If anyone else curious - without Pluggy last version of mod has a bit different settings. Notably the "Let Settings["SpellEffectReduction"] := 0.1", which means that you'll have 90% spell efficiency at 0 light armor skill and 80% spell efficiency at 0 heavy armor skill respectively. Don't think it's intended.
Having 100 light armor skill(didn't tested the heavy one) provides 97% spell efficiency, which guarantees that your spells will get at least 1 magnitude reduction(spell damage/effect) due to the game rounding numbers.
Regardless the "SpellEffectReduction", 100% spell efficiency is achievable at ~117 light armor skill, but it would be only misleading text on a spells menu page(game rounds numbers, script is not) - damage would still be decreased unless you have exactly 150 light armor skill(149 skill and you lose 1 damage on every spell, 151 skill and you lose 1 damage on every spell). The real problem is illusion spells though...
This can be fixed by rounding down the "SpellEffectMod", sort of: if SpellEffectMod >= -0.01 Let SpellEffectMod := 0 This value seems to imitate the system game uses for spell efficiency stat in spells menu page, at least for the important breakpoint. And to prevent the decreasing of the spell efficiency after certain points of heavy/light armor skills(200+; not like it's possible to achieve them by accident, but still), one probably should clamp the Heavy/LightArmorSkill variables, like: if HeavyArmorSkill > 100 Let HeavyArmorSkill := 100 [same for light armor] It doesn't changes anything particularly in the game, just internal calculation of mod wouldn't benefit you with increased spell efficiency after you get more than 100 skill points of armor skill. And in vanilla game itself, having more than that is pointless. But then you probably would want to change the main formula so it better resolves around those numbers(like 100% efficiency at 100 light armor skill, 90-95% spell efficiency at 100 heavy armor skill, for example).
Also it's possible to increase spell efficiency for players that aren't wearing any armor pieces to something like 120% efficiency, which will give 20% boost to magnitude(/damage) or duration of spells and to tie it to a willpower or to a sum of all magic skills or something.
Hi GeneralKappa, I've been using this mod for a long time . I don't really understand the problems you describe and I wish I did. Have you made a patch for the problems for yourself or are you just pointing them out? Can these be fixed by tweaking the script by my self or does it require a major re-write?
Greetings I wasn't sure that someone else still uses this mod due to it's download/endorsements ratios and being 8 years old, so it was rather a grunt and some place to recollect my thoughts.
Main points are: 1) Default settings(when "Pluggy" isn't active) are different.
2) Players can't get 100% spell efficiency if they don't have exactly 150 light or heavy armor skill. It shows 100% proficiency in the menu at 117 skill, but you will still cast with penalty which depends on the magnitude/duration of spells used, it always will be minimum 1 damage or 1 second, which has some heavy consequences: "Reductions in effectiveness are especially troublesome for Illusion spells with a magnitude that refers to target level, and is capped at 25. Magnitude 25 spells are actually governed by an exception that allows them to affect all levels of enemy (see: Magnitude to Level Conversion). But because wearing armor reduces the magnitude to 95% of 25, which is 23.75, and rounds it down (to 23), the exception ceases to apply, and so targeted Illusion spells become nearly useless at high levels if wearing armor." from https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magic_Overview#Tips
3) Spell efficiency in menu shows sometimes incorrect value(1% error). While mod sets them accurately, spell menu value usually rounded down, which leads to the situations when you have 100% spell efficiency in menu, but still 1 damage short on magic(or more than that, on a large magnitude spells).
4) Main spell efficiency calculation formula having the nature of square and having deal with numbers close to 0, thus after some point reversing the calculation, for example by default you're going from 70% spell efficiency at 0 skill level to 100% spell efficiency at 150 skill level in this mod(using quadratic function + offset), but what interesting is that if you're going past 150 skill level, your spell efficiency will be decreasing up to 70% spell efficiency at skill level of 300 or something, then again it goes all the way around until 450 skill. Not really a major problem though.
I actually did some changes for my personal use. Like got rid of Pluggy dependency code(rip configurable file), embedded the perks changing stuff from it(it's easily removable though), changed spell efficiency formula to be linear and capped it(0 skill = 70% efficiency(40% for heavy armor) 100 skill = 100% efficiency, no additional increase/decrease after that). Also rounded internal spell efficiency numbers to represent the number one has in it's spell menu.
Major problems could be fixed using TES Construction Editor(although you would probably need plugin TES CS Extender to save the scripts containing OBSE code) but you need to think of a calculation system that is better than existing(although it still can be used with some tweaks, but I hardly see the reason why author decided to use quadratic function over linear, can only think of getting to higher spell efficiency numbers more rapidly because higher skill levels are leveling slower, but not sure if it's a big deal) and rounding thing, which took me quite a while thinking about it(what I came up with is so simple so it really embarrassing). Don't need any major rewrites, just pinpointing the problematic spots and dealing with them. And pretty much everything it contains could be configurable though it, as I mentioned before.
