GUIDE General Feedback

[pStyl3]

I've finished Fallout 3 including all DLCs, only two or three sidequests are left to do, and I must finish up Puce Moose' questmods. Like with the other major Bethesda games, it was a hell of a ride, I had a lot of fun. Although I really do not dislike the mainstory of FNV, the mainstory of FO3 is better, in my opinion. Project Purity is something that's worthy to fight for and having to fight alongside Liberty Prime at the end was epic. On a sidenote, both his english as well as german voice acting were really well done (I looked up the english one on yt). On the other hand, what I think did FNV better than FO3 was .. well FNV has a more "friendly feel" to it, while FO3 can be, at times, really a wide and empty wasteland, in it's truest meaning. I personally like the feel FNV gives me a bit more than the one of FO3.

 

Anyway, both FNV and FO3 are totally awesome games and I'm glad I played them, as well as modded them. For the latter one, CaPD was an integral help in doing so, thanks for that Kelmych.

 

Regarding CASM's quicksave/quickload feature, unfortunately my testings weren't consistenly good, I had problems reloading a safe two or three times (missing textures upon loading that game, or even falling through the ground, unable to leave the interior I was in). So I went back only using hardsaves through the menu.

 

I also had my good share with "random" crashes during the entire playthrough .. I can't really tell what the reason is. Maybe one mod was causing the crashes, maybe the combination of some mods .. but in the end, nothing fatal, I always found a way around those problems.

 

One suggestion, how about adding this mod by Yukichigai to CaPD?

Creature Companion Fixes - Dogmeat - RL-3 - Fawkes

[hellanios]

Kel, why should we move the Enhanced Weather - REBOOT.esp and Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow in Fallout.esp to the optionals tab?Aren't they needed?

Arlington House Restoration and Better Rivet City Church seem to need cleaning.

Also, excalibr has an FWE patch in the package.Should we install it?

Moving to RH ironsights, shouldn't we download the WMK bridge?

And one more thing about the 10mm pistol fix,is it needed only if we use a retexture of the gun?

Edited February 22, 2015 by hellanios

[Fullsaildan]

Kelmych - 

 

Great guide, and amazing work! I'm going through it now and keeping track of things that seem slightly less clear than they could be etc and will provide over all feedback at the end later this week. Question on FWE: I am not a fan at all (It just doesn't feel vanilla enough to me, I'm not into the survival aspects, and mods that try to pack in fixes like the bobble-head stand along with game play changes leave me uncomfortable.) I've read through the list and want to make sure I haven't missed anything; Is there any downstream plugins affecting it?  

 

I'd be interested in authoring/maintaining a more vanilla guide but feel much of it would overlap yours and it would just be overkill. Let me know if you'd be interested in working on incorporating something like that and I'd be happy to help or maintain it. Or if there is other stuff you'd like help with; I think you will probably see a TON of traffic if Bethesda announces 4 in a few weeks. 

 

Also, Can anyone provide any feedback on this mod: https://https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/13520/? ? It seems to remove a bunch of things like rocks and such that were used a bunch as filler but provided no real value, and could be a good performance increase, but it hasn't been updated in ages. 

 

thanks and keep up the great work!!!

[GrantSP]

@Fullsaildan

That mod will provide a bit of performance increase (not measured by any standard but since the engine won't be dealing with hundreds of extra stuff it will be free for other things) but there is IMO a better alternative, Clean-Deluxe by Jeoshua, I used this mod extensively on my previous low-spec machine but haven't used it on my current one.

 

(also your link format is incorrect, doubled up https://)

[Kelmych]

 

On the other hand, what I think did FNV better than FO3 was .. well FNV has a more "friendly feel" to it, while FO3 can be, at times, really a wide and empty wasteland, in it's truest meaning. I personally like the feel FNV gives me a bit more than the one of FO3.

 

Fallout 3 was Bethesda's first Fallout game and for some reason they went in a very different and far more "serious" direction than the much more whimsical and "fun" approach taken in Fallout 1 and 2. The number of NPCs that you might consider your friend in FO3 is ... almost none, in contrast to Fallout NV where they "lightened the game up a bit" and moved back partway toward the feeling of Fallout 1 and 2.

