[null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://gamesandgrub.blogspot.com/2012/03/", "unformatted_src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8012/7163694886_dfd63852ee.jpg", "src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8012/7163694886_dfd63852ee.jpg", "formatted_filename": "dfd ee", "alt_text": "Fallout 3 Tactics - gatling laser shoots backward 2", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 313}, {"document_url": "http://gamesandgrub.blogspot.com/2012/03/", "unformatted_src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8163/7163689114_172847783f.jpg", "src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8163/7163689114_172847783f.jpg", "alt_text": "Fallout 3 Tactics - gatling laser shoots backward 1", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 313}, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://gamesandgrub.blogspot.com/2012/03/", "unformatted_src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8163/7163689114_172847783f.jpg", "src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8163/7163689114_172847783f.jpg", "alt_text": "Fallout 3 Tactics - gatling laser shoots backward 1", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 313}, null, {"document_url": "http://gamesandgrub.blogspot.com/2012/03/", "unformatted_src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8010/7163700592_2c163c124d.jpg", "src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8010/7163700592_2c163c124d.jpg", "formatted_filename": "c c d", "alt_text": "Fallout 3 Tactics - good cover 1", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 313}, null, {"document_url": "http://gamesandgrub.blogspot.com/2012/03/", "unformatted_src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8168/7163706370_b42e440d5b.jpg", "src": "http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8168/7163706370_b42e440d5b.jpg", "formatted_filename": "b e d b", "alt_text": "Fallout 3 Tactics - good cover 2", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 313}, null, {"document_url": "http://gamesandgrub.blogspot.com/2012/03/", "unformatted_src": "http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7241/7163682682_1250ce81b4.jpg", "src": "http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7241/7163682682_1250ce81b4.jpg", "formatted_filename": "ce b", "alt_text": "Fallout 3 tactics - shoot exposed body parts", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 313}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]

Fallout 3 - Tips to Avoid Crashes
 - Tips to Avoid Crashes

This is one of our posts on tips to optimize your Fallout 3 experience -- giving you the best gameplay experience through a careful mix of cheats and mods. For the full index, click here.

Fallout 3, patched to 1.7, with just DLCs and NO mods, is actually very stable, all things considered. Most of the time, if you are getting a crash, removing all your mods will let you play through an area without a crash -- meaning mods are the problem.
Exactly why mods cause crashes is not easy to determine, but part of it probably has to do with computing load. The bigger the mod, the greater the chance of a crash, even if the mod is not buggy per se.

Game Freeze
This sort of crash happens when the game suddenly freezes up and you cannot access any controls at all. Typically you have to do a Control-Alt-Delete to access the Windows Task Manager and end the Fallout 3 application that way. It is rare, and often isolated to just a couple of locations. One location I have gotten this is inside the Recently Built Shack in Greyditch. It would suddenly occur, but not reliably in the same place.

This seems to be related to Fallout 3 using more than 2 CPUs. A workaround is to edit Fallout.INI: Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3
Find the line:
change it to:
Add another line after it and insert:
This will limit the game to two cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze. If the game still crashes write this iNumHWThreads=1

Mothership Zeta Operating Room Game Freeze
This is a slightly different type of Game Freeze, in that it is reliably repeatable. During the initial sequence where you are on the operating table and three aliens hover over you, the game may freeze. However, one alien in the back will continue to loop an animation where it seems to be mouthing something. During this time, you can still access the menu. Once that alien stops moving, the game will have frozen as usual, with no controls accessible.
This seems to be related to using the console command Purge Cell Buffers. Used at the appropriate time, this memory management command is said to help overall game stability, and there is a mod that does this periodically. In this particular instance, using Purge Cell Buffers causes the intro sequence to freeze.
This article on Fallout 3 Wiki has more comprehensive information and fixes for this and other potential game-stopping bugs.

Sudden Crash to Desktop
This sort of crash is generally caused by the game suddenly not having required information, which may in turn be related to an incomplete load of game information. Try a double-load: Load a game from the Main Menu, then load it again. This double-load gives Fallout 3 more time to load things in the background or work on things further than the area immediately around you. See Crash to Desktop on Save (below) for more information.