I haven't actually played with it since I started changing the script, only run the game to see if it works as intended, so my changes aren't set in stone yet. And sure, I can share it, although I'm not a big user of this site and never uploaded a mod. That is, if someone actually needs it.
// Was curious if the difference between default formulas and simpler one is significant. https://imgur.com/rPatdFU 1-2% at lower levels doesn't seem much, and it's steadily gets better after that.
/// Changing the default formulas with lesser numeric value(100 instead of 150) seems works better https://imgur.com/YVsjafg Still need some sort of cap to not get decreasing efficiency if you have some items with +armor skill and round the numbers down so you can have 100% proficiency instead of mod going from 99% to 99.99% over 18 levels and never reaching the 100%. Also formula derived from the one game uses for calculating the experience needed to level up each next skill, it starts slowly, but then at ~44+ armor rates caching up with "linear" and giving more efficiency per level(although the end destination is still the same = 100% efficiency at 100 skill level).
Thanks a lot for the further and very thorough explanation, GeneralKappa. I also find it odd that he used a quadratic function, but maybe it's because of mods like AV uncapper (https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34841) so that skill increases above 100 keeps having an effect. I'd love to get your tweaked version of the mod. I'm barely able to scripts so I don't think I could make the changes my self even if explained really simple.
Yeah, remembered that someone on the internet mentioned that OBSE can refer to game settings through .ini files(rendering pluggy somewhat irrelevant) while searching for clues how to fix some stuff. Made an quick check of its viability by copypasting some stuff from old pluggy code. For more features in .ini file would need to work a bit more than that. But I don't mind. And you're welcome. :)
So with 100 skill in heavy armor/light armor will it ever be zero? I'm looking for a mod that does that because it's rediculous that I can't dispel on myself because I don't want to wear a crappy looking robe... It's almost like the creators of that silly penalty want mages to be annoyed forever or something...
If you are a master of an armor, you know everything there is to know, therefore, you should have 100pct spell effectiveness since at 90 skill it's at 95pct... hopefully i'll find a mod that does that.
You're right, I'll fix fPCBaseMagickaMult in the next update.
I just noticed that when I reinstalled Oblivion, I installed Pluggy v125, not v132. That's why it wasn't working anymore for me. v125 requires the ini file to be put in the my documents folder, but I can't access that folder from within an OMOD.
"fPCBaseMagickaMult" is a bit confusing, to increase your magicka by 25%, fPCBaseMagickaMult needs to be set to 1.5
If you got time over, it would be nice to get rid of the hassle to move and enable the ini file, it could stay in the data folder and you could include an option to enable it during the omod installtion, for example: "Do you want to enable the optional settings (default = no)?"
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If anyone else curious - without Pluggy last version of mod has a bit different settings.
Notably the "Let Settings["SpellEffectReduction"] := 0.1", which means that you'll have 90% spell efficiency at 0 light armor skill and 80% spell efficiency at 0 heavy armor skill respectively. Don't think it's intended.
Having 100 light armor skill(didn't tested the heavy one) provides 97% spell efficiency, which guarantees that your spells will get at least 1 magnitude reduction(spell damage/effect) due to the game rounding numbers.
Regardless the "SpellEffectReduction", 100% spell efficiency is achievable at ~117 light armor skill, but it would be only misleading text on a spells menu page(game rounds numbers, script is not) - damage would still be decreased unless you have exactly 150 light armor skill(149 skill and you lose 1 damage on every spell, 151 skill and you lose 1 damage on every spell). The real problem is illusion spells though...
This can be fixed by rounding down the "SpellEffectMod", sort of:
if SpellEffectMod >= -0.01
Let SpellEffectMod := 0
This value seems to imitate the system game uses for spell efficiency stat in spells menu page, at least for the important breakpoint.
And to prevent the decreasing of the spell efficiency after certain points of heavy/light armor skills(200+; not like it's possible to achieve them by accident, but still), one probably should clamp the Heavy/LightArmorSkill variables, like:
if HeavyArmorSkill > 100
Let HeavyArmorSkill := 100
[same for light armor]
It doesn't changes anything particularly in the game, just internal calculation of mod wouldn't benefit you with increased spell efficiency after you get more than 100 skill points of armor skill. And in vanilla game itself, having more than that is pointless.
But then you probably would want to change the main formula so it better resolves around those numbers(like 100% efficiency at 100 light armor skill, 90-95% spell efficiency at 100 heavy armor skill, for example).
Also it's possible to increase spell efficiency for players that aren't wearing any armor pieces to something like 120% efficiency, which will give 20% boost to magnitude(/damage) or duration of spells and to tie it to a willpower or to a sum of all magic skills or something.
I've been using this mod for a long time . I don't really understand the problems you describe and I wish I did. Have you made a patch for the problems for yourself or are you just pointing them out? Can these be fixed by tweaking the script by my self or does it require a major re-write?
