May be it will be better to include this assault rifle to the leveled list and to make it unaccessible at the lower levels.
It is very good weapon- it will be not wise to corrupt it.
All other types of assault rifles, including FN-FAL, chinese AR... have big spread, and it serves good for the balance. P90c also very powerful, but also have big spread, leveled and consume very big number of bullets, it make this weapon expensive for use often and letal only on short and not-so-short distances. Moreover- only chinese is upgradable from this list

Why not use FO3Edit to simply modify the assault rifle damage down a bit? Chinese AR is currently at 225 dps. Why not make it 150 dps?

I have a question with a caveat

the caveat is that I'm still using version 5.0 (old style) - I suppose the only reasons for this is due to liking the character that I made and his arc in the 'story' that and kinda waiting around to see of FOOK 2.0 is released and if patches between it an the newer FWE are made. Oh I guess and letting the master edition FWE mature, which it sounds as though it has.

OK the real question ... I noticed that I was always fighting a battle to keep encumbrance down and was always mystified as to why I never had enough - that is until I dropped some ammo. I then reviewed readme and smacked myself in the head thinking 'doh!!!'
I looked through the FO3edit program and all entries and saw that there was no entries for ammo weight and that ammo is not shown to have weight in game (hence my not catching that part of it).
So then is it that FWE actually does show ammo weight (in either the old or new versions of FWE) and that I have another mod that, at least visually, removes the indication of weight -or- is it that showing weight of ammo is not really possible.
If it is and it just hasn't been done - is there any chance that it could be implemented.

Ok final revision of this bloated post:

Short question - does the newer FWE master esp part have the weight of the ammo in it or is that recorded in the esm part? Will a later loading mod removed the weights once again when and if they rename the ammo?

thanks - sorry for getting lost - if you read this prior to this revision.

The Chinese Dragoon Assault Rifle seems to have very little spread... it's incredibly accurate, even out to long range.

At any rate, while I do feel assault rifles are still a little strong right now, my issue is more with the other small guns being a little weak. The Hunting Rifle is often your average newbie's bread and butter long-range weapon in vanilla, and it just can't serve that purpose in FWE because the damned thing never hits what you point it at. That's partly an issue in vanilla as well, but noticeably less so. When you're using a pistol over a rifle for long-range fighting, something's wrong.

Assault rifles are excellent for mid-range and close-range combat, but I think they're too good for long-range... it seems like something an adjustment to the spread of the weapon would be the best means of addressing that issue, since increased spread wouldn't matter at all up close and wouldn't matter too much only 15 meters away, but would make a huge difference 40 meters out.

On a similar subject: Am I the only one that feels shotguns are effectively worthless in FWE? Even the CAWS doesn't seem to do jack for damage, even up close. I don't know if it's because some pellets are hitting arms and legs (which would do very little HP damage), or what... but it again seems like the best option is to sit back and plink someone in the head with a 10mm Pistol instead of use the shotguns. Ironically, the raiders and other enemies I encounter that're using them seem to have no problems killing me with them even from 15-20m away. Maybe I should try aiming at feet instead of chests...

Hello.

Okay, I just noticed that something got glicthed with the prior release reducing the assault rifle damage (for assault rifle, chinese, etc....) and the damage reduction didn't seem to be included in the file. I have no idea why it didn't. If you add a mod kit to it, the damage is correct in the WMK + FWE FOIP patch. For reference, the assault rifle should do 24 (from 36) damage per bullet (as seen in FO3Edit/GECK) and the chinese should do 25 (from 37). The other new weapons appear to be correct, i.e. the FN FAL does 30 damage now (from like 45 or something). By comparrison, a laser rifle does 50 damage, the hunting rifle does 32 damage, and a lever rifle (from WMK) does about 40 damage.

Now, regarding accuracy. The hunting rifle has the same "min spread" as in the original game (0.3). T3T has increased the normal "spread" value from 0.3 to 3.0 . . . all the prevailing knowledge from the GECK WIKI suggests that the normal "spread" values don't have any bearing on accuracy, and the data isn't used. I've never been entirely convinced of that. It may have some effect on firing un-zoomed weapons when the auto-aim (caugh! auto-correction) kicks in, which might explain why it's less accurate, than a 10mm pistol wth a 0.5 min spread and 1.0 normal spread. If anyone wants to edit the value down in FO3Edit and check, that would be cool.

