Fallout New Vegas Mod - GQ Partial Unlock

Fallout: New Vegas Mod - GQ Partial Unlock
--Download (version: August 10th, 2012)--
Alternate Download Link
--Requires the New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE)--


Use the console to additem xx000ADE and bind it to a hotkey.

Equip the item (via hotkey) when looking at a door, container, or terminal that is locked. Each time you do this, the lock level is reduced by 5 and one Bobby Pin is removed from inventory to represent an incremental lockpicking or hacking attempt. No karma penalty or hostility is triggered.

If the lock level is 5 or less, the object being looked at will be unlocked.

If a key is required, nothing happens (and no Bobby Pins are lost).

Fallout New Vegas Mod Review: New Vegas Bounties

Fallout: New Vegas Mod Review - New Vegas Bounties - Part I (ver 1.3) and Part II (ver 1.25)
Alternate download links: Part I, Part II

Score: +7/-1

Summary: Someone gives you missions to kill bad guys for money.

Why Get This: The writing / story.

At its most basic, New Vegas Bounties involves you being a bounty hunter -- you go and capture (but mostly kill) bad guys for money. However, there are story threads that bind everything together or at least give you a sense of a longer quest.
+ Story for each bounty. This may not seem to be a big deal, but when the writing is good, it really adds to the overall experience. New Vegas Bounties doesn't simply give you text dumps, but more like text snippets that help you add things up. Each bounty has a bit of a story about why they are criminals, and there are sometimes notes / communications here and there to bring things alive and to give you a sense of a world that's alive and active beyond your own actions.
+ Foreshadowing. This is related to having a good story, but also ties in to there being a sense of a big picture story around your otherwise pointless kill missions. There is a reason why foreshadowing is a literary device -- it whets the appetite, sets up anticipation or trepidation. It's used somewhat in Part I (because that is a linear quest), and to much better effect in Part II.
++- Encounters. You get genuine "encounters" here, which might be dialogue with the bad guy, specific tasks to do (such as crippling them to force surrender), or combat setups that make it more interesting than simply sneaking up and sniping everyone from far away. Although these are often scripted cheats where you read a note and bad guys magically appear all around (used way too often in part 2, hence the point taken off), it does break up the monotony and tries to counter the whole stealth-and-snipe combat cure-all in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.
+ Voiceovers. Any attempt at this tends to immediately add more atmosphere and immersion.
++ Interesting side quests. There's a good range of these if you can find them, such as a search for a hidden cache of legion gold, or telling an old man what became of his kidnapped daughter. Plus for dialogue-resolved quests, there are often several options or different outcomes.

Fallout New Vegas Mod: GQ Convenience Items

Fallout: New Vegas Mod - GQ Convenience Items
This is the New Vegas version of our Fallout 3 mod GQ Conveniences.

--Download (version: July 1st, 2012)--
Alternate Download Link

* Added July 1st - Weapon Mod Kits in the Sell Menu.
--Requires the New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE)--

GQ Convenience Items is a compilation of various utilities to make playing Fallout: New Vegas more convenient. They are essentially cheat items. Most of them are geared toward time-saving.
This mod has NO dependencies -- not even FalloutNV.ESM -- so it can be put anywhere in your load order. Since there is nothing in it that needs to be merged with anything else, if you are making a Merged Patch or Bashed Patch, you can position this mod underneath them to be excluded from Merging or Bashing.

You will need to use the console command "player.additem <FormID> 1" to add the items that trigger or toggle the utilities:

xx00080b Bullet Time 25%
xx000808 Grab Items
xx00081a Light Amplification
xx00080d Move Keys to Storage
xx00080c Repair Items
xx000809 Sell Items
xx00080a Store Items

==BULLET TIME 25%==
Equipping this item toggles 25% Bullet Time -- the game moves at 1/4 speed for everyone, including you. The AI can calculate combat moves much more quickly and accurately than you in regular x1.0 time. By slowing the game to 1/4 time, it puts you approximately at the same competence level as the AI. If you are in melee, for example, you can react to blocks or enemy movement at a reasonable speed, and can now more feasibly take advantage of any superior reach afforded by your weapon (or react to the AI backing away from your short reach weapon).

Known Issue:

• If you are in Bullet Time and enter VATS, after a VATS sequence time will be reset to 1.0 by the VATS system. But the Bullet Time script does not know that. When you next toggle Bullet Time, it will just reset Bullet Time to 1.0. You need to toggle it a second time to restart Bullet Time.

