I'm a little confused by weapons that have a damage multiplier like this one. My sturdy caravan shotgun has damage listed as 5.3x7. Does it really do 37.1 damage? And if so...why not just put that? Sorry if that's a dumb question, I think all my questions sound dumb because they are about guns and ammo and I know nothing about guns and ammo -Meg

You do 5.3 damage per shot, because with a shotgun not all the shots hit unless you're really close.

I assume it means 7 projectiles doing 5.3 damage each.

It also means that if the enemies DT is 5.3 or higher, you're not going to be doing much damage...

Basically it's to do with the damage threshhold.

The reason it's written as 5.3x7 is because each individual projectile does 5.3 damage, and the caravan shotgun fires seven projectiles at once. I'm guessing you knew that part, but I'm just putting that out there for the sake of clarity.

If the thing you're shooting at with that shotgun has a damage threshhold of say six, then that shotgun isn't going to hurt it very much. Since essentially what that would mean is that it would be deducting six points of damage from EACH projectile. As opposed to deducting six points of damage from all of them combined, which as you said would total 37.1 damage.

Hopefully that makes sense.. It's kinda hard to explain lol.

If you want one projectile firing for full damage than use slugs. :tops:

Hmm. Speaking of slugs, does the one slug do the full 37 points of damage that the seven shot would have totaled up to? If so, then that's far more powerful then any of the standard slug throwers I've found so far(highest for me being the cowboy repeater, at 17 per round).

Actually I had no idea it fired seven projectiles at once! Where does it say that, or is that what the x7 means I guess. I am so baffled by guns, lol. It looks to me like it shoots one shot, then another, then you have to reload it. ANYway Thanks for the info and that does clarify a lot. So I don't really want guns that have low damage even if it has a multiplier, higher damage is better in general. That's good, because it's annoying to reload after two shots. Thx! -Meg
Thx to you all for the replies, reading this board has helped me immensely!

A shotgun fires pellets.

To understand the root of the way it's displayed you have to understand GURPS, the roleplaying game Fallout (the venerable original) was supposed to be based on before licensing issues got in the way and forced Interplay to invent the SPECIAL system.

In GURPS DR is "Damage Reduction" in FONV this concept is back in a big way as "damage threshold." Unlike in GURPS damage below the DR does not cause no damage at all, but it does cause very minimal damage.

When you understand this it's easy to see that 7 hits at 5 damage is very inferior to one hit at 35 damage when the foe has armor. on the other hand 1x20 is far inferior to 7x5 when the enemy doesn't have DT/DR.

In essense a weapon with multiple projectiles will hit multiple times for less damage and each "pellet" is affected by DR/DT. This makes, in general, multiprojectile weapons far better against the unarmored or lightly-armored than the heavily armored.

FONV seems to use a modification of the GURPS rules for hits below the DT. In GURPS one point per die of bruise damage is transferred *if* the target is in "soft armor", IE Kevlar or Spectra or Monocrys. In FONV more than that seems to get through, but it's still inferior to a hit that can burn through the DT/DR outright.



I actually like the change. Now if only they adapted the GURPS special rules for plasma weapons, where plasma reduced DR of armor through burning and melting, then Energy weapons might not be the step-headed redchild of more flexible and varied-ammo physical guns.

Oh well I guess you can expect that from a TL 5+4 alternate-tech GURPS world.

Right.



If you're unfamiliar with Shotguns in real life - it does fire just "one shot". But that single shell is actually a hollow cylinder filled with small metal balls. When you fire a single cartridge, a spray of those metal balls comes out the end of the shotgun in a cone. Very handy for shooting small fast-moving things like birds (with shells filled with many small pellets). Against tougher targets, larger pellets are used.... in the case of the in-game gun, seven of them. Hope this helps.

(And a "slug" shotgun shell is one that's more like a normal bullet - instead of having a bunch of pellets, it just has one big solid chunk of lead. And is effectively just like a very big, but short-range, rifle.)

Exactly. This is a great RL example of what I tried to explain using GURPS rules by way of SPECIAL system.

To clarify, against human targets most people would use what's called #00 buckshot. Each #00 buck is about the size of a 9mm pistol bullet. a 12ga. slug is .75 ounces or better and the size of a .67 bullet. You tell me which would do more damage if you didn't have armor, OP, 4 9mm bullets of a .67 round. Now if you had armor that could shrug off a 9mm, like a police vest, which would hurt more, those 9mm shells might break some ribs but a .67 would go right through and screw your internal organs right up.

Technically its called shot, and their not pellets. Pellets are nothing like what a shot shell shoots. Shot shells are loaded what are known as BB`s or "Ball Bearings" vairying in size. Bird shot has many "BB`s" or shot compared to 00 Buck which has only 6 - 7 large shot or "BB's"

Not to be insanely accurate but it is nice if the correct terms when possible can be used or stated. Just like how its upsetting to hear ever kid refer to a magazine as a clip.

You are right, I have no knowledge of shotguns or any other types of guns in real life, hehe. So all that info is extremely helpful!
So if something/someone has heavy armor, I need a higher damage weapon to break through the armor, otherwise, smaller and faster might be more efficient, right?

Also, someone posted the question I'm quoting here, and I'd also like to know the answer (if it wasn't already said and I missed it).
Thank you all again, I'm off to bed for the night before my brain explodes -Meg

If you like the shotguns I would highly recommend Shotgun Surgeon too.

