Well right now the missile launcher has a base damage of 20, and a blast damage of 125. The grenades have a base damage of 1, relying on blast damage of 90. I'm guessing that you need a direct hit for that measly 20 damage from the missile to register, but I'm not sure. I suppose it makes sense for a direct hit. Otherwise, if the damage is just added on to the blast radius, having 2 separate damage entries is a bit redundant. Now if there were a way to add some type of 'racial damage multiplier' against a specific target (say the super mutant masters/brutes that everyone seems to be having issues with) so it could provide a hidden bonus damage against very tough targets, that would be interesting.

To go along with what Jigun has said (and I agree), it would be good to have more distinction between the different weapon categories. Frag grenades should be used for crowd control over lighter armor targets. I think power armor wearing enclave troops and mutants should be able to shrug these off to a degree. I don't agree with people suggesting that regular frag grenades should be able to slaughter everything in the game...armor should have an effect here, and also consider the rate of fire for grenades. You can lob them at pretty decent rate (1 grenades per second I think...and also very efficient with Kai Hohiro's FPS grenade hotkey mod) right now. Also, frags are very common loot. If you're an explosives user but not specialized in big guns, frag mines/bottlecap mines can be used to help punch through heavier targets. There are different types of explosives, so they should have different purposes. The missile launcher can be used for very big or heavily armored targets (enclave, behemoths, gargantuans, brutes/masters, robots etc,).

I think this would be the better way to go, rather than weaken the mutants and other creatures. Different targets should require different tactics and weapons to take down effectively.
Expecting to take everything out with an FN FAL or a couple grenades seems pretty one dimensional and boring to me. Big guns/explosives/small guns users should excel in different areas of combat, and be less generalist. I think that's the whole point of skill point reduction in the current FWE, to that characters can become more specialized over the course of the game, rather than turning into demigods that are masters of every skill.

Agreed 100%. Your choice of skills should heavily affect your playstyle.

Another question: a lot of people are mentioning how difficult it is to progress in this mod, especially with MMM. Should I consider starting a new character with the mod now, or wait until future patches? Is it really that difficult. An even more important question: is there a mod that allows your skills to progress past 100, like in the original Fallout games? I believe that would help me to deal with enemies and also to specialise the character in certain areas.

I've been one of the one lobbying for more explosive damage. Riddley has described grenades and mines as crowd control. I haven't considered them as such before but perhaps that is their true purpose, like an area-effect spell in Oblivion. I've been trying to use them as something stronger then small guns against big, strong targets because I felt that explosives should be stronger then small guns. So I just had an idea. What if explosives had a knock-down effect. Maybe the big uglies aren't killed by the grenade or mine but they could be knocked-down by the concussion. This would make them very effective crowd control weapons.

Hi to all:

Agree that explosives are fairly weak in terms of damage and variety (thereby making the explosive skill rather useless). Perhaps more explosives (more are designable with higher explosive skills) are needed. Additionally, higher explosive skills at certain intervals should give different perks per explosive i.e. "your skill with explosives has enabled you to modify the frag mine such that it affects a much greater radius"; "you have added a ejecting platform to the bottlecap mine such that detonation occurs at chest level, thereby dispersing shrapanel without prejudice to ALL parts of the body"; "you have replaced the explosive filler in the frag grenade with more effective materials. Your frag grenades now cause knockdown." etc. etc. You could of course add a little bit of graphics to each perk too if you feel inclined. That would differentiate explosives from guns as just another source of direct (ineffective) damage. Either way damage needs to go up because raiders seem to shrug off grenades without too much problem.

Supermutants: these guys are pretty tough. The normal ones are fine. The brutes are strong. Don't know how much you want to modify them though. I don't consider the FN-FAL to be an end-game weapon (since i find a good number of them and i'm only level 8) but if it is the brutes are taking the bullets fairly well. Perhaps removing the Nerd Rage perk is enough? It seems pretty weird actually that they have nerd rage considering their intelligence. I mean don't nerf 'em too much.

