PREFACE:
I'm not going to lie and say that there's no ego involved -- there is, nor I'm not after fame, glory, reputation, but rather I try to avoid those as the point of my mods. I fancy myself as a modding Giant, not in a sense of being prolific, but rather as the shoulder people would stand on. I see my mods as the contribution to the community, as we as individuals unite to create it.
I built WO-S because I wanted that, if i were to leave FO4 Modding, eventually, as we all move on with our lives, or to different games, I have left the best and most stable version, and most modder-friendly as I can get it to be.
The Realistic Elephant in the Room:
Spoiler:
Show
Realism or "muh-realism" is a pervasive attitude within the community, which I actively dislike. Personally, I would really like to just ignore Gun-Snobs, people are entitled to their preferences you know, it's common-sense to just download what you fancy, and ignore what you don't. But having been modding for years, this pervasive attitude doesn't just live on it's own, but knocks on people's doors, entering uninvited, and insists on their preferences, even if obviously it's not for them.
People drop their realism trivia -- even if nobody fucking asked -- and often, it's not even that accurate: such as in my other mod about a raider Grenade-Launcher, and some asshole pointed out grenade-launchers don't fire buckshot due to pressure, ignoring that Shotgun Shells are low pressure, and a buckshot 40mm ammo exists called the M567. People complain that you don't contribute to their need for realism, such as in my previous mod Peppermill Crank Gun, and some guy complained that I did such. People complained, why did I put a scope on a Double-Barrel for being a shotgun, despite it having an option to rechamber to 50-Cal that time.
People nitpick your weapons and mechanics in the matter of how realistic it must be, that every small detail of the weapon is judged for it, regardless of how fun it would be -- like, just buy a real fucking gun? This shit is fucking annoying, I didn't asked for your opinion, and obviously did not intend the weapons and system to be realistic. You would think that, "they're you're patrons, you should be nice", no I don't, and I don't want too -- I'm a person too, and I have my limits.
All that mods that add so much caliber, just for the sake of being the right caliber, might be fun for the gun-snobs looking for realism, but that just does not make sense from the point of trying to have a good gameplay. Sure I add 30-06 and 12.7mm, as well as the 25mm, these are extra complexity -- but only as a different currency for different weapons. I don't see the ammo-system as point for Realism, but rather Ammunition itself as a concept is the cost of using the weapon, and the ammo-system as expansion for ammo-type is a different way to use the same weapon. It works as a reward for those willing to buy it, look for it, or create it.
/rant
About the Main System:
The point of WOS is simplicity and modularity from the Modder's perspective. Oh it still needs a bit of integration, but it's more of a tool-box. The base esm, the foundation, while houses a bits of bauble, it is also implemented like an attachment pack. Since I was going to tinker with the internals anyways, I might as well. A bit of 180 from the Weapons Overhaul Redux, the WOS-Lite is the simplification instead. Though the inner-workings is complex, it is conceptually simple and user friendly.
I went with the modular route of separating the intended experience into (Sub) Systems, that users can change how involved they want to be. See, there were some requests to make a mod that has separate ammo-system, as my selection can be so cluttered, and they didn't want that. But if I disabled the ammo-system, I also disable basically the only thing that the Heavy-Weapons, being the Missile-Launcher, Harpoon, Fat-Man, and Broadsider, going for them.
I approached the mod with modularity in mind, and this also extended onto the attachments and properties, leading me to certain techniques.
Actor-Values - these kind of work, and they were my original attempt. But as it turns out, the AVIF does not immediately update the damage card in real time, so I had to revert to the good-old keyword system, that has premades. Those that aren't listed in the damage card can stand using the AVIF system though. Likewise I approached the Core Consumption with AVIF, but the problem is that the require reloading immediately just as you pull them out, so I wasn't going to do that. But for the most part, it works, it really really really works.
