Radiation Levels

[Galaga Bee]

Just wondering what people's preferences are with regards to how the radiation levels in Fallout 3 could be done. Here are some of the possibilities:
1) No radiation. The initial nuclear blasts are so long-gone that the radiation levels are back to normal (or at least close to normal) everywhere you go so that your health and abilities are not affected.
2) Slightly increased radiation levels in all areas, but the same rad levels everywhere (no variation). This would cause only a slight drain to your health and abilities over time.
3) Slightly increased radiation levels in all areas (same as #2), but also variable so that in some areas you would lose drastic amounts of health or abililties without health packs or radiation suits.
4) Same as # 3, but with normal radiation levels in most places so that there is no "slow drain" on your health/abillities in most areas, but some areas in which it would be necessary to have a radiation suit or lots of health packs in order to survive.
5) Drastically high radiation levels in all areas, so that you would basically be required to wear a radiation suit the entire game.

My vote is for #4. #2 or #3 could also work, but it just seems like kind of a pain in the ass to have to constantly use up your health packs or wear a rad suit due to the slow drain on your health.

Edited:
I take that back. My vote is now for #6, which is a combination of #1, #2, and #3. In other words, in some areas you don't have any radiation, in some it's only slight, and in others it's drastically high.

[Smoke_Jaguar]

If you hadn't had edited the post, you know you would have made a point, don't you ?then again, when it's just you and me.....

I think it should be as before, but, as a sidetrack, I really think the enviroment suit in Tactics was a nice little piece of equipment.They could make a quest to go to a facility(an airforce base, like NORAD, NEADS,a hospital with a morgue basement, a burnt out amusement park, or my favourite, a large mental hospital turned to an orphanage and in the war turned into a bunker, with mutants and stuff) and you'd have to obtain the enviro suit from somewhere else, just to be near it.

[Galaga Bee]

Yeah, IMO there should definitely be some quest(s) involving searching for a hazmat suit in order to enter one or more areas. It beats the standard "find the key" quests, since the item you're looking for actually has a use once you've entered the new area.

I also think that variations in the rad levels can make for some very deep immersion, as even a slight difference can make for drastically different areas and have a profound impact on the game environment. So, for example you might find more "civilized", populated areas where there's less radiation, more mutated plants/animals/mutants in the mid-range rad areas, and completely deserted, dead, barren areas where there's high rad levels.

[Smoke_Jaguar]

you know, we should call Beth and ask, no wait, to TELL them they need to hire us, we of course being know-it-alls.
i hate getting the key quests, and to stick to the subject, apart from hazmat suits and what-not, check this out: a geiger counter fitted to your wrist, 'RadBoy 2000' which alerts the player when radiation levels are high, fully interactive with lights and switches (when rad levels are highest, it will say 'danger will robinson, danger')


And a talkative skull.

[Galaga Bee]

The rad counter is a good idea, but it seems like it could potentially be a little redundant since you would sort of be able to tell by the immediate drop in health points anyways, depending upon how the radiation would affect the player character.

IMO, instead of having a steady drop in health as soon as you enter a radiated area (for example, one health point is lost immediately for every second of exposure; under this system the geiger counter would be redundant), it would be better (if possible) to make it similar to poisoning where you would experience delayed health effects long after your exposure to the radiation, which is more realistic anyways, since in the real world you usually don't start feeling the effects of radiation until after you've already gotten a heavy dose.

You could have a "rad exposure meter" as a part of the interface (similar to a health meter) which measures your overall, cumulative exposure level; it would increase as you are exposed to varying levels of radiation, and would then gradually reduce over time once you leave the irradiated areas. As the "rad meter" reduces, you would lose a corresponding amount of health.

Delaying the health loss has lots of different plusses and minuses, the main drawback being that it would really suck to walk into a radiated area, receive a lethal dose but not know it, and then suddenly keel over dead a few hours later and have to reload and lose all the gameplay you had during the "waiting for death" period. However, the inclusion of the geiger counter/rad meter would offset this (since you'd know it was coming, and the health wouldn't be lost all at once), combined with some wise gameplay and a couple of health packs. Also, extremely high rad level areas could still continue to provide immediate health loss so you don't stay there too long.

You could also have some cool sound effects so that the geiger counter starts making the telltale "clicks" whenever you approach highly irradiated items or areas. I even like the name "Radboy2000" too.

Morte from Planescape: Torment is one of my all-time favorite NPC's.

As for the job application, that's a great idea, you could be my assistant once they hire us.

[Smoke_Jaguar]

I actually talked about radiation with a relative who is a doctor and is in the field of 'infectious diseases' and asked what is it like.
He told me that victims of radiation poisoning will experience immediate nausea and vertigo, followed by a vomiting sensation.They are also winded, cannot run or do certain actions, and that without medical treatment radiation will act like AIDS, in the sense that it lowers your imune system to practicaly nothing, most AIDS victims dying of the well-known common flu, thus making you extremly weak to the elements.However, it does not kill you directly, so a loss of ENDURANCE and STRENGH stats should represent this, without actually draining hit points, just lowering their max number due to ENDURANCE and STRENGH losses.
I am not a fan of massive hit points loss, so a slight decrease in those attributes is enough to lower your max hp but it just boils to ****ing up your imune system, giving praise to expressions like 'You hit like a girl',and when you get hit in combat you lose a lot of blood and so on.
What do think?
(except Galaga Bee, don't hurry to post)

[Kipi]

Firstly, I think that the radiation level should be same as in F1 and 2.