Turrets: the ones that you get out of hacked terminals are utterly useless. They are usually destroyed 1 second after activation. So basically they end up doing about 1 or 2 bars worth of damage to say, a supermutant. Not worth it! Give 'em more health and possibly more damage.

Melee/unarmed: utterly useless. It's pretty hard to survive even with guns considering your enemies' uncanny aim and lethal damage dealing potential. Getting close to them without firing is suicide. IMO instead of adding an "evade" perk, the player should be given damage resistance during sprint (perhaps have a script to check that the player is unarmed and actually running towards/closing the distance to, an enemy.) The power fist should also do better damage considering its rarity. Just nicked one from Rocksalt's safe and was overwhelmed with joy until I saw the damage value - yuck!

Shotties: they're better since spread and damage has been tweaked but there is still some quirkyness. Perhaps there is a way to alter the shotgun pellets so that one fat, predominant pellet positioned at the center is farther than the other pellets/that particular pellet travels faster than the other ones. This would avoid the issue with all pellets undergoing the same damage penalty due to limb dmg reduction. Don't know if that's possible but just throwing things out: the CAW being described as a pretty decent weapon is in my opinion even worse than the combat shotgun. Plus the wind-up time is hella annoying.

SM and brotherhood battles: these could be found in a variety of places and are very cool. Easiest place to find 'em at is near the Washington monument. But these brotherhood knights/initiates, as well as the SM, are decked up with some pretty high level gear. And they are free loot since they slaughter each other. I grabbed some awesome plasma guns from a dead BoS. Perhaps changes should be made to their leveled list such that most rank-and-file BoS are only given crappy weapons, whereas the important ones i.e. citadel + those guarding Three-Dog have the serious weaponry. I must say though, it was nice finding a laser rifle and i was able to stock up on 5.56/7.62 from the SM's - probably got 200 of each.

Anyway i'm enjoying the game so don't take the above as complaints, just nitpicking!

Well, you'd have to be careful with a mechanic like this. Otherwise, you could just spam grenades and 'stun lock' entire groups, which is cheesy and unfair IMO. I'd prefer to see a mechanic like this correspond to Demolition Expert Perk ranks, rather than general use (this helps reflect the fact that the person is better trained with explosives over someone who is specialized in another area of combat). This provides more incentive for those choosing to specialize in demolitions, and creates more distinction. For example:

Demolition Expert

Rank 1 - Knockdown chance 15%; Concuss target 10%; Knock unconscious 5%
Rank 2 - Knockdown chance 33%; Concuss target 20%; Knock unconscious 10%
Rank 3 - Knockdown chance 50%; Concuss target 25%; Knock unconscious 15%

Now, I still think this should be tied in with the explosive type and the size/weight of the creature somehow (knocking down gargantuans/behemoths/and heavy power armor users with every little frag grenade isn't right). Also, I'm not entirely sure how the concussion mechanic works on enemies in game. If it had the effect of lowering perception, and reducing accuracy, this could work. Also, maybe a a very brief 'frenzy' type effect to simulate the reduced perception/blurred senses, where the creature's aim is poor, and he/she/it shoots wildly for a few seconds (potentially hitting friendly targets). This would be an interesting tactic for taking on minigun-wielding supermutants, which people have difficulty with. My attitude with all of this is simple - bring the right tools for the right job (which should correspond with your chosen skills). If you wander into a pack of super mutant brutes with only an assault rifle and expect to get out alive, you should pay for the mistake of not being prepared. I'd prefer it if FWE moved more towards skill-based choices and tactics, rather than everything being tied completely to the weapon.



It's not difficult unless you adopt the playstyle of "run and gun". If you plan out your attacks and act intelligently, it's not very hard. The game with FWE for me isn't that difficult, but then again I'm what Mr. Burke refers to as a 'masochist', I suppose :shrug:

Yes there is a mod that allows your skills to progress past 100 (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2045)

And you really have to use everything you've got to survive this mod. Morphine, Psycho, frag mines...