Obviously though, it still requires a fair bit of integration, as the necessary steps must be put in place for the systems to work. It doesn't make a lot of conventional sense to have a 180mb attachment lying around, but it not do anything.
About the Lite System:
Unlike before, the "Receiver-Trigger" is the combination of Damage-Receivers, and the Trigger-Receiver, as intended by the Vanilla FO4, sans the other modification, that is for another category. I chose this to simplify the damage receivers and the trigger receivers, so that there's a distinct power difference, and level requirement.
The "Frame-Misc" is the combination of Frame, and other stuff, as well as the AP Trigger into the Frame-Misc. It's my way of giving it some special ability, without having to resort to expanding the modifications so much like I did before.
The "Brutal" Receiver was something I just came up with, and then reworked last minute, while the +100% limb damage sounds nice, I look at it as the direct opposite of the "Calibrated" Receiver, not in effect, but in concept as something that improves consistency, the Brutal Receiver is inconsistent by introducing Critical-Hit outside of VATs, but has weaker critical damage as a result -- this means the Brutal Receiver is about running the numbers. It also has the indirect effect of making the Critical Legendaries such as Cryo a LOT LOT more useful, because you can freeze them outside of VATs, and if you have a rapid-fire weapon you can certainly run the numbers.
I went with "Barrel-Muzzle" on the purpose that I see that a lot of muzzles go unused and people gravitate to two things anyways: Muzzle-Brake and Suppressor. I think unless people looked under the hood, they wouldn't even notice that the Compensator, though seems like doing Muzzle-Brake but worse, actually has an adjustment to the recoil profile, not just reduction in Muzzle Climb. And thus to simplify things, when possible, I combined the barrel selection into these, as follows: Stub, Short, Long, Heavy, Long-Ported, Short-Ported, Long Suppressed, Short Suppressed; these are the standard barrel combination that offers true variety.
With "Mag-Caliber" I combined Calibers and Magazines on the purpose that I can directly change their capacity. The problem with previous iteration is that, I had to play around with the ammo-capacity with the same magazine attachments, but with how the engine worked, the capacity of those that meant to have low capacity gets bloated anyways. By combining the calibers and magazine directly, I can just change that with no fuzzing about.
I chose to be rather stingy with rechambering options this time around, for the purposes of making the weapon selection feel more purposeful and diverse, that you have to switch to a specific weapon to be able to use specific ammo. It's like when you got .38 on the Sub-Machine Gun, why would you use the pipe-guns? And in fact many people don't. These weapons are now instead implemented as separate weapons, as opposed of the hassle of changing the weapon fundamentally dynamically between calibers. Albeit the Combat Shotgun is still able to switch between .30-06 as Combat Rifle.
About the Heavy System:
The Heavy System has a built-in ammunition system, separate from the Ammo-System, because custom ammos is basically the main thing that makes them relevant. The heavy-weapons are an inflexible bunch, a one-trick pony that just shoots a big-ol round, doing heavy damage. By adding different ammunition type, along with different fire-modes, the weapons can be tweaked and used for far more cases, and for far longer.
I went with high attack damage for the Missile-Launcher, that it requires now a bit of accuracy as you lose a lot more damage if you don't land. This is because of the annoying phenomenon that is the Explosive Damage-Bloat. Okay let me explain, the way I had been doing it is how the Vanilla FO4 doing it, which is multiplicatively, but the problem is that there is this unexplained doubling of damage when you have more than one source of explosive damage bonus, such as in the case of Heavy-Gunner + Demolitions Expert Perk; and it doubles EVERY additional explosive damage multiplier.
So if you got Heavy-Gunner + Demolitions Expert + Explosive Bobblehead, it isn't just (2 x 2 x 1.15) = 4.6x, rather it's (2 x 2 x 1.15) x 2 x 2 = 18.4x, so with the Missile Launcher doing 135 damage, it's not 621 splash + 15 direct damage, it's 2484 splash + 30 direct damage actually. Now that seems fine since the Missile-Launcher is kind of single-shot, or three, or four, and has heavy ammo, but that ain't good for the Explosive Legendary mod, and if i were to give the missile-launcher damage-receivers, as adding multiple sources will certainly give it runaway bloat.
