What's the difference from the original mod you may ask?
Instead of modifying the vanilla Vertibird Race's Spell, I made a new spell that I attached to the race by using RobCo Patcher.
The fire and acid immunity is no more as first one had to modify vanilla entries (which I wanted to avoid) and secondly I felt that it kinda makes sense that those things could deal damage. Putting the engine on fire kinda will hurt it.
Instead of 99% base damage reduction it's now 90% and instead relies less on niche ways to kill the Vertibird. This will reduce the cases of NPCs trying to take down a Vertibird and failing to do so because they are using the wrong method.
Quick question! Does this mod work for mod-added Vertibirds? Like the ones from America Rising 2? The description mentions other mods that changes Vertibirds, but I'd like to be 100% sure.
It does. It's actually why I had to build in two "don't"s so it ignore SS2 Vertibirds and Flying Personal Vertibird as those two buff theirs by default.
I reduced the buff quite a bit on the Vetibirds compared to the original, so less need to patch for other stuff as it's not as over the top anymore. If it proves needed I could look into making a patch though, but haven't heard anything yet.
Oh, and do you have a way of avoiding getting these effects? My VB's have their own 'shielding and damage threshold' mechanic which this mod would mess up. I am not very conversant with the robco patcher so can't tell if it will only touch 'standard' VBs...
Oh yes, I created a bunch of perks just for my VB's. A 'no bleed damage' (they don't bleed), A 'no melee damage' (you can't kill one with a stick, bare fists, bloodbug, etc), a 'ballistic damage threshold' (they should resist pipe guns etc but not armor piercing high power bullets), and similar effects for energy. I of course added all the standard - no cripple, no stagger, no poison damage, much reduced fire damage - the standard things you would expect of a miltary grade armor plated machine. I reasoned that whatever they did for power armor they would doubley do for a VB.
I did make them more susceptable to emp (electricity) but as the base game does not do anything special to implement electrical damage, this is only useful for people who run those sort of patches.
Seems you implemented a lot of the fixes I also have in here. So using both mods does sound like you'd get doubled up on stuff on your Vertibirds.
I could create a Keyword as a condition so that if the actor has the keyword it would not apply the new spell. (I presume it'd work, even if the spell is attached to the race) and then just use RobCo Patcher to apply the keyword to your Vertibirds.
Btw, which would it be? I checked out your Flyable Personal Vertibird and only found the Passenger Perk, but none that would affect the Vertibirds from what I could tell. Am I looking at the wrong place here?
At the moment there is not too much overlap between your mods effects and mine so not really an issue, but I assume you plan to improve it so at some point it would be nice to have an 'exclusion' option.
For now I will add your mod as a requiring my "Better Vertibirds" patch as well, as you also implement the 'explode on both wings damaged' mechanic (my patch is for my mod - not Better Vertibirds).
Hmm, do all your Vertibirds use the FPVFaction [FACT:FE000897]? In that case I can use that to filter what to apply the keyword to.
Since while the effects doesn't overlap per say for now, both mods would end up buffing your Vertibirds making them very durable. Also means people wouldn't need to use the patch.
Would probably have to change how I distribute the Spell in that case. Was thinking more of a "ExcludedKeyword" as condition that I distribute to your VBs if your mod is installed.
As it'd get complicated to do it the other way if your mod isn't installed xD
Does Robco bug out if you have an exclusion for a mod that isn't there? I know nothing about it... I don't expect you to do anything that requires a special patch etc.
I actually never tested that tbh. Just kind of assumed. So the approach I did was to solidate everything to the Perk that now buffs them all in one. The Spell that applies the perk now have a condition that checks for BetterVertibirdExcludedKeyword [KYWD:01000011].
Then I made a RobCo patch that only runs if your mod is installed that will apply said keyword to all npcs with the FPV Faction, which in return means they don't get the perk, and no extra buffs.
Thanks for that! I don't expect other peoples mod's to know about mine, or allow for it - so you have gone above and beyond! I just wanted something I could make a patch from (which is normally easy with an override - except when Robco is used!) At least with a keyword others can use it too (if any other VB author wanted too...)
That's the beauty of RobCo Patcher! Letting us pre-patch for other mods like this. And it also made it very easy to disable for anyone else who might want to for any reason.
And you are welcome to look at/copy what I did to make my VB tougher - and I will do the same with your mod! Explosives are the real achillies heel of NPC's as they bypass most of the resistances. They can even kill 'protected' NPC's (which should be impossible).
Yeah, was considering doing some Armor Resistance to make lower end weapons weaker and tune back on the overall damage reduction in return.
