Bizarre behavior of bloatflies

[SuperJ]

Okay, so I'm sure we've all noticed that the HP of bloatflies (and some other creatures) seems like it goes through huge variations. One time, you killed a bloatfly with one shot from your crappy pipe pistol. But the next time you encounter one, it seems like it just won't die, taking 4-7 shots from your wound up laser musket that you KNOW deals way more damage than the pipe pistol.

This has been aggravating me for days now. I'm just now getting back into this game, but I knew something was odd about this. So I got to googling. It seems like a lot of people are saying "well it's a bullet sponge", "maybe it's a leveled encounter" or "get gud and use the right weapon." Screw all of that. I noticed something quite... bizarre...

Okay, so this is what I did. New game. Got into sanctuary with the 10mm pistol. Went through the houses and killed all bloatflies in just one shot. Easy. Then I went up to the Concord watertower and saved before beginning my experiment...

First, I shot one of the bloatflies while sneaking. Got the 2x damage bonus... annnnnnnnnnd it was hardly damaged. Of course. Reloaded the save.

2nd attempt. I used the console to target the bloatfly and used getav health. The console reported it had 10 hit points. Okay good. Shot it while sneaking again. Still... same result. It just turned around and headed right towards me, with about 80% of its health bar. Reloaded the save.

3rd attempt. I did everything as before, but this time, AFTER, I once again pulled up the console and ran getav health.... ummmm.... now it has 67.25 hit points?! Also, there is now a [PP] at the end of its ID. Doesn't that mean it's a parent or child reference? What the hell just happened?

So let me get this straight... the bloatfly has 10 HP... I shoot it, dealing roughly 18-20 damage... and it... mysteriously gains maybe 50 or so HP... without dying? I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with leveled lists, what weapon was used, etc. This is just a bizarre bug, and I hope I'm not the only one who's noticed the HP changing like that...

[SuperJ]

Oh yeah, I should also mention another quirk I noticed: When using VATS, I'm getting the killcam animationfor the first shot. You know, the angle that seems to take the longest to play out? Further proof that the game knows the bloatfly is supposed to die from that first shot.

[wtiger27]

There is a bug/glitch with bloat flies and other flying insects which does happen with some, as they can become immune to damage for a bit. Not seen that bug myself in my runs, but players have complained about it on here before. So it does happen.

[SuperJ]

One of the other discussions I read was also one you replied to. Something about the hitboxes temporarily allowing the projectiles to pass through without registering damage... yeah I've experienced that a few times as well.

[DouglasGrave]

"Mods?" would be the first question to ask here (because that's a default question to answer whenever it's something weird and unusual).

Another one I'd have is whether the bloatfly you shot had the same ID the entire time, as it almost sounds like shooting it made it somehow get substituted with an upgraded version (or maybe get levelled up and recalculated somehow). You could check things other than its health to see if its level and other abilities increased at all.

[SuperJ]

Mods, yes. Not very many. Just the 'essentials', and as far I can tell by looking them over in FO4Edit, nothing is touching the bloatflies except my own little plugin I made where I reduced the HP value of all bloatfly variants to 10. It's had no effect on my current observations.

Yeah the ID did remain the same - 000195d2e - for the bloatfly I was experimenting with, but I noticed a [PP] had been added at the end AFTER shooting it the first time. So yeah that does give me the thought that it is somehow not dying, but being replaced by some other variant. But according to FO4Edit and the little plugin I made... such a variant should not exist.

Also, if I use recycleactor on a bloatfly that is 'infected' with this bug, it reliably reappears without any problems... dies in one shot like it should.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by SuperJ:

Mods, yes. Not very many. Just the 'essentials', and as far I can tell by looking them over in FO4Edit, nothing is touching the bloatflies except my own little plugin I made where I reduced the HP value of all bloatfly variants to 10. It's had no effect on my current observations.

