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About this mod
Converts the Laser Musket to use only one crank, with upgrades increasing damage at the cost of a longer reload animation. Designed to be as minimal as possible to increase compatibility with other mods that change the Laser Musket (including LMO and overhauls).
- Permissions and credits
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Thanks to Apam, versions 2+ include Rustless and Stock Replacer Laser Musket mods as optional installs for added convenience.
Problem and Solution:
In vanilla Fallout 4, the Laser Musket can be cranked up to 6 times for up to 6x the base damage per shot, making it an interesting weapon on paper. Unfortunately, the gameplay of mashing the reload button repeatedly and frankly insane ammo consumption makes it fall far short of other snipers in almost every way. This mod aims to solve those two issues in the simplest way possible to avoid incompatibilities with other mods.
Why This Mod:
Other mods exist to address the ammunition issue either through infinite charges or using Fusion Cores, but the only way I've seen others try to get around the reload button spam is with semi auto or automatic musket mods. Another common problem with these mods is that they don't play nice with each other or most overhaul mods, requiring compatibility patches to function properly. MusketTweak doesn't require reload key spamming, and plays nice both with your save game and other mods.
A couple nice little side-effects of the changes are that the AI now uses muskets to their full potential (they've always only cranked once), and the shotgun variants make receivers more of a compromise rather than a straight upgrade path.
Specific Changes:
MusketTweak only touches Laser Musket Receivers, which are called Converters with this mod instead of Capacitors (eg. Four Crank Capacitor -> Eight Pole Converter). It also gives specific descriptors of what the Receivers do, in precise % terms. The Laser Musket can now only be cranked once, so it behaves more like the Hunting Rifle than anything else.
Damage per shot now ranges from 60 (2 crank equivalent) to 180 (6 crank equivalent), with reload time sans perks sitting between 2-4 seconds. I didn't scale the reload time exactly with the damage because reloading multiple cranks at once has a faster animation than the initial one, but the actual DPS scaling of the receivers should improve at a similar rate to default.
Note that you can still trigger a multiple reload animation if you spam the button, but it won't impact you as much as you'd think since the secondary crank seems to be largely unaffected by my changes. You can also just get out of the habit of abusing your R key. For compatibility reasons, Muskets will retain the naming conventions determined by your other mods.
The Extended versions change every Musket modification as well as their loose mod misc items, and can be thought of as a total overhaul for the weapon while maintaining compatibility and vanilla balance. Stocks become the only factor for determining sighted sway, with sights only determining zoom and how quickly you can switch between hip and shoulder fire. Barrels are the largest change point, with extended versions gaining a reason for use if you're tight on resources (they have half a beam focuser's worth of range extension compared to bracketed barrels). Bracketed barrels remain the endgame target, but extended barrels can be used without regrets now, especially for outfitting settlers.
Compatibility:
Because of how few mods are incompatible, it's easier to list those.
MT is compatible but not recommended to use with M.D. Wolfe's Laser Musket uses Fusion Cores. (you will consume one Fusion Core per shot with both loaded). Useful Crank (and by extension Project Overlord) is completely incompatible because of the way it handles infinite ammo, but I do recommend it over Crank to Charge if you want an infinite ammo Laser Musket mod with normal crank behavior. I downloaded every overhaul I saw in the first three pages of the category and everything but those mentioned should work fine.
Every other mod should be compatible, including overhauls and Crank to Charge. Included is a compatibility patch for Laser Musket Overhaul as well, though I should warn you that using both together makes the barrel upgrades from LMO significantly less overpowered.
In general, try to load after any other mods that affect the Laser Musket.
Features I'd Like to Include Eventually:
Removing poles from the receiver model to match visuals to the converter pole description
Disallowing the multi-crank animation
Versions:
1 - Only changed Reload Speed and Damage values, if that's all you want then you can stick to this file
2 - Basic files expanded to include receiver Weight and Value changes, Extended files and Apam assets added
2.1 - Fixes LMO-EX Apam stock install error and correctly describes auto and semi-auto receiver damage values.