==GRAB ITEMS==
Equipping this item will cause a script to grab:

• All inventory items lying around
• All items in containers that do not have a "Key Only" lock.
• All inventory items from dead creatures.

It affects a one cell radius. For interiors, this will typically be the entire interior.


Known Issues:

• It WILL take items even if it would be stealing. There is no reliable test in the GECK or NVSE to detect if it would be stealing to take an item. However, you will suffer no Karma loss.
•  It can grab things from locked containers and even if you cannot pick the lock. However, it should reliably detect when a container is locked with "Key Only" and cannot be lockpicked.
• It can grab things behind doors that are "Key Only". This could possibly break quests.
• Sometimes the game will not register that you have taken an item or emptied a container, even if the item is gone from the game world. If you equip the Grab Item to run the script again, you will get a duplicate of everything and get another set of items from the containers. To properly update the game, make a clean save (not overwriting an old save), and reload that save game from the main menu, then reload it again in-game.
• Sometimes it will not grab some or all items. You can try reloading (as above) to refresh the game.

==LIGHT AMPLIFICATION==
This item toggles a light amplification effect which increases ambient lighting, thus allowing you to see better in the dark. Unlike almost all "night vision" mods, there is no monotone shading involved. Everything is simply brighter. See the screenshots below for a comparison.





==MOVE KEYS TO STORAGE==
Equipping this item destroys all the keys you have (even quest-item keys), and reproduces them inside the container accessed by the Storage item (see below). This is meant as a way to drop keys since you cannot normally do that. When you pick up a key, you no longer have the option of lockpicking the associated lock, and therefore you cannot gain any XP from opening the lock.

==REPAIR ITEMS==
Equipping this item opens the Repair Menu that you normally get when you ask a merchant if they can repair your items. The proxy character who is handling the repair will have a repair skill equal to your current Repair skill.
This is meant to be an alternative to using items for repair. Instead of accumulating items to repair your gear, and trying to remember what repairs what, you can use this to repair your gear at any time. In general, it will cost more than repairing with items because of the repair formula, which always gives you (5% + (15% of your repair skill)), in addition to a small fraction of the condition of both the item being repaired and the item used for the repair. However, you can repair in small increments instead of sacrificing an entire item to do so.

==SELL ITEMS==
Equipping this item opens a special Barter Menu.

• The merchant has no bottle caps, only no-weight "cash" items. You buy and sell at a 1:1 ratio.
• This is meant to be a sort of clutter-clearing option. Instead of dragging loot to the store, you can now convert them to an equivalent value in no-weight items, which you can use to barter with regular merchants.
• If you have a weapon equipped, the merchant will also have the available Weapon Mod Kits for that weapon.
• This is a convenience to save you from waiting at a merchant to get the kit you want, or hoping to find one as loot.
• Typically the problem of finding an appropriate kit is made worse by having various mods that add weapons and even more kits. Often, by the time you find the kit, you will already have found a significantly better weapon.
• To simply use this item as a garbage bin, sell the merchant various objects, but don't take anything in exchange. The script clears the merchant's inventory every time you start the Barter Menu, so whatever you sell is pretty much gone for good.

Known Issues:

• If you equip this from your Pip-Boy inventory menu instead of a hotkey, it will still work. However, after you have sold items, they will still be listed in the Pip-Boy, but in reality they have been removed. It is recommended that you DO NOT click on anything, and instead close the Pip-Boy and allow the game to refresh its information properly.

==STORE ITEMS==
Equipping this item opens a remote container where you can store stuff.


Known Issue:

• This does not work if you equip the item from your Pip-Boy inventory menu. You must hotkey the Storage item and use it that way.

Fallout New Vegas Mod Review - New Vegas Enhanced Content

Fallout: New Vegas Mod Review - New Vegas Enhanced Content (ver 3.0)

Score: +1/-3

Summary: Mod compilation.

Why Get This: One stop shop for a mash-up of various mods.

New Vegas Enhanced Content (NVEC) is a mod compilation. There are various components, mostly imported directly and most of which you can get and apply separately. They key separate components are:

• Cosmetic enhancements - Mostly improvements to the appearance of NPCs. Optional stat and inventory changes.
• Performance enhancement - Removes unessential static items, thereby reducing computing load and improving performance.
• Error fixes - Most very minor, but some quite significant.

The rest of the mod is a compilation of mods. You can see the list here.

