To get the most out of this mod and melee in general, take the few minutes to read the article! You'll be glad you did!
If nothing else, make sure you use the base game Settings menu to set a Power Attack hotkey, and only use that one to parry attacks - otherwise the Countermove and Killmove systems will be locked out!
BREAKING NEWS AS OF OCTOBER 2024: THE HOLY GRAIL HAS BEEN FOUND!
This mod adds HOLD TO BLOCK FUNCTIONALITY, at long last, hallefrickin'lujah Important Note: with that mod, holding block SEEMS like you just twitch as always and stand there doing nothing. It's working. Keep holding block. As long as you do so, you will intercept any and all incoming melee attacks!
Plans for this mod are now to remove my clunky workaround magic invulnerable burst, in favor of recommending their mod be used alongside this one - thereby keeping the Strength scaling for damage reduction, the improved Sync kills, and everything i learned about the Countermove system.
Version 2.2 - hotfix (hotdogfix?) - previous versions silently buffed Dogmeat's base damage. If you're ok with that, no need to update. Purists will want to grab the new file. Version 2.2 OPTIONAL - hee hee - just watch its associated video
Nope, they don't get buffed. IMO the game (all NPCs, humanoid or critter) already has too many stupid advantages in melee, they sure don't need MY help lol.
If you're just looking for them to be overall better or smarter or at least more interesting, I suggest PANPC (Pack Attack NPC Edition) as well as animation enhancers / replacers that can be applied to NPCs. The former replaces braindead Beth AI with a new system, and the latter just gives more variety and looks better.
Thanks for the quick response! Also, yeah, I agree. NPCs have way too much of a melee advantage. Ah yes, block my rocket-powered sledgehammer with your fists.
Some day I hope to also solve the fact that the rocket-powered sledgehammer is the best "stealth weapon" in the game.... since sneak attacks are a plain boring lazy flat multiplier.... so any bladed weapon just dings these damn damage sponges whereas somehow I "sneak attack" a giant flaming roaring brick on a stick with a rocket up its ass....
What is even going on lmao, 8 years spent looking for a solution, now two in one week. That mod you linked is even relatively recent lol
Looking at that mod, it has some critical red flags for anyone keeping their game balanced (or making it harder):
It somehow causes you to block 100% of the damage, always
Blocking is free and infinite with no costs and no downside: you don't drain AP, you can't get staggered no matter how much force hits you, etc.
This all being the case - and the impression i get from the page is that the author isn't interested in making any changes - looks like I'll be combining THREE mods now. This is where we are:
My mod will handle the sync chance increases and the "STR affects your damage mitigation" effect
"The real solution" etc makes blocks cost you AP, and also has a simple ranking system where Behemoths are at the top and small critters are at the bottom, and being overpowered can get you staggered
This newish mod fixes the root cause (the stupid twitch animation) and replaces it with true, visible sustained block
Therefore I think the best thing to do will be to make a compat patch for both mods, with both mods as hard requirements, that blends all three and takes the best features of each.
Hi spacefiddle, thanks for the mod! Are you sure that blocking only stops 25% damage? I mean, it would make sense as there is a bunch of armor mods that supposedly increase the amount of damage blocked but from my tests and different YT videos, it seems that blocking negates all damages. In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qionQMKGXyk), the player fully blocks a behemot and it's from 2015 so it's unlikely to be modded. In a more recent video by Jabbo who plays mostly Vanilla (https://youtu.be/0i3W7ivYU5w?t=971), he blocks Swan and takes no damage. I tested with some raiders and I observed the same thing: all damages are blocked. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm just trying to understand as I'm doing a mod of my own and I just can't get my head around this.
EDIT: So I'm not the only one confused, there is a debate in the comment section of an other mod lol (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/66403?tab=posts)
Well, there's a couple things going on: - In my own experience, I was frequently fighting multiple melee-only mobs - such as Ferals - and getting slapped to death even while blocking. This is what led me to believe that the block only seems to "count" for a very small window such that anyone attacking you half a second before or after you hit the button, hits you anyway, even tho it looks like you're still in the block position. Why Beth changed blocking to this gawdawful twitch-parry i'll never know. We had a real block in Skyrim. The code from Skyrim's HORSES are still in FO4 FFS so why bother to remove blocking??? /tableflip POINT IS, it's possible i did NOT take damage from one of the attacks (it was blocked) and the rest hit me. I'll have to take another look at all this, it's been a while
- There's a number of references to blocking percent, both as a base stat and, of course, all those things that supposedly enhance it, and it's most definitely a base of 25%. Which would make sense, given that there are so many effects that supposedly modify it. But hey, when has Beth ever limited themselves to making sense? Or things that work like they say they do? :P so it's entirely possible the whole thing is broken.