Also considering dumping the bonus to Limb damage. More of a left-over thing from the original mod that I tuned down to 2 rather than 10. But then again they had 1% on base. So limb would be 10% of vanilla there, while I've managed to put that at 20%.
And will take a second look on the Bleed when I get the chance.
Honestly must say I didn't see anything out of place trying it. Used both Ripper and my rifle with bleed. Sure it took damage over time from the rifle (not sure if the ripper did), but other than that I didn't see any issues. Maybe the stagger is part of it?
If test with a mod like floating damage installed, you will see the ripper uses a spell that just subtracts a small amount of health - repeatedly. The spell isn't like a normal damage effect with 'damage resist' modifiers etc. It just brute force takes away health.
Got a question, possibly unrelated, but... okay, so vertibirds have this annoying behavior of trying to crash at the player's location. And I was wondering if maybe there is a way to circumvent that behavior by making the vertibirds just explode in the air as soon as their HP drops to 0 or both rotors are crippled?
It might not be immersive, but imo neither is watching a multi-ton vehicle careening around in the air with the intent of squashing you, with all the grace of a snowflake in winter.
EDIT: Took a quick look in xEdit, and the Vertibird race is flagged as "Deferred Kill" and "Procedural Crash Landing" - which might be exactly what I am looking for. The first flag should in theory mean that the vertibird cannot actually "die" until it completes its tasks. It instead goes down to 1 HP and enters the crash land behavior. That's just what I think it does, gonna slap together a quick plugin and see what happens with those two removed.
Seems like removing these two flags from the vertibird race does exactly what I wanted. When they are killed, they are actually killed and explode immediately in the air. Which also looks pretty cool. Dunno how this behaves with quest important vertibirds or those that carry BoS soldiers.
40 comments
Thanks in advance!
running next-gen ver
Now vertibirds are more of a terror of the skies!
Endorsed.
So my take is that you already have a method to make them made of "less paper", I take it?
I did make them more susceptable to emp (electricity) but as the base game does not do anything special to implement electrical damage, this is only useful for people who run those sort of patches.
I could create a Keyword as a condition so that if the actor has the keyword it would not apply the new spell. (I presume it'd work, even if the spell is attached to the race) and then just use RobCo Patcher to apply the keyword to your Vertibirds.
For now I will add your mod as a requiring my "Better Vertibirds" patch as well, as you also implement the 'explode on both wings damaged' mechanic (my patch is for my mod - not Better Vertibirds).
Since while the effects doesn't overlap per say for now, both mods would end up buffing your Vertibirds making them very durable. Also means people wouldn't need to use the patch.
As it'd get complicated to do it the other way if your mod isn't installed xD
I don't expect you to do anything that requires a special patch etc.
So the approach I did was to solidate everything to the Perk that now buffs them all in one. The Spell that applies the perk now have a condition that checks for BetterVertibirdExcludedKeyword [KYWD:01000011].
Then I made a RobCo patch that only runs if your mod is installed that will apply said keyword to all npcs with the FPV Faction, which in return means they don't get the perk, and no extra buffs.
I just wanted something I could make a patch from (which is normally easy with an override - except when Robco is used!)
At least with a keyword others can use it too (if any other VB author wanted too...)
And it also made it very easy to disable for anyone else who might want to for any reason.
Explosives are the real achillies heel of NPC's as they bypass most of the resistances. They can even kill 'protected' NPC's (which should be impossible).
Also considering dumping the bonus to Limb damage. More of a left-over thing from the original mod that I tuned down to 2 rather than 10. But then again they had 1% on base. So limb would be 10% of vanilla there, while I've managed to put that at 20%.
And will take a second look on the Bleed when I get the chance.
The spell isn't like a normal damage effect with 'damage resist' modifiers etc. It just brute force takes away health.
It might not be immersive, but imo neither is watching a multi-ton vehicle careening around in the air with the intent of squashing you, with all the grace of a snowflake in winter.
EDIT: Took a quick look in xEdit, and the Vertibird race is flagged as "Deferred Kill" and "Procedural Crash Landing" - which might be exactly what I am looking for. The first flag should in theory mean that the vertibird cannot actually "die" until it completes its tasks. It instead goes down to 1 HP and enters the crash land behavior. That's just what I think it does, gonna slap together a quick plugin and see what happens with those two removed.
Seems like removing these two flags from the vertibird race does exactly what I wanted. When they are killed, they are actually killed and explode immediately in the air. Which also looks pretty cool. Dunno how this behaves with quest important vertibirds or those that carry BoS soldiers.