The Ammo-System Journey:
The Ammo-System is a long long journey.
It started from the basic Rechambering system, as the natural and logical conclusion of it, where Bethesda didn't do the rechambering system quite right, that it only added 75% of the base-damage while using a rarer and more expensive ammunition -- take the Hunting-Rifle for example, deals 37 base, which means the 50-Cal does 64.75 damage, while the closest upgrade of the 308 is at 55.5 -- now who in their right mind will pay for rarer heavier 50-cal for mere 9.25 damage difference? And thus the Multiplicative damage system is approached, where there's proper damage scaling between ammunition.
Now the problem with perk system is that, the perk has to be present somehow and so at first I went with a MGEF-ENCH which worked well enough but the issue is that it doesn't dynamically update with the stat-card and thus it has to be injected. And so ends the Multiplicative Damage, and now into the Ammo-System.
The Ammo-System started first as just some attachments, okay cool that's fine, but it had to expand to requiring specific ammo types, and it also needed to be dynamic. Firstly, I don't want F4SE. I know it's convenient, but I am after compatibility, as I would prefer it if it can also be used by Consoles.
I don't want to shit on other mods, but something like Loads of Ammo, has it's short-coming on dealing with the in-engine problem that the weapons aren't detected as separate instances, and so when you attach the mod it'll attach it to one "random" -- being IDK how it is done -- weapon of the stack, which means it's anybody's guess which weapon will get the attachment, so it' was a common solution to only have just one of the weapons in there. That's not good enough for me, but IDK how to tackle it either, that is when I found the approach of this random modder -- which I unfortunately cannot locate anymore, nor remember the name -- had this in his code how to tackle this, and that is by counting the weapons one-by-one into temporary containers, isolating them until the weapon is unequipped which meant that the weapon is indeed isolated. And thus the first iteration of the ammo-switching system was born.
Problem now is that there's near 200 ammos in my mod, like WTF? My first try was separate ammo-switchers, which exactly had the same amount of switches as you had ammo, which ain't good. That needed a solution, first was just a perk-based system of detection in an alch that basically had all the MGEFs, and thus the 2nd' iteration was born. Now in WOS, it's much more universal that led me to use FormListID system.
About the Ammo System:
> The Variety - I didn't go after different specific bullet-head types, like JSP, Wadcutter, SWC, JHP, RIP, Surplus, Magnum Buckshot, etc. etc. The problem with these rounds is that, they are visually and functionally the same with little differences to be worth the bother. It's not like you can mix and match them in a single magazine, and rock-and-roll with different effects, no the ammo attachment is highly specific and having multiple types but handful amount like 1 to 3 of each type is ultimately just getting in the way of play.
I chose to have niche-based specialized ammo-types that combine aspects, like Incendiary + Tracer, Depleted Uranium being Radium + Armor-Piercing, Surplus with Sneak-Attack damage bonus and inherently suppressed; etc. etc. Ammos being different fundamentally, also change the weapon use fundamentally instead of just rehash of the same application, and to that I find them more interesting.
> Crafting System - With the privilege of making a system from the ground up, I introduced ammo crafting system like that of the New Vegas, but not quite. I removed the need for the primer and the powder, and simply made it as simple "Casings". Casing to ammo is not 1:1, while unimmersive to the gun-snobs out there, gameplay-wise it's too complicated to have 1 casing for every 1 ammo type, so instead I made it so that the casings are universal, and some ammo type takes more than others.
The crafting system of FO4 is a bit limited, as it can only create 1 type of object at a time. I went around it through the use of item-injection. Remember the bobby-pins and the Vault-Suits on packs? You basically craft one of these, and then once in the inventory, it unpacks, that gives you multiple items. This also means that scrapping can be done easier because it instead references to a more universal item.