+ It's a big convenience.
- Not well curated. You get quantity but sacrifice quality. Some mods, such as Snowglobe Perks and Unique Items and Collectibles offer bonuses that are okay on their own, but combined can be unbalancing or troublesome. For example, between the two, you can get a huge movement speed boost (about +30%). On its own, this isn't a huge problem and can be a convenience in crossing long distances. The problem is that the game engine can't really keep up properly. run too fast in an exterior and you will probably see the terrain hasn't caught up in loading and processing, and you're walking on terrain textured as if it were distant terrain. And there's no telling how much game information the game engine has NOT loaded. Also, see  the screenshot below. Some mods are added that not only don't work properly but have unnecessary profanity. (The text in the upper left corner reads, "You must equip a blade before using the Grinding Wheel stupid fuck.")



- Not well documented. You need to sift through all the mods separately to find out what's included and in some cases, how to activate it.

- Not balanced. There's just no thought to some of the inclusions, which may be those that the mod-compiler has personally added (instead of being drawn from a mod). For example, near the start of the game, you can easily pick up a 9mm handgun that has the high fire rate of a pistol, uses cheap and plentiful ammunition, has a damage splash radius, very low spread (meaning high accuracy for placed shots), AND does damage on par with an anti-materiel rifle. Even at a beginning Guns skill, you can one-shot a lot of enemies by hitting them in the head.

Helpful Tips
If you are handy with the GECK, you can selectively disable features. Otherwise you're stuck with an all-or-nothing. You can use the Console to remove some perks you don't like, but that's the extent of what you can do to remove content.

If you're not that good with the GECK and/or don't mind spending the time, I recommend you instead look through the included mods separately and add what you want on your own. Do this if you only want a few of the features you found in NVEC.

A basic way to remove content with the GECK is to first find out what the content looks like in the game file. In the GECK, instead of loading the file, use the "Details" button to look at a listing of every entry in the mod.
If you highlight an entry and press [DEL], it will modify the file by flagging that entry as "Ignore". It is NOT deleted unless you load the file. But the game won't load it from the mod either. In this way, you can turn content on and off.
To help you find out what to delete, you can download the mod that was integrated by looking up the list here. Use the GECK Details function to look through that mod, then find it in NVEC and disable it. Make a backup in case things get messed up.

If a perk gets added that you don't want, you can look up the FormID and use the removeperk console command instead.

Why Game Companies Should Not Hire Modders

If you didn't already know, various internet forums are sometimes full of childish people and moderators who are often petty, ineffectual, or both. The Nexus group of sites, such as New Vegas Nexus, is sadly exemplary of this. Here's a snippet I got from a discussion board for one of the mods, NVEC.





Mods can be big and cumbersome, and often things can happen which are triggered by a mod, but not directly related to the mod. I had that happen with some Fallout 3 mods I installed, and there's nothing the modder can do to change it because it's not directly their fault. For example, too much data that the game engine has to process can result in crashes.

What often happens, however, is that people who use the mod will report the issue. And why not? As seen from the screenshots above, all the modder really had to do was say that the error, although seeming to be a direct result of installing the mod, really has nothing to do with the mod. Maybe ask if the user had inadvertently forgotten something else they did.

Instead, what the modder did was stay completely silent and just keep censoring and/or deleting comments by the user. That is so wrong for so many reasons, but the key reason it is wrong--and why modders like that aren't hireable material--is that the modder basically stuck their head in the sand. Not so much that they were pretending the problem wasn't there, but pretending that the user feedback wasn't there.
Why would they do that? Just to prevent people from getting spooked and not using their mod?
In this case, that is even more baffling since the mod is mostly an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink compilation of other people's work anyway.

And when the modder did say something about it, notice what they said--that they were basically using a right they paid Nexus for to in effect hide bad publicity about their mod. It's one thing that the modder is childish, but it's another issue when the website allows and implicitly encourages that -- and profits from it.

Although Nexus has momentum-popularity going for it (since so many mods are available from the same place), if you are tired of this sort of nonsense, you can try Mods Reloaded instead. It's not as sophisticated a website design, but all mods are checked by the site admin and there isn't the same kind of popularity contest going on there. It's precisely the popularity contest that gets people acting in strange ways.

Game development is NOT a popularity contest to get your feature incorporated in the game. In fact, it's the opposite: You must NOT have an ego about your piece of work because the realities of a shared work means sometimes it can't get used or the project has to move forward to completion and the feature will have to be dropped because it's not complete.

Modders like the one who put NVEC together are not the sort of people that should get hired at game companies. Either that, or they'd better be able to swallow their egos and actually be team players.