[QUOTE=Smoke_Jaguar]I actually talked about radiation with a relative who is a doctor and is in the field of 'infectious diseases' and asked what is it like.
He told me that victims of radiation poisoning will experience immediate nausea and vertigo, followed by a vomiting sensation.They are also winded, cannot run or do certain actions, and that without medical treatment radiation will act like AIDS, in the sense that it lowers your imune system to practicaly nothing, most AIDS victims dying of the well-known common flu, thus making you extremly weak to the elements.However, it does not kill you directly, so a loss of ENDURANCE and STRENGH stats should represent this, without actually draining hit points, just lowering their max number due to ENDURANCE and STRENGH losses.
I am not a fan of massive hit points loss, so a slight decrease in those attributes is enough to lower your max hp but it just boils to ****ing up your imune system, giving praise to expressions like 'You hit like a girl',and when you get hit in combat you lose a lot of blood and so on.
What do think?
(except Galaga Bee, don't hurry to post)[/QUOTE]
That would be good, but the small loss of hp could also represent the fact that you actually suffer more from flu and such... so maybe combining both, in the way that getting radiated lowers your STR and CON, and you take very little damage at the beginning, but if you do not remove the radiation, the amount of damage you will take will grow and grow until you die...

[Galaga Bee]

Here is what I'm envisioning so far:

A "radiation meter", which represents an item (a geiger counter) equipped in the player's inventory which would measure both the current rad levels in the player character's present location as well as total accumulated exposure to radiation by the player character.

The total accumulated exposure could be represented by a bar in the interface which increases or decreases over time according to the amount of radiation the player character is exposed to (after any multipliers have been factored in) and the length of time they are exposed to it. The meter in the interface would be hidden when not in use (ie. if the player character is in a zero rad level area and has not accumulated any rad exposure, the meter would not appear in the interface).

As the meter increases, the player character would suffer a penalty to strength (not endurance; see below), unless the rad levels in the current area are at a high enough level that exposure would result in immediate HP loss in addition to the strength penalty. As the bar decreases over time the strength penalty would be proportionally removed, and the player character would suffer a small amount of hit point damage proportional to the decrease in the meter.

I do actually like the idea of applying an endurance penalty as well (if I felt it would work the way I wanted it to), however I'm going to have to weigh in against it just because the ability penalty would have to be applied as the meter increases (along with the strength penalty), which means that the player character would experience the corresponding HP loss immediately as well, instead of experiencing a delayed HP loss as the meter decreases.

However, this doesn't mean that "endurance related" penalties can't still be applied (other than HP loss) as the meter increases, therefore I'm also thinking the player character could suffer from weaknesses to poison and disease while irradiated, as well as all other penalties that would normally go along with a loss of endurance. In other words, all of the effects of an endurance penalty *would* actually be applied (and change according to the level of accumulated exposure, just like the strength penalty), it's just that the endurance number itself would stay the same and the HP loss would be delayed.

The meter would also have a small number next to it which measures the rad levels in the current area, accompanied by the telltale "clicking" noises a geiger counter would make. The number would also change colors as the number increases, going from light yellow at low levels to deep crimson at high levels.

I also don't think anyone should get too carried away with the idea of the delayed HP loss, IMO the meter should reduce over the course of about anywhere from an hour or two to a full day (max) in-game and that's about it. It's still just a video game, and I wouldn't want the player to be penalized the entire rest of the game just because they happened to walk into the wrong area.

The delayed hit point loss would also need to be carefully balanced so that players don't "die in their sleep" after experiencing high levels of rad exposure, although this could be prevented in any number of ways.

I think it would also be neat to be able to use the geiger counter to find certain sources of radiation, so that you could shut it down, move it, bury it, blow it up (like a dirty bomb :speech , etc.

I would also like to add that if the developers choose not to include something like this in the final version of the game, it would make for a great mod for someone to add to the game, and anyone would be welcome to do it since I know nothing about modding.

[Smoke_Jaguar]

I decided to play a highly modded vrs. of Fallout 2, with the NMA mod 'MegaMod'.
It is an interesting altenate way to play the game, where the tribe almost forsakes you, just like the Overseer, only this time you get to proove them wrong by strangling your aunt Morliss (you know what I am talking about, you actually get to strangle her to tell you some vital info) etc, and to get to the point, they changed a lot (weapons, items, locations, quests) but they didn't touch radiation.In fact, no mod does that.So, what are *we* so desperate about?

About radiation damage, the only radiation-based damage that occured during play, was in Tactics, when I left a certain mission area, Jo, my trusty driver, died while driving back to the bunker.Her body misteriously dissapeared from behind the wheel and was teleported back to the mission area.
It was a real loss, and I told myself that I had to go back for her, and take my chances with the fearsome cockroaches and radscorpions while I drove my squad through the atomic wasteland.We had to get that Calico Liberty back.

[Galaga Bee]

I think a lot of people just never thought to do anything with it.