Also, I worked through some damage calcs for the whole armor weakness issue. With the increases to global damage, armor does in fact become essentially useless. With 85 DR, taking a weapon that does 100 damage (i.e. a sniper rifle), the armor only reduces the damage by like 5-10%, which is pretty pitiful. I need to do some testing, but I think I've got some new settings to try that will keep the damage high for lightly armored folks, but make those in power armor much tougher. I "think" I'll also be able to implement a scheme where high DR can nearly negate the damage taken from low powered weapons, but that needs some testing.

Anyway, got's to run.

EDIT: Incidentially, increasing the armor should make the enclave tougher, and may draw fights out a little longer in general. Might also be harder to wade your way through a zone of enemies one-shotting them each as they appear. Meaning you might end up fighting tougher encounters. We'll see . . .

And here I always thought that the "spread" value determined its spread as if you had zero in that particular weapon skill and min spread being the value at 100 weapon skill. Shrugs
If you do manage to implement that scheme for high DR, that would be fantastic. Always thought it funny that a 10mm pistol could harm people in power armor.

I hope this scheme doesn't mean I'll need to carry the most powerful weapons in the game to kill Enclave troops. Some of us are only rocking the 'spear and pipe rifle tribal' look.

I've been wondering why my assault rifle made heads explode on contact.

Here is how the prevailing wisdom sees things:

"Min Spread" is the lowest your accuracy will ever be with a particular weapon, the base accuracy being determined by your skill level and other factors (weapon condition, etc...). I had previously thought of it close to how you described above, with the exception that I thought "spread" was like a base spread value which would then be modified by skill, condition, etc.... and frankly I wish it was implemented that way. It would allow you to make a weapon that required greater "expertise" to use have really bad accuracy at low skill levels, which would be negated at higher skill levels.

Even so, I'll try testing things with the hunting rifle and see what happens. I can't believe that that value has no bearing whatso ever. I have tried testing things before with huge values for spread like 100, but it didn't seem to do much.




It might mean you need more powerful weapons. Depends on the damage. For instance, if you had a 10mm pistol at 100% condition it will do 20 base damage in FWE. With a small guns skill of 10, you would deal 25.55 damage (remember that FWE increases global damage). At 100 skill your 10mm would do 35 damage. With the adjusted armor calcs, someone with 50DR would reduce damage by 25 (in fact you can calculate the actual damage reduction by halving your DR as seen in the pip-boy). At 100 skill (doing 35 damage), anyone with more than 70 DR would be immune to your 10mm pistol. Of course, there are other damage factors too, like sneak attack bonuses, perk damage modifiers, etc... that also increase damage.

Against a max DR of 85, based on my calcs, you'd need something that does close to 30/35 base damage factoring in the base weapon damage and any skill or condition bonuses to reliably punch through maxed armor. This is all completely theoretical at this point and I haven't tested it yet. So it remains to be seen how it actually plays =)

Wait a minute...

does this mod conflict at all with the decaying feature MMM has? my corpses just disappear without any skeleton taking its place

Has anyone successfully made and used a melee character in FWE so far? This isn't a balance concern, but more of a general question. I earlier tried using melee and found myself still using guns and explosives more than anything else, with melee being relegated to its usual position of being used to mop up crippled enemies or to fight enemies that can't block (i.e. creatures and humans not using melee weapons.) Even with the Charge! and Tackle perks, melee ended up being just too damned risky against more than one or two enemies using guns, which meant I generally had to use guns and grenades to pick off other enemies before closing in to finish them with melee.

FWE does make Fallout 3 more like a shooter with RPG elements than an RPG with shooter elements, so I don't really mind that melee is more of a gimmick than a primary means of fighting. Just curious to see if anyone's had success with it as their primary form of combat.

And on that tack, I would also like to see if anyone's gotten any real use out of shotguns in FWE. I started a vanilla game and used some liberal cheating and such to give myself a Combat Shotgun with 80% condition, an Auto-Fire Mechanism from WMK, and then wandered down to the Super Duper Mart to test things out on some Raiders. In vanilla, I mowed the raiders down. Using the same set of circumstances in FWE, an unmodified Assault Rifle outperforms the modified Combat Shotgun in every circumstance... and I'd assume it would be the same with a CAWS or Pancor Jackhammer (though I've never seen a Jackhammer.) Is there any particular reason shotguns should be so incredibly weak in FWE as compared to vanilla? I would expect a shotgun to fairly obliterate unarmored opponents at close range, yet it seems to do barely as much damage as a pistol even at point-blank. Maybe I'm just unlucky with pellet spread.

