Fallout New Vegas Advanced Version 1.5
public release
Russell "Castle" Meakim Jr
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This is a Fallout New Vegas game play overhaul. Every module is optional and self contained but playing with all of them active should give the feeling of a full out overhaul. This version has a new module that adds a considerable number of new hand placed spawns in the wasteland adding a new level of challenge.

I am open for all requests, comments, feedback so feel free to let me know what you think.

Get the mod http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36832

==Version 1.5 change list==
-Increased spawns module for wasteland added ( One line but its a HUGE change )
-Six Hands now properly accounts for multiple of the same weapon...
-Six Hand penalty is now 20 per hand... ( Up from 15 per hand )
-FONVADamage.esp module is currently unsupported until I get a chance to do a proper damage overhaul...

Looking forward to trying it out this weekend!

Is this all packed into one mod or are you able to adjust aspects of it at your leisure?

It is a full overhaul that is packed into a number of separate/optional modules that you can use alone or together if you want. If you only want increased Wasteland spawns or Six Hands with Arwen's or FOOK it should work with zero problems as well.

If you use every module together you get a fairly rebalanced game.

edit: To clarify, my last overhaul for FO3 I made the mistake of putting everything into one esp when it really wasn't necessary. This time I am working on a design philosophy of elegance. Where the main re-balancing is done through portable systems rather than touching every asset in the game. I also make it a rule to not change things just because I can.

By the way... meant to mention this some time ago, but heavymoney doesn't actually make ncr and legion money weigh something. The problem is that the misc item references are not the ones actually used in game, but rather the "caravan money" references (example: for $5 NCR, 13a4d6 isn't used, but rather 176ac6 is used).

It is the fact that they are caravan monies, rather than misc items, that result in the barter menu exchanging them for full value in both directions at all times, regardless of barter skill.

However the caravan money entries don't have a field for weight as far as I can tell.

Wow...

OK, got a chance to play with MoreSpawns.

When I first heard your description of what you had done, I was afraid that it was going to be too much. Well, at least for my tastes, I was correct - it is too much. Not just a little bit, but at least twice as much additional as it should be - possibly more like triple.

When I took the road to go from Mojave Outpost to Primm, I met up with over a dozen scorpions - some bark, mostly rad and giant rad. The first giant rad I met was 15 feet beyond the giant statues - making it close enough to end up in conflict with the wandering folks at the outpost -- and most NPCs in this game are not tough enough to handle something like that, certainly not more than once... meaning that sooner or later, the Mojave Outpost is going to loose a large portion of its population. Besides which, meeting up with that many radscorps without even wandering off the main highway, makes me think there would be no way at all to maintain any supply of AP ammo. And with that much by the roads, forget about the caravans in game - none of them stand a chance at all.

But then as I approached Primm, I encountered Lakelurks. Really? Here? IMO, something like Lakelurks should only be in some very specific places (like near large bodies of water, not a 200 gallon puddle). Never mind this being a lowbie area *shrug*

Going into Primm itself was kinda cool - for a minute. I snuck in and got the drop on two guys. But there were three other guys in front of me, and two more behind me, who heard the fight. Nice to have more bad guys there, but it just seemed a bit too many.

...then I ran up the road to kill some powder gangers. What was interesting was when I hit the camp along the road between the main highway and the NCRCF. I wish I had been fast enough to grab a screen shot, because it was like the 4th of july. There were ten sticks of lit dynamite, arcing in flight towards me, at the same time.


While having that many spawns all over the place may be the way to go for some folks, for me at least it becomes a detriment - making some character concepts nearly impossible to make work, making the OOCHPR mod feel almost useless (not enough time between combat for it to kick in much), and changes the focus of the game play too much away from role-playing/story telling and into straight up combat.

At least, that was my impression after playing with the mod for 45 minutes or so... but that impression was far enough into the "not enjoyable" range, that I'm not likely to give this incarnation of it more of a go.

Yeah I definitely know what you are talking about with the increased spawns. I have two main fears with the spawns module is that I either did not do enough or I did too much. On that same note I don't want people installing the mod and feeling like it made no difference so I might have over compensated in some respects. Its a big job so it will take a lot of tweaking to get right. This is the kind of feedback I need to improve the mod.

I agree that those two lake lurks are out of place Ill make sure to fix that tonight.
Another thing to keep in mind is that as I assist Martigen with his much better iteration of increased spawns and diversity I intend for this module to be complimentary. That means a great deal of the hand placed spawns will be toned down since the actual increased spawns functionality will be customizable at that point. The more spawns module has a lot of room to grow and depending on how Martigen decides to do his thing will greatly influence what I do with this module. Sorry that you did not enjoy it but I appreciate honest feedback.

