DAMAGE RESISTANCE 
Armor in Fallout: New Vegas was underwhelming, and as such, Light Armor became the go-to for most players as it allowed for more inventory space and faster movement without a noticeable trade-off in protection. Vicious Wastes aims to correct this.
Damage Resistance is added to armor based on class, and the existing DT of the armor. These values can be configured in Vicious Wastes.ini, but the default settings are as follows:
- Medium Armors gain DR equal to 50% of their DT.
- Heavy Armors gain DR equal to 80% of their DT.
- Power Armors gain additional 40% of their DT as DR, on top of their above Medium or Heavy bonus.
VALUE
Obsidian made some odd choices when it came to balancing armor values, and some definitely appear to be oversights.
- Combat Armor, an early to mid game medium armor is valued at 6500 caps.
- This is a huge step up from the armor sets that rank below it, which are all worth well below 1000 caps.
- It's so high that most power armors are worth less than it, and Remnants Power Armor has the exact same value.
- It's so high that most power armors are worth less than it, and Remnants Power Armor has the exact same value.
- Obsidian seemingly re-used the armor value from Fallout 2 at some point in development, and it ended up sticking
- This caused the reinforced variants to have inflated values, and any higher-end medium armors had to stay in line
- This is a huge step up from the armor sets that rank below it, which are all worth well below 1000 caps.
- Recon Armor is valued at 7200 caps; 800 caps less than Reinforced Combat Armor despite them having the exact same weight and DT, and Recon Armor having a Stealth bonus.
- All of the later armors had to follow suit, so we ended up with incredibly inflated values such as NCR Ranger combat armor (7500 caps), Christine's CoS recon armor (9500 caps), Elite riot gear (12500 caps)
See the Individual Changes section below for more details on this.
WEIGHT
Vicious Wastes reduces the carrying capacity of both the player and companions. To complement this, armor weight has been reduced as well.
These values can be configured in Vicious Wastes.ini, but the default settings are as follows:
- Light Armors over 7 Lbs weigh 40% less, but will not go below 7 Lbs.
- Medium Armors over 15 Lbs weigh 40% less, but will not go below 15 Lbs.
- Heavy Armors over 20 Lbs weigh 33% less, but will not go below 20 Lbs.
- Power Armors (medium or heavy) retain their original weight
- If the player has Power Armor training, your power armor will compensate for roughly half of its own weight.
- If the player has Power Armor training, your power armor will compensate for roughly half of its own weight.
The above settings were chosen specifically to come close to the values found in JSawyer, as it does quite a good job at making Medium and Heavy Armors a
practical choice. The benefit of how Vicious Wastes makes these changes, is that they apply to all armors. Not a single compatibility patch is required, it will just work.
Here is a chart with some select armors from each class to show the changes versus the vanilla game, with comparisons to JSawyer for convenience:
INDIVIDUAL CHANGES
Vicious Wastes makes some manual tweaks to armor, usually to address to exploits, economy health, or correcting weight oversights.
Every change can be customized or removed via the config files found in .../data/Vicious Wastes/items/armor.txt
- T51b Power Helmet: Now occupies the "Hair" equipslot, to fix helmet stacking.
- Remnants' Power Helmet: Now occupies the "Eyeglasses" equipslot, to fix helmet stacking.
- Enclave Power Helmet: Now occupies the "Eyeglasses" equipslot, to fix helmet stacking.
- Enclave Shocktrooper Helmet: Now occupies the "Eyeglasses" equipslot, to fix helmet stacking.
- Marked Patrol Armor: Value reduced from 2900 to 700.
- Marked Scout Armor: Value reduced from 2500 to 280.
- Marked Tribal Armor: Value reduced from 2750 to 900.
- Marked Trooper Armor: Value reduced from 2250 to 400.
- Gannon Family Tesla Helmet: Value increased from 120 to 3530. This is in proportion to the armor's value vs. Remnants' Power Armor's value.
- Merc Chamer Outfit: DT from 1 to 3. Weight from 8 to 5.
- Merc Cruiser Outfit: DT from 1 to 3. Weight from 8 to 5.
- Merc Adventurer Outfit: DT from 1 to 3. Weight from 8 to 5.
- Merc Grunt Outfit: DT from 1 to 2. Weight from 8 to 3.
- Merc Troublemaker Outfit: DT from 1 to 4.
- Merc Veteran Outfit: DT from 1 to 4.
- NCR Trooper Fatigues: Weight from 26 to 8.
- Space Suit Helmet: Weight from 0 to 2.
- Headwrap: Weight from 0 to 1.
- Ranger Hat: Weight from 0 to 1.
- Dirty Pre-War Parkstroller Outfit: Weight from 10 to 2.
- Dirty Pre-War Relaxedwear: Weight from 5 to 2.
- Lobotomite Jumpsuit: Weight from 10 to 1.
- Rebreather: DR from 3 to 0.
- Vault 11 Jumpsuit: DR from 1 to 0.
- Scientist Outfit: DR from 3 to 0.
- Valence Radii-Accentuator: DT from 3 to 0.
- Atomic-Valence Tri-Radii-Oscillator: DT from 4 to 0.
- NCR Ranger Patrol Armor: Value from 390 to 1200.
- Combat Armor: Value from 6500 to 2000.
- Combat Helmet: Value from 800 to 400.
- Van Graff Combat Armor: Value from 6500 to 2500.
- Combat Armor, Reinforced: Value from 8000 to 3000.
- Combat Helmet, Reinforced: Value from 1000 to 800.
- Recon Armor: Value from 7200 to 4000. Sneak bonus from +5 to +10.
- NCR Ranger Combat Armor: Value from 7500 to 4500.
- US Army Combat Armor: Value from 8494 to 4750.
- Combat Armor, Reinforced Mk II: Value from 9000 to 5000.
- Chinese Stealth Armor: Value from 500 to 5000. Sneak bonus from +5 to +20.
- Metal Helmet, Reinforced: Value from 280 to 600.
- Merc Troublemaker outfit: Weight from 7 to 8.
- Desert Ranger Combat Armor: Value from 8000 to 6000.
- Desert Ranger Combat Helmet: Weight from 0 to 3.
- Riot Gear: Value from 7994 to 5000.
- Riot Gear Helmet: Value from 800 to 900.
- Advanced Riot Gear: Value from 8494 to 6500.
- Advanced Riot Gear Helmet: Value from 1000 to 1400.
- Elite Riot Gear: Value from 12500 to 9000.
- Elite Riot Gear Helmet: Value from 1500 to 1800.
- Sierra Madre Armor: Value from 400 to 2500.
- Sierra Madre Armor, Reinforced: Value from 1000 to 4000.
- Sierra Madre Helmet, Reinforced: Value from 850 to 1000.
- US Army General outfit: Weight from 1 to 6.
1 comment
These .ini options will save a lot of time.