Yeah I downloaded it recently and created a new raider character. I find myself running away a lot. BTW there should be more traders and a doctor or two for the raiders side, cause all i have is paradise falls and evergreen mills smiley jack.

Heh that's what I like about this mod. Often when I see a large group of super mutants or enclave soldier in the distance I think "meh...not today. Live and let live or how they say"

Thanks for the continued feedback! I'll read through this all when I have more time and form a good direction to take =)

Also, I was looking at assault rifle damage (oh no, not again!) . . . and I'm thinking that the 5.56mm varieties need a little boost again, maybe by 5 points of base damage. right now, the assault rifle only does 5 more damage than the 10mm weapons (25 vs 20), which isn't much considering the cost of ammo, fewer repair options, etc. With the new armor changes, and tougher creatures, I just don't feel like the assault rifles are holding their own very well. Heck, the .32 cal pistol does 28 damage, is easy to repair, is cheap, and doesn't cut through ammo. So if the assault rifles did maybe 29-32 base damage or so (from 25-27) I'm thinking that might be better.

Got a little issue with the alternate traveling mod...

Can't find my bike! I traveled from the museum of history to the citadel and now I can't find it outside of either locations. I've got a feeling it might have fallen through the floor somewhere (seriously). Its happened once before to me but I caught it happening before my saves got overwritten. This time i didn't catch it and CASM overwrote all my old saves already.

Any kind of console command or something I can use to retrieve the bike back to me? I don't want to have to run around everywhere from now on. Any help would be appreciated!

oh noes indeed. Those assault rifles are difficult to balance. But I can't agree on the point you make with ammo, because every other npc or mutant has an assault rifle, so I usually have several thousand rounds lying around unused at the moment, by far more then .32 or 10 mm clips.
I think that's actually the strength of the two 5.56 assault rifles. With the FN FAL I have to play very conservative, with the chinese I can just blow an entire clip, even if I don't have a good shot, and still have enough ammo to wage a small war. Assault rifles have a good clip size and are fairly precise, especially with the scope, so they need some drawback so they aren't the prefered weapon for every situation. I would say to 2-3 points of damage more at most, but it's really no critical issue.

Rather the damn shotguns aside the CAWS and Combat(which are fantastic now) need some kind of fix. Thanks to the large amount of enemies, their small clip size and abnormal reload time they are useless in nearly every situation(not a FWE problem, but actually already a Vanilla one). Their damage is good, but they just aren't practical in a real fight.
But sadly I can't offer a decent solution either at the moment, other then from making their clip size larger(but I'm not sure how well that would fit with the weapons...).

I would really like to make some better use of that sawed off shotgun...

Try this in console
prid XX001551
moveto player

Where XX is a number of AlternativeTravel.esp in FOMM

That did the trick, thank you!

one thing iv'e seen, not sure if its been reported but raiders w/ regular double barreled shotguns fire continuiously w/ out reloading

This is a weapon limitation really. The "lower tech" shotguns are designed to dispatch enemies in tight quarters/close combat...they aren't designed to kill wave after wave of an enemy. Upping the clip size wouldn't work very well for the feel of the weapons, as they would then lose distinction. Maybe that magical combination of projectile count and base damage isn't quite there yet, but with FWE the shotguns 'should' provide an alternative to other weapons in that you don't have to rely on a headshot to get a kill (IE getting a meatshot), whereas with many other weapons (pistols/rifles etc), you need to headhunt to bring a target down quickly. I've consistently gotten 1 shot body kills, and have many times aimed for the knee caps, instantly removing both legs (and this is part of the satisfaction with using shotguns...as sick as that sounds

If I know I'm about to enter an area with many many enemies, I usually don't use the shotguns...because they aren't designed for this situation. If I encounter a few packed enemies in tight corridors, I always whip out a shottie , because this is where the weapon type excels. Additionally, the shotguns are actually not *too* bad at taking down larger creatures like mutants, centaurs, and big animals, because the large size means more projectiles are hitting the target per shot. This is just my view though...different situations call for different weapons and tactics. With any of these weapons, be it assault rifles, shotguns, missile launchers, or miniguns, I think it's important to look at what the intended function behind the weapon is and try to translate this as close to possible in-game (even though this isn't always practical).