> Shotgun Double Fire - Buckshot, Dragon's Breath, and Coinshot can fire both barrels, consuming two rounds when available. The Double-Fire is this elusive mechanic that I had been chasing from the start. First I approached it by a straight-up double-ammo, afterwards as burst-fire that wouldn't quite work with VATs, and then now I settled with a script that consumes extra ammo on shot while doing double damage.
> The Overpowered in the room - Arguably many are overpowered, and they are, for reasons of scarcity. Yeah they are craftable, but if you've been playing without cheats, resources are scarce.
> Armor-Piercing Slug - While slugs do exist for shotgun shells, I chose to add an Armor-Piercing effect in addition to knock two birds with one stone as opposed of having dedicated ammo, like the Incendiary-Tracers.
> The Trick - The "Trick-Shot" Round, roasted by PancuroniumB, for being "Aim-Bot" rounds, as if it is what it makes it broken, but I disagree. Chain-Lightning, is already used and arguably done better by the Tesla Rifle by far more common ammunition with higher damage.
The consideration of the auto-aim round is simply far more complicated than just they home in, as it comes with big drawbacks such as being unable to headshot on subsequent bounce, couple that with inherently low damage, it's saving grace is merely increased sneak-attack damage to hammer in the point home that it's for catching people unaware.
Why it comes with damage reduction is a matter of the Chain-Lighting system itself, that two additional bounce means it's effectively 3x your normal damage, x4 if you headshot your first-target, and just 2x if you made it bounce off a wall -- so right there you are already incentivized to have good aim. Because of that, the Trick-Shot round isn't the be-all-end-all ammo, it's rather niche and has a very specific playstyle. I chose the low-caliber ammunition to give them a niche once stronger weapons are coming out.
> The Match Round - Point of it is basically the beefed up Overpressure rounds, for incredibly long distance. That is just it, the niche of the basically the sniper-round of the Overhaul. Though I have approached it like Metro franchise, that it's prohibitively expensive and as a result is used as currency. This is because I simply can't find a use of them either as too rare to matter, or just a bit weaker than the API instead. By using them as currency, I can make them far more common than they should be, and thus they are more available to use but just simply more economical to be sold.
> Economical Rounds - Inspired by Metro, it started out as the Dirty Rounds for rifle rounds, really cheap and sold in bulk. I expanded it to the Special Rounds for the magnum rounds, and the energy variants; the Extinguisher for Cryo, and the Cold-Fusion for plasma. It's designed in game as a low-cost alternative to standard ammunition, and to saturate the area with it.
Originally, it was just low damage, but now it's painfully low-damage, that has increased recoil and reduced accuracy, with bonus damage to Vermin and Raiders to recuperate a bit of that damage. Without degradation, this is simply the best that it could be.
> Subsonic and Trick Rounds with Sneak-attack bonus -- I wanted an "overpressure" for rifles, but I don't want it to be basically just a Violent legendary in ammo, so subsonic is my approach. Yeah it deals bonus damage, but like the Trick-Shot Round, most of it's usefulness comes with the Sneak-Attack bonus. This is to make it so that it's best used with Single-Shot weapons, while the bonus damage still serves to beef up the DPS.
> The Armor-Piercing Incendiary - I could not make a wall-penetrating projectile, so instead I just approached it with explosives. LOS-Ignoring explosion means you can hurt enemies at the other side, but this is really just useful in defilade.
> The Plasma Rounds -- the one for the 500-Mag and 44-Mag is my attempt to give them an "Overpressure" rounds to the magnum ammo. But I didn't want it to be basically just a magnum of a magnum, so instead I added some skill involved. Originally I planned Trick-Shot ammo with the 44-Mag and the 500-Mag instead, but at the time I was iffy in using the Chain-Lightning system because I don't want it to hit more than twice. But I've since moved past that reservation since I utilized it with weaker ammunition instead.