One other thing: Is it possible to fix water fountains, fire hydrants, and other water sources to again restore HP as per vanilla? Telling PN to make drinks restore HP doesn't appear to affect static sources of water - and even the water fountain outside the Overseer's office in Vault 101 (before you even are given the option to setup PN) doesn't offer HP. With the hugely increased radiation intakes, I would think allowing water fountains to restore HP again would be fine, since it really would be a tactical decision at that point - do you use one of your few remaining Stimpaks to patch yourself up, or do you drink from the water fountain and irradiate yourself? Is this something I could adjust myself via FO3Edit or GECK? What variables would I need to look for?

The only shotgun that I've used and liked is the double barrel and pa's fishing aid, the unique version. I can't stand the combat shotgun, and any of the auto shotguns. Terrible shotgun is ok I guess if you mod it with wmk. Still not a fan. They all feel like weak pellet guns unless your right in there face. Pa's fishing aid feels like a shotgun should... tremendous power, long reload times. And it doesn't fall into the trap that most video game shotguns do, where they shoot a cloud of pellets that vanish 5 feet away. You can definitely go mid range with it.

As to the water fountains not restoring hp... that's because you use them to fill water bottles. The less rads in a particular water source, the better the bottled water.

This shotgun situation was mentioned towards page 1 or 2. Everyone one pretty much agrees - shotguns right now are pretty terrible, because the results you get with them are so random. Sometimes a blast to the face will take a raider out, sometimes it will barely do any damage at all. The shotgun should be lethal at close ranges, but as it is, it's just too random right now. Unfortunately the CAWS is the same - a really neat weapon that I would love to use, but one that is vastly inferior to even a regular assault rifle. Shotguns if anything should be very reliable alternative in close quarters combat, but as it is now, in many situations it's too risky, because you have to ask yourself "Willl the gun actually do it's job this time?" You learn the hard way that most of the time it doesn't.

No word from Mezmorelda on this issue yet, but even without comparing shotguns to the messed up assault rifles, they definitely could use some work.

eidt: Just took a quick peek into the FWE esm and esp looking for shotguns, and it seems there isn't any projectile information for override, so it's the same as vanilla. The weapon information from vanilla isn't really that much different for the basic shotguns - slight health increase/base damage increase/action points and critical damage, so I'm not sure why it's so random right now. Shotgun spreads for FWE range from the standard vanilla numbers 7.0 to 3.0, with the jackhammer having the least spread (2.5). I'll test this out, but maybe either a slight decrease in spread, or an increase in projectile count w/ a decrease in base damage or range. I also noticed that for some reason the combat shogun variant makes use of the 'Rumble pattern - triangle' and and rumble wavelength variables, which I'm guessing controls how the projectiles exit the gun.

Rumble is controller vibration.

Edit: I checked the data as well, could the fact that shotguns do as much damage as in vanilla be the problem? Other weapons have gotten a huge increase, so the effectiveness of shotguns will have gone down in comparison.

My only thought regarding the shotgun is that all of the damage is applied to whatever limb / bodypart is hit first. With the spread and enemies arm's in front of them holding weapons, it might mean that a lot of the damage is being reduced. Even so, this would mean in vanilla that you wouldn't be blowing heads apart as often. I really have no idea. I'll continue to look into it.

Any input on assault rifles? Why not change the damage using FO3Edit?

I am not able to find the stand alone mod for the Caravans upgraded plugin used in this mod on nexus, so if someone could find the link I would appreciate it.

Yep this may true, except for the sawed-off shotgun, which got a boost (50->65). As far as I can tell, shotguns are the only weapons that are using more than "1" for Projectile Count data. All of the shotguns are using 9 projectiles per shot, which could explain why the damages seem very random if all of projectiles aren't hitting the target (or are hitting the arms/legs during combat, as Mezmorelda suggested).

