Previous experiments were run from a basic blandness or what we know as the "Hero Complex" && "Big Boss Game Theory" particular to the opinionated issue or lack thereof in Fallout 3 && New Vegas vs what we knew about the truth or reality of what the wasteland actually was, or waster theory in my case. In 2016 though the expeditionary idea came back though, directly from TTW's vanilla result, time passing in the real world, and Lucky Harith...
MMM tougher traders would be a secondary example, but there was another that added in more guards. You know we are iterating on the initial idea, looking at what was right or wrong with it in the Game Design area. A proper kit in FO3 back in the day resulted in the player losing or getting killed, because it's vs a computer after all. In the New Vegas era the result was more aligned with a generic fun factor of having actors or the game/actors kit'ed out.
By kit I mean that everything was changed about it in order to produce a desired result. It's Lucky Harith here in the initial idea because we followed the actor as they walked, an pretty much the actor an merchant was killed in less than the first day in the wasteland. There were many reasons that caused this, and some of those are just FO3/FNV design/development that is contrary to our opinion of what it should be due to the fact we have more freedom.
Using the Obsidian version of the engine does fix a fair amount of issues though, so it would seem possible to localize edits to NPC/Creatures, Hidden custom NPC weapons/gear, and ai packages. At least for the TTW build an relying on the stability, testing, and functionality. In my case though it's limited only to my own personal opinion of what it should or could be an hence it's flawed by my own limitations due to opinions I have that are old pretty much.
I only spent a day on it, an the result failed it's prototype testing phase, an it meant starting over from scratch. For Lucky Harith, we first cut the bullet proof vest off the Vault Security armor, an reshaped it to fit the Red Racer jumpsuit. This added 16 DT or so but was reduced to 14 because the game grabbed the old worn out textures for the BPV. Then I don't even know if DR is used, but we ran a double DT number for DR, so 14 DT && 28 DR as ratio.
Cutting the armor resulted in the somewhat flawed POV/FOV of FNV, as you might have noticed on the clone of that particular BPV on the Powder Gangers in FNV, the straps look way too wide, but some of this is due to the wider/bigger torso of the armor/clothing. For that issue we are really looking at taking the original Vault Security armor an sizing proportion an shape to that before adjusting for that particular outfit, in that method at least.
Actor inventory was next, which is all silly, an balance limited to leveled list for weapon condition an DPS that way using player weapons instead of what would be quarantined NPC weapons for various reasons, but mostly because of the fire rate issue with NPC's an semi auto fire, being different if the player is using it, vs a NPC using it, which glitches out, so Lucky Harith's shotgun would need to have a hacked fire rate set, to slow him down when firing.
It's a kit though, so most of the inventory an other data about the NPC/Creature is voided an replaced ideally. It also supports the desire for custom encounter over cloned encounter (more encounters) you know, obviously, because if the encounters were better then we wouldn't need massive amounts of them, or as a juxtaposition to the status quo or for example a tailored MMM, which we did in the first 4 months in Fallout 4, something we noticed.
From that we go into the lore of Lucky Harith or the game, an he in particular deals with weapons, which opened a can of worms as to what he might use in travel. I didn't get to run with that idea, instead just going with a Bethesda level weapon condition list for the Chinese Assault Rifle. Then that would default to a new kit of weapons for distance to target to exploit the ai of the game. Which you might have never tried, but is really fun.
A sniper rifle, assault rifle, melee weapon, hand to hand. Each actor has combat ai built into it, but for FNV at least in testing an numerical comparison the best combat style is actually the default combat style, ROFL, because it's what Scrambler (I think was his name) used an had good melee/H2H fighting feel in game testing, but numerically matched ranged combat style, from there it's just setting the numbers to limit distance in the weapons.
You know sniper range in the weapon for the actors would be limited to where the mid range weapon comes in, then melee at the end of midrange. In testing for FNV this worked in combat scenes, where other custom ai packages would work as well, because it's all controlled automatically an near instantly by the game. But it would require some other ai package editing to represent in game play the actual idea of modders/gamers.
Lucky Harith had Stimpaks but in vanilla form it wasn't enough to keep him alive, an it didn't play the animation for when they were used, which is kind of :(, but easy to fix. Really just adding details after that via the kit. Some kind of gloves/hat/glasses an object effects for them, possibly making them good loot or wares for sale by the merchant, but all themed on that Red Racer thing Lucky has for whatever silly reason.
What I noticed was the merchant travel packages were silly an that's why they don't work so well in the game. The Bramin for example stays too close, the caravan doesn't really travel all that much in the wasteland, an the guard doesn't follow correctly. Not much sandbox in them either. Then the guard is a merc pretty much, an generically named, poorly equipped, along with many of the same problems as Lucky.