Sometimes a double-load won't help. A busy place with very far line of sight, such as Wilhelm's Wharf, can cause a CTD. I have consistently experienced it myself approaching Wilhem's Wharf from Greyditch, and with Mart's Mutant Mod loaded. Something you can try is to teleport yourself there. In the case of Wilhelm's Wharf, I used the console to get the Ref ID of Grandma Sparkle (by clicking on her when you have the console open), who is typically outside. Then I use player.moveto <Ref ID> to teleport my character to her location, which was previously inaccessible due to CTD on approach.
Using moveto typically causes the game to unload data, move you to the cell, and reload -- like a Fast Travel, only you aren't travelling that far. If you are indoors and using moveto to get to another location in the same indoor space, the game won't do that. It will just move you there since the entire indoor area is loaded. Outdoor cells are much smaller and using moveto can trick the game engine into clearing memory and reloading instead of trying to load more data and manage memory as you move forward in the game world.

Crash to Desktop (CTD) on Save
This sort of crash happens when you try to save the game: It immediately crashes you back to the desktop, even if you didn't move or do anything from where you last successfully save the game.
This is apparently related to trying to save the game when Fallout 3 has incompletely loaded data. Fallout 3 can sometimes have a lot of stuff to load and process. While the game may appear to work fine, the loading of information is actually not complete or properly done.

The workaround is to roll back to a previous successful save. Load this save from the Main Menu. Once loaded, look around you to force the game to load even more stuff and start processing the surrounding area. Now, load the same game again. Since a lot of information should now have been loaded and prepared, Fallout 3 doesn't have to start from scratch and has more of a chance to "catch up".

Changing this line in Fallout.INI also appears to help, by giving Fallout 3 more memory to work with:


The default is 25,600K (i.e., 26214400 bytes). If you have a lot of system memory, you can try changing it to 1 GB (1073741824) or even 2 GB (2147483648). If you are using hi-res textures or mods that introduce a lot of new textures because of new objects, this ought to help. As a precaution, double-load your games from the main menu, and make Clean Saves (saves that don't overwrite a previous save) every time. Labels: cheats, fallout 3, mod

Fallout 3 Mod - GQ Bullet Time
 Mod - GQ Bullet Time
-- Download (ver: 2012-Mar-17) --

Posted by paimo bejo at 2:08 AM No comments: 

Fallout 3 - Combat - Specific Fighting Tips - Monsters
 - Combat - Specific Fighting Tips - Monsters

In this post, we present notes on how to tackle specific adversaries. (For general combat tips, see this post.) Because the AI combatants tend to react, move, and aim very quickly, we recommend you level the playing field with a Fallout 3 Bullet Time mod.

Deathclaws are probably the most dangerous monster to face (other than Feral Ghoul Reavers from the Broken Steel and Point Lookout expansions) because they are very fast and very agile. Even in 1/4-speed Bullet Time, you typically have to lead your shot (anticipate their position) when shooting them.
They can leap to close the distance and inflict a lot of damage in the process. They can't turn very quickly, but their claw swipes can have very wide arcs of effect, similar to ghoul attacks. If you continually circle to the flank, you will do better than trying to block or step out of range.
Because Deathclaws have so much health and can quite reliably inflict damage quickly, if you are stuck in close combat I recommend an automatic weapon with the biggest clip possible. A shotgun can do well if your spread is quite tight and especially if your chance of getting a critical is high, but an automatic weapon generally has a tighter spread, which means more concentrated damage to a body part.
Start with the head if you can reliably keep your weapon focussed there. As soon as it takes a crippling injury anywhere, like all creatures it will go into a flinching animation where they reel from the injury or clutch at it. If you don't think you can finish it off during that time (since you might need to reload), go for another body part (body or legs) to force it to flinch again, buying you more time and accuracy (since it stands still during that time).
If there is extensive cover, keep backing around cover to force the Deathclaw to run around the corner and deny it the ability to pounce. It tends to slow down as it goes around, therefore negating its speed advantage and letting you get in more shots.

