Solve your bullet sponge game balance issues by killing nearly any actor in the game with one tap to the head (if they have one) from any weapon. Including those annoying unkillable essentials. An EZ switchable scripted solution with no compatibility patching needed (or even possible).
[ Critical Shot Authorised ]
Add this to any game at any stage and the player automatically gets regenerating [ Headshot any Actor menu ] AID item activator when the mod starts up. As new game start clears player inventory, craft replacements at any Industral workbench with 1 [ Fe ] iron. Then switch options in the configuration menu:
Configuration menu
Hostile actor headshots [ *Off | On ]
Friendly actor headshots [ *Off | On ]
Essential actor headshots [ *Off | On ]
Player headshots [ *Off | On ] for balance.
Headshot notifications [ Off | *On ] triggers additional dopamine hit.
Faction Kickout [ *Off | On ]
All of these functions are dynamically switchable as much as you like, even in the middle of combat. The menu header shows how many live 3d loaded actors are being headshot managed in each category at that time.
Essential actors are protected unkillable by anyone including the player to keep the quests they are involved in running. Typically they are uniqe named and are always friendly. Once you are past doing the same old quests and off into the OpenWorldUniverse of your imagination, kill anyone and work with the consequences.
TO BE CLEAR: if you CHOOSE to enable this and start killing essentials you will break quests, so don’t cry.
Faction Kickout provides handlers when you kill essential unique named actors in friendly questline factions, just like the good old days shooting Fallout 4 faction leaders in the face.
The player is kicked from the faction (if joined) which turns permanently hostile and shuts down all its quests. Also kicks any faction companions and elite crew for consistency. This does not clean up any visible quest objectives as there are simply too many. Faction kickout handlers are provided for: Constellation, Crimson Fleet, Freestar Rangers, Ryujin Industries, United Colonies.
Pro tip: if you wipe out Constellation and still want to NG+ in that game, use Shutdown Constellation, enable companions, trigger NG+. Infact why not make shutting down Constellation, unlocking companions and then killing the whole lot a thing before you NG+ for consequence free sociopathy.
Performance
This manages actors that are 3d loaded in the active radius around the player (usually 300 meters), releasing them when they die or 3d unload.
For most hostile areas that will be 20 to 30 actors which can be found and headshot managed in less than a second. Heavy populated friendly settlements can have a crap-tonne of NPCs in the active area: Atlantis up to 300, Neon Core 200, Akila City 150 which can take ~ 5 seconds to find and manage.
When you fast travel into a busy settlement, just relax for a moment before blasting away on your psycho murder fest rampage. Also be aware that the AI engine can only really handle 30 actors in combat at once (iNumberActorsInCombatPlayer & etc) so most of them will hang back and engage in waves.
You may be frustrated that your ability to land headshots is proportional to frame rates. Creation Engine is of course an open world RPG platform for dialog and quests which comes with plenty of real-time latency. It does shooting better than Call of Duty does quests tho.
Technical operation notes
This works by scanning for matching actors in the loaded area as the player moves through the world plus a backup timer when stationary. Matching actors head condition is reduced by 95% of the normal 100 health value (for humanoid races) and most semi-automatic weapons will deal at least 5 damage at all ranges for one tap, but some considerations:
> Some creatures may start with higher head part health and a 95% reduction may be more than one tap damage at range.
> Some actor models don’t have a headpart, or a tiny hitbox like the Vasco robots.
> There is no peer reviewed data for head armor/penetration falloff yet.
> To ensure that the player is credited EXP for headshot kills which are normally only 5 damage, this makes a HARD EDIT to game setting fXPDeathRewardHealthThreshold changing from default 0.25 (percentage of target health) to 0.01 (percentage of target health). If something else later in your load order edits this you will simply miss out on EXP for headshot kills.
> Actors that are spawned super close to the player by jump-scare mods may not be detected and headshot managed in time before engagement. Using SKK Stalkers with a 100 meter spawn radius or Outpost Attacks is fine.
Installation
This does not depend on anything at all (like script extenders) except your ability to follow instructions.
(A) Mod Manager Install
Folllow your chosen mod manager install instructions for ESM files and loose scripts, I’m not getting involved in that any more.
(B) Manual Install
(C) To validate your installation attempt in a running game:
To validate scripts console [ cgf “SKK_HAAManagerQuestScript.GetVersion” 1 ]
To validate the ESM console [ help SKK_HAAManagerQuest 4 quest ]
Quality & Compatibility
(1) This is 100% new forms and scripts. As it does not modify any base game content at all, the likelyhood of it CAUSING conflict is zero.
(2) The only point of contention is game setting fXPDeathRewardHealthThreshold described above.
(3) Installing mods disables achievements.
Known Issues
(1) Do not rename the ESM file. The scripts use GetFormFromFile() lookups on fixed file names rather than script properties until Creation Kit releases because technical reasons.
(2) This is a scripted solution. You can totally disable it doing anything in your game using the menu, but don’t try and remove scripted mods from a savegame without rolling a hard d20 skill check on pure luck. SKK mods does not offer support for mod manager installs or bad luck.
(3) There has been a report that EM weapons dtElectromagnetic can damage actor head condition so trigger headshot death. If this is infact true, you will need to make a choice about what solutions you use.
Spawning mod authors
If you are spawning actors in script and would like them to be instantly headshottable if that actor type is configured, rather than waiting on player movement or 30 second timer updates, add this code fragment for masterless dependency free service:
Credits:
SKK50
Download mod
| File | File size |
|---|---|
SKKHeadshotAnyActor_007
|
28 KB |
|
SKKHeadshotAnyActor_001
|
18 KB |
|
SKKHeadshotAnyActor_001_MODMANAGER-001
|
18 KB |