Either way, it's definitely pretty useless vs. multiple attackers (that stupid 2-second twitch really irks me) so this mod would still be useful to 1) make the block cancellable, since now it stops early if you release the button, and 2) that second of damage-immunity burst, when 4 ferals are all trying to stagger-slap you at once. Plus I rather like the knockback effect, it's (the non-silly version) i think is balanced.
Thanks for the reply! I also found out that you can block multiple attacks at once though it's harder and less reliable than with your mod. But yeah, the more I dig, the more I understand how broken a lot of systems are, especially everything related to melee combat. Like how you can't make a sprint attack below a certain threshold of movement speed or how you can't make a simple melee attack while moving above an other movement speed threshold. Modding Fallout 4 is a facepalm fest lol.
There's a number of references to blocking percent, both as a base stat and, of course, all those things that supposedly enhance it, and it's most definitely a base of 25%. Which would make sense, given that there are so many effects that supposedly modify it. But hey, when has Beth ever limited themselves to making sense? Or things that work like they say they do? :P so it's entirely possible the whole thing is broken.
In vanilla (base game), blocking is guaranteed to block 100% of melee damage, survival mode or not, so I can only assume you have a mod that changes that. Your mod should address that, but only if it's based on 25%. Can you tell me where the 25% comes from? At this point I'm sure your mod is just trying to address a problem that doesn't exist but if you can get it to work the way you intend I'd love this mod.
P.S. I did some research while writing this, and it seems that the default value for ArmorBlockPercent is 0, but even 0 is treated as 100% block. Player.SetAV ArmorBlockPercent -30 is 70% block, and at -100 or below blocking is completely disabled, even stopping the attacker's recoil reaction. I'm pretty sure it's a bug in the game where max is expected to be 100 but 0 is referenced instead. Your mod sets ArmorBlockPercent to min 10 max 100 but this doesn't make the mod work.
the attack speed adjustments are defintely just the labels as far as i can tell. timing 10 attacks with different weapons with and without the mod it's the same speed.
hmm i thought it was actually an enforced delay between attacks before you could start the animation again, but i could be wrong. Either way, using The Real Combat Fix with this mod (linked in top stick as well as main page) will solve that problem.
Edit: wait no that's right, i could swear i saw in the CK or xedit or somewhere that those speeds had time values attached to them that influenced the time between "attack finished" and "next attack allowed to start." I'll have to look again.
See the updated top Sticky - my Magic Block workaround is no longer needed. I will be updating this mod to strip it out, while keeping the other changes like Strength scaling, more Sync events, the combat animation conditional fixes, etc. Coming Soon(tm) or possibly Later(tm), but definitely Eventually(tm)!
I have an question, how do I modify this mod so that there's some sort of visual effect when you get off a perfect block? Been messing around in xEdit but I haven't gotten anywhere.
the attack speed adjustments are defintely just the labels as far as i can tell. timing 10 attacks with different weapons with and without the mod it's the same speed.
Is it possible to get the block immunity and counter aspect of this mod because this is causing conflicts with my mgs anim mod all weapons are being reverse gripped. From what I see this mod changed all melee weapons to knife speed which i supposed ties the anims to every 1h weapons. Let me know if theres some way to manipulate the files so the anims don't swap otherwise the rest of the mod is great but the anim switched isn't so good.
I'm trying to modify this with xedit as youve said elsewhere here, as I want to make this compatible with Blocking Overhaul. I like the counter system, and would like to keep it but I'm also using Extended and Cancellable Melee Block- as well as some custom third person animations.
So to both those ends, what would I need to remove for the strength scaling reduction? I've removed the quest, npc edit, weapon edits, and animations changes that overlap, and it seems like I've removed the strength based scaling (probably) but every power attack does an instant kill move.
I guess what I'd like to know, to summarize, are what Xedit records go to which part of the mod so I can keep it functional, while removing the conflicts with blocking overhaul and extended/cancellable block.