Ghouls actually fight remarkably similarly to Deathclaws, and you can use the same tactics, except many ghouls are quite weak, so one or two shotgun blasts (or even just pistol shots) to the head should finish them if you are engaged in melee. A Sneak Attack to the head with a light firearm is usually enough to one-shot-kill weaker ones.
Don't try to run except to reposition or put distance between you and other ghouls that haven't yet confirmed your location -- they are fast enough to catch up and hit you with their long-reaching lunges/leaps without really losing ground chasing you.
The distinctive Feral Ghoul Reavers are probably the most dangerous enemy in-game, with a combination of speed, damage, and toughness. Soften them up with sniping and hiding if your Sneak is good enough to counter their high Perception.

The best way is to sneak-attack the head with a close-range shotgun blast (if you can manage it) outside of VATS to blow it off with a single shotgun cartridge. Keep shooting if it doesn't die right away. This works remarkably well even at a low Small Guns skill because your initial shot (especially with a shotgun outside of VATS, since you get critical damage bonus per pellet that hits, not per cartridge fired) should take off a lot of health, and ghouls that become alerted always do a short animation of rousing and hissing, during which they do not move or attack.

The Dart Gun is a great equalizer against the Ghouls' speed. In open combat against Feral Ghoul Reavers who have grenade-like projectile attacks (bits of their radioactive flesh), cover won't help you as much because of the explosive radius and indirect attacks (they can throw them over cover like grenades). Dart Gun them then close quickly to get them to put away their glowing "grenades".
There is a distance at which they will try to melee you. If you crippled their legs, your speed exceeds theirs so you can keep your distance and gun them down. If you are too far away, they will run away to put more distance and pull out their grenades. Chase them to make them put the grenades away again.

If you are agile enough, you can literally run (even quite closely) past a ghoul's running swiping attack and take no damage. You then have a window of opportunity while they are recovering from being unbalanced by their all-out attack and are turning around to face you. You can try this with Bullet Time (also available in this combo "Conveniences" mod for Fallout 3).

Mr. Gutsy
Mr. Gutsy robots like to stand off and shoot their plasma pistol at you, while not really paying much attention to going for cover. If you find good cover, you can duck from its plasma blasts and in between take shots at it until it goes down.

These usually start near water. No one -- not even mirelurks -- can attack while swimming, and you cannot generally shoot INTO water and hit anything (but you can shoot the exposed parts of anything that is partially in water). You can, however, throw grenades into water and the blast can harm creatures. You can therefore use cheap Frag Grenades to get the attention of Mirelurks and get them out of the water where you can engage them; or hide till they turn to go back into water, then Sneak Attack them.
It is not necessary to aim for the vulnerable face in melee or a Sneak Attack melee. A Sneak Attack with melee appears to automatically hit that no matter where you hit, because generally there is a burst of blood at the faceplate when they go down. When you shoot, however, hitting the face does a lot more damage than anywhere else.

If they start from far enough away, they will end their charge with a pounce. If you keep moving sideways, they won't be able to set that up. Or if they do start their pounce you can try sidestepping it, but it's a quick pounce, this is actually quite hard to do.
If your attack skills are low, then the fastest way to kill one is with the Repellent Stick. The initial hit tends to cause distraction, during which time they do not attack.

Radscorpion, Giant Ant
Radscorpions charge into battle, but once in range, they move more slowly. They are very long, and so have a slower time turning. They must be head-on in order to attack you with either stinger or pincers, and typically you can either strafe to its flank or move in and out of range if you know what to look for in its attack animation and can anticipate an impending attack.
If you are in front but to the side, you can try moving straight instead of strafing, thus in effect walking past the monster, before turning around to strike from behind, or to keep to the rear or rear flank.

Giant Radscorpions and Albino Radscorpions are much harder to flank or dodge because they move more quickly overall. If you can find a long fence and get around it quickly enough, the scorpion might not be able to path-find its way around, allowing you to shoot it quite safely.
Albino Radscorpions tend to back off when charged, and are actually quite hard to flank if you start in front of them.

