Assuming nothing goes wrong it still takes 3-4 HE missiles on average for me to take down a 250hp deathclaw. And one gauss rifle headshot. Probably because ya know, I don't play on very easy.

Both the M67 Fragmentation Grenade (US issue) and the 40x46mm and 40x53mm Grenade Launcher rounds (also US issue) all have listed killing radii of 5m and wounding radii of 15m. That means that any unprotected human sized target within a roughly 30 foot circle has a high probability of death and anyone within a 90 foot circle a high probablity of injury. Frag grenades all pretty much list similar kill radii and the 40mm in game should be pretty close to the real life rounds, so the in game damage should more closely reflect that. In order to correctly specify missle launcher and other explosives damage, I would have to do a little research to determine just what kind and size of explisive warhead is closest to the in game models.

As far as damage goes, considering it is an RPG and making certain we take into effect RPG mechanics, then a hand grenade at max skill level should pack enough punch to kill all unprotected human sized targets in a 5m radius of detonation with a high probability. Same goes for 40mm grenades. Since these are area effect weapons, that would mean that at max skill a frag 'nade must deal enough damage to reduce an unprotected human target's weakest body part's hit points to 0. So, question for GECK users: What is the lowest body part hit points by percentage? The head? OK, if that's so, then what would be the highest amount of hit points a human head would have at the highest NPC level possible? That's the minimum damage a frag grenade or 40mm must deal, and out to a 5m radius.

-Gunny out.

Well, normal civilian have 60~150 hit points, so basically what you need to do is made sure it deal ~100dmg at 5m mark. Since JE have mention that the explosive decade is by index of 2, i.e. Base DMG^1/target radius(by in game unit, which seems to be inches/cm)=damage.


Eitherway, weapons in NV are way less powerful than their real world counter part; i.e. a 9mm in the head should reduce your have to near zero without any sort helmet, fire that burns your skin would cause all sort of shock and pain to prevent you to do anything, or 50cal would blow a big hole in whatever living thing that it hits.

I agree with you in theory. Since it is completely within the realm of possabilities that a single .22cal round would kill an unprotected human, then that should be possible. Now, it takes a fair ammount of skill/luck for this to happen, so that's where the RPG mechanics come in. But you should be able to kill any human target, given the most ideal circumstances, ie: maxed skill, maxed weaponnhealth, most damaging ammo, most advantageous circumstances (stealth critical). You then work your way backwards to base damage from that.

Completely hypothetical situation:
Assume the highest level human target, and the body part with the least hit points has 100 hit points.
Assume stealth crit dam of 200% of base damage.
Assume ammo dam miltiplier of 1.75%.

The base weapon damage (with max skill and max weapon health) would have to be 19 (if I did the math right) to kill a 100 hit point target under the most advantageous circumstances. Factor in damage midifying perks and it could be lower.

Since frag 'nades have no crits, they would have to deal a base 100 dam to kill the above target.

That brings up the biggest question of them all: Under what circumstances should any single hit scored on an enemy result in damage enough to immediately kill that target?
-Gunny out.

The circumstances of a 40mm Grenade Headshot.

We should have more ammo as well, like Chemical, Depleted Uranium(High impact DMG, low AOE DMG), and Blank 40mm/25mm Grenades.

Damn. She is obviously related to the hillfolk in pointlookout.Or they all have subdermal implants.

That's my point. I can kill a damn deathclaw with a head shot from a damn bb gun, but a 40mm round to the face of a mole rat does squat.

Flare, Buckshot and CS. Or posion gas. That wound be cool. Another delivery method for posions. I still want the dart gun back, but I'd settle for posion gas grenades.

-Gunny out.

The thing is that we NEED something like a shotguns slug ammo, and Depleted Uranium is very Fallout IMO. A BB GUN IS STRONGER THAN A FLYING HALF-POUND OF CONCENTRATED EXPLOSIVE?