Yeah the ID did remain the same - 000195d2e - for the bloatfly I was experimenting with, but I noticed a [PP] had been added at the end AFTER shooting it the first time. So yeah that does give me the thought that it is somehow not dying, but being replaced by some other variant. But according to FO4Edit and the little plugin I made... such a variant should not exist.

Also, if I use recycleactor on a bloatfly that is 'infected' with this bug, it reliably reappears without any problems... dies in one shot like it should.

Checking in the Creation Kit, the bloatfly placements up by the Concord watertower (where you did your experiment), they're using the entry "LvlBloatflyAggro768" which is templated from "LvlBloatfly" which is templated in turn from "LCharBloatfly" like a lot of other random levelled enemies and could plausibly be affected by level changes, it just wouldn't normally change while you're right there, assuming your experimental save is within sight of the bloatflies (to make sure the enemy has actually been loaded and any random elements selected). Some variation in the strength of bloatflies isn't abnormal on its own, just having it update on a bloatfly that's already been visibly loaded.

If you happen to be using quicksaves, those can be a little fudgy about some details (mines being well-known), but not usually enemy details.

Anyway, I'd be checking not just the enemy's health, but also its level to see whether that changes at all when attacking the bloatfly. The level part will tell you whether the bloatfly is gaining health as a separate effect (if its level doesn't change at all), or possibly just because it's being calculated from its level.

I can't say why it would be doing that if the bloatfly has already been loaded in as an enemy, but you should at least be able to narrow down what is happening.

[SuperJ]

Okay, here are a couple more details:

1) The save I'm experimenting on is standing near the bloatflies, so they were already spawned when the game was saved. This one is not a quick save.

2) It does appear to be something that happens when a bloatfly is spawned. During one new playthrough, the 6 bloatflies found in Sanctuary were affected, but on the next new game, they were not affected.

Okay so I loaded the experiment and used the console to give my character the Awareness perk, then targeted the bloatfly in VATS. Level 1 bloatfly confirmed. Also used getav health again just to check for consistency.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/5LFLxTq.jpg[/img]

I shot it, and VATS still shows it is level one, but also its health was boosted. The hip shot I made must have hit the head, as VATS shows the head has no remaining health, and the reported health is now 45.5.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/67MqKJb.jpg[/img]

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by SuperJ:

Okay, here are a couple more details:

1) The save I'm experimenting on is standing near the bloatflies, so they were already spawned when the game was saved. This one is not a quick save.

2) It does appear to be something that happens when a bloatfly is spawned. During one new playthrough, the 6 bloatflies found in Sanctuary were affected, but on the next new game, they were not affected.

Okay so I loaded the experiment and used the console to give my character the Awareness perk, then targeted the bloatfly in VATS. Level 1 bloatfly confirmed. Also used getav health again just to check for consistency.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/5LFLxTq.jpg[/img]

I shot it, and VATS still shows it is level one, but also its health was boosted. The hip shot I made must have hit the head, as VATS shows the head has no remaining health, and the reported health is now 45.5.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/67MqKJb.jpg[/img]

Well that rules out a change in level-based health (and we can also see that its defenses haven't changed). It seems to confirm that it's exactly the same bloatfly (ID, level, defenses, all equally unchanged), just with more health for some reason. And based on the amount of the health bar remaining compared to the console report of its health, it was easily dealt more than 10 points of damage (30+ by the look of it).

The only similar effect in a regular game is with legendary enemies having their health restore when they're first reduced below half health, and that only applies if they survive the attack.

With those ruled out, it really puts the most likely cause back to being some unexpected interaction from your mods, and the self-made plugin is your primary suspect (because it's explicitly altering bloatfly health). You didn't see this bug before adding that, did you?

[SuperJ]

Yes... the problem was occurring long before I made that plugin. The reason I made it was to try to bring the health of all possible bloatfly encounters down to 10. But since it didn't work, it's getting removed right now.

I was just discussing it with a friend who is a professional developer (not for video games, but still), and he suggested it may be an overflow error. If that be the case, I'm not sure a plugin could do anything about that... hmmm.... the plot thickens....