Giant Ants have the same problem, except they are generally even slower-moving. Make sure you have plenty of room to move about and strafe around them and you should be fine in both cases. Watch out for ants who have trouble negotiating terrain suddenly teleporting ahead (the game does this after a while to prevent monsters from being permanently stuck).
If you are in a tunnel or otherwise cannot flank them, it is possible to attack and back away, but watch for them charging you suddenly if you happen to be in front.

Sentry Bot
The sentry bot moves slowly, and more importantly it turns very slowly. If you start right behind it and can stay close, you can keep strafing to keep out of its front arc, where it can only fire straight ahead. Stay to the flank or rear and you can defeat any lone Sentry Bot without getting shot at.
Against two or more, it is generally safer to first shoot for the combat inhibitor of at least one so that they end up fighting each other.

Super Mutant
The short necks of super mutants means that they are harder to head-shot from behind because so little of their head sticks out -- especially when you are in a crouch and are looking up at an angle. It may be easier to headshot them from the side, if not the front (if you have enough darkness or sneak skill).
The weakest ones (simply called "Super Mutant") have 100 health and can be killed with a single Sneak Attack Critical head shot with a reasonable weapon, even at a fairly low Small Guns skill.

The regular Super Mutants also have quite low Perception, so if you are somewhat in hiding and one approaches you (at around 60-70 Sneak), you may want to try just sitting still if they are staring right at you but your status is still [CAUTION]. You don't really lose anything by letting it go to [DANGER] since you can't Sneak Attack them properly at [CAUTION] anyway. In the best case, your status will change to [HIDDEN] once they walk past.

If you can, use a shotgun on the tougher ones. A Sneak Attack Critical with a shotgun, aimed roughly at the head to hopefully get most of the pellets striking the head, might be enough to blow its head off in one shot.

If you can't sneak-attack Super Mutants, you can sometimes safely engage the Big Gun carriers in melee, especially if they are carrying Miniguns, which have a start-up time. By keeping to their flank, you can force them to keep turning trying to target you. And if they have a minigun, even if they do turn to face you, they will need about a second to start up the gun before it can actually fire.
This does NOT always work. Many weapons can fire at an unreasonable angle (the projectile can deviate at a very sharp angle from the barrel -- see pictures below) possibly due to the game's auto-aim. So if a super mutant has a Gatling Laser, for example, you need to pretty much be at the rear or you will still be hit. Being between the barrel and the mutant's body is also no guarantee you will be safe, but moving into the mutant's body and using melee is still safer than allowing it to back away and trying to outgun it. Although a weapon will fire backwards, the AI does not appear to know this and will try to back off to the minimum distance. Super Mutant Behemoths are fast enough to run you down, so you can try a combination of backing off and side-stepping to keep out of range. Start this early. Use a shot gun since they will be in close quarters anyway. Against one at full health, if shots to the head don't inflict significant damage, go for the thighs instead to cripple one or both legs. They only carry fire hydrant clubs, so once their legs are crippled you can outrun then to keep your distance and shoot them to death. Better crippling weapons include the Railway Rifle and the Dart Gun.

Super Mutant Overlords who use Super Sledges can somewhat easily be defeated by crippling their legs with a dart gun, then engaging them in melee. When they pull back to swing, retreat backward. Once they have swung, dart in and hit them a couple of times -- there is no back-swing attack, and you can tell when they are ready to swing again when they have pulled back their weapon. Often they carry grenades, which makes fighting them at range very annoying.
Posted by paimo bejo at 1:24 AM No comments: 

Fallout 3 - Combat - General Combat Tactics and Tips
 - Combat - General Combat Tactics and Tips

In this post, we present general combat tips. (For specific monsters, see this post.) Because the AI combatants tend to react, move, and aim very quickly, we recommend you level the playing field with a Fallout 3 Bullet Time mod.