While shape-charge round is not? Anyways, I do wonder what application would DU grenade have.

DU are extremely potent for armor pentration, decimation, damnation, and disintegration.

The hand grenade has a base damage of 75 and max skill and 130 with Demo Expert 3. Enough to kill most "normal" people in the game. The main problem is the cost - make it 15-20 caps and you can start spamming them for great fun. The 40MM Grenade is a little weak - the base damage is 50. Boost it to 75 and give it some DT reduction. Increase the speed so they shoot farther and straighter. Makes them much, much better.

Isn't that because a 40mm grenade is smaller then the frag grenade?

Plenty, but usually not launch from a tube.

DU is employ as the head/projectile/penetrator; tube launch grenade does not produce enough muzzle velocity for DU head to penetrate armour.

In the game, valkebus, in the game.

Valkebus's point is that DU slugs are generally used in high-velocity weapons, since they have a large enough powder charge to generate the kinetic energy needed to punch the slug through heavy armor.

In game terms this can be approximated (and I actually did this) by adding a -DT component to HV (High Velocity) rounds. The catch here is that there are no 40mm HV rounds in the game, so I had to add them (pretty easy, actually, make a copy of the standard round and tweak a couple of stats and a couple of vendor lists).

This does somewhat go against the Grenade Rifle's or Launcher's nature, though, since their primary role is a short-range antipersonnel weapon, however for the sake of game play I let that slide since normally the standard 'armor' worn by raiders would not stop the shrapnel wave at all while in-game it's treated like armor plating.

I wanted to make HEAT rounds, however I did not see any way that we have access to of altering the shape of the blast and that killed the idea. These rounds work by focusing the blast into a narrow cone, much like an over-sized welding torch, however all explosive blast effects available in the GECK are toroidal. Even if I could change the shape of the blast wave I would still have the problem of the damage equations being based on the toroidal model, and I have no access to those so the damage of the new rounds would be rather lacking.

I could not agree more with OP. Explosive weapons are horribly underpowered. I haven't the slightest clue as to what JE Sawyer has against them. Honestly, how many times do you encounter massive groups of weak enemies clustered together? Plus, what with the completely broken perks, (oh yeah, and make the Mercenary's Grenade Rifle count as an explosive. Wtf.) explosives just simply are not worth upgrading unless you really want that achievement.

And flame weapons just simply do not belong as Energy Weapons. Honestly, how does that work? I just simply cannot see a gun that launches globs of fuel that explode on impact being comparable to a gun that uses batteries to shoot lasers out of it.

I think Sawyer's formula went something along the lines of guns shooting bullets, energy weapons shooting plasma and/or lasers, and explosives shooting things that, well, explode. It just doesn't make sense to me to break it.

And while there are crafting options for explosives, they svck. (powder charges are just crappy frag mines, while time bombs have no real combat use)

I could probably go on for a long time with other things like their limited use in hardcoe mode (massive weight; missiles weight 3 pounds. Plus high cost of close quarters mistakes.) and their pathetic range.

Explosives in Fallout New Vegas are just simply worthless and boring. Whether or not Obsidian wants to change this, right now they're a dud.

And they fit in Explosives cause?
Incinerator's balls of fire does not explode.
Upon impact the ball of fire breaks and it spreads.
It's like throwing a balloon filled with water at someone.
It does not "explode", it breaks and it's fluid spreads out.
Same with Incinerator balls.

^^ The Incinerator does Explode. Check the Geck. It has an AOE attack just like a Grenade. Not a direct damage section. Very simlar to an Inciderary Grenade.

@General Masters - Just make a high dam, small radius, hight DT reduction missile.

Yes. It has AOE attack. Cause it spreads...
Tesla Cannon's beam doesn't explode either.
It shoots out a huge energy beam that on impact splashes out into the immediate area.

Same with Incinerator, it's ball of fire upon impact spread out into the immediate area.