> The Frag Round - The Frag round is exclusive to 50-MG, 500-Mag and 12.7mm, it is basically their Overpressured ammo, but with splash damage. The 50-MG Frag is of late addition, as the AP-I largely functioned as such. But with the explosives rebalancing, I felt that I could make 50-MG have it's own splash-damage ammo while I can re-focus AP-I into delivering damage through walls.
> The Pulse Round -- is merely just from FNV, as I wanted, the Shotguns are the most versatile weapon in the game. Anti-Robot is just something logical following the Dragon's Breath which is anti-ghoul, and AP Slug for hunting,sniping, and anti-armor.
> That Smarts - On the side of the Smart Rounds, which is different altogether, could not subvert cover, and is purely for homing in. Typically found on large-caliber weapons, it's main draw is that it's more the matter of investment; the ammo requiring Recon Scope to do full damage and increased VATs would basically already locks you out on certain attachments; and the lack of headshot means it's going to hamper your damage output to some degree.
> Optimized Core/Cell/Cartridge - Basically Match Round for energy weapons, though it's not that expensive and as such not a currency. While Overpressure is basically Violent legendary in ammo form, Optimized is basically Rapid + VATs Enhanced + Lucky in ammo form. It's main use primarily is to top-up the low firing-speed of certain attachments like Sniper or Charging barrels, or make them more accurate as a result.
> Microwave Cell/Cartridge/Core - While I like FO-NV ammo selection, I just don't want to follow their exact selection. It's the Optimized, Overcharged -- without weapon condition, the ammo selection seems to be moot. So I thought of something else, a bit more unorthodox choice of making enemies explode upon death as useful crowd-control ammunition far cry from the Overcharged rounds. It is also useful against robots, to have a different effect between Organic and Non-Organic. Initially it dealt damage, but that quickly stacks up when you managed to spread it out that makes it too in tune with weak-damage rapid-fire weapons, so instead I changed the mechanics into a pseudo Furious legendary that encourages focus-firing on a single target to maximize damage, while they still explode on death, it's merely stagger. This has allowed me to also give the Gatling Laser it's own Microwave.
> The Quantum - The Rechargeable Cells and the Quantum Cores were also roasted by PancuroniumB, it's the laser equivalent to the series of ammunition I call "Economical" rounds, largely for Survival Play where ammo have weight. While yes, Quantum and Rechargeable are unlimited, but also very rare -- to the point that you are just better off crafting it -- and you can only craft it once you get the Nuka-Nuke schematics -- so what will happen if you didn't get it?
> Davy-Crockett and Nuka-Rocket - Basically rocket version of Nukes. It's not complicated. Though generally the Nuka-Nukes and Mini-Nukes have insanely higher AOE fitting their nature, the Nuka-Rocket and Davy-Crockett has smaller AOE, and has faster projectile speed that meant double range. This means that they are comparatively safer to use as you can fire them a lot closer without harming yourself and you can reach for farther.
> Low-Yield Nukes - Economical is one of the ammo types I am also trying to integrate. Having buffed Nukes to ludicrousness -- because they are nukes, the Low-Yield seems to be a sensible choice.
> Castle Bravo - Previously Nagasaki (don't ask, it's obvious), while nukes are buffed into ridiculousness, here's one more even more ridiculous ammo. The Fat Man is kind of unimpressive as a nuclear weapon, it's basically just a grenade-launcher that is more powerful, but all things considering it's not THAT powerful, and thusly buffed. Now as for the existence of Castle Bravo, despite already having a properly buffed Mini-Nuke is that of fun and novelty -- that you only get two shells. It's not that common or easy to craft, it's only really available once you finished Liberty Primed, which basically committing to another faction already.
New Mechanics and Other Tweaks
> Multi-Caliber Revolvers - I chose to include multi-calibering the revolvers, that a .44-Mag can fire .45 seamlessly, and so would the .500-Mag with 12.7mm round, purely on realism grounds -- yes I am capable with that too, but also to give revolvers a bit more niche as that utility-based weapons.