Ummmm let's see... oh damn, i guess the update is gonna make people start playing again, guess i better start paying attention....
The strength scaling would almost certainly have to be done with a Perk IIRC. There would be "entry points" with conditionals that kick in depending on what STR the character has, so like "if STR is 10 double melee damage, if STR is 9 add 90% melee damage, if STR is 8 add 80%..." etc. I don't remember how i set it up exactly but it would have to be along those lines; assuming i wasn't a total moron and made a perk JUST for the strength scaling that doesn't have ANY other entries related to any other effects, THEN it should be safe to simply nuke that perk.
If you for example trimmed the quest but still have the effect; it would be prob'ly because in your game the perk was already applied to you and removing the quest that adds it at game start or load, doesn't strip any *actions* that quest took before you removed the quest, if you follow me?
TL;DR look for a perk related to STR and melee damage and murderize it
I nuked the perk, but i also ended up nuking a handful of other things which may have been the issue. Gonna keep experimenting, I think your animation changes may also be a culprit against the ones im already using, in which case no harm no foul.
I'm thinking about using FO4Edit to merge this mod into Melee Mechanics Tweaks (to consolidate these two melee mods and keep my load order clean), but I'm only interested in the Strength-scaled damage reduction for blocking. Exactly which records do I need to copy over in order to leave out the immunity burst?
Edit: Ah, so an easier way to do it would be to simply copy over everything (besides Weapons), then remove the "Mod Incoming Weapon Damage" and "Mod Incoming Spell Magnitude" effects from the Immunity Burst perk? Less chance to break something that way, haha. After fixing the references and testing, everything seems fine....
Yep, you've hit it exactly. With a lot of mods, you'd be amazed at how many invisible perks your character has, as it's often the best - or only - way to get a persistent effect on the player without script spam. And "A perk" can actually be any number of different effects, so pruning out the ones you don't want is fine :)
Great, thank you! I get incredibly paranoid whenever I make even the smallest tweak to a mod.
I really appreciate you making this, by the way. I had no idea blocking only reduced damage by 25% in vanilla. That's ridiculous! You may as well not block at all and just try to dodge. Your solution to this is incredibly sensible. The immunity burst makes sense as a feature, I'd just prefer to go without it and focus on my positioning in combat instead and bottle-necking enemies.
Your mod combined with Melee Mechanics Tweaks may very well make me actually use melee now; in the 1000+ hours I've put into Fallout 4, I've never once used melee as anything other than a backup/utility skill, let alone a dedicated melee build. Having a block ability that actually does something is probably the most important to this. Thanks again!
Looking at that Melee Tweaks mod, I make some of those changes too; for others, I have other mods that do the same or similar things.
I'm not surprised tbh. If you look around the Nexus, there are actually quite a few modders who've all taken a crack at trying to fix how awful melee is in Vanilla. I've never messed with the Collections system, but I'm starting to think I might put one together based on all the best melee improvements i've found. A lot of us wound up overlapping some of the changes we made, but also, each one added something unique i didn't know about too.
These are all my favorites so far - This mod (obviously). Basically everything by Elzee; her grab attack animations are amazing, Faster Getup is another essential by her IMO. The Real Solution for the Broken Melee System is a mouthful but works in conjunction with everything else just fine far as I can tell, as does Third Person Melee Tweak. Pugilism isn't a mechanic so much as a workaround, allowing you to equip gloves as weapons for fisticuffs while adding a whole set of awesome gloves to choose from (including immersive in-game placement of certain sets). I also merged the Cyber Arms mod into mine so that I could use the arms with the boxing buffs. Lastly I have Kicks & Punches and UGO's Slide Kick Only option, as recommended in the sticky post. I think that's all the melee stuff I use...
Not sure, having looked at that new overhaul, they're making some very specific tuning and changes. One thing that will definitely conflict (possibly badly) is that I reduce damage of blocked attacks based on the character's strength; they have a set static list based on the kind of attacker. That could mean one overrides the other - or it could apply both and completely nerf all blocks the way the other author doesn't want to - stuff like that.
If you feel like there are some parts of each mod you like....
Since we have some overlap, but also, each mod does different things... it might be possible to make a blend of them in xedit, removing conflicts, keeping the parts you like from each.
But as far as plain compatability, i think that's not possible even with a patch, as i would have to decide for everyone which parts from which mod to keep.
