Survival Mode Tweaks

[ZS Maeklos]

I've got to admit, when Bethesda first announced they were going to overhaul the Survival difficulty and make it more like the Survival Mode from New Vegas, I was stoked. Then came the initial release and I was massively underwhelmed.

Thankfully, judicious modding has made it more enjoyable than it otherwise would be. As it is, I'm going to address the elements of Survival Mode that need rethinking as well as my reasoning for such:

1. No Save Option - This is not a good thing. Random, unexplained CTDs are a rarity compared to what they were for Skyrim, but they still do happen. Losing a couple hours' worth of work because the game decided to take a dump on your desktop is frustrating. Also, the increased spawn rate and the fact that for the first 20-30 levels, you can be one-shot by a great many enemies makes this even more frustrating. Fortunately, this can be gotten-around with a mod that allows in-menu saving (no hotkeyed quicksaving), but the option to allow time-interval autosaves or all normal autosaves (area transitions, X amount of time between opening your PipBoy, etc) would be great.

2. Enemy Difficulty - While human enemies seem to be fairly balanced with respect to raiders, Gunners and Rust Devils show a huge variety in difficulty. I've been able to take out a Rust Devil using a souped-up rifle and a headshot, then turn around and pop another Rust Devil from the same spawned group in their unarmored head and knock off only 5% of their health. The mitigating factor seems to be armor: if a target is wearing armor on any part of their body, it seems to affect their armor rating for their ENTIRE body; a targer wearing leg, arm, and body armor sees a multiplied armor rating for everything, including their unarmored head. This imbalance gets even more frustrating when fighting things like Deathclaws, where more than 300 rounds of ammunition are often required to take one down using weapons whose damage is rated at more than 100. It doesn't matter if it's an Overcharged laser rifle or a combat rifle chambered in .308 - Deathclaws, radscorpions, and even blood bugs have ridiculous damage soak. The whole tag line shown on the loading screen about "Be careful in Survival Mode - you do more damage, but so do your enemies!" is a lie. Your enemies do more damage. And you *can* do more damage through Adrenaline...but +25% damage is worthless when your 100+ damage shots are only doing 1 point of damage to an enemy.

3. Food Doesn't Heal You If You're Hungry - Food is food. Why wouldn't you get the benefit of healing if you eat it while you're hungry? Why does shoving food needlessly into your already-stuffed gob heal you when eating food while starving doesn't? This doesn't make sense, especially since not only do you not get the healing benefit of the food, you also don't get the stat boost. Yet this effect doesn't work the same for water: drinking water while thirsty does still replenish your health.

4. You Can Only Sleep X Hours In Bedroll/Sleeping Bag/Mattress - Why? Again, this doesn't make sense.

5. Food Makes You Ill - If you have the park that lets you eat things like mutfruit and tatos without suffering rads, you still can get sick from eating it. If that's the case, why isn't everyone in the Wasteland sick from eating? Again, just something else that doesn't make sense.

6. Sleeping Makes You Ill - Why do you randomly get sick when you sleep? I've woken up in my clean bed in Sanctuary Hills only to find out that sleeping gave me parasites. Huh?

7. No Fast Travel - This is particularly frustrating if you get stuck somewhere. Without modded save capacity, this means a redo on the day. Even still, being unable to fast travel while somewhere like the Castle or the Glowing Sea will often see you get alerts for communities like Sanctuary Hills or Tenpines Bluff even though their defense ratings are higher than food + water ratings. Taking off at a dead run will still see you fail these defenses simply because you can't get there in time. I don't usually fast travel whether playing Survival Mode or not, but having a community be able to fight off an attack or giving an extended timescale to get there to help seems a good fix.

8. Enemy Grenades - At level 51, with full health and an Endurance of 6, and wearing a full set of T-60d power armor, I've been killed by single frag grenades and, outside of power armor, by single molotov cocktails. This has ALWAYS been an issue, but even moreso with Survival Mode. The damage of a grenade is 151. It doesn't make sense that if you're caught in the blast from a grenade, you take that 151 damage against EVERY exposed body part, whereas enemies only take 151 total. I've dropped frag grenades on combat-armored Gunners - right at their feet - and done less than 10% damage. Also, enemies have infinite grenades and spam them incessantly, which doesn't make sense since weapons like the Fat Man and missile launcher are able to be programmed to take into account the enemy's actual ammunition count. But this combined with the ridiculous damage of Survival Mode makes running into a Supermutant armed with a single (yet infinite and spammable) molotov cocktail inside of a building a death sentence. Even if you're in power armor.

