I remember playing around with the value because I found it to be still not working but it seems when I set it to 5 it makes it so npcs don't go out in the open anymore to loot something better unless it's something quite extreme. The only problem is npcs with melee weapons don't seem to loot however unarmed do go to loot. Setting the value higher makes unarmed opponents never loot which is something I don't want. Also, if they have a pistol in their inventory and the weapon they were using flies out of their hands they sometimes switch to it in combat but they don't pick up their primary unless their pistol has run out of ammo or shot out of their hand. It just depends on the difference against their primary like Captain Dusk wouldn't use her YK32 pistol over her Barrett XM500 but Captain Gallows would use his Glock 86 immediately when his Multiplas was shot. Not perfect but I'm fine with the results. The weapon mods I have are FWE and 20th Century with the latter being balanced towards FWE damage.
I replied to your private message but I'll post here as well so people can see.
I haven't found NPCs to ignore their currently equipped weapon and pick up new weapons in vanilla. My companions and settlers seem to always use whatever weapon I gave them without trying to pick up new weapons. And because FO4 doesn't have weapon durability unlike FO3, and they don't normally run out of ammo (except companions I think), they have no reason to pick up a new weapon.
If you're sure you don't have any mods that alter combat or AI to make them choose better weapons to make the game more difficult or something, then I can have a look at it.
Heck actually I might do the mod tomorrow anyway. It might not help a lot but it's not hard to do anyway so yeah. But I'd appreciate it if you can let me know if you have any mods that might alter combat or AI in any way.
I replied to your PM as well. But might add here that I have seen Valentine run and pick up a laser rifle in a vanilla unmodded save. So it might still happen in FO4, just very rarely.
Think it mainly affects units with bad or low-end weapons.
I am under impression that NPC's are making good choices, but weapon stats are misleading. For example, they would never choose to use Missile Launcher, despite the huge damage it does. Or Tesla Cannon. In New Vegas Boone never uses his own rifle if he has alternative. Give him 9mm pistol and ammo, and you will never see his rifle any more.
In all of these games on the GameBryo engine (including Oblivion, Skyrim, and FNV) there are very specific calculations, which are directly affected by the GameSettings tweaked by this mod. The effects are more obvious in the Fallout games than Oblivion and Skyrim, because of the settings they are at by default. I suppose the reasoning behind it is so that when an NPC runs out of ammo or breaks their weapon, something more common in Fallout, they will try to look for a weapon, but that's odd because NPCs don't run out of ammo in vanilla (you need a mod to make that happen). The condition of their weapons does go down even in vanilla though, and you can shoot a gun out of their hands to bring it to 0% health, which is ideally when they should be running to look for a new weapon.
In Oblivion and Skyrim, if they run out of arrows they switch to their melee weapon. But if they're standing close enough to a source, such as a chest or a corpse that has ammo or a better weapon, they will pick that up and switch to it.
In all these ames, NPCs will equip based the weapon's raw damage before any bonuses to damage are applied (like by the weapon skill or enchantments in the case of Oblivion and Skyrim). In the Fallout games, they will also never select a gun that they can't find any ammunition for.
In the case of FO3 vanilla companion guns, they are usually designed to be quite weak so that you can give them a new gun and they'd use that instead of their default gun.
Just like I mention in the description, you might sometimes find your companions or a Raider running across the battlefield right into the enemy line to try to pick up a new gun even if they already have a gun with ammo that isn't broken.
You can test the effects of this mod if you like. If you don't like the mod it's completely safe to remove from your save, as GMST (game settings) are reverted to default when mods that change them are removed.
That's odd. The game settings this mod tweaked calculate on the damage stat of the equipped weapon, like how much difference is acceptable between the current weapon and the weapon they want to equip, and reduce the distance at which they look for weapons to replace their existing one. Actually that's all it does.
I have to ask the following common troubleshooting questions: 1. Is the mod activated? 2. What is the damage stat of the weapon your NPCs have equipped, and what is the damage stat of the weapon they picked up instead? 3. Do they have any ammo for their original weapons? 4. Is their original weapon broken? (Lowered condition will reduces its damage too)
If you have a mod that edits leveled lists it could interfere with this mod in an unexpected way. NPCs could be spawning with guns without ammunition, which is a very common issue that would cause them to pick up a new weapon IF this mod is active. Also, if their weapon breaks during combat (shooting a weapon can destroy it), it'll also cause them to pick up a new weapon regardless of this mod's settings.
1: the mod is active 2: charon likes to pick up 10mm pistol instead of using his shotgun, he has ammo. jericho likes the 32 revolver, no idea how much ammo he has. and cross picks up anything even when i have a mod to chnge her original weapon from a laser pistol to laser rifle, dosent matter what i give her either. 3: the original weapons seem fine, they started picking up trash from the frist moment we got into combat, this mod has limited it to only happen in most fights, but it's still going on in the rest of them
Well sadly it sounds like there isn't really anything I can do at this point. This mod's settings are pretty solid and actually extremely restrictive, and if it isn't working for you somehow you either have another mod that's forcing NPCs to act in a way outside of what the settings are able to handle, or have somehow set your GMSTs in-game and the game is reading your GMSTs instead of this mod (save game always takes priority, then mods then vanilla).
Only a few suggestions left. If it still doesn't work with these I don't know what else to tell you.
1. Try disabling this mod, loading your game and saving, exiting the game then re-enabling this mod (a.k.a. "clean save"). 2. Try reloading an earlier save from a time before you even heard of this mod. 3. Similar to above but more extreme (and probably more foolproof), start a new game and see if anything happens.
Lastly, just to clarify, though I think you get it, this mod only limits how much they try to pick weapons up when in combat by altering the game variables. The vanilla values were very weak and allowed NPCs to run to pick weapons up if the weapon on the ground 20 feet away had even a slight damage advantage. It also affects all NPCs actually, not just followers. If they are somehow ordered to pick stuff up (such as the doings of some follower mods), they will ignore this mod's effects.
That said, they shouldn't be picking up weapons for any reason except if their weapon is unusable (broken or out of ammo). If you are observing them to ALWAYS pick up after the troubleshooting I suggested above, then this mod really isn't working for you for some reason, and again there's nothing I can do about it because I'm stumped.
Thanks so much for this mod, my damn companions keep ditching their squad issue weapons for random ones off the ground lol. I would endorse you but i'm a noob and don't know how D:
Well after a while the Endorse button will be available. I think it's only a few minutes after downloading the file. There's also an endorsement reminder that pops up once in a while unless you disabled that.
Yeah, that sort of thing was why I made energy weapons have a fairly large attack multiplier. I got really sick of Enclave troops ditching their laser or plasma rifles for assault rifles. Endorsed and plugged on my mod's page.
Yup I've been using this mod ever since I made it of course and almost forgot about it until I started playing with Apocalypse Armory. There's a lot of cool weapons in there that have alternative functions, like limb damagers and stuff that does knockdowns. NPCs tend to not like equipping those, and will pick something with a higher DPS stat or something. With this mod, they've been using whatever weapon I give them, even if all I give them is a Switchblade with a custom poison enchantment or something.
I am definitely giving this a twirl, because damn it, troopers, you were assigned Service Rifles for a reason and you will like it. If I like it, I'll plug this on my own mod's page.
27 comments
I haven't found NPCs to ignore their currently equipped weapon and pick up new weapons in vanilla. My companions and settlers seem to always use whatever weapon I gave them without trying to pick up new weapons. And because FO4 doesn't have weapon durability unlike FO3, and they don't normally run out of ammo (except companions I think), they have no reason to pick up a new weapon.
If you're sure you don't have any mods that alter combat or AI to make them choose better weapons to make the game more difficult or something, then I can have a look at it.
Heck actually I might do the mod tomorrow anyway. It might not help a lot but it's not hard to do anyway so yeah. But I'd appreciate it if you can let me know if you have any mods that might alter combat or AI in any way.
Think it mainly affects units with bad or low-end weapons.
In Oblivion and Skyrim, if they run out of arrows they switch to their melee weapon. But if they're standing close enough to a source, such as a chest or a corpse that has ammo or a better weapon, they will pick that up and switch to it.
In all these ames, NPCs will equip based the weapon's raw damage before any bonuses to damage are applied (like by the weapon skill or enchantments in the case of Oblivion and Skyrim). In the Fallout games, they will also never select a gun that they can't find any ammunition for.
In the case of FO3 vanilla companion guns, they are usually designed to be quite weak so that you can give them a new gun and they'd use that instead of their default gun.
Just like I mention in the description, you might sometimes find your companions or a Raider running across the battlefield right into the enemy line to try to pick up a new gun even if they already have a gun with ammo that isn't broken.
You can test the effects of this mod if you like. If you don't like the mod it's completely safe to remove from your save, as GMST (game settings) are reverted to default when mods that change them are removed.
I have to ask the following common troubleshooting questions:
1. Is the mod activated?
2. What is the damage stat of the weapon your NPCs have equipped, and what is the damage stat of the weapon they picked up instead?
3. Do they have any ammo for their original weapons?
4. Is their original weapon broken? (Lowered condition will reduces its damage too)
If you have a mod that edits leveled lists it could interfere with this mod in an unexpected way. NPCs could be spawning with guns without ammunition, which is a very common issue that would cause them to pick up a new weapon IF this mod is active. Also, if their weapon breaks during combat (shooting a weapon can destroy it), it'll also cause them to pick up a new weapon regardless of this mod's settings.
2: charon likes to pick up 10mm pistol instead of using his shotgun, he has ammo. jericho likes the 32 revolver, no idea how much ammo he has. and cross picks up anything even when i have a mod to chnge her original weapon from a laser pistol to laser rifle, dosent matter what i give her either.
3: the original weapons seem fine, they started picking up trash from the frist moment we got into combat, this mod has limited it to only happen in most fights, but it's still going on in the rest of them
Only a few suggestions left. If it still doesn't work with these I don't know what else to tell you.
1. Try disabling this mod, loading your game and saving, exiting the game then re-enabling this mod (a.k.a. "clean save").
2. Try reloading an earlier save from a time before you even heard of this mod.
3. Similar to above but more extreme (and probably more foolproof), start a new game and see if anything happens.
Lastly, just to clarify, though I think you get it, this mod only limits how much they try to pick weapons up when in combat by altering the game variables. The vanilla values were very weak and allowed NPCs to run to pick weapons up if the weapon on the ground 20 feet away had even a slight damage advantage. It also affects all NPCs actually, not just followers. If they are somehow ordered to pick stuff up (such as the doings of some follower mods), they will ignore this mod's effects.
That said, they shouldn't be picking up weapons for any reason except if their weapon is unusable (broken or out of ammo). If you are observing them to ALWAYS pick up after the troubleshooting I suggested above, then this mod really isn't working for you for some reason, and again there's nothing I can do about it because I'm stumped.
Enjoy the mod.
Well after a while the Endorse button will be available. I think it's only a few minutes after downloading the file. There's also an endorsement reminder that pops up once in a while unless you disabled that.