 

 

I also had my good share with "random" crashes during the entire playthrough .. I can't really tell what the reason is. Maybe one mod was causing the crashes, maybe the combination of some mods .. but in the end, nothing fatal, I always found a way around those problems.

 

I also have occasional crashes with Fallout 3, but with the fixes that have been included these are far less frequent when I first played the game.

 

One suggestion, how about adding this mod by Yukichigai to CaPD?

Creature Companion Fixes - Dogmeat - RL-3 - Fawkes

 

This was in the guide until recently. I looked at this mod and the most recent update of UUFO3P with FO3Edit and found that the most recent version of UUFO3P had incorporated the complete version of the mod.

[Kelmych]

Kel, why should we move the Enhanced Weather - REBOOT.esp and Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow in Fallout.esp to the optionals tab?Aren't they needed?

Not they are not needed; see "Xepha's Dynamic Weather - Rain ReadMe.txt"

Arlington House Restoration and Better Rivet City Church seem to need cleaning.

The newest version of Arlington House is indeed dirty, as in Rivet City Church. I'll add this to the guide and userlist.yaml

Also, excalibr has an FWE patch in the package.Should we install it?

No.

Moving to RH ironsights, shouldn't we download the WMK bridge?

No.

These are covered by two more recent compatibility mods (see the RH_IronSights FWE- WMK compatible and 20th Century Wpns -Plus- Reborn for FWE 603-WMK for FWE-Calibrv14-eXcalibrv23 mods in the last section of the guide)

And one more thing about the 10mm pistol fix,is it needed only if we use a retexture of the gun?

what 10mm fix?

[Kelmych]

Kelmych - 

 

Great guide, and amazing work! I'm going through it now and keeping track of things that seem slightly less clear than they could be etc and will provide over all feedback at the end later this week. Question on FWE: I am not a fan at all (It just doesn't feel vanilla enough to me, I'm not into the survival aspects, and mods that try to pack in fixes like the bobble-head stand along with game play changes leave me uncomfortable.) I've read through the list and want to make sure I haven't missed anything; Is there any downstream plugins affecting it?  

 

I don't know what you mean by vanilla. Do you mean:

- how it works on less capable systems

- the overall graphical feel (e.g., the green tint)

- the minimal configurability of the vanilla game

- the vanilla quests

- the difficulty and challenge of the vanilla game (which without additional mods is oriented more toward inexperienced users since this was Bethesda's first Fallout game)

- a "vanilla" mix limited to graphical improvements and changes that can be considered fixes or fairly limited changes, similar to what is provided in the STEP Core/Expanded guides for Skyrim (but no other guides on this site; all the other guides are less restrictive to varying degrees). Note, however, that the guides on the STEP site are generally closer to vanilla and lore-friendly than other available guides.

- some other aspects of vanilla gameplay

 

This guide is, for example, aimed at providing more flexibility in gameplay than that of the original game, capable of making the game interesting for a wider range of users than the pure vanilla game provides while remaining as lore-friendly as is reasonably possible. It has a strong interest in providing game balance; the mods in the guide need to work together well, including compatible item and creature/NPC parameters/statistics. This can be achieved using a large set of compatibility mods/patches (as is the more common approach with Skyrim) or with an overhaul mod and a smaller set of of compatibility mods/patches (as is more common with Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout NV). In Fallout 3 the main choices for overhaul are FWE, FOOK, and Arwen's Tweaks. FWE is by far the most popular of these. Arwen's tweaks are the least comprehensive (thus probably the closest to the vanilla game) but also the least up-to-date.

 

If FWE is completely removed it would be very difficult to have a guide that achieves the goals stated above; the mods necessary to achieve the goals don't otherwise exist and Fallout 3 is an older game and noone is writing major mods for it any longer (other than porting Fallout NV mods to Fallout 3). Don't forget, however, that FWE is intentionally very configurable (as are some of the other key mods in this guide). If, for example, you don't want to use the survivability aspects (which Bethesda took from FWE and included in vanilla Fallout NV, by the way) you can turn these off.

 

 

I'd be interested in authoring/maintaining a more vanilla guide but feel much of it would overlap yours and it would just be overkill. Let me know if you'd be interested in working on incorporating something like that and I'd be happy to help or maintain it.

