Fallout 4 mods/Better Artillery Signal Flares

Better Artillery Signal Flares
Developer steve40
Latest version 1.1
Release date 2016-03-11

DescriptionEdit

This mod improves the Minutemen artillery signal flares, including longer throwing range and a proper fix of the infamous "invisible wall" bug. Several options are available including weightless flares and shorter cooldown time.

OptionsEdit

There are five versions of this mod. Use only one:

  • Vanilla Weight Version: the weight of the flares is still vanilla (0.5).
  • Zero Weight Version: flares have zero weight.
  • Vanilla Weight Fast Cooldown Version: the weight of the flares is still vanilla (0.5). The cooldown period is decreased by 75%.
  • Zero Weight Fast Cooldown Version: flares have zero weight. The cooldown period is decreased by 75%.
  • Vanilla Range and Weight Version: includes all the fixes but keeps the range of the flares short like in vanilla. The weight and cooldown are also left at vanilla values.

IssuesEdit

The "invisible wall" bug happened because the flares were on a timed fuse, and after a short delay (0.8s), they would explode silently (you could usually see a small muzzle flash effect when this happened) and a "movable static" copy of the flare (a placeholder for a script) was put in its place. This movable static would simply drop vertically to the ground as if it hit an "invisible wall". Increasing the fuse duration a little is not a full solution to this problem because the fuse can still expire while the flare is in flight if it is thrown at a very steep angle into the air. Furthermore, increasing the duration of the fuse means it will take longer for the artillery to fire. The "perfect" solution was to completely disable the Alt Trigger flag (timed fuse) so that the flare only "explodes" on collision; add a proper collision layer; and set the fuse duration to a very high number like 999. This last change is necessary because, even if the fuse timer is disabled, this value still affects the calculation of the throwing range (another bug!), and low values like 0.8 cause the throwing trajectory seen using "Demolition Expert 3" Perk to be abnormally short.

There is a vanilla glitch in the "lobbing" type of projectiles (e.g. flares), whereby throwing a flare at a car will cause the car to move several feet as if it were hit with a huge force, even when the force of the projectile (flare) is set to zero. This seems to happen only with throwing weapons and not other types like missiles, bullets (beams) or arrows. Unfortunately I haven't found a practical solution for this particular vanilla bug.

CompatibilityEdit

  • Fully compatible with "Angry Artillery". This mod is highly recommended.
  • Fully compatible with "Artillery Fire and Range Expansion". Note that if you use one of the fast cooldown options of "Artillery Fire and Range Expansion", then choose a version of my mod that has vanilla cooldown.
  • NOT compatible with "Weightless Artillery Smoke Grenades". Use the "zero weight" option of my mod instead.
  • NOT compatible with "Artillery (Smoke) Grenades Un-Nerfed" - the invisible wall glitch can still happen at steep throwing angles using that mod.

DownloadEdit