I wish this had gotten more visibility as it's exactly the mod I'm looking for. No bull, no silly parts (I'm looking at YOU pistol vs rifle gunpowder), no superfluous crafting tables, and it works well. I was sitting on over 2500 rounds of otherwise worthless 5mm ammo courtesy of Ack Ack and the vertibird minigun, but I was able to convert it all into usable 5.56. Very nice!
After taking a year off from Fallout 4 to try other games (not 76, but other games), I'm back into Fallout 4. I've started a commando playthrough using automatic weapons when up close. So, I'm looking into crafting bullets. I hate the idea of using my acid and lead to make new bullets, when I have hundreds of .38 ammo just sitting there. So, I looked for scrapping mods. Yours popped up and looks to be exactly what I need. Thank you for making it and releasing it.
As for which version to pick and your observation about 50% vs 100%... I'm going to go with 67%. I think that's pretty realistic. IMO, if you're converting by hand with basic skills... Will you be able to salvage ALL of your materials, save all of the powder, reuse ever scrap of casing, lead, and primer? No. Will you waste fully HALF of your materials? No.
Imagine how much powder and lead would be sitting around under your table if you waste half of a 400 bullet .38 conversion. Don't light a match and don't slip on those 200 little balls of lead.
This mod is a great idea, reminds me of the many ammo conversion/breakdown mods from New Vegas. One question though: i stumbled upon this mod while searching for one that gives an option to get the 2mm EC ammo (Gauss) more easily, since the ammunition plant recipe for this type of ammo is quite excessive for my taste. I didn't notice it in the description, so it's safe to assume that you didn't add the 2mm EC ammo conversion to the mod?
Edit: it seems it's missing. I've added the recipe by modding the mod itself, since it's pretty easy. For those interested, just load the mod and masters into CK, go to items, constructible objects, duplicate and edit any of the "ammoConversion BAM to [ammo name]" items. Just change the name of the ammo to 2mmEC and set the created object (the final product added to your invenctory) along with the quantity.
Well, the idea with this mod is that since most kinds of conventional ammo use *roughly* the same kinds of materials (lead, brass, copper-nickle, smokeless powder, whatever the heck primers are made of, etc) in *vaguely* comparable proportions, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to be able to break them down and re-make them into another kind of ammo, realism-wise. But the 2mm EC used by the Gauss Rifle is a very different kind of ammo, it's preumably some kind of power cell, along with tiny, magnetic rounds. Lead is not magnetic, so that's probably not involved, there's no reason for it to contain gunpowder, brass, primers, etc. So it wouldn't really make sense to me to convert conventional ballistic ammo into 2mm EC ammo, or vice versa. But if you wanna be able to do that, that cool, I'm glad you like the mod, and I myself often do little personal edits like this to the mods I download, it's good modding practice.
Obviously it's very easy to question the amounts of each ammo type that correspond to a unit of Ballistic Ammo Material in this mod.
One case that particularly confuses me is that I can't figure out if the .45 round is supposed to be understood as more potent than the 10mm round. Given that the .45 round is used in the Submachine Gun, which is clearly modelled after the real life Tommy gun, which uses .45ACP, that cartridge would seem to be the basis of the Fallout .45 ammo. And Chris Taylor seems to have implied that the 10mm in Fallout is based on the real life 10mm Auto cartridge.
Since 0.45 is about 11mm, and since in the Fallout New Vegas DLC "Honest Hearts", the .45 round did more damage, was more valuable and had a higher weight than the 10mm, and since the .45 round in Fallout 4 also weighs slightly more than the 10mm round, I assumed the .45 should generally be understood as a stronger type of ammo than the 10mm.
But apparently, according to Wikipedia the 10mm Auto in real life has between 900-1000 joules of energy, whereas the .45ACP has between 500-800 joules. And Fallout 4 is also petty vague as to what round is to be considered more powerful. The 10mm pistol does 18 base damage, compared to the 24dmg of the pipe revolver, and the 33dmg of the combat rifle, both of which use .45. Does that mean .45 is stronger? What about the Submachine gun, which uses .45 ammo and does 16dmg with its best receiver(Requiring gun Nut 2), compared to the 10mm pistol with a "Hardened Automatic Receiver"(which only requires Gun Nut 1), which has the same automatic rate of fire, and does 18dmg, even though it's a pistol compared to an SMG? Does that mean the 10mm is to be understood as more powerful than the .45? But the Radium Rifle uses .45 and does 27 base dmg, 37 with a Powerful Automatic Receiver, and 60 with the semi-automatic Advanced Receiver, not counting radiation damage. So I guess Bethesda seems to USUALLY think the .45 should be understood as stronger than the 10mm?