In general, enemies have three styles of combat: Long Range, Medium Range, and Short Range. We'll also talk about Cover, Grenades, and Mines.
Medium Range
Short Range
All gun-using creatures usually have a minimum distance from which they can shoot. If they are using a long-barrelled weapon, you can sometimes go right up close, chest-to-chest, and be behind this distance but still be able to melee them. Shooters rarely switch to melee in such a case, but rather try to back up and shoot. Some weapons (especially Gatling Lasers) can actually have their shot angle backward, but the AI will still fire only infrequently if you are mostly to the flank. Example 1: Very close range, but it allows me to keep the Super Mutant Overlord's Big Gun completely concealed. Also notice it is complete top to bottom cover -- The AI can also shoot at extremities, so just because you can't see their gun or see them doesn't mean they can't shoot at a piece of you. In this situation, the enemy did not reposition too much, so I just took my time with a small handgun. Example 2: The enemy is high and on a ledge. The AI cannot jump and does not consider jumping even a safe distance down to be a movement option. Therefore, in this situation the AI probably couldn't find their way to me. Also, being on a ledge makes it easier for me to shoot its gun out of its hand if I wanted to. It would generally fall off the ledge, becoming either completely inaccessible or too far to be quickly retrieved. I might even be able to grab it first. Example 3: Somewhat tricky cover. The amount of exposure to the enemy is very small, but if I remain behind cover too long, they could charge up the stairs. In this case, however, the building was ruined and I could quickly retreat out of line of sight, and drop down from the second floor to the ground floor outside the building. The enemy is shooting upward at me with a Tri-Beam Laser, so it was also a bit more dangerous each time I stepped out to shoot. 

Fallout 3 - Combat - Skill Development
 - Combat - Skill Development

After you've played Fallout 3 for a while, you should first consider your overall game experience and set your Combat Difficulty. In this post we will discuss skills to develop toward combat.

Overall, I recommend aiming for Sneak ~70, Small Guns ~50, then Repair ~95. I typically develop Lockpick 95, Science 70, Repair 40, and Science 95 after Sneak 60-80 because those benchmark levels get me past locks, terminals, and traps instead of having to remember where I left something undone.
If you are willing to do more fighting to get loot, and come back later for locked containers, then don't worry about these skills for a while. Plot-related barriers all have keys and traps can mostly be avoided instead of disarmed for loot.

Your target number for skills need not be 100 since you can typically get skill-enhancing gear for +5 (e.g., Vault 101 Utility Jumpsuit for +5 Repair and +5 Lockpick), and (if your related SPECIAL is less than 10) a non-addicting Statistic enhancer of +1 (e.g., Pre-War Baseball Cap for +1 Perception, which in turn gives +2 to Energy Weapons, Explosives, and Lockpick).

Small Guns vs. Energy Weapons
Melee and Unarmed

Posted by paimo bejo at 1:22 AM No comments: 

Fallout 3 - Combat and Difficulty Settings
 - Difficulty and Combat Settings

In this post we will discuss Difficulty settings and setting up combat encounters in Fallout 3. We first start with what we consider "good combat".

What is a "Good" Combat Setting?
Most of the combat you encounter can be termed "random encounters". That is, on your travels, you encounter some hostiles. They are not important to the plot and to keep the action moving and to keep the quests and stories advancing, they shouldn't totally absorb your time in heavy strategy or multiple reloads/re-dos.
To draw on some 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons methodology, a "random encounter" is just filler action and shouldn't be a life-and-death struggle. You should be able to come out on top having used only just a fraction of your resources (and in a game where you can get mods to have unlimited storage, "resources" means what you Strength allows you to carry, without mods). Random encounters are meant to be exciting, but because they are ultimately unimportant, they shouldn't really take you too much away from the rest of the game, or risk killing you unless you are deliberately putting yourself in excessive danger -- This is our benchmark for what makes combat "good".

As you know, you can choose five settings: Very Easy - Easy - Normal - Hard - Very Hard. The chief difference is:
Beyond the numbers, what does this mean, actually? We can look at the early game where you fight Raiders and see how each setting "feels". Then we match it up with whether we like it or not -- although in a game where adversaries can be of a "higher level" and absorb more damage, we can only go so far with using this as a benchmark.

