Zombie Walkers - Part 2

Some of the changes below are linked at the Actor level. Most Feral Ghouls extend a single base template (with a few exceptions). This makes it easier to make changes and have all Ferals inherit them.

Actor -> Actor -> FeralGhoulRace -> Male -> encFeralGhoul01Template

Stop dodging like a monkey

Feral Ghouls have the ability to bob and weave to dodge bullets like agile monkeys. This of course needs to stop. Evade chances are controlled by Combat Style which is linked to Actors on the AI Data tab.

Miscellaneous -> CombatStyle -> csFeralGhoul

On the General tab of the csFeralGhoul combat style there's sliders for Avoid Threats. I set all of them to 0 and so far in my testing have not seen them dodge much of anything.

Make them tougher as you level

Changing Feral Ghouls to level with the player is trivial. Doing so makes them tougher to kill as their hit points will increase. The Stats tab on an Actor has a checkbox called PC Level Mult. Simply check this and the Actor will level with the player.

Don't let them hit you

I wanted to create Zombies that were slow but made you pay if you let them hit you. This means more damage and adverse effects were needed outside of how Feral Ghouls work in the game by default.

Feral Ghouls don't use weapons in Fallout 4. They attack with their hands (and bite). These attacks use a hidden Unarmed Weapon that is linked to the Race on the Combat Data tab.

Weapon -> Default -> UnarmedFeralGhoul

Weapons have a lot of fields that I haven't explored yet. The only field I modified for this mod as of the time of this writing is base damage by changing it from 15 to 30 (Damage -> Base).

Some weapons, including this one, have magical enchantments associated with them that is specified using the Enchanting dropdown. Seeing the term "Enchanting" is one of many hints that the Creation Kit originated with the Elder Scrolls games (eg. Skyrim) and it is a little humorous to see it retrofitted for Fallout 4 but it works.

Miscellaneous ->dtRadiationEnchFeralGhoul

Feral Ghouls had a little bit of bleed damage (which I may add back at some point) and radiation damage that varied dependent on level. I changed this to include two effects for the first release:

1. The Stagger effect used by the Yao Guai. Ideally I'd like to have the Zombies grab their enemies and then bite, but that may not be doable. I figured a stagger is the closest I could come in that if they hit their prey, the prey would stagger allowing them to close in for the kill. It makes the Zombies very dangerous, especially in groups.
2. My own custom magic effect called ZombieInfectionEffect which I'll blog about in the next post.

Continue to Part 3

Back to Part 1