I don't know, I find the technicalities of firearms to be confusing, and I find Bethesda's balancing to be really confusing as well.
I've used this mod for a couple weeks and it more than meets my needs. I'm really not interested in an "immersive" ammo crafting experience, so I value this mod's simple two-step process. One could quibble with the conversion yields for a couple ammo types but the basic logic is correct: breaking down a .50 round should produce a lot more reusable material than breaking down a .38 or .10mm round. Offering three versions is a nice touch. I've tried both the 1by2 and 2by3 options; the 1by2 is clearly better suited to playing on Survival mode. Even with a mod like Survival of the Commonwealth https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/31478? active there's still a ton of .38 ammo to be had.
It would be nice if the menus were better organized, but that's not a big deal.
Unfortunatly no. It's only for ammo types that exist in the vanilla game, and the ones that come with Far Harbor and Nuka-World. You can see the ammo types covered in the "Amounts and Perk Requirements:" section of the description. It also does not apply to variants of those ammo, such as the Cryo Verison of the 10mm round added by the Horizon mod. This is because the mod only adds a new item (the Ballistic Ammo Material"), and 22 recipes. Each recipe is just a simple piece of instruction for the game "if you put in these things under these conditions, you get this item out". Thus, there is no way for it work for items other than the ones it's specifically made to deal with.
I don't use New Calibers, although if I saw more demand for it, I guess I COULD try making a patch for it, but that would require some learning and tinkering on my part. Thing is - to my understanding, there are two main types of plugins that Fallout 4 uses, .esp files, and .esm files. The base game and its DLCs are .esm files. Most mods that use plugins are .esp files. An .esp file can use an .esm as a "master file", meaning that it can use items that are in that file, which is why my mod (an .esp) can contain recipes involving ammo types from the base game and its DLCs (which are .esm). But "New Calibers" is also a .esp file, and for whatever reason .esp files are apparently not naturally able to use other .esp files as master files.
Now, there are ways around this, which is why you often see mods that have other .esp files set as their master. The problem is that to make or edit a file that has an .esp as its master, it apparently requires a bunch of crazy work-arounds and technical acrobatics for it to accept the .esp as a master file, something it would normally only do for .esm files. I don't know how to do that stuff at this point, which is why this mod only uses ammo from .esm files. Of course, if you wanted to, you could try to learn how that stuff works and make a patch yourself. Though, if you do make a such a mod, and it's made using my mod as a basis, make sure it uses my mod as a master file as well, so that it requires my mod as well, at least if you're gonna publish it.
Fortunately, patching two mods is not that complicated. First, an esp file can be a master for another esp file. Second, you'll want to create your patch using FO4Edit. There are tutorials on YouTube for just about anything you can do with FO4Edit, and since the user interface has not changed the basic steps for patching two mods are the same whether the game is FO4, Skyrim, or FNV.
It's a bit interesting how most people seem to chose either the 1/2 version, or the 1/1 version. They either want lossless conversion, or they want the relatively punishing conversion ratio of 50%, but not many people seem to chose the 2/3 version, which is in-between those.
Here we go, mod is up. Hope I didn't mess too many things up. The files don't seem to have listed themselves in the order I would have liked them to, but oh well. In case anyone wonders, the way the different cartridges are balanced relative to each other is meant to be some kind of vague compromize between how valuable/useful/powerful the rounds are in game, and how big the actual cartridges are in real life. Hence why the .44 rounds come in the same quantity as the 7.62mm rounds, because whilst the .44 is worth more and is generally more powerful in-game, the 7.62x39mm round in real life is bigger than the .44 Magnum round, so as a compromize, they both come in the same amount. Feel free to tell me your thoughts on the balancing, and how it could perhaps be improved.
13 comments
As for which version to pick and your observation about 50% vs 100%... I'm going to go with 67%. I think that's pretty realistic. IMO, if you're converting by hand with basic skills... Will you be able to salvage ALL of your materials, save all of the powder, reuse ever scrap of casing, lead, and primer? No. Will you waste fully HALF of your materials? No.
Imagine how much powder and lead would be sitting around under your table if you waste half of a 400 bullet .38 conversion. Don't light a match and don't slip on those 200 little balls of lead.
Edit: it seems it's missing. I've added the recipe by modding the mod itself, since it's pretty easy. For those interested, just load the mod and masters into CK, go to items, constructible objects, duplicate and edit any of the "ammoConversion BAM to [ammo name]" items. Just change the name of the ammo to 2mmEC and set the created object (the final product added to your invenctory) along with the quantity.