In the early game, at any difficulty, you can expect that a handgun will kill a human with a shot to the head if they are unaware (Sneak Critical). This is pretty reasonable. We can assume that when they are aware, even a direct hit to an unarmored head is just an abstraction in a game where dodging is limited to strafing and ducking. Nevertheless, a couple shots to the head should result in a kill, a few more if they are armored.
Once we get to Hard or Very Hard difficulty and Raiders of level 4+ (and you can't really tell who's veteran and who's not from just looking at them), it can start to swing either way, where you might or might not kill someone with a bullet to the head (never mind that your character can take multiple bullets to the head and survive...). This is not bad, but it just looks weird. It gets weirder when you have the highest-level raiders surviving sniping rifle bullets to the brain or a full clip of assault rifle fire (allowing for some misses due to weapon spread).
This, to us, is not reasonable. It makes combat hard, certainly, but something about the reality-defying nature of it is just irritating. On top of this, the enemy does double damage. Combined with the AI's coordinated accurate shooting and strafing, this can make for a lot of stumbling into no-win situations. (But Bullet Time can even things out a bit).

You can use stims, eat food, and drink water in copious amounts during combat by binding something to a hotkey or opening your inventory, but this is really a type of unreasonable compensation for a too-high difficulty. Realistically, are you going to administer a stim to your crippled head during a gunfight? Or somehow pull out a Brahmin Steak and eat it in between trying to shoot down a mole rat with your rifle? It is our opinion that if you rely on having in-combat healing, then the fight is too tough and should be classed as a mini-boss or boss fight. If you only occasionally use one of these "magic healing potion" options, it's not so bad since chance and mistakes happen in combat. But if most fights, or every fight, is like this, then you've set the difficulty level way too high for things to really be fun.

I recommend the highest Difficulty Setting to be Normal if you fight head-to-head, to still get reasonable-looking results. If you almost exclusively sneak-and-snipe, then you still want to set the difficulty down to Normal because after around Small Guns 30-40, you can kill super-mutants with a single sniping rifle sneak attack shot to the head at even Very Hard difficulty -- which means you are getting 50% more XP for the same work.

Things change around level 20+ IF you have the Broken Steel add-on because that expansion adds monsters specifically designed to kill player characters -- in particular, the Super Mutant Overlord, the Albino Radscorpion, and the Feral Ghoul Reaver (also in Point Lookout). All of these have a lot of health, can do a lot of damage quickly: The Super Mutant Overlord has a 40-120 damage bonus using the Tri-Beam Laser Rifle that cannot be blocked (and that only applies to the player character); the Feral Ghoul Reaver and the Albino Radscorpion both do massive damage and move very quickly. Combine this with the 200% monster damage from Very Hard Difficulty and combat jumps in difficulty very suddenly, compared to what you will have encountered before. A tedious amount of sniping and running might safely defeat these enemies (and they have high Perception, so Sneak skill would have to be very high), but head-to-head things can get suicidal.

If you don't mind using (a lot of) potions mid-combat, then go for Very Hard, because that gives adversaries similar survivability compared to you. They don't have the advantage of potions (i.e., food, water, and stimpacks) so taking half damage is okay.

Combat Difficulty and "Static Game" Fallout 3
To make the game more interesting, and to slow down your skill progression a bit, you can start at level 10, but without the skill advancement. This will also give you more health to start, which is generally fine because you will be facing stronger enemies from the start.
Once you have finished the initial "Escape!" quest and you are about to exit Vault 101, BEFORE you activate the door to finalize your character, use the console command player.setlevel 10 . The game will recalculate your XP to put you at the very start of level 10, and award you the additional health from level increase. You will not gain any skill points or perks. Essentially you will experience the game world as if you were level 10 (including a slightly wider variety of store items and an increased possibility of energy weapons in stores) but with level 1 skills. Your level advancement rate will be slower because the XP requirement between levels increases as you increase in level. You will also have a wider variety of perks to choose from because all perks have a level requirement.

