PANPC 2.0.10 Released: Mars Attacks!

PANPC 2.0.10 has been released and is now available to Citizen role users on the GreslinGames Discord.

A couple of bug fixes, some Pipboy impacts on stealth, and new support for Zeta aliens in PANPC!

Changelog:

[NEW] Zeta alien support w/keyword, faction enable
[NEW] Added custom Zeta aliens to Arena teams
[NEW] Added custom Zeta squads as possible Raiding Parties
[NEW] Pipboy light causes player visibility penalty in the dark
[NEW] Pipboy radio creates detection penalty for player
[CHANGED] Alien Blaster, Gamma Gun now treated as energy weapons for tactics
[CHANGED] Slightly increased courage hit on fire/explosion/molotov attacks
[PERF] Throttle settings now split between interior/exteriors
[FIX] Settlers, guards should now properly retreat to guard workshop objects

Aside from a couple of bug fixes (such as settlers and guards unable to successfully retreat to workshop guard objects in 2.0.9), this version does three significant things.

Throttle. First introduced in the early 1.8 series, Throttle is an MCM control that attempts to scale PANPC script activity to compensate for spikes in overall script overhead (such as when running lots of NPCs, for example). It works, and works well, but this control applies to every PANPC enemy in the game, and you don't always need the same scale value in every situation.

There are now two independent Throttle values for interior and exterior cells. You no longer have to cripple your Corvega runs to avoid crushing your high-pop settlements.  

Pipboy Stealth. By default, your Pipboy light and radio will now both screw up your PANPC-related stealth.

There is already a PANPC mechanic for "tracer" fire: if you fire an energy weapon, you get a brief and decaying visibility penalty, representing the enemy's ability to follow the pretty red light line back to the source.  

Now, your Pipboy light and radio will create a "floor" to that, making you always at least a little detectable. If you use your Pipboy light in the dark (light level value < 30), your visibility penalty will never go lower than just a bit above zero. Using your light in a well lit area has no penalty.

Your radio will always give you away, but how bad it betrays you depends on where you are. Outdoors, it's about the same as using your Pipboy light in the dark. If you are indoors, however, it's a bit worse (due to wall echoes and acoustic effects).

And finally..

Zeta Aliens!

These critters had an entire DLC in Fallout 3, and show up briefly a few times in Fallout 4, mainly to give you a new gun. I'd been planning to support Zetas in PANPC for a long time and I finally got around to doing it in 2.0.10.

I discovered very quickly, however, how awful they were in Fallout 4. They existed mainly to die: almost no health, no resistances, they spawn frenzied, and their animations are extremely limited (no crouch, no cover, little to no melee attacks). There was no real point in doing the AI, I realized, unless I wanted to take on the job of rebuilding them into real enemies.

So I got a start in 2.0.10 on doing exactly that.

Vanilla aliens haven't changed, but PANPC now includes a custom leveled NPC version that has better health, doesn't murder their fellow Zetans on sight, a bunch of resistances, and jabber maniacally in their alien lingo (the vanilla ones are unvoiced). I've added a new Zeta team to Arena, and there is also a control in the Raiding Party MCM menu for spawning occasional Zeta assaults.

The AI itself is a weird erratic mix of aggressive and defensive, what I think of as "highly aggressive cowards". Since Zetans can't take cover (Bethesda didn't give them cover anims or behaviors), and they can't run away very fast, they get out of bad situations with local teleports. In situations where any other NPC would run away or shift to a hard retreat, Zetas will dramatically zap themselves there instead.

As of late 2022, there are at least two significant Fallout 4 mods available for retooling Zetans: Project Zeta and Zetans - Alien invaders in the Commonwealth. I guarantee you that the authors of both of these mods put more work into their Zetan enemies than I did, and I so plan to look at them both in detail soon and patch them for PANPC.

As always, you can get the new download on the GreslinGames Discord. You'll need Citizen role to do it, so jump into the #role-requests channel and request it, and you'll be good to go as soon as I'm back at the keyboard.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to everyone. (If you don't do Christmas, please mentally translate my holiday wishes for your traditional observance of choice, in a sincere spirit of good will and common humanity, thanks.) 

Thank you for a great year in 2022 for PANPC and GreslinGames, and I'm looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings.

My best,

- G.