But the 2mm EC used by the Gauss Rifle is a very different kind of ammo, it's preumably some kind of power cell, along with tiny, magnetic rounds. Lead is not magnetic, so that's probably not involved, there's no reason for it to contain gunpowder, brass, primers, etc. So it wouldn't really make sense to me to convert conventional ballistic ammo into 2mm EC ammo, or vice versa. But if you wanna be able to do that, that cool, I'm glad you like the mod, and I myself often do little personal edits like this to the mods I download, it's good modding practice.
One case that particularly confuses me is that I can't figure out if the .45 round is supposed to be understood as more potent than the 10mm round. Given that the .45 round is used in the Submachine Gun, which is clearly modelled after the real life Tommy gun, which uses .45ACP, that cartridge would seem to be the basis of the Fallout .45 ammo. And Chris Taylor seems to have implied that the 10mm in Fallout is based on the real life 10mm Auto cartridge.
Since 0.45 is about 11mm, and since in the Fallout New Vegas DLC "Honest Hearts", the .45 round did more damage, was more valuable and had a higher weight than the 10mm, and since the .45 round in Fallout 4 also weighs slightly more than the 10mm round, I assumed the .45 should generally be understood as a stronger type of ammo than the 10mm.
But apparently, according to Wikipedia the 10mm Auto in real life has between 900-1000 joules of energy, whereas the .45ACP has between 500-800 joules. And Fallout 4 is also petty vague as to what round is to be considered more powerful.
The 10mm pistol does 18 base damage, compared to the 24dmg of the pipe revolver, and the 33dmg of the combat rifle, both of which use .45. Does that mean .45 is stronger?
What about the Submachine gun, which uses .45 ammo and does 16dmg with its best receiver(Requiring gun Nut 2), compared to the 10mm pistol with a "Hardened Automatic Receiver"(which only requires Gun Nut 1), which has the same automatic rate of fire, and does 18dmg, even though it's a pistol compared to an SMG? Does that mean the 10mm is to be understood as more powerful than the .45?
But the Radium Rifle uses .45 and does 27 base dmg, 37 with a Powerful Automatic Receiver, and 60 with the semi-automatic Advanced Receiver, not counting radiation damage.
So I guess Bethesda seems to USUALLY think the .45 should be understood as stronger than the 10mm?
I don't know, I find the technicalities of firearms to be confusing, and I find Bethesda's balancing to be really confusing as well.
I'm really not interested in an "immersive" ammo crafting experience, so I value this mod's simple two-step process.
One could quibble with the conversion yields for a couple ammo types but the basic logic is correct: breaking down a .50 round should produce a lot more reusable material than breaking down a .38 or .10mm round.
Offering three versions is a nice touch. I've tried both the 1by2 and 2by3 options; the 1by2 is clearly better suited to playing on Survival mode. Even with a mod like Survival of the Commonwealth https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/31478? active there's still a ton of .38 ammo to be had.
It would be nice if the menus were better organized, but that's not a big deal.
Many thanks!
This is because the mod only adds a new item (the Ballistic Ammo Material"), and 22 recipes. Each recipe is just a simple piece of instruction for the game "if you put in these things under these conditions, you get this item out". Thus, there is no way for it work for items other than the ones it's specifically made to deal with.
I don't use New Calibers, although if I saw more demand for it, I guess I COULD try making a patch for it, but that would require some learning and tinkering on my part. Thing is - to my understanding, there are two main types of plugins that Fallout 4 uses, .esp files, and .esm files. The base game and its DLCs are .esm files. Most mods that use plugins are .esp files. An .esp file can use an .esm as a "master file", meaning that it can use items that are in that file, which is why my mod (an .esp) can contain recipes involving ammo types from the base game and its DLCs (which are .esm). But "New Calibers" is also a .esp file, and for whatever reason .esp files are apparently not naturally able to use other .esp files as master files.
Now, there are ways around this, which is why you often see mods that have other .esp files set as their master. The problem is that to make or edit a file that has an .esp as its master, it apparently requires a bunch of crazy work-arounds and technical acrobatics for it to accept the .esp as a master file, something it would normally only do for .esm files.
I don't know how to do that stuff at this point, which is why this mod only uses ammo from .esm files. Of course, if you wanted to, you could try to learn how that stuff works and make a patch yourself. Though, if you do make a such a mod, and it's made using my mod as a basis, make sure it uses my mod as a master file as well, so that it requires my mod as well, at least if you're gonna publish it.
In case anyone wonders, the way the different cartridges are balanced relative to each other is meant to be some kind of vague compromize between how valuable/useful/powerful the rounds are in game, and how big the actual cartridges are in real life. Hence why the .44 rounds come in the same quantity as the 7.62mm rounds, because whilst the .44 is worth more and is generally more powerful in-game, the 7.62x39mm round in real life is bigger than the .44 Magnum round, so as a compromize, they both come in the same amount.
Feel free to tell me your thoughts on the balancing, and how it could perhaps be improved.