I keep forgetting the difference

I'm not sure that is true. I was using 20ga slugs earlier against some bandits ("jackals" I think) who wore armor with a DT of around 5 or 6. I was getting the red shield on the screen, even with the slug ammo. If slugs worked like we think they would, then slug ammo would not have had an issue tearing through that low of a DT.

I'm going to have to test this now, to see whether shotguns are properly taking into effect the "# of projectiles" setting on the individual ammo. For most shotgun shells, it's set to zero (which means "use the weapon's setting") and slugs have it set to one (a non-zero should mean "use the ammo's setting").

Well as far as the game goes its pretty simple really. You need a projectile that gives more damage than the DT is for the armor they are wearing. Otherwise you can use armor piercing rounds of a smaller caliber that will punch through their armor and still damage them.

Now in real life things get even more complex. For instance as was said above a police vest can stop a 9mm projectile which is a .38 caliber round. Ok well that doesnt mean a pistol round out of a Cz.52 wouldnt punch through the same armor even though its a 7.62mm projectile which is a .30 caliber. Length of the casing is very imporatant compared to the diameter of the projectile which is why you have at the very least 10 different 9mm rounds and they are not interchangeable between guns that are 9mm caliber.

Now as far as game mechanics goes I doubt the game takes into consideration the size of the case for a given round where say a 7.62 round would pierce ballistic kevlar vests but a 9mm round wouldnt all because the 7.62 round has a 25mm long case where the 9mm round only has a 18mm long case.

Dont know but to get back on topic though what was said above is pretty much correct minus the pellet part. With 00buck shot you got 7 shot in the cartridge (BB's) and basically you got 5.3 per shot. As far as the slug goes, I dont know if the slug does more damage than 5.3 in the caravan shotgun but I know in the lever action shotgun it is a good gun with slugs against lightly armored personell as well as ghouls (not the revers and glowing ones, they get armor piercing rounds)

It happens but there is a major difference.

Magazine = Storage container for the cartridges.

Clip / also known as stripper clips = Speedloading devices used to reload both integrated and detachable magazines with ease.

For instance my 91/30 has a intergrated magazine but with the use of clips I can quickly reload the magazine with 5 shots at once just by inserting the clip into the recever groove and pressing down on the top most cartridge pushing the 4 below it into the magazine.

But reguardless of that accuracy there are still alot of people that will want to argue over it. Just like the last argument that someone started with me is when I told them what they were calling a pistol wasnt a pistol. Apparently people believe any hand gun is a pistol even though a pistol is a detachable magazine autoloading hand gun and a revolver has a rotating cylinder that holds 6 - 8 shots on avg. It would be wrong to call a revolver a pistol but theres people out there that still do. Some might not think its a big deal but to the real gun guys/girls its really bothersome but at the same time a great indicator to if the person being talked to knows about gun or if their some gun expert from watching movies all the time.

Ah, that's it. I remember now. ... Hey, isn't there a gun in F:NV that uses a clip? It places a black box on top of a rifle and pushes down a slider button on the outside. The memory might be from some WW2 game though. And yeah, calling a revolver a pistol or vice versa is silly.

I cant say. I havent found enough of the weapons to know. I got the pretty much basic stuff from FO3 that carried over. Still havent even got the grenade machinegun lol

You are, of course, absolutely right, and I was grossly simplifying things to explain to a user that might not be familiar with firearms terminology.

a #00 buckshot shooting 12ga. shells fires usually 7-9 (depending on the shell's manufacturer and brand) shot, each #00 in size, which is 8.4mm in diameter, which is within an error of margin of what I said, 9mm. Shells of corrispondingly higher gauges shoot correspondingly smaller shot, up to the minuscule #FF "birdshot" at .23in (5.8mm) a shot and barely able to penetrate a leather jacket.

Obviously it would be a burden on the engine of FO:NV to represent every shotshell from Triball or even #0000 to #FF, so I assume that shotshell represents the smallest round that you'd use against a human, a #00 buck, and slug represents a 440-grain (.50cal/12.7mm) "American" or "Foster" slug design.



Oh, and what most people call a "clip", you can get away with calling it a "box mag" or "box magazine" or even a "box clip".
Very few pedantic arms enthusiasts (like myself) will get on your case for calling a box mag. a "clip" though, since arms that use a moon clip or stripper clip are always at least older than the M24, which used a box mag even though it was a variant of the moon-clip-fed M1A1 Garand of WWII.
Though it should be noted the M1A1 Garand (not to be confused with the M1A1 Abrahms Main Battle Tank) is in FO:NV!

I actually own a moon-clip-fed M1908 Springfield. A better deer rifle you could not ask for. Hell, in a post-apocalyptic world I would swear by her if I could loot enough .30-08/7.62x65 shells from either sporting goods stores of the soviet military. In my opinion there has never been so fine a target rifle. PS. look for my "Uncle" Stuart fallout mod, based on my uncle that has killed more deer with that rifle than Boone ever killed Legionmen.

DELETED FOR REPETITION, ACCIDENTAL REPOST.

I retract this... I went back and looked at my FRAPS video of that fight and I didn't have the slug ammo loaded (oops...). So it made sense that a DT of 5-ish was giving me the red shield.

This is necessary if you want to do any damage with a shotgun at all. otherwise, any DT at all will make your shotgun extremely weak.