F&L NV as of 10/03/2015 and more merging

[James_Richards]

Has anyone ventured into further decreasing the load order by merging more of the mods in the current F&L NV list?  I'm considering adding a small handful of mods and I've already removed some I really don't want and will be testing the reduced setup soon.

 

Right now, I have 138 esp/esm, 128 active after the removal of some things.  Here's my plan:

 

Roleplayers Alternative Start Fallout New Vegas

Modified: Tutorial Killer - reinstalled to not have Roleplayers Alternative Start compatibility

Afterschool Special

Tales form the Burning Sands

Sortomatic for Tales of the Burning Sands

Modified: Fallout Character Overhaul - FCO - Afterschool Special.esp

 

Planned addition:

Realistic Weapon Damages

WMR for WMX and PN

Cowboy Perk Complete - New Vegas Bounties

Bottle That Water and Bottle That Water PN patch

Leather Backpack

Missing Ammo Recipes

Cowboy Repeater without Peep Sight

Wild Wasteland Integrated

Manual Reload

 

There are others I may add, but these I consider priority.  Any thoughts?

Edited October 5, 2015 by James_Richards

[Audley]

I am not sure if you can get the Cowboy Repeater w/o Peep Sight mod working properly. It modifies the meshes to the cowboy repeater and so does several other mods. So you may not get the textures working properly if you use it with WMX/WRP. I couldn't get it working properly so if you do let me know. 

 

I am 99% sure that the leather backpack mod is already integrated with Project Nevada and thus would be a conflict/waste of a .esp slot. Manual Reload is older so it's kinda wonky so beware on that one. It also takes up two .esp slots. Not sure if it's worth it. Bottle That Water never worked properly for me for whatever reason so beware on that one as well. 

 

I have done a lot of testing with Realistic Weapon Damages and found that the least amount of mods messing with damage the better. Overriding PN with RWD makes things... difficult. As you have now turned the game into a complete cluster of some enemies dying in 1-2 shots while others being complete bullet sponges. And because RWD doesn't use scripts it isn't really compatible with mods that add new creatures such as AWOP or Monster Mod. It also doesn't completely cover the DLC so if you use it make sure to get the unofficial DLC patch. In  my opinion RWD is not really worth it and it only makes things more unbalanced UNLESS you are using it all by itself. But with PN all it does is complicate things. Just go look at Gopher's lets play on Youtube. It's a complete mess in terms of mod balance. His character can kill deathclaws with 1-2 shots and he doesn't die very often. Once you reach a good level with RWD the challenge of the game goes away. 

[James_Richards]

Yeah.  I went back and watched a couple videos and have noticed it.  I guess I'll just play around with difficulty and other settings.

 

These were just some mods I played with before I started going with this mod list.

 

I think before I add anything, I'll need to optimize my textures.  I have an R9 290 and get barely above 30 fps while recording at least.

[oqhansoloqo]

"Bottle That Water and Bottle That Water PN patch"

 

EssArrBee used to have some kind of water bottle refill mod in the guide but decided to remove it due to him considering it unnecessary.  After playing the game a couple times he decided that even in hardcore mode that it's not overly difficult to find clean water in the game.

 

I agree with him.  I am at level 17 and I have about 40 bottles of purified water in storage because I don't use a lot of them up.  There are plenty enough sources of clean water in the game that visit often enough.  The game starts you out in Goodsprings - named for the good spring source there.  While most of the wasteland has irradiated water, there are enough places with good water spread out to offer ways of safely rehydrating.  The mod-added player homes in the guide have good water...  One of them has a water purifier where you can convert dirty water to purified water, etc.  You just don't really need to make it even easier to get purified water.

 

What's a little more difficult, and only at the beginning of the game, is trying to find food and ammo.  Later on, you have more food than you need due to the fact that you start making long and extended trips across the wasteland over many creature respawn points.  You also have more ammo because you are fighting more people who have it as loot.  Geckos, coyotes, and bloatflies don't tend to carry a lot of ammo on them... At the beginning of the game, you are weak, wary, more localized, and are forced to be much more resourceful and careful about who/what you tangle with.

[James_Richards]

OK.  So.  Leather Backpack is in Project Nevada already.  Verified on the nexus page, so this will be a bit redundant.  If there are special values (will look into it further) maybe I'll make my own PN patch or just modify those values directly to the PN Equipment module.

 

I have received feedback on Bottle That Water, and just as oqhansoloqo pointed out, it's a bit much and unbalancing.  I will probably make two setups, and see how my water supplies last in a playthrough.

 

Sorry Audley, you are right.  It'll be difficult to integrate the no peep site version of the repeater.  Maybe I'll look into modifying the meshes and textures on WRP/WMX and see if that'll work, but I don't really have the steam to modify the modding of Fallout.  I just want to play.

 

RWD is definitely out.  My own 30 minute testing shows that even though it's a good idea...it's not implemented very well.  I am looking into finding an alternative.

 

One thing I am curious about on the Manual Reload...  How about Realistic Reloading? (nexus link)  Many mods I add or want to use must be updated to at least 2013...

 

Still looking into reducing load order to minimize instability.  Any advice on what might be mergeable?  I know with Skyrim there were some strict rules like mods that have scripts, reference scripts or script fragments should not be merged, unless you want to resolve conflicts by hand.