I also want to add optional modules that add things like super mutant camps and things of that nature around the wastes. XD
I guess I am kind of crazy in that I like the game to beat the hell out of me to enjoy it most lol...

Well, after reading that feedback I definitely have to post my own

So far I've only been using the rarer loot part of your overhaul, but after seeing the increased spawn thing I had to try it out. So I did. And I have to say, my opinion is the complete exact opposite of the previous feedback given. This is awesome! The wasteland is crawling with critters, just as it should be (at least I think so)! I actually visited some of the same locations as DarkUncleBoh, like the powder ganger camp. And yes, it got rather crazy with half the countryside blowing up, but what do you expect from ten (or more) escaped convicts with a s***load of dynamite and a real love for blowing things (and people) up? As for Primm, that was the most fun I've had in a while in this game! I tried shooting it out with these guys, it ended up with me crouching behind a wall with a crippled leg, nothing but a 9mm and two mags left to defend myself with and who knows how many escaped cons just around the corner. Fun, fun, fun! (I'm serious!)

The lakelurks were weird though.

Roaming the Mojave is also a lot more fun now, I could actually feel like a hunter, gathering meat and hides around Goodsprings (and not just shooting a stray coyote every 5 minutes).

About settlements being attacked by critters or raiders, that's what guards are for. Seriously, why put guards around a camp if you don't give them something to do?

Oh, and I used this together with Populated Wasteland (which I admit, can make the amount of enemies in some places a little overkill).

I had to come chime in too! I didn't see you'd added increased spawns until tonight. I went to try out the same corridor as DarkUncleBoh, but I took a new character so I started at Goodsprings and headed toward Primm and the Mojave Outpost.

I didn't see any Lakelurks (I agree that they should only be near, well, lakes or maybe the river). But, I agree with Krhanol that more is better. But then that's why I was so excited by the prospect of an Increased Spawns module. Not everyone is going to enjoy more baddies and that's fine too. I thought Primm was much better with more convicts. It seemed a little silly to me in the vanilla game that the town had been taken over by so few of them to begin with and that I could waltz in and kill them all pretty easily. It was still pretty easy (I had a companion with me) but it was a lot better with more convicts. Then I continued on down the highway toward the outpost but turned left instead. Ran into lots of radscorps along the way (mostly little; but did run into one Giant Radscorp) and there were more Jackals around the Pit Stop although they had run off to fight with the increased number of ants which was fun (the more chaos the better IMO) and came back to fight with me after they had killed the ants they were chasing. Oh, and all along the route I noticed the increased numbers of critters at the different spawns points and more activity was going on. That was great too. More hunting and fighting was going on; just like with MMM increased spawns in FO3.

I loved it. Thanks so much. I will definitely keep it in my lineup. I've been wishing for something like this.

Yeah I realized this awhile back but keep on forgetting to do anything. it turns out that currency weight might be limited to just pre war money and maybe bottlecaps.. I have been on the fence about this plugin for some time maybe this is the last nail in the coffin. :/
edit: unless anyone disagrees with that notion.

So based on the comments here, I went back and put some more time in with the added spawns, going back over some of the same areas as well as trying some new areas.

One thing I did find - quick traveling around, I crashed a fair bit (three crashes out of about twenty or so quicktravels). I don't know for a fact that this is the increased spawns, but I normally experience a crash maybe once every 12+ hours of gameplay, and even then usually when I leave the game up and running overnight. Anyhow...

My "double, possibly triple what the difference should be" was perhaps overstated - but IMO, not by too much. Some areas it seem OK for the most part, others just seem way too much to me.

That having been said, I do recognize that different folks have different preferences - and if the "more chaos is good" mentality appeals to you 90% of the time or more, than you're probably on the right track with this. Personally I have never seen Fallout as an appropriate place for that level of population -- if I want nearly non-stop streams of enemies to shoot at, I'll play an FPS (as opposed to an RPG with FPS elements). For me the space between spawn points, and more importantly the fixed nature of those spawns, was/is the problem with the vanilla game... but I still want to be able to exist in the space between spawn points (just have the space between be smaller), rather than feeling like I'm just moving from one spawn point to another.