A even slower rate of advancement can be had by setting your starting level to 21 instead of 1 (using the console). As this is the initial level limit in Fallout 3 (without the Broken Steel add-on), by setting your initial level to 21, you will see pretty much everything the game has to offer from the start. This provides a "static game", where the world just "is", and the only difference in your experience is your character's skill improvements -- as opposed to the levelled game, where new creatures and items suddenly appear because you are of a higher level.

By starting at a higher level, you have theoretically more survivability from having more Health, but having less Sneak and combat skills means fights are harder, and some typical random encounters can be outright suicidal  without some luck and a lot of healing (e.g., 2+ Talon Mercenaries, who normally don't appear until you are level 7+, by which time you would have had the chance to acquire solid skills and decent gear).

If you start your level at 31 (or significantly above 20), you can encounter the deadly Broken Steel add-on creatures, and some areas or even random encounters will be impossible. Some equalization can be gotten with the Dart Gun, however. Remember that Broken Steel is an add-on in the original game where your level is limited to 20, and the super-monsters don't appear until you are level 26+. Further, in the original game when you enter an area, it records your character level so that future encounters are all keyed to that level. Therefore, the Broken Steel super-monsters are theoretically very rare, and limited to any new areas in Broken Steel. If you start a game with Broken Steel, AND you develop your level before exploring a lot of locations, you'll encounter them much more frequently. In fact, at a high level, you may find you encounter more Super Mutant Overlords than regular Super Mutants.

If you do start your character at a higher level, you will also want to tweak your game to increase your maximum level to account for your level jump without getting perks or skill points, since the maximum level is normally 20, or 30 with Broken Steel.

Finally, for an exceptionally challenging time, you can make your own Perk in the GECK editor to adjust your Health downward so you are truly "level 1" when you start. i.e., If you start at level 31, to be properly "level 1", you need to suppress 30 levels of Health, or 300 Health. Some monsters, especially on Very Hard difficulty, will kill you with a single hit even with your starting 120 to 200 Health.

V.A.T.S. vs. Real Time vs. Bullet Time
The VATS system in Fallout 3 is really a compensation for AI opponents who calculate moves far too quickly.
Because of all this and more, Fallout 3 implements VATS, which basically lets you queue a few attacks. While in VATS you take only 10% damage, to compensate for not dodging while in VATS, and having to wait for your Action Points to fill up once the VATS sequence ends. Also, the chance to hit in VATS goes down very quickly over range, making sniping useless.

Instead of VATS, you can slow the world down to 25% speed for everyone -- including you. At that speed, you can think, move, and fight approximately as well as the enemy. What they can do, you can do too. It then comes down to damage and weapon spread, both of which are determined by the skills your character has developed. A simple mod that does this is GQ Bullet Time, which lets you toggle 25% time on and off.

Whether you fight in real time or bullet time, you may still want to use VATS:
Other Combat Tweaks

Posted by paimo bejo at 1:20 AM No comments: 

Fallout 3 - Cheat Codes - When and Why to Use Them
 - Cheat Codes - Why and When to Use Them

Careless use of Cheat Codes can break quests, so be sure that you are using it as a convenience instead of accomplishing a task or quest.

To open the console on the PC, press the ` or ~ key (typically above the Tab key, to the left of the 1 key, and under the ESC key.

What this does: Typically known as "toggle clipping", this turns off (for the player) the game engine's detection of barriers. You can walk through walls and into the air.
When to use it: Shortcutting. For example, you are in Megaton and have exited your house. You want to go Craterside Supply, which is at the other end of Megaton and with no straightforward route. Instead of spending a lot of time running up and down, just use this command and walk directly to it. Once you are outside Craterside Supply and standing on or above the platform outside the front door, use this command again to turn on normal physics.

