From the various crafting menu screens we see in the Fallout 4 E3 videos we can learn some fairly interesting stuff about how the game is going to treat damage types and resistances in Fo4.

-First off, armor, or at least power armor, has three kinds of resistances on it. The first is displayed as a shield, the second one a lightning bolt, and the third is a radiation symbol.

-Secondly, during the weapon mod menu sections, we can see that normal guns deal a damage type displayed as a crosshair, laser weapons have the same lightning bolt symbol as PA does, and plasma weapons have BOTH.

-Thirdly, several weapons/weapon mods indicate that frost damage, in the form of cryo weaponry, and electric and fire damage, in the form of weapon mods, will be present in the game.

From this, we can gather that Fo4 is going back to a more Fo1/2 style of damage resistances, with guns dealing physical damage, energy weapons dealing energy damage, and plasma dealing both. As well as there being various fire/frost/shock mods to further influence damage instead of those being stuck on only one or two items in the game like in Fo3/NV.

I suspect that, since plasma weaponry has both physical and electric damage, its going to do the highest total damage, but it is going to be split between the two, offering lower damage on each type then a normal gun or laser weapon does, but allowing them to work on more targets without having to carry both a normal gun and a laser weapon on you at the same time.

Seems like a nice way to balance all three out.

... Dang, now I really can't get that new weapon modification (and settlement construction) system out of my head.

This is absolutely great news, as in TES games, it's always fun to figure which is the best element to use (and I admit, which looks cooler XD) to harm your enemies. Seeing this system (back?) in FO4 is really good.

EDIT: I am talking about the cryo, fire, and electric weapons though. Plasma seems a little bit... less powerful?

I don't like this.

Don't like it just because past Fallouts have mostly treated Energy weapons as superior. I prefer Vegas' balance methods to it. It could work if tweaked right, but I just get the impression that Plasma might be designed to be superior to the others.

Plasma weaponry would be largely superior in this case, as it does the most damage, and works on basically every target. This is the way lore treats it as well, plasma is supposed to be the best and most advanced form of weaponry in Fallout.

It just does less physical damage then a normal gun, and less energy damage then a laser weapon, because it does both at the same time, but the combined power is higher then a normal gun or energy weapon.

Thank you, that sounds interesting.

It all depends on the enemy and it's armor. If the indications are proper we will have a fun gameplay element.

I think some foes will have greater resistance to energy weapon damage than normal damage (I suppose melee and unarmed are of the same category with exceptions). I don't think Plasma is designed to be superior in any case, only vs some enemies (without high resistance to either damage type).

I think Bethesda wants players to enjoy the game without feeling coerced to use a specific kind of weaponry. Gameplay > realism in this case.

Hopefully we'll be able to specialize in Energy Weapons and still be able to specialize in Lasers (and their unique strengths, i.e. precision and speed) without feeling like we cripple ourselves by not resorting to the clearly superior Plasma category.

I guess plasma have become the jack-of-all-trades kind of element? But master-of-none?

Seems OK to me...

But we dont know how effective the new cryo weapons will be as they havent been in any fallout game before.. we know the new android faction will use cryo weapons as seen in the gameplay trailer (the synth firing a blue laser weapon that left a blue smoke/ice cloud when it missed)

Cryo weapons were in Mothership Zeta. They had the ability to freeze targets for like 3 seconds or something similar to that.

I suspect cryo/shock/fire weapons are going to work similarly to how fire/frost/shock magic did in Skyrim.

-Cryo weapons will slow your movement speed and possibly drain AP.

-Incendiary weapons will have damage over time fire effects, and cause opponents to possibly freak out/run away.

-Shock weapons will do more damage and/or disable robots and power armor.

Well, about fire weapons, we have seen fire weapons literally every time... (flamers)

Mr. Possum, do you have some news on what the electric weapons will be? And their properties? Or are there no infos yet?

yeah but those were pretty limited and there were only like 3 different weapons of that type.. 2 of them being pistols i believe

In fallout 4 with heavy modification we dont know what cyro weapons will be capable of.

They were mines and grenades actually.

None, but I suspect cryo/shock/fire weapons are going to work similarly to how fire/frost/shock magic did in Skyrim.

-Cryo weapons will slow your movement speed and possibly drain AP.

-Incendiary weapons will have damage over time fire effects, and cause opponents to possibly freak out/run away.

-Shock weapons will do more damage and/or disable robots and power armor.

all we know is in the trailer when they were modding the junk jet (rock-it launcher) there was a mod to add shock damage.. but i dont recall if it was hovered over or not.

Cryogenic freeze and cryo-based weapons. Maybe they have a common root in the storyline. Maybe this common root is the Institute.

I see... Thanks for the info btw!

Then we would be obviously expecting EMP weaponry then?

well the institute makes androids (the synth faction) which have been seen carrying cryo weapons.. so your probably not far off.

We really cant be sure if those are cryo weapons or not TBH.

well they are blue lasers with an icy particle effect... id say its pretty likely its a cryo weapon as it looks similar to the weapons in mothership zeta.

That's certainly the direction they can take it, I just struggle to imagine a situation where Plasma wouldn't be superior. Like I mean, how the hell do you determine what kinds of enemies are weak to bullets and which are weak to energy? Are mirelurks weak to energy or....?

That's my main concern: the potential is totally there, I just can't quite see a coherent rule-of-thumb being formed to utilize the system well. Something like "mutations are weaker to bullets whereas humanoids and other natural beasts are weaker to bullets, whereas highly armored humanoids are a mix" needs to exist.

I have a crucial question, which although may not seem to be related to this thread, do relate to damage types...

Will we see ammunition types like in FO:NV again? I brought this up because those different ammunitions seem to have different properties and damages e.g. hollow point better for unarmoured foes, AP for armoured, etc.

I would doubt that though...

Exactly. This is why I said:

Maybe there's going to be a Witcher-like monster manual?

I think most of that was changed and put into the modification system.. probably to make it easier to keep track of rather than having like 10 types of the same ammunition.

  

You can see in the trailer when the raiders are targeted with VATS their resistances are shown right by their health bar so it shouldnt be too hard to figure out which enemies are weak to what.

Nice!

There we have it, VATS is the key. A good solution. Now we only need high enemy resistances to make this feature somewhat viable.

Also, in the PA customization gameplay segment, we can see numbers above 100, so the DMG RES stat is no longer a a direct % reduction. Imo it'll work like in Skyrim, which was a % reduction too, just with bigger numbers instead of the direct % number. Iirc 596 armor was equal to 85% dmg res, which was the max.

Also also, dmg threshold is gone, huzzah !

I want to craft cryo grenades. You could use them like flasbangs in room clearing. Just open the door, lob in a cryo grenade and then VATS headshot the poor svckers before they can react. This must be a thing. Please, Mr Bethesda... weapon crafting looks awesome but don't neglect explosives!