I'm not entirely sure how the damage for these weapons is calculated. Is the base damage a factor of the projectile count? For the sawed off, it has a base damage of 65, so with 9 projectiles, that's around 7.2 damage per "pellet". With the min/max spread on these weapons being high compared to other small guns (as it should be...it is a shotgun afterall), all of these pellets aren't going to hit the target, so the damage would be significantly decreased. Also, just looking at some of the numbers quickly (I'm probably missing something here), the CAWS really isn't much different than the other vanilla shotguns. I know it's not terribly reliable, but the in-game damage info for me lists the CAWS damage at like 800, while the combat shotgun and sawed off are around 80 each. I'm guessing the fire rate listing is the cause of this? Does that effect the damage calculation?
H&K CAWS - Base damage - 55

Min spread - 3.0
Spread - 5.0
Base % to hit - 30
Projectile count - 9
Min range - 192
Max range - 680
Fire rate - 3.0
Attack shots/sec - 1.687500
Crit damage - 27
Crit % - 1.0

Combat shotgun - base damage - 55

Min spread - 3.0
Spread - 5.0
Base % to hit - 30
Projectile count - 9
Min range - 192
Max range - 640
Fire rate - 1.0
Attack shots/sec - 1.5
Crit damage - 30
Crit % - 1.0

Sawed-off shotgun - base damage - 65

Min spread - 7.0
Spread - 10.0
Base % to hit - 15
Projectile count - 9
Min range - 128
Max range - 500
Fire rate - 1.0
Attack shots/sec - 2.249999
Crit damage - 30
Crit % - 1.5

Anyway, if projectile count is one of the reasons why shotguns are acting strange, maybe increase the projectile count, and make adjustments elsewhere if needed (base damage, spread etc). I'll try and fool around with the setting after work. Other than that I'm not really sure, because I don't recall shotguns performing this strangely in vanilla, so my guess would be the different limb damage percentages as compared to the original is the main culprit here. As for the shotgun headshots being so random, I have no clue.

Edit: Wrote this while you posted Riddley

I tested out the shotguns a bit, in a controlled environment.

Sawed-off shotgun, original damage 50, FWE 65.
10mm pistol, 9 and 20 respectively.

A raider takes 1-2 shots to the chest before dying with the shotgun, and the last shot is usually for a single HP bar. 2-4 with the pistol. That translates to about 60-80 damage with both weapons, +- any modifiers. I used leveled raiders so their armour and health may have varied. Still, I think I've found that at point blank it takes about as much damage to kill with both weapons.

My theory is that the damage listed for shotguns is divided among the pellets, and if you get in a hit on a raider a few pellets may miss, some hit limbs, some hit the weapon etc. In addition, the sawed-off shotgun i tested with seems to have an almost 45 degree spread, so at a few meters distance only 2-3, out of 9, pellets are likely to hit, so you're already at least halving the damage there. Add to that that shotguns have a much lower rate of fire than automatics and you can see how they get outperformed.
I also wonder what happens with the armour calculations when you have multiple weak pellets compared to a single bullet? Maybe Mezmorelda has an idea?

My suggestion is to tighten up the spread on most shotguns, and increase the damage by a lot. You'll may still get somewhat random results, but at least you'll get a definite effect on the target.

Yeah I figured it was something like this. It's around 7.2 damage per projectile for the sawed off, so obviously unless all 9 pellets are hitting or you get lucky, it's going to underperform. With the distance you list of a couple meters, 3 pellets hit = 21.6, which is less damage than a single shot from the 10mm pistol. I'm curious as well about the armor, and whether or not each pellet is calculated for enemy AR/DR. If it is, then the pellets would do even less. I agree about the spread and damage increase, but also maybe a projectile number increase for certain shotguns.

It really depends which way you want to go - with the pellet system, the lower-end shotguns like the sawed-off can get a projectile count increase, maybe with a slight base damage increase, but keep the wide spread. This way, the weapon can primarily be used as a scattershot for maiming/crippling/finishing off opponents, while the higher-tech shotguns should have less spread/higher base damage per projectile. What I'm also wondering is if in order to cripple an opponent, does the damage itself factor in, or is it just limb health? I notice that most of the time, the shotgun blasts rarely cripple, whereas a single 10mm bullet cripples quite often, so maybe the pellet damge is insufficient to cause more crippling as it currently is.