 

One of the areas where this guide certainly needs work is in providing "configurations" of the guide aimed at users with particular interests (such as, for example, yours). Some mods are marked Optional because they only appeal to a subset of the likely users of the guide, and only a few mods are marked as Core to try and avoid limiting the user group that can benefit from the guide. Many mods have options and with different choice of parameters or options would be more appealing to different groups of users, but the guide has very limited information on how to set these for different user interests (or choose subsets of the mods). Ghostwise, for example, has been assembling some recommendations for users who don't want the game to be quite as challenging; if the full set of mods in the guide including optional mods is used the game can easily become more challenging than Fallout NV, as an example.

 

 

Or if there is other stuff you'd like help with; I think you will probably see a TON of traffic if Bethesda announces 4 in a few weeks. 

 

 

[hellanios]

 

Kel, why should we move the Enhanced Weather - REBOOT.esp and Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow in Fallout.esp to the optionals tab?Aren't they needed?

Not they are not needed; see "Xepha's Dynamic Weather - Rain ReadMe.txt"

But if Xepha's Dynamic Weather is not used then the plugins should remain active?

Arlington House Restoration and Better Rivet City Church seem to need cleaning.

The newest version of Arlington House is indeed dirty, as in Rivet City Church. I'll add this to the guide and userlist.yaml

Also, excalibr has an FWE patch in the package.Should we install it?

No.

Yeah,but why?Is it covered by another patch?

Moving to RH ironsights, shouldn't we download the WMK bridge?

No.

These are covered by two more recent compatibility mods (see the RH_IronSights FWE- WMK compatible and 20th Century Wpns -Plus- Reborn for FWE 603-WMK for FWE-Calibrv14-eXcalibrv23 mods in the last section of the guide)

The assets from the bridge are included in 20th Century Wpns -Plus- Reborn for FWE 603-WMK for FWE-Calibrv14-eXcalibrv23?

And one more thing about the 10mm pistol fix,is it needed only if we use a retexture of the gun?

what 10mm fix?

After the installation of RH_Ironsights.The texture change for 10mm pistol.

 

Edited February 23, 2015 by hellanios

[Adonis_VII]

I have another texture mod to recommend.  Beards by Drumber (FCO guy) https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49624/?  It comes in 512,1024,2048 sizes.  I'm currently using 512 and it already seems considerably better, looking like actual hair. I may look at 1k, for when you're closer to NPC's.  2k is definitely too high for 1080.  The pictures give you an idea, but you can really tell in game moving around.

 

Vanilla -> Beards (512)

 

[Kelmych]

The mods included in the guide don't use the meshes that are in the RH_Ironsights - WMK Bridge optional file. There aren't any textures in this optional file, only meshes. Maybe we should suggest installing the WMK bridge with these meshes, and disabling the plugin. They would replace meshes in the base WMK mod. The Paradox Ignition page is fairly vague on whether these are needed; they probably are.

[Nozzer66]

I have another texture mod to recommend.  Beards by Drumber (FCO guy) https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49624/?  It comes in 512,1024,2048 sizes.  I'm currently using 512 and it already seems considerably better, looking like actual hair. I may look at 1k, for when you're closer to NPC's.  2k is definitely too high for 1080.  The pictures give you an idea, but you can really tell in game moving around.

 

Pics deleted for clarity, but if it's done by Drumber I'll definitely use it. His stuff is good stuff. :)

[Kelmych]

The 10 mm pistol texture changes in RH_Ironsight are only needed if the replacement textures are used.

 

I'll look at Beards.

[Adonis_VII]

He has a couple other component mods, but of them only the beards and teeth (https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/55768/?) play nicely with Fallout 3 NPC's as the rest require hand placement and he hasn't done FO3 characters.

[MosAnted]

Have you considered Refurbish DLC as opposed to Delay DLC? There is an update for the merged plugins in the Bethesda thread as well that never got uploaded to nexus for whatever reason.

[hellanios]

I have encountered a problem with Fallout Redesigned.If I activate it a big exclamation mark covers my character in 3rd person. I have archive invalidation both in the fallout.ini and the profile in MO along with the bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles=1.