Honestly the only thing that drew me to the Overhaul was the tier setup; how size contributes to mitigation and prevents blocking entirely against larger enemies. I stuck with your mod for now cause I prefer the multi-block mechanic, I definitely don't agree with the default blocking dynamic, especially if you're wielding something two-handed... I think the ideal setup would be Blocking Overhaul as the base while adding your multi-block mechanic to the smaller tiers for ferals and other humanoids. If that's something you're interested in spending time on I'd love to see a patch, not quite sure how to accomplish that myself yet.
105 comments
If nothing else, make sure you use the base game Settings menu to set a Power Attack hotkey, and only use that one to parry attacks - otherwise the Countermove and Killmove systems will be locked out!
This mod adds HOLD TO BLOCK FUNCTIONALITY, at long last, hallefrickin'lujah
Important Note: with that mod, holding block SEEMS like you just twitch as always and stand there doing nothing. It's working. Keep holding block. As long as you do so, you will intercept any and all incoming melee attacks!
Plans for this mod are now to remove my clunky workaround magic invulnerable burst, in favor of recommending their mod be used alongside this one - thereby keeping the Strength scaling for damage reduction, the improved Sync kills, and everything i learned about the Countermove system.
And if you like a good brawl, you'll love
Combat Zone Restored
Version 2.2 - hotfix (hotdogfix?) - previous versions silently buffed Dogmeat's base damage. If you're ok with that, no need to update. Purists will want to grab the new file.
Version 2.2 OPTIONAL - hee hee - just watch its associated video
If you're just looking for them to be overall better or smarter or at least more interesting, I suggest PANPC (Pack Attack NPC Edition) as well as animation enhancers / replacers that can be applied to NPCs. The former replaces braindead Beth AI with a new system, and the latter just gives more variety and looks better.
Ah yes, block my rocket-powered sledgehammer with your fists.
Some day I hope to also solve the fact that the rocket-powered sledgehammer is the best "stealth weapon" in the game.... since sneak attacks are a plain boring lazy flat multiplier.... so any bladed weapon just dings these damn damage sponges whereas somehow I "sneak attack" a giant flaming roaring brick on a stick with a rocket up its ass....
Go to your room, Todd.
this mod adds hold to block as well why would i use the real melee combat fix over that?
Looking at that mod, it has some critical red flags for anyone keeping their game balanced (or making it harder):
This all being the case - and the impression i get from the page is that the author isn't interested in making any changes - looks like I'll be combining THREE mods now. This is where we are:
Therefore I think the best thing to do will be to make a compat patch for both mods, with both mods as hard requirements, that blends all three and takes the best features of each.
For the lazy, here's that URL made into an actual link ;)
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/82059
EDIT: So I'm not the only one confused, there is a debate in the comment section of an other mod lol (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/66403?tab=posts)
- In my own experience, I was frequently fighting multiple melee-only mobs - such as Ferals - and getting slapped to death even while blocking. This is what led me to believe that the block only seems to "count" for a very small window such that anyone attacking you half a second before or after you hit the button, hits you anyway, even tho it looks like you're still in the block position. Why Beth changed blocking to this gawdawful twitch-parry i'll never know. We had a real block in Skyrim. The code from Skyrim's HORSES are still in FO4 FFS so why bother to remove blocking??? /tableflip
POINT IS, it's possible i did NOT take damage from one of the attacks (it was blocked) and the rest hit me. I'll have to take another look at all this, it's been a while
- There's a number of references to blocking percent, both as a base stat and, of course, all those things that supposedly enhance it, and it's most definitely a base of 25%. Which would make sense, given that there are so many effects that supposedly modify it. But hey, when has Beth ever limited themselves to making sense? Or things that work like they say they do? :P so it's entirely possible the whole thing is broken.
Either way, it's definitely pretty useless vs. multiple attackers (that stupid 2-second twitch really irks me) so this mod would still be useful to 1) make the block cancellable, since now it stops early if you release the button, and 2) that second of damage-immunity burst, when 4 ferals are all trying to stagger-slap you at once. Plus I rather like the knockback effect, it's (the non-silly version) i think is balanced.
I'll have to look into this more.
At this point I'm sure your mod is just trying to address a problem that doesn't exist but if you can get it to work the way you intend I'd love this mod.
