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About this mod
A lightweight overhaul of the Molotov cocktail that fixes some gameplay issues and strives to make the Molotov cocktail a viable weapon throughout an entire playthrough.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Molotov Cocktails: What's the Problem?
The Molotov cocktail in Fallout 4 seems very useful at first as you easily burn through groups of radroaches or low-level raiders. However, the longer you play, the following issues become apparent:
Blaze: What This Mod Changes
Following is what Blaze changes about the Molotov cocktail experience:
Compatibility
Other mods that make edits to the explosion, object effect, or magic effect records used by the Molotov cocktail will be incompatible.
Other mods that edit any of the ranks of the Demolition Expert perk would conflict. Let my mod win any conflicts to get my changes to the perk.
The Molotov cocktail in Fallout 4 seems very useful at first as you easily burn through groups of radroaches or low-level raiders. However, the longer you play, the following issues become apparent:
- Explosive damage. The Molotov cocktail actually explodes for 50 instant damage, then leaves a fire hazard that burns for a total of 40 damage over 5 seconds. (There's also a damage of 1 when the thrown Molotov cocktail makes direct contact--bonk.) First, it's worth noting that real Molotov cocktails don't actually explode; they simply spread flammable liquid. Second, Molotov cocktails dealing instant explosion damage leads to some extremely frustrating gameplay. There's no way to know for sure which enemies will use a Molotov cocktail, and unlike a thrown grenade with a fuse/timer, you oftentimes can't escape from an incoming Molotov cocktail. On harder gameplay levels like Survival, Molotov cocktails can instantly kill you.
- Damage scaling. The explosive portion of the Molotov cocktail damage will scale with the Demolition Expert perk, but the burning "damage over time" from the fire hazard does not. This causes the burning portion of the Molotov cocktail--which is kind of the point--to become virtually worthless as you encounter more difficult enemy NPCs.
- Damage resistance. Because of the way the Fallout 4 damage resistance system works, higher damage values do significantly more "true damage" than lower damage values (see here for more info). As a result, the low "burning damage over time" values from the Molotov cocktail become increasingly negated over time as you face enemies with higher energy resistance (yes, Molotov cocktails hazards are tied to energy resistance).
- Inconsistent burning effect. The fiery hazard from an exploded Molotov cocktail, which triggers the damage over time effect, lasts for 8 seconds, but the actual damaging effect lasts for only 5 seconds. As a result, if an enemy is still standing in the hazard at the end of the 5 seconds, the hazard will check again (which it does every 0.3 seconds) to see if it should re-apply the damaging effect. This means enemies could "burn twice" as a result of continuing to stand in the hazard. There's nothing inherently wrong or broken about this, but it's a bit counter-intuitive or unrealistic.
Blaze: What This Mod Changes
Following is what Blaze changes about the Molotov cocktail experience:
- I've completely removed the explosive damage from Molotov cocktails. If the thrown Molotov cocktail projectile itself makes direct contact, it does 1 point of normal damage (bonk) to the target.
- The fiery hazard left by an exploded Molotov Cocktail now does 100 burning damage over 8 seconds. This 100 total damage is roughly on par with the vanilla Fallout 4 Molotov cocktail which does 90 damage (50 explosive damage + 40 burning damage). In addition, I've adjusted the damage effect to occur over 8 seconds instead of the default 5 in order to match the length of time the fiery hazard lasts.
- I've modified the Demolition Expert perk so that it now also affects damage from the Molotov cocktail fire hazard. This means the Molotov cocktail will scale better into the end-game.
- I've added a new fear effect to the fiery hazard from the Molotov cocktail. Humanoid NPCs and other creatures (with some notable exceptions for "tough" creatures like Deathclaws) will temporarily flee in terror when affected by the fire hazard, giving the Molotov cocktail a tactical ability that will remain useful throughout your entire playthrough. Note that human NPCs in power armor, unique NPCs, and legendary NPCs are not affected by this ability.
Compatibility
Other mods that make edits to the explosion, object effect, or magic effect records used by the Molotov cocktail will be incompatible.
Other mods that edit any of the ranks of the Demolition Expert perk would conflict. Let my mod win any conflicts to get my changes to the perk.