Regarding guards having something to do: I certainly don't have a problem with that. But it creates an imbalance when you have respawning creatures that are more powerful than the guards, right outside of a settlement where the guards do NOT respawn. I sat back and watched as Sgt. Kilborn (or whatever his name is - the wandering guy by the statues at Mojave Outpost) aggro'd a giant radscorp and promptly get killed by it - then a caravaner and a mercenary get killed by the same radscorp, before the merchant finished it off. But now, three days later, the radscorp will be back... and have much less to contend with. I for one don't like feeling that the game is a race to do everyone I want to with NPC's before random spawns kill them all off.

More Legion in Nelson was cool... the ghoul on the road east out of Nipton seemed a little out of place... watching a fire gecko and golden gecko duke it out while a giant radscorp killed them both was just a bit odd...

So yeah - for myself, it feels fun at parts, but too much too often to be a good trade off for my game. Ultimately up to you how you want to balance it, since others seem to like it this way. I'll just end up with the same wish that I had in FO3 -- the want for more spawns, but only a few, not enough to make me feel like I'm in a heavily populated lush environment with skirmishes going on around every corner.

There will definitely be a balance to be had with the more spawns module.



I used more randomized spawns than Obsidian did so it often can happen. Ill take a look at those ghouls east of Nipton.
What surprises me most is that nobody seems to have mentioned the increased likely hood of encountering random death claws now. I am not against the idea of placing more armed guards around smaller settlements. Keep the feedback coming I am taking notes

Well, after playing a little more I have to agree on some points. Named NPCs getting killed svcks. But as I said, I use Populated Wasteland, which adds more guards to most camps and settlements, so I've only seen those getting killed so far (don't know if they respawn, they should in my opinion). And the critters fighting each other does get somewhat annoying after a while. Maybe make them non-hostile to one another? Geckos at the very least shouldn't fight each other (although I haven't witnessed that personally).
Possible solution for users who find the increased spawns add too much life to the wasteland: Give spawns a chance to not spawn at all (or increase the chance if it exists already), then people would still see more enemies, but not quite as many and maybe not in such close proximity to each other (thus reducing the chance of critter battles). Then, when you come to the same area again you just cleared out, those spawns could now have placed creatures, making it a little more enjoyable to travel the same route multiple times (for those of us who like to keep fast travel to a minimum). Does this sound at all possible/plausible/rational? (I'm tired)

Yeah that is all possible/plausible/rational. Most of the things you are mentioning are things that FO3 MMM covered by applying more complex spawn rules such as spreading monsters out if they are likely to fight each other. Ultimately this module will be toned back considerably in the coming versions once Martigen gets his feet on the ground. I may even pull things back just a little in some locations to reduce the deaths of named npcs and things of that nature in the next version update.

For now Ill look into simple solutions to many of the above problems.

Hey everyone
I have couple questions about not just the state of this overhaul but to gather general opinion about New Vegas overhauls right now. I know that I personally seem to have a relatively conservative view about the changes I make to the game. This is pretty obvious when looking at Arwen's overhaul for example. I simply don't see the need to change things like how fast I run backwards, perhaps its because I have not tried it.

In a sense I personally want to see a ipso-facto overhaul emerge like FCE like with FO3's FWE. I think that the term overhaul is being used too far out of context lately. I am guilty of this myself... I don't think going through and revising how much rads and regen you get from food and modifying a handful of global variables actually constitutes an overhaul honestly.

In a lot of ways I am asking for general opinions on what I am mentioning here. But also what are things that you think I should change? Should I try to see about assisting with FCE if that is possible? Continue moving forward with changes for this mod? From what I understand FWE is a compilation of sorts. That it is possible to contribute to the ipso-facto overhaul by simply focusing on more specific modules like the super advanced needs mod that Imp is working on right now.

If I am to list my main gripes with the game it would look something like this.

1. You can carry too many guns in vanilla game...
2. Item rarity, vanilla food stims ammo ect are far too common...
3. Want the wasteland to be more populated with friends and enemies...
4. Want combat and damage to feel more realistic...
5. Food/drink, amount gained from eating drinking, no regen, radiation more meaningful...
6. Bottle caps harder to obtain and maintain, vendors buy for less and sell for more...
7. Repairing items to be more meaningful...
8. Less weightless items like stimpaks and pre war money...

Overall I just want the game to be considerably harder but other than the above gripes I start to draw blanks on things I really want to see changed. I mean I can see a desire to better balance hand to hand weapons and energy weapons. What are other major gripes that most people have with the game?

I started using the increased spawns module a couple days ago and have been more than pleased with the results, though personally I would like to see a few more baddies out there. the wasteland should sill be a dangerous place and IMO Fallout should still reflect that in game. I think that is an area in which Bethesda did better than Obsidian did.That's not to say they did a bad job, it's just that there are some things I think they did better than Beth and others that weren't quite as well implemented.

