy.

- Over Charge Cells and Max Charge Cells decrease the amount of energy total but make up for it by increasing damage and DT penetration. for example, a Plasma rifle with a normal MF could fire 12 shots, with 240 energy. One using a MFC Max Charge can only fire 6, because the energy amount would be halved, to 120. An MFC Over Charge would be inbetween, at 9 with 180 energy.

- There would be weapon mods that lower energy usage. There could even be some that increase energy usage slightly adding more damage w/out the negative effect Max and Over charge cells have on condition

Yep, that would be "recharge" instead of "power". There is still problem with cells in different stages of depletion inside inventory however.

@ Lord Vukodlak
No it isnt. The current syestem is
EW Battery = Gun Bullets
which is not logical

yea, i foresaw this issue, but them's the breaks

I thought about the making the weapon use a full cell and it could work, but leads to nit being able to switch to over and max charge cells unless you put them in first.

this is really the only issue i foresee

:wink_smile: you guys think i should put my idea into a new topic so we can discuss it further and maybe even have a dev look at it?

Or how about we institute the idea that if you reload a partial magazine/battery, you lose all of the energy/bullets inside.

well that would be like if the courier took out the cell at halfway and threw it away, which would make my refilling cell concept impossible.

and it's not like when switching out a magazine with 19/20 bulltes loses the 19 bullets

so we would have to deal with the amount of different energy level cells we get.

MFC (240) x5

MFC (220)

MFC (120)

MFC (80)

Empty MFC

etc.

The way to get rid of them would be to combine them at a workbench

Clutter, I think that a "Partial MFC/ECP/SEC", being a Misc Item, unusable as ammo, could be recycled into usable ammo.

Edit: Can anyone see my Avatar? I cant i am am having trouble reseting it.

well then people would probably be annoyed that they accidentally reloaded when they had a 220 out of 240 MFC and can't use it

and no, i can;t see your avatar. mine was an omega symbol before, but for some reason turned back into the BoS symbol :shrug:

It could be solved by using floating point numbers. 1 full cell = 1.0. Half depleted cell = 0.5. This would allow to store all cells in different stages of depletion in single slot. Which then could read something like: EC 239.2. Computers do not like floating point numbers generally, tends to slow them down and they often can not compute them precisely but there would be ways to overcome that. Like storing those numbers internally as integers. Cell = 100 but is displayed as 1.0. 0.5 would be stored as 50.

yea, like i said before, if you had 10 fully charged MFC's they would be called MFC (240) 10

idk what floating point numbers are

We dont want to overcomplicate things, I say we use the second idea, renaming the Batteries as Energy. So it can be at least somehow anolagous to guns.

Here's an idea for a way to think about it.
Instead of thinking it in terms of ammo capacity What if energy weapon ammo had a condition? just like other equipment. It continues to supply ammo until the condition is exhausted at no loss of effectiveness.

The ammo display would simply tell you how many shots you have with the cell before it degrades to 0. Based on how much each shot degrades the cell with that weapon and how much condition the weapon has left.
Once a cell is emptied you chance to get to receive and empty cell as normal.

Partial cells are handled just like any other equipment that's degraded. You repair it with another item, In this case an energy cell. Unlike regular repair this would be an unmodified by skills. A 20% cell, a 30% cell and a 15% cell would always be 65% when combined. When you reload you always grab the highest charge available.
It could be taken further and any left over charge say from a 40% cell used on a 70% cell is left behind.


But its simple.

If you treat the energy cell as a single item that provides multiple shots its much more complicated then tracking ammo per shot like you do with guns and you avoid any complications from cells in different stages of depletion inside inventor.

yea, that's the easy way out, lol

i think the first option would serve to make energy weapons truly different from regular guns

In fact why not to store those cells internally (inside program) as their respective energy capacity? So your MFC would be stored as 240 but displayed to player like 1.0. It would make calculation of shot energy usage simple as well. Everything would be calculated in "energy" internally but displayed as "cells" to player. You don't have problem with reloading as you are putting "energy" in to your gun. It is just displayed to player as if he is using cells.

Problem solved.

[Edit:] example:
You bought 100 MFCs which displays as 100 in your inventory but program tracks that as 2400 MFC enertgy. You reload your rifle with 1 MFC. You inventory displays 99 but program knows it as 2160. You fire 6 shots depleting your loaded cell in half (120 energy). You reload by adding 120 energy from your inventory which now displays 98.5 while storing it as 2040. If you decide to put your MCFs in to crate, it done by 1 cell (tracked as 240 MFC energy) until last one which is put in to crate as 0.5 (120 MFC energy).

And it all can be done by doing simple math of displaying MFC energy as MFC cell = MFC energy / 240.

I am all for complexity as long as i am not spending 576 bullets for 24 shots. THAT is how inefficient and illogical the current system is, whether you like it or not.