Tesla Cannon Chaining

Tesla Cannon Chaining

The Tesla Cannon's electrical blast attack, going by some unused records in the game files, was supposed to be able to be able "chain" between several targets. Instead, at release its explosion flag was removed and it ends up having an attack with no are of effect whatsoever. While this is fixed by YUP on that end at least so that it can blow up TTW Enclave vertibirds, the part about chaining is still absent, and requires designing a system around it for it to work as envisioned. Which yeah, is kinda what this does, bringing these weapons to what I believe should be a top Energy Weapon tier.

The Tesla Cannons now deal splash damage over the area of their electrical blast, and apply their further electrical damaging effect over time to all the targets caught in it. But that's only the beginning now. From the point of impact, additional blasts are fired to any nearby targets in the vicinity, causing slightly lower damage but also having an area of effect, and linked with you as the one responsible for them of course. Suffice to say, fired at a big pack these weapons can now cause much more damage than before.

But I know what you're thinking, collateral damage out of whack. Well, yes, if you decide to fire it where you shouldn't. If firing it out of combat, innocent bystanders will get chain blasted as you'd expect, and you'll have to deal with the assault charges. But when firing it in actual combat, the script is smart enough that the electric blasts will not chain to actors not engaged in combat with you. The blasts placed at enemies may still scrape nearby allies, but at least they won't get direct hits. Your companions and yourself are also safe from receiving a chain blast from your own attacks. But of course, neither you or them are safe from an enemy's Tesla Cannon attacks!

You can easily customize the power of all this with a pair of global values in the configuration ini, or in the console while in-game (set <global> to <value>):

• []migTeslaRange is how far from the initial blast an actor can be to get caught by a chain blast. Default is 650, about 30 feet.

  []migTeslaChains is the max number of chain blasts that can be produced. Default is 4.

  Plus, the feature from FO3/TTW is restored so that Tesla Cannons can blow up vertibirds in one shoot. This includes the few vertibirds that appear in FNV, so you can now easily give the President a piece of your mind before he lands. Be sure to aim for the cargo hold area, other parts of the vertibirds don't seem to register hits very well.

  This goes for the regular Tesla Cannon, and for Elijah's Jury-Rigged version found in Big MT. To kinda balance this stronger damage mechanic, and because the an