Yep I've seen this. Needless to say this makes shotgun weilding raiders more dangerous. I've also seen it with other weapons that use very small clips (like the pipe rifle). I'm not entirely sure what's causing this...maybe Mezmorelda has an idea.

I want to congratulate you, Mezmorelda, as well as all contributors and fans of FWE Team, with 200 endorsemants on the Nexus
There is only 5 unendorsemants and all of them from I-don't-like-it series. I think it is big success.
Thank you so much for your work!

I have one request. Please, please please PLEASE add tracers back to the hunting rifle and sniper rifle. It can be a lot harder to tell exactly where I hit without seeing the bullet. I think the effect is actually pretty decent as long as the weapon isnt a full auto one like the minigun.. These precision weapons could really use their tracers back. Or an option to simply have a lower frequency of tracers on automatic weapons while precision weapons always have their tracers.

Indeed, congrats on the amazing work, all of those endorsemants are well earned.

Mezmorelda, what do you think of phalanx's companion mod?

I've been getting that itch again, but I don't want to play another shooter character... been there, done that and all. Is melee even feasible in FWE? I'm not a fan of sneaking around (and sneaking without the little alert thing at the top is pretty much impossible, anyway), and even with power armor, you can end up taking some nasty hits while closing in. Would the Tackle perk be enough to counteract this with some good old-fashioned baiting the AI? I'm pretty sure I could make it work in the later game (especially once I get my hands on a Super Sledge, or an upgraded Shishkebab with the Pyromaniac perk), but the early game seems like it'd be rough. I guess I could "cheat" by getting the Winterized T-51B armor from the Operation Anchorage DLC, but that really does kinda feel like cheating to be wandering around in power armor that early in the game...

Any ideas?

@PizzaSHARK!
I think- constant chems using, high endurance and strength as well as damage-protecting spells can make the deal.
I don't use melee character, but sometimes was forced to it. As you can see- I'm alive for now

Well thank you! Now if only I could get 2.1 out the door instead of finding new things to tweak =) My changelog is as long as the 2.0 update so far!

Given the interest involved, it might make sense to create a tracers on optional module. Won't take long at all to create. I'm thinking of having tracers on all the time for single-shot weapons (i.e. sniper rifle, hunting rifle), and then in maybe every 4-5 shots (on average) for more clip oriented weapons. Turn tracers back n for shotguns?

Try getting the Toughness perk up to rank 5 as soon as possible, those 30 DR are going to help. Add Cyborg, and the "Tough" Wasteland Survival Guide perk (requires high strength/endurance), and you're looking at almost 50% DR unarmoured. Wearing light armour should let you run to enemies a bit faster, which keeps them from shooting you up too badly.
Shoot up with some chems, and get the strongest mele weapon you can find, and tell us how it went.

I'd bring a gun to deal with powerful melee monsters though, I wouldn't want to have to stab a matriarch to death. At the very least get a Dart Gun to help with slowing enemies, either to run down, or away from.


This is not the time to suggest making armour unlootable is it?...

Thanks delamer you are the master of user support!

In case this ever happens to anybody in the future you can also use the following console command SetStage weMain 4. I did have the ground swallow up the mototcycle once. I've also had situations where the movable geo-markers appear sunken in the ground. I think this happens when the marker in on its side when you activate it.

As Riddley already said a shotgun is a close-quarters weapon. Now that the shotguns are doing some damage again its what I carry when wandering indoors, especially hallways. I use the combat shotgun the most. When you mod its magazine that gives you 24 rounds on tap. Thats usually enough to handle most close quarters situations. Although I have to say the double drum mag looks a little strange.