A quick question: is the min/max range value only for VATS? Or is that the actual projectile falloff? If it's not for VATS, some shotguns could be re-worked to be horribly innaccurate at range, but very lethal up close with wide spread/more projectiles per shot. A lot of this can be balancd around the fact that shotguns 1) poor rate of fire, and 2) limited clip size.

I can add. "Sneak" hit from shotgun from behind to the head- always death for the enemy. With old vanilla sneak system, when weapon's sound was no big deal, shotgun was the best weapon for the sneaky-type character

Hmm well I tried a bunch of different settings with a custom patch for the sawed off shotgun. Lowered the spread down to 3.0, increased base damage to 70. Performed much better, but it was a bit too strong at range for a little sawed off. Headshotting was a bit more consistent though.

Then I tried increasing base damage to 75 (from 65), decrease spread to 6.0 (from 10), and increase projectile count to 14. This feels much better in game. It's still sometimes random, but with these settings I consistently can 1-shot a raider in the head close up. Also, close range and somewhat further back, aiming for the central mass (chest) and sometimes the legs actually works very well with the increased projectile count. Body shots are viable with these settings it seems, so you don't always have to rely on a headshot to get a kill like with many other weapons. This is primarily offset by the fact the clip is only 2 - Getting overwhelmed is still pretty easy with MMM, but if you get backed into a corner, the gun is a lot more reliable. I also went in and changed the projectile ranged data for shotgun shells which was untouched with FWE, and kept the speed the same (10000), but lowered the range to 4000 (from 10000).

It's more fun to use, is more effective and more reliable, but it still needs some tweaking I think.



You mean an automatic sneak attack when shooting the head? Sounds kinda interesting...

Thanks for the feedback and testing regarding the shotty's. I'll definitly take a look at tweaking the spread, damage, and number of projectiles.

I've done some testing of my own as well, with shotty's and other things. Here's the report:

1) Shotguns
I do think that the damage from multiple projectile weapons (shotguns) is applied against the first limb that is hit. I turned on god mode and went about attacking everyone in megaton. When I had a clear shot at someone's head (even aiming a little above their head) I seemed to get 1-shot kills on the megaton population. However, if someone was aiming at me and had their arms out in front of them, presumably the shotgun hit their arm's first and the resulting damage was very low.

Adding more projectiles or even reducing the spread might help somewhat with this issue. In addition, it might be worthwhile to re-examine the limb damage %. Arms for instance only apply 15% of taken damage to the foe's overall health, which would explain why those shots randomly seem to do so little damage. Limb damage should maybe be closer to 33%.

2) Hunting Rifle / Spread
I also testing some hunting rifle variations of the normal spread value. I can say fairly confidently that the normal "spread" value does have some impact on aim when using an unzoomed weapon, i.e. when auto-aim (red cursor) is in effect. Shooting at about 50 yards out, I compared the 10mm pistol (0.5 min spread, 0.5 normal spread) to the hunting rifle (0.3 min spread, 3.0 normal spread), I defintely hit more consistently with the 10mm pistol. I edited the hunting rifle back to 0.3 normal spread, and it felt more accurate than the 10mm again. There are a lot of wierd calcuations at work with the autoaim, so I wouldn't be surprised if it had some effect on the aiming system.

3) Min/Max Range Values
The GECK wiki indicates that the min/max range values are actually an AI related variable, that controls how close or far the enemy will "want" to be to most effectively use the weapon. The actual ranges for the weapons is handled through their associated projectile data.

I have FOOK downloaded, but can I still download this mod and expect everything to run smoothly?

This is strange, as I thought FWE disabled autoaim completely (or can that even be done)? As for the shotguns, they are a bit more difficult to balance correctly because they're the only weapon using multiple projectiles. For the sawed off, I increased the base damage in small intervals until it felt about right with a 20-25 percent increase, then adjusted spread and projectile count accordingly. With the settings I mentioned above, it makes for a very good alternative weapon, because you can body shot reliably if the enemy is 5-10ft away. If you're going to change the limb damage percentages up to 33%, the increased projectile count would make it more effective (maybe too much).

I'm not sure where to find it in FO3edit, but what are the item codes for the H&K CAWS, Jackhammer, and Weapshotgun (the standard winchester double barrel)? The shotgun family is pretty so small so maybe I can start testing out some of the other guns.