So, just my few thoughts about Survival Mode. Throwing them out there in case the folks working on tweaking this game want to give them an eyeball. You never know.

[CerebralAtrophy]

1) Yeah its dumb, but after a while you find out theres a bed always 2min away. TBH id rather be able to keep all saves than just save anywhere.

2) Its fine. Seriously its not that bad if you focus on attack and sneak. I one-two shot dethclaws, mirelurk queens. Any easier and id go melee

3 4 5 and 6) Food does heal as long as you are eating the right food and don't have a debuff. Nobody sleeps as well in a sleeping bag as well as an elevated matress past the age of 8. Quit eating ♥♥♥♥♥♥ food. Sleeping wont give you parasites.

7) You can fast travel with the brotherhood or institute. I agree that there should be more points. 3 settlement home plates would be amazing.

8) A grenade should kill you in everygame ever. I bathe in fire and it barely hurts me. Im betting if you had explosives maxed it would destoy those gunners.

Sounds to me like youre just starting out. It will get easier and then come to the point were you see 2 dethclaws fighting and instead of saying oh ♥♥♥♥, you are like yay exp!

[ZS Maeklos]

Actually, it's the opposite. Level 51 and running into Deathclaws that take 200+ rounds from an Overcharged laser rifle with all the works and max points in Rifleman, backed up by a companion with a fully-rigged combat rifle chambered in .308.

Also, sleeping does give you illnesses at random, whether that illness is parasites, insomnia, weakness, or fatigue. And food does NOT heal you if you're hungry. In case you've never noticed, both the heal rating and stat/buff bonus is 0 until you eat enough not to be hungry anylonger. Which means that - since growable food like tatoes, corn, and mutfruit can make you sick when you eat it - you have to waste stat-boosting meat in order to fulfill your hunger, since you get 0 healing and 0 buff while you're hungry.

I'd suggest you pay more attention to make sure what you post is accurate. But it's teh intarwebs, so YMMV.

[ZS Maeklos]

Also, per the sleeping, millions of outdoorsmen in America alone sleep just fine in sleeping bags, in hammocks, or just rolled up in a blanket on the ground. Not to mention the billions of people in the world that actually do sleep on the ground every day.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by ZS Maeklos:

Actually, it's the opposite. Level 51 and running into Deathclaws that take 200+ rounds from an Overcharged laser rifle with all the works and max points in Rifleman, backed up by a companion with a fully-rigged combat rifle chambered in .308.

Also, sleeping does give you illnesses at random, whether that illness is parasites, insomnia, weakness, or fatigue. And food does NOT heal you if you're hungry. In case you've never noticed, both the heal rating and stat/buff bonus is 0 until you eat enough not to be hungry anylonger. Which means that - since growable food like tatoes, corn, and mutfruit can make you sick when you eat it - you have to waste stat-boosting meat in order to fulfill your hunger, since you get 0 healing and 0 buff while you're hungry.

I'd suggest you pay more attention to make sure what you post is accurate. But it's teh intarwebs, so YMMV.

Deathclaws have extreme resistance to energy damage. Maybe learn the game before complaining about it huh?

Takes me less than1 magazine of Violent 10mm Auto pistol. With only 2 Commando points.

[ZS Maeklos]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Deathclaws have extreme resistance to energy damage. Maybe learn the game before complaining about it huh?

Takes me less than1 magazine of Violent 10mm Auto pistol. With only 2 Commando points.

Not 'extreme resistance'. All deathclaw variants have an energy resistance that is higher than their ballistic resistance, but the 30% armor penetration from maxed Rifleman negates this difference for everything but standard deathclaws. For standard deathclaws, the AP bonus from Rifleman puts their energy resistance at 167. Compared to a weapon that does 154 energy damage, this means that the deathclaw's energy resistance soaks about 54% of that damage but should still take more than 70 damage per hit, based upon the damage formula on the wiki - though this is susceptible to range penalties.

So, yeah. I do know the game. Maybe you should back up statements with facts before tossing out trite comments, huh?

[CerebralAtrophy]

Originally posted by ZS Maeklos:

Actually, it's the opposite. Level 51 and running into Deathclaws that take 200+ rounds from an Overcharged laser rifle with all the works and max points in Rifleman, backed up by a companion with a fully-rigged combat rifle chambered in .308.

Also, sleeping does give you illnesses at random, whether that illness is parasites, insomnia, weakness, or fatigue. And food does NOT heal you if you're hungry. In case you've never noticed, both the heal rating and stat/buff bonus is 0 until you eat enough not to be hungry anylonger. Which means that - since growable food like tatoes, corn, and mutfruit can make you sick when you eat it - you have to waste stat-boosting meat in order to fulfill your hunger, since you get 0 healing and 0 buff while you're hungry.