But the biggest concern is that they will act basically like Special Rounds, but even weaker, treading on the Economical aspect of the Special rounds. The entire balancing act is largely on the supply and demand, with the .44-SPC being much more abundant while even stronger than .45 and just as strong as the rarer .45 +P would already retain it's niche, and the .45 still has uses on other weapons that are strictly restricted to it.
> The 12-Gauge vs 20-Gauge - On previous mod, I have introduced a new dichotomy of shotgun shells, the 12-Gauge and 20-Gauge shotguns. Actually it already exists within the under the hood to allow different performance between shotguns with respectable fire-rate and capacity and those that have not. But the reality is that there is just too much shotguns in the game vying for the same single ammunition type, and that is the shotgun shell. By having two different shotgun shells means there's less competition between weapons, and because of that, I can make the niche between shotgun types much more pronounced; the 12-Gauge can have it's fire-power, but the 20-gauge can have it's mid-range utility and better controllability -- but both still retain relevance.
> 500-Magnum - 45-70 is largely superfluous, it's basically a 44-Mag anyways. It just makes sense to make the Lever-Action use 44-Mag instead, while relegating the ammo to be more powerful. While yes, having another set of ammunition type can be contrary to my position, but the idea is that it's much more different than just a round with longer case, that the 44-Magnum being more available and with the lever-rifle using it by default means we can keep the complexity of a whole 'nother roster of ammunition without making a weapon complicated to use.
> (SPECIAL) Stat-Based Damage Bonus - I chose to implement this, for the reason of the game lacking a bit of RPG Element. Inspired by the Perception Affects Energy Weapons by argvminusone, I wanted that by default, and with it I expanded with ALL SPECIAL stats. I do believe it's fairly balanced, as I just followed the format of argvminusone, and that seems to be balanced.
> Jamming System - It is not fully implemented sadly, and is in fact disabled by default. It's a remnant of the WO-Redux, but it's something that I felt to be unfun, and somewhat janky. It serves as an artifical cap to capacity by forcing reload, but the jank-part is that it can just be interrupted anyways.
> Weapon Affinity - It is also a part of WO-Redux, and I implemented it as a way to make certain weapons play much better against specific targets -- thereby creating a niche. For example, the 50-MG being an Anti-Materiel ammo will obviously fare better against power-armor, and so does Armor-Piercing weapon; the Harpoon will obviously deal extra damage to mirelurk; 5.56mm and .38 will deal bonus damage against Vermin being bug and molerats; and the Shotgun-Slugs with intent of hunting will fare better against big-game being Super-Mutants, Yao-Guais, Deathclaws, Rad-Scorpion, Mirelurk-Queens, etc. This as a result provides more nuance in using specific weapons.
> Close-Range Shotgun Bonus Damage - Also part of WO-Redux, it's reintroduced at version 1.19.6-AP, whose point being to make shotguns feel good and powerful. Kinda unbalanced? Perhaps, but you're in short range -- 640u is short, 320u is hella short, and 160u is basically melee range where you can be touched by melee right back. I intended increasing armor-penetration this time around, but given the stats it's just more expedient with bonus damage as you'll be doing more net damage anyways. The +25% static NPC-to-NPC damage is a limitation because the GetDistance function only accounts for specific reference, and the only thing I can reliably reference is the player whether incoming or outgoing damage.
> MIRV - The Carpet-Bomb secondary action has glitches, because it can spawn at your feet instead -- as funny as that may be, but it is nonetheless annoying and disruptive. I chose to make it basically one massive shotgun that fires nukes, like FO3 MIRV or FNV Tiny-Tots just to simplify it. The Grenade-MIRV is my attempt for an Economical Ammo for it -- one tends to amass a lot of grenades, why not make use of those as primary?
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