Sorry i'm getting off track here.

I like the idea of keeping everything modular for the reason that I can pick and choose which plugins I can use and which ones I don't need,

I like to see things kept somewhat simple in terms of making the game a little more challenging. Again, IMO when one starts changing too much it kinda stops being fun and more of a chore to play the game.

I really like having combat feel more realistic. A bullet to the head of a raider from a 9 mm pistol is just as deadly as from a rifle. It really should take 5 shots from such a gun to kill you or your opponent. Also armor should reflect a more realistic damage resistance as well. A power armored BOS or NCR soldier should be harder to kill than a merc with only leather armor.

I guess that's all I'll get into now. I just thought I'd add my two cents worth. (probably not even worth that much at that)

Oh yeah, Stmpaks and Radaway healing over time. It's something I liked in some FO3 mods and haven't really seen one I want to use with NV yet.

Alright peeps

It looks like I am strongly considering the prospect of stepping things up a notch for this mod in the next version. This will change some of the core principles and even the name of the mod. Once I begin working on the damage overhaul this will step things up considerably in terms of how much I am going to change. This will mean correctly balancing energy weapons and hand 2 hand weapons. Many modules that exist right now will be consolidated or removed entirely. I have an idea on how I can go about updating DT and damage on all NPCs without breaking compatibility. ( Though its possible I might by hand touch every piece of gear in the game including every weapon for total re-balance as an optional plugin anyway )

I will also be including a slow xp gain, reduced skill points per level, and more locations on the world map. ( Such as Super mutant outposts ect )

Many bug fixes and additions to existing modules and further enhancements to the increased spawns module.
This is coming about as a result of the full implications of the domino effect caused by globally increasing weapon damage. Its a complicated enough venture where at that point I might as well take that one extra step to go all out. At that point this will no longer be a small project. It would become an extensive re-balance of the game.

Any thoughts or opinions on this?

edit: Though I do fully understand your points barrettsfloyd. From what I can tell even if this mod becomes more extensive I want to still allow for modularity and avoid changing things just for the sake of changing them.

You asked for thoughts and opinions, so I'll give you mine. This all comes with the caviat - these are just my personal thoughts and preferences for my own play environment. Everyone likes things differently, and I fully support that - no matter how... "strongly worded" my opinions might seem at times.


All that having been said: I generally avoid overhauls like the plague. Pretty much every overhaul I've seen has aspects that I like... and every single one I've seen has other aspects that I dislike so strongly, that it doesn't make for a worthwhile compromise to get the ones that I do like. In truth, the entire reason that I first started to teach myself modding in FO3 was so that I could pick and choose what parts of XFO I would install in my game environment.

I am also a professional photographer. One of the mottos that I live by is that "less is more" - because being subtle is a lost art sometimes, yet is can have a great deal of rewards. Much of what I work with includes the mentality that an enhancement works at its best when it is "felt but not seen" - ie, you don't notice the difference in a way that you can really put your finger on, but the subtle change impacts the entire visual experience enough that you know you like it better... even if you cannot explain why.

This is something that I see applying to many (most?) mods as well. Yes, IMO there are some substantial things that could be changed to improve FNV - but for the most part I feel that most improvements would be best if subtle. The kind of changes that you can play with for three months, and then have difficulty remembering what parts of the game are mods and which parts are vanilla. This is where most overhauls "go wrong" in my mind. This is also where a lot of mods that don't fit "canon" at all, go wrong in my opinion. Because in the end I do believe that FNV is a very fun game, and quite playable right out of the gate. (Well, OK, I find that DarnUI truly is a must in my book)

That is actually the root of the problem that I had/have with your increased spawns mod -- I don't want this to feel like an entirely new game. I want it to feel like FNV... just a little bit MORE like FNV. The photographic equivalent of increasing color saturation. Do it a little bit, and you really make the colors pop and catch your eye. But do it too much, and your brain focuses too much on, "That color is fake... it doesn't exist in nature"


One of the things that I very much agree with, is that the game needs to be harder - at least for my preference of course. However, I do not agree with using more enemies to balance that. While I do agree that some amount of damage rebalancing could be done here and there, I tend to disagree with how most people approach it -- often I find that people bring a preconceived notion of "how it should work" to the table... often based on some interpretation of reality. Unfortunately, what works in reality does not necessarily make for good gaming - often the two are somewhat exclusive of one another. I mean, if nothing else I'd like to maintain the viability of a character who is largely melee or unarmed based. But if any push for "realism" in combat is going to shift that towards "suicidal" as it is in real life (bringing a knife to a gun fight - and doing so repeatedly).