P.S. I did some research while writing this, and it seems that the default value for ArmorBlockPercent is 0, but even 0 is treated as 100% block. Player.SetAV ArmorBlockPercent -30 is 70% block, and at -100 or below blocking is completely disabled, even stopping the attacker's recoil reaction. I'm pretty sure it's a bug in the game where max is expected to be 100 but 0 is referenced instead. Your mod sets ArmorBlockPercent to min 10 max 100 but this doesn't make the mod work.
Edit: wait no that's right, i could swear i saw in the CK or xedit or somewhere that those speeds had time values attached to them that influenced the time between "attack finished" and "next attack allowed to start." I'll have to look again.
Been messing around in xEdit but I haven't gotten anywhere.
So to both those ends, what would I need to remove for the strength scaling reduction? I've removed the quest, npc edit, weapon edits, and animations changes that overlap, and it seems like I've removed the strength based scaling (probably) but every power attack does an instant kill move.
I guess what I'd like to know, to summarize, are what Xedit records go to which part of the mod so I can keep it functional, while removing the conflicts with blocking overhaul and extended/cancellable block.
The strength scaling would almost certainly have to be done with a Perk IIRC. There would be "entry points" with conditionals that kick in depending on what STR the character has, so like "if STR is 10 double melee damage, if STR is 9 add 90% melee damage, if STR is 8 add 80%..." etc. I don't remember how i set it up exactly but it would have to be along those lines; assuming i wasn't a total moron and made a perk JUST for the strength scaling that doesn't have ANY other entries related to any other effects, THEN it should be safe to simply nuke that perk.
If you for example trimmed the quest but still have the effect; it would be prob'ly because in your game the perk was already applied to you and removing the quest that adds it at game start or load, doesn't strip any *actions* that quest took before you removed the quest, if you follow me?
TL;DR look for a perk related to STR and melee damage and murderize it
Edit: Ah, so an easier way to do it would be to simply copy over everything (besides Weapons), then remove the "Mod Incoming Weapon Damage" and "Mod Incoming Spell Magnitude" effects from the Immunity Burst perk? Less chance to break something that way, haha. After fixing the references and testing, everything seems fine....
I really appreciate you making this, by the way. I had no idea blocking only reduced damage by 25% in vanilla. That's ridiculous! You may as well not block at all and just try to dodge. Your solution to this is incredibly sensible. The immunity burst makes sense as a feature, I'd just prefer to go without it and focus on my positioning in combat instead and bottle-necking enemies.
Your mod combined with Melee Mechanics Tweaks may very well make me actually use melee now; in the 1000+ hours I've put into Fallout 4, I've never once used melee as anything other than a backup/utility skill, let alone a dedicated melee build. Having a block ability that actually does something is probably the most important to this. Thanks again!
I'm not surprised tbh. If you look around the Nexus, there are actually quite a few modders who've all taken a crack at trying to fix how awful melee is in Vanilla. I've never messed with the Collections system, but I'm starting to think I might put one together based on all the best melee improvements i've found. A lot of us wound up overlapping some of the changes we made, but also, each one added something unique i didn't know about too.
This mod (obviously).
Basically everything by Elzee; her grab attack animations are amazing, Faster Getup is another essential by her IMO.
The Real Solution for the Broken Melee System is a mouthful but works in conjunction with everything else just fine far as I can tell, as does Third Person Melee Tweak. Pugilism isn't a mechanic so much as a workaround, allowing you to equip gloves as weapons for fisticuffs while adding a whole set of awesome gloves to choose from (including immersive in-game placement of certain sets). I also merged the Cyber Arms mod into mine so that I could use the arms with the boxing buffs. Lastly I have Kicks & Punches and UGO's Slide Kick Only option, as recommended in the sticky post. I think that's all the melee stuff I use...
One thing that will definitely conflict (possibly badly) is that I reduce damage of blocked attacks based on the character's strength; they have a set static list based on the kind of attacker. That could mean one overrides the other - or it could apply both and completely nerf all blocks the way the other author doesn't want to - stuff like that.
If you feel like there are some parts of each mod you like....
Since we have some overlap, but also, each mod does different things... it might be possible to make a blend of them in xedit, removing conflicts, keeping the parts you like from each.
But as far as plain compatability, i think that's not possible even with a patch, as i would have to decide for everyone which parts from which mod to keep.