I wasn't sure that someone else still uses this mod due to it's download/endorsements ratios and being 8 years old, so it was rather a grunt and some place to recollect my thoughts.
Main points are:
1) Default settings(when "Pluggy" isn't active) are different.
2) Players can't get 100% spell efficiency if they don't have exactly 150 light or heavy armor skill. It shows 100% proficiency in the menu at 117 skill, but you will still cast with penalty which depends on the magnitude/duration of spells used, it always will be minimum 1 damage or 1 second, which has some heavy consequences:
"Reductions in effectiveness are especially troublesome for Illusion spells with a magnitude that refers to target level, and is capped at 25. Magnitude 25 spells are actually governed by an exception that allows them to affect all levels of enemy (see: Magnitude to Level Conversion). But because wearing armor reduces the magnitude to 95% of 25, which is 23.75, and rounds it down (to 23), the exception ceases to apply, and so targeted Illusion spells become nearly useless at high levels if wearing armor." from https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magic_Overview#Tips
3) Spell efficiency in menu shows sometimes incorrect value(1% error). While mod sets them accurately, spell menu value usually rounded down, which leads to the situations when you have 100% spell efficiency in menu, but still 1 damage short on magic(or more than that, on a large magnitude spells).
4) Main spell efficiency calculation formula having the nature of square and having deal with numbers close to 0, thus after some point reversing the calculation, for example by default you're going from 70% spell efficiency at 0 skill level to 100% spell efficiency at 150 skill level in this mod(using quadratic function + offset), but what interesting is that if you're going past 150 skill level, your spell efficiency will be decreasing up to 70% spell efficiency at skill level of 300 or something, then again it goes all the way around until 450 skill. Not really a major problem though.
I actually did some changes for my personal use.
Like got rid of Pluggy dependency code(rip configurable file), embedded the perks changing stuff from it(it's easily removable though), changed spell efficiency formula to be linear and capped it(0 skill = 70% efficiency(40% for heavy armor) 100 skill = 100% efficiency, no additional increase/decrease after that). Also rounded internal spell efficiency numbers to represent the number one has in it's spell menu.
Major problems could be fixed using TES Construction Editor(although you would probably need plugin TES CS Extender to save the scripts containing OBSE code) but you need to think of a calculation system that is better than existing(although it still can be used with some tweaks, but I hardly see the reason why author decided to use quadratic function over linear, can only think of getting to higher spell efficiency numbers more rapidly because higher skill levels are leveling slower, but not sure if it's a big deal) and rounding thing, which took me quite a while thinking about it(what I came up with is so simple so it really embarrassing). Don't need any major rewrites, just pinpointing the problematic spots and dealing with them.
And pretty much everything it contains could be configurable though it, as I mentioned before.
I haven't actually played with it since I started changing the script, only run the game to see if it works as intended, so my changes aren't set in stone yet.
And sure, I can share it, although I'm not a big user of this site and never uploaded a mod. That is, if someone actually needs it.
//
Was curious if the difference between default formulas and simpler one is significant. https://imgur.com/rPatdFU
1-2% at lower levels doesn't seem much, and it's steadily gets better after that.
///
Changing the default formulas with lesser numeric value(100 instead of 150) seems works better https://imgur.com/YVsjafg
Still need some sort of cap to not get decreasing efficiency if you have some items with +armor skill and round the numbers down so you can have 100% proficiency instead of mod going from 99% to 99.99% over 18 levels and never reaching the 100%.
Also formula derived from the one game uses for calculating the experience needed to level up each next skill, it starts slowly, but then at ~44+ armor rates caching up with "linear" and giving more efficiency per level(although the end destination is still the same = 100% efficiency at 100 skill level).
I also find it odd that he used a quadratic function, but maybe it's because of mods like AV uncapper (https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34841) so that skill increases above 100 keeps having an effect.
I'd love to get your tweaked version of the mod. I'm barely able to scripts so I don't think I could make the changes my self even if explained really simple.
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/48993/
Would be glad for any feedback.
I will have time to test this weekend, so I'll report back later.
Thanks again.
Made an quick check of its viability by copypasting some stuff from old pluggy code.
For more features in .ini file would need to work a bit more than that. But I don't mind.
And you're welcome. :)
If you are a master of an armor, you know everything there is to know, therefore, you should have 100pct spell effectiveness since at 90 skill it's at 95pct... hopefully i'll find a mod that does that.
As it should have been from the start.
Thanks again for the bug report!
EDIT: Got the bug, new version is up.
I just noticed that when I reinstalled Oblivion, I installed Pluggy v125, not v132. That's why it wasn't working anymore for me. v125 requires the ini file to be put in the my documents folder, but I can't access that folder from within an OMOD.
This should also be fixed in the next update.
If you got time over, it would be nice to get rid of the hassle to move and enable the ini file, it could stay in the data folder and you could include an option to enable it during the omod installtion, for example:
"Do you want to enable the optional settings (default = no)?"
EDIT:
(Or you can enable it by default
Thanks for the quick updates!