The Geck might say that it explodes but that's because it's easier to type that then to write something more confusing like my post here.
It's easier to just label it as "explosion", for user understanding and possibly for coding.
I mean, why have three separate labels for aoe damage?
Splash, explosion, spread?
It's easier to just throw them all into the same category of "explosion".
So I wouldn't go trusting the Geck just cause it says explosion or AOE or whatever it says in there. (Not a Geck user)

Every single other energy weapon is an insta hit weapon. Same goes with every gun. You point the trigger and it hits automatically. You aim DIRECTLY at your target. Only the Flame Weapons and Explosions are not insta hit. You lobe with the Grenade Rifle, you lob with the Frag Grenade, you lobe with the Grenade Machine Gun and you lob with an Incinerator. You do not lobe a Tesla Cannon. You point straight at your target and shot. You do not aim an inch above there head with a Gauss. But you do with an Incinerator or Grenade Rifle.

Oh yeah, and the perk that boosts Flame Weapons has an Explosive Requirement. A better fit with explosives.

Besides, there are a ton of guns an Energy Weapons that could easily fill the roll of the Incinerator. Like the Gatling Laser or Laser RCW or Tri Beam or Multiplas. Explosives has how many weapons?

Flamer?, if they had a plasma torch or even a weilding one it would come under energy.
Flamers are as close to EW as they come more than they are to explosives.

This however is an old agurement dating since all flame projectile weapons were classed as EW.

This and only this subject makes me truely yearn for big guns.

They do have a welding weapon - it is called the Thermal Lance. It is a melee weapon.

True, it is an old argument, but mainly because it is a bizarre design decision. You can make an argument either way, but in the end there are a ton of EW. Hardly anything an explosives. That alone would dictate moving those weapons into explosives. Especially since it would give explosives a much need short range weapon. Plus it makes more sense - Energy Weapons shoot high Tech Beams - Pew Pew. Not low tech Flame Fuel.

Or I would perfer bringing back Big Guns!

I'd honestly rather have a skill called Flame Weapons or something like that and have around a dozen fire-based weapons in it.
Great DPS, horrible ammo consumption, scarcity of ammo, and close-range weapons mostly.
Against high DT users it's weapons would "eat away" at the enemies armor and lower their DT, which would mean a really horrible ammo consumption.
Try going for close-range DPS against a deathclaw. :ahhh:

But why I'd rather have them in EW is for balance as well.
If Explosives followed my view on it (Can be seen in the DLC suggestion thread, second post.) then it would make sense for them to not have any close-range weapons since their weapon class isn't meant for close range battles. (Yknow, since the weapons either explode or use ammo that explodes..)

And yeah I'd also like to have Big Guns back.
Makes no sense to me why they'd remove it. ("Well because we wanted a tier system and most Big Guns are in the top tier"... So what!? It's my choice if I want to svck with every weapon until I get a big one.)

Well, Right now a flamer will just piss off a Deathclaw or Giant Radscorp. Add some DT -15 to Flamer Fuel and it is still really risky to use a Flamer close range against a Deathclaw. I know, I tried it.

I think the move is to consolidate the different skills - regardless if we want it or not. But I can see the devs POV - 80% of all players probably use Guns or EW exclusively. They buffed up Melee and Unarmed to make it more attractive, they just forget to do that to explosives.

If you give Explosives no close range weapon, them it is forever a secondary skill. Melee opponents charge. There is nothing you can do when someone is point blank in your face.

But that would be the point of the skill yknow.
It would have awesome damage, one hit kill in fact for the most of the time.
So you would have a breeze when enemies are far away.... When they get close on the other hand... You better time the explosion right behind them so you don't get hurt or pop some med-x.

Yknow.
Upsides and downsides.
Explosives should have several downsides to make up for it's ridiculous AOE damage.
At least that's how I see it. :shrug:

You know, dropping a grenade in the middle of a raider band and scoring a sneak attack can be devastating. I took out entire gangs with a single grenade.