The biggest thing from a balance perspective in my mind, is resources. Earning caps is too easy in this game (especially with merchants who play caravan using their store as betting fodder - but even without that loophole). Food and water are laughably too easy to come by. Chems are all over the place. Ammo is a tricky one, always has been - make it too scarce, and using fully-auto weapons is simply prohibitively expensive - make it too common, and there is no sense or urgency to be efficient with your ammo use.

My new characters (I'm on number... six right now?) tend to feel more rich than poor, within an hour of gameplay... a feeling that never really passes. (Of course this is why the series of mods that I'm working on right now, all have some element of a "money-sink" involved)


...anyhow... I'm being pulled in multiple directions as I have been typing this, so I apologize if it is a bit meandering... but there are some thoughts for you. Take 'em or leave 'em.

- DU

You struck a deep cord on this comment....
Working in the game industry has showed me exactly this so many times over. Its seems as though its a form of overcompensation that I often have had to struggle with. I have had work pulled from a game just because it was not over the top enough when I often look to level layouts from older games. Being a level designer who has been in the game industry for around 10 years now I have seen the transition from level layouts like Q1Dm3, DM6 and CS DE_DUST the magical art of "less is more" die at the hand of "More is always better" when talking with today's average designer saying the term "choke point" gets a blank response... No, every level must have as many connections as possible to every area and we must all believe that anything made with a team less than 100 people is not fun.

I have seen games like UT die by this motto. Once one of the greatest FPS games ever made now its been tossed aside. And I am watching as future games begin to make the same mistakes. The idea that "More is better" is a double edge sword and it does not necessarily entail the future of game design.

edit: to this day I often look back at a solid level design like DE_Dust or Crash with a tear in my eye.

Agreed.

That is how I feel about most "increased spawns" mods. Yes, more spawns can be fun -- but it is like the old saying, "Anticipation of death, is worse than death itself". In this case, wandering around wondering what, or even when, you're going to meet up with something... is often more powerful, and yes even more fun, than constantly being embroiled with something.

FNV out of the box got this one wrong. Fixed spawn points, and fixed contents of those spawn points makes it all easily predictable. But somewhere there has to exist a happy medium point. IMO, that secret to that happy medium is randomness --- maximize the anticipation and wonder. If there are thousands of spawn points, but most of them only have a 10% chance of spawning something, you're not too likely to memorize where the spawn points are. And if they have a chance of spawning anything between a single mole rat on one extreme, and a 10 man legion raiding party on the other extreme...

...combine that with the fact that sure, the chaos of coming across a couple of groups fighting each other can be fun. But it can also get old. If it is a rare occurance however, then it can still be cool - but also hold onto that wonder and excitement of not knowing how it is going to turn out, for a lot longer (as well as setting you up for the anticipation of the next time you come across something like that).

/$0.02

I might have just figured out a solution to the whole damage overhaul problem. It ended up being simpler to solve than I thought.
There must be a catch or some kind of limitation .. This solution doesn't even break compatibility with anything...

edit: on that note. Other than increasing damage and DT globally what other things do you think should be included with a damage overhaul?

FYI: The new DLC coming out will be raising the level cap to 35. Not sure if this is really relevant to your mod, and I still have no idea if or when it will come to PC and the PS3.

Interesting, I haven't really considered touching the level cap so if/when this dlc comes out for PC it wont cause any conflicts.

Really no reason for you to worry about changing the level cap - easy enough for folks who want that to grab a standalone mod that won't conflict with anything else, for that purpose.

Regarding damage overhaul: Frankly, anything "else" that should maybe or maybe not be touched, depends largely on what exactly you have planned for damage and DT (both the "how to implement" as well as the "by how much do you plan to change things").

Well all the mod does right now is globally increase damage by *3 and globally increase DT obtained through armor by *3. So far the solution is really simple and breaks no compatibility with anything.
Heavy ammo esp needs to be consolidated into this plugin or removed entirely because hollow point and armor piercing rounds need to have their effects increased. Some perks might need adjustment but imo I am on the fence about that honestly since some perks that increase DT were a little over powered anyway.

Now armor is far more important and shooting people in the face matters. ( Thank god I wanted this for awhile )

I was considering other things that I could bring to the table that most other overhauls do such as making it so skill has much less effect on how much damage a gun does and making it so the condition of a weapon much more greatly effects how much damage it does. That is about it really.