I'd suggest you pay more attention to make sure what you post is accurate. But it's teh intarwebs, so YMMV.

I smoke everything in the game no problem. Again you dont get parasites from sleeping its a delayed effect from something else. But its the interwebs so YMMV or more post crying about something. Survival isn't for everyone. Good luck losing your virginity

[Maverick]

I just edited the files to make it so NPCs use ammunition, no infinite grenades and they can run out of ammunition... that does mean there will be a lot of corpsed you dig through that don't have ammo to take but if you kill them quick enough you will, and if you bait their shots so they run out, you win

[ZS Maeklos]

Originally posted by Cerebral Atrophy:

I smoke everything in the game no problem. Again you dont get parasites from sleeping its a delayed effect from something else. But its the interwebs so YMMV or more post crying about something. Survival isn't for everyone. Good luck losing your virginity

Wow, someone forgot to put on their Big Girl panties after they woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, looks like.

Having NPCs run out of ammunition would be a good change if they didn't have so little ammunition to begin with. Even if they start with a full magazine/charge in their weapon, they've usually only got a dozen or so rounds beyond that. More firefights would last 5 or 10 seconds and be over as the enemies then run at you and I guess try to beat you to death with their fists? Which, admittedly, would be hilarious. But not, I think, what's needed.

I think what is needed is a change in how damage from grenades and explosions work, simply because damage is treated differently for players and NPCs. If you get caught in an explosion, you take that explosion's damage to every body part caught in the blast. That means that if a grenade goes off at your feet, you take 151 damage for each leg, arm, body, and head - 906 damage total, reduced by armor. So even if you're wearing a full set of power armor, a grenade going off at your feet can still hit you for 300 damage. If the enemy who threw it is a supermutant or gunner with the Demolition Expert perk, that damage looks more like 900.

But NPCs only get hit by damage once - so a grenade going off at the feet of a gunner, a deathclaw, or Piper will hit the closest body part only. Which means they suffer only 151 damage, which is then reduced by armor.

Finding a way to apply player-based explosive damage to NPCs would be great.

[-shhfiftyfive]

not going to read the whole thing here but i just wanted to point out one thing of note:

if you use your weapon at a distance greater than intended (listed in description and determined by barrel, etc), then your bullet damage will be complete poop.

so instead of 100% damage from medium range, trying to use a medium range weapon at long range will result in you wasting tons of ammo and doing about 5% normal damage.

example: i've wasted 80 rounds of 5.56 on a deathclaw because i was 2 feet outside of the optimal range. stepping forward 2 feet made all the difference and the deathclaw was dead in about 5 bullets instead of 80. no exaggeration.

[Råb!d]

Mods fix all that.

NexusMods.com/fallout4

[danconnors]

Hand Grenades are ridiculously overpowered in Survival mode. If you are wearing undamaged power armor with explosive shielding, you should take virtually zero damage from a grenade. I've been killed by single hand grenades while encased in T-60 E explosive protection power armor.

Power armor completely encloses the occupant in protection, not the only partial coverage of conventional armor. Explosives should be neutralized by the armor until it begins to fall apart.

I recently ran into three super mutants, each armed with a missile launcher. Before I could kill them they got off around a dozen missiles at me. My power armor legs went into the red during the fight, but I was not killed. Considering that a missile is at LEAST 10 times as powerful as a hand grenade, the damage done by grenades is unrealistic.

There are some encounters where the changes made to survival mode did not take place, most notably the cockroaches in Station Olivia that take around a dozen hits from a 10 mm pistol to kill. I am assuming that the damage still being done by grenades falls under the list of items not upgraded by the survival upgrade.

[Zubenelgenubi]

Originally posted by Maverick:

I just edited the files to make it so NPCs use ammunition, no infinite grenades and they can run out of ammunition... that does mean there will be a lot of corpsed you dig through that don't have ammo to take but if you kill them quick enough you will, and if you bait their shots so they run out, you win

This should be added to the standard survival. Course you'd get less ammo from corpses too.

[-shhfiftyfive]

another note: this map should help you stay in the right area for your level (shows what level of enemy to expect in each area of the map).

http://imgur.com/16QPI5x

wandering into a higher level area can result in false assumption that something is op when really you've got to curb your expectations... don't go to a 30+ area and get mad that the area is challenging even though you are level 80... this is a blessing, not something to cry about. adapt.