What this does: "Toggle Lite Brite" seems to turn off the calculation of lighting. In exchange for the horrible rendering, you will get a massive FPS increase.
When to use it:
What this does: Toggles "God Mode". Typically people use this to make themselves invincible and not use up any ammunition. But it has various other effects.
tmm 1
What this does: Toggles Map Markers -- all map markers on your World Map are revealed and activated as if "found", so you can Fast Travel to them. You can turn this feature back off with tmm 0, or just reload a game where you haven't used this command.
player.modav <attribute or skill>
What this does: Adjusts an attribute (Strength, Perception, etc...) or Skill (Lockpick, Sneak, etc...) by an integer amount, either positive or negative. It will safely work whether you currently have modifiers or not. It can set a Skill to a value of over 100, but the game will still display 100 and you get no benefit from it.
player.addperk <BaseID>
player.removeperk <BaseID>
What this does: Adds or removes perks. The Fallout 3 Wiki has a list of perks and BaseIDs.
player.drop <BaseID> <number of keys>
What this does: Drops an item from your inventory.
When to use it: Drop keys. Keys that are picked up are added to a KeyRing in your inventory. The keyring is itself not actually an inventory item, but a type of submenu that shows what keys you have. You cannot normally drop keys. Keys are used automatically and you cannot therefore pick the associated lock for XP. To get the BasesID of a key, try this Fallout 3 Wiki page on keys in the game.
Example: Suppose you picked the pockets of Nathan and Manya in Megaton and got two copies of their house keys. To drop them, the console command would be  player.drop 430d0 2 . Once dropped, the key should then be on the ground at or very near you. You can move it about by Grabbing it, or just activate it to pick it up again.
Alternative: If you don't know the BaseID or can't look it up easily (e.g., it is a key from a mod), you can try the removeallitems command to drop most keys (some keys still can't be dropped this way, usually because they are essential to important quests).
save <filename>
What this does: Lets you specify a file name when you save your game.
When to use it: It's faster than going through the menu. You can put in a descriptive save game name. Use in place of Autosave and Quicksave.

SetEssential <BaseID> 1
What this does: When you use this on a creature, it makes the creature "Essential": It cannot be killed, only knocked out temporarily. To get the BaseID, you need to open up the .ESM file in the GECK Editor and find where the creature or NPC is defined. The creature's Reference ID (what you get if you click on the creature while in Console mode) cannot be used. Or, you can download this, which has already done the lookup work for you.
When to use it: Protect quest characters. To turn it off, use the command setessential <BaseID> 0. You can also download the NPC Essential batch file to remotely do this for all key characters in the game. In case a character or creature you need does get killed, you can try clicking on it while in Console mode and using the command resurrect. 

Fallout 3 - How to Play, Cheat, and Mod
 - How to Play, Cheat, and Mod

This post indexes our tips on optimizing your Fallout 3 experience -- giving you the best gameplay experience through a careful mix of cheats and mods. You can cheat easily enough by turning on God Mode with the tgm console command, but everyone knows that gets tired very quickly. Fallout 3 plays OK without any cheats and mods, but we can have a more interesting time by doing so.

Posted by paimo bejo at 1:00 AM No comments: 


Fallout 3 Mod - GQ Grab Inventory Items
 Mod - GQ Grab Inventory Items
-- Download (ver: 2012-Mar-07) --
-- Requires the Fallout Script Extender (FOSE) --

Note that the inventory item has no icon and is not visible when you equip it because none was assigned. This is a very lightweight script that has no dependencies whatsoever (not even Fallout3.esm).
Posted by paimo bejo at 11:58 PM No comments: 

Fallout 3 Info - Skill Book Checklist
 Info - Skill Book Checklist
-- Download (ver: 2012-Mar-05) --

Location of all skill books in the game, compiled from the Fallout 3 Wiki. Comes in plain text, Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, and Microsoft Word.
Posted by paimo bejo at 11:54 PM No comments: 

Fallout 3 Mod - GQ Rest to Restore Health
 Mod - GQ Rest to Restore Health

Posted by paimo bejo at 12:10 AM No comments: 

Fallout 3 Mod - GQ Bottle Water
 Mod - GQ Bottle Water
-- Download (ver: 2012-Mar-07) --

Posted by paimo bejo at 12:05 AM No comments: