Give Feedback
0 of 0
About this mod
Fixes the flaw with Nuclear Anomaly that permitted the explosion to outright kill the player character. Optionally makes the player character's limbs and armor immune to the explosion's damage.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
Nuclear Anomaly Won't Kill You
This mod fixes the flaw with Nuclear Anomaly that permitted the explosion to outright kill the player character. There's also an optional, highly recommended version of the mod that makes the player character's limbs and armor immune to the explosion's damage, among other things.
The problem
Nuclear Anomaly, in its vanilla iteration, is considered a waste of a perk for several reasons:
I personally found the idea of Nuclear Anomaly to be very appealing, within the context of Fallout's world: If combat gets so intense that you drop precipitously low in health, you literally explode like a small nuke. You become a being that your enemies will truly regret trifling with. Having a couple more stats capped is really just bragging rights compared to such a unique and menacing power.
But obviously the perk was designed in a hurry, somewhat ill-conceived, and barely tested. This is so obvious, in fact, that there really cannot be any arguments against fixing and tweaking the perk to perfection, or as near to it as the game will permit.
The solution
The most immediate flaw is the main one this mod fixes:
That is what the "Vanilla Version" of this mod does. Everything else is the same as vanilla. But I strongly recommend the "Corrected Version" of the mod, which boasts the following:
Let's break these features down.
Making the case for Nuclear Anomaly over Almost Perfect
At level 30, the choice is between Nuclear Anomaly and Almost Perfect. In fact, however, if one takes advantage of the No Weaknesses perk at level 24, followed by a few Intense Trainings, one can end up with every SPECIAL stat capped except Charisma (6) and Perception (7), and still possess the mighty Nuclear Anomaly. The meta for achieving this is quite rewarding. It is my hope that some folks will view this mod as an excuse for trying out a new way of building their character from the ground up.
Requires:
Fallout Script Extender, unless using the Vanilla Version.
Notes:
This mod fixes the flaw with Nuclear Anomaly that permitted the explosion to outright kill the player character. There's also an optional, highly recommended version of the mod that makes the player character's limbs and armor immune to the explosion's damage, among other things.
The problem
Nuclear Anomaly, in its vanilla iteration, is considered a waste of a perk for several reasons:
- At level 30, one has to choose between Nuclear Anomaly and Almost Perfect, the latter of which carries the potential to cap every SPECIAL stat. For many players, that settles the question right away.
- One has to find their hitpoints somewhere between 0 and 20 for Nuclear Anomaly to trigger. Given that players can end up with over 600 hitpoints by the time Nuclear Anomaly is available, 20 hitpoints is already an absurdly narrow range.
- A disappointing proportion of the time, Nuclear Anomaly's explosion will outright fail to damage the player, nearby NPCs, or both.
- Most dealbreaking of all, on any difficulty higher than Easy, one is almost guaranteed to be outright killed by Nuclear Anomaly's explosion, in spite of safeguards put in place specifically to prevent that.
I personally found the idea of Nuclear Anomaly to be very appealing, within the context of Fallout's world: If combat gets so intense that you drop precipitously low in health, you literally explode like a small nuke. You become a being that your enemies will truly regret trifling with. Having a couple more stats capped is really just bragging rights compared to such a unique and menacing power.
But obviously the perk was designed in a hurry, somewhat ill-conceived, and barely tested. This is so obvious, in fact, that there really cannot be any arguments against fixing and tweaking the perk to perfection, or as near to it as the game will permit.
The solution
The most immediate flaw is the main one this mod fixes:
- The player character will no longer die from Nuclear Anomaly's explosion.
That is what the "Vanilla Version" of this mod does. Everything else is the same as vanilla. But I strongly recommend the "Corrected Version" of the mod, which boasts the following:
- The player character will no longer die from Nuclear Anomaly's explosion.
- The player character will no longer suffer limb damage from Nuclear Anomaly's explosion.
- The player character's armor will no longer take damage from Nuclear Anomaly's explosion.
- Nuclear Anomaly will trigger when the player character hits 20 percent health or below.
- Nuclear Anomaly's visual effect will now include the Mini Nuke mushroom cloud when outdoors.
Let's break these features down.
- Obviously the player character was never meant to die from this perk.
- Limb damage may or may not have been intended, but the canonical description for the perk doesn't say anything about limb damage. The perk does, on the other hand, heal the player up to 20 points, i.e. beyond the vanilla threshold for Nuclear Anomaly triggering. Based on this, plus the fact that the explosion outright destroys the player's legs normally, I felt it was obvious that limb damage would have been avoided if enough care had been lavished on the perk. Beyond canonical considerations, keeping limb damage prevents the perk from being any fun at all.
- Likewise armor damage. I feel that if the perk's author had been able to come up with a way of sparing the armor, they would have, and keeping armor damage in kills the perk's fun.
- The 20 hitpoint threshold literally only makes sense on the lowest difficulties and in scenarios that don't involve heavy-hitting NPCs. I'm convinced that the value of 20 is the result of limited testing in semi-god-mode conditions. Modifying this to 20% is perfectly satisfactory.
- The mushroom cloud is actually meant to appear. The reason it fails to is due to an obscure game engine limitation that was an unexpected headache both to troubleshoot and to work around.
Making the case for Nuclear Anomaly over Almost Perfect
At level 30, the choice is between Nuclear Anomaly and Almost Perfect. In fact, however, if one takes advantage of the No Weaknesses perk at level 24, followed by a few Intense Trainings, one can end up with every SPECIAL stat capped except Charisma (6) and Perception (7), and still possess the mighty Nuclear Anomaly. The meta for achieving this is quite rewarding. It is my hope that some folks will view this mod as an excuse for trying out a new way of building their character from the ground up.
Requires:
Fallout Script Extender, unless using the Vanilla Version.
Notes:
- The mod does not and cannot fix the issue of Nuclear Anomaly's explosion occasionally failing to touch the player or any nearby NPCs. I have tested this extensively. Even launching a Mini Nuke directly at one's feet will occasionally produce the same result: The blast just misses some NPCs outright. It is a flaw in Fallout 3 and any fix would probably require creating a convoluted script to outright take the place of the game's built-in explosion engine. The behavior has some predictability: If it fails in a certain location, generating another explosion in the same spot will fail the same way again.