OK, then the Mini Nuke is not a Nuclear Bomb. The in game blast effects are no where near what the Davy Crocket (which is significanly bigger than the Mini Nuke) has. It only looks like a Nuclear Bomb. I am sure Vault Tec's marketing department had more do with the name and packaging than the Vault Tec Engineers ever did.

Grenades look like and can be called Pineapples, but that does not mean you chop them up and put them on a Ham Pizza.

The first time I shot one off in FO3, I thought, "Yep, just a HE Shell".

The problem is fatman was a pretty redicules concept from the start. I recall my annoyance when it was first announced by bethesda.

As for c4, whats not to like about that stuff? Amazingly stable stuff. And you can cook with it. I kid you not, it burns nicely. Just dont step on it to put out the flames.

Some people seem to be forgetting the issue of game balance and the level of realism applied. Like others have already stated, if the ammo is scarce....why the damage nerf?

The Fatman does severely damage, if not kill, the player when used improperly so it's not as though the Fat Man in its original format was overpowered with little consequence for the player.

That way it does'nt become "THIS WEAPON SOLVES ALL YOUR PROBLEMS" type thing I i think, If it was OP, People would track it down early in the game and slaughter everything with it.

I liked the Fat Man, and am slightly baffled by the people bemoaning its ridiculousness, this is a wacky SF game, not a real-world shooter. Slinging portable nukes around in FO3 was fun. But as has been said, they're too rare/too weak in NV. Not sure I launched so much as one in all my time in the Mojave.

Which is why ammo is so scarce. It cannot be your go-to weapon for every tough encounter because of this scarcity and the dangers of using it close range.

I have found about 6 Mininukes fairly close to each other, I don't see how I could'nt just use one and clear everything out but whatever.

It is hard to find these things in this game. I think I have found two of them, wait three, in two play throughs.

I am going to have to fire this thing just to see the difference this time around. I played with the MIRV and Fatman in FO3, but only as a diversion never tactically in a battle. I prefer the Grenade Machine Gun in this game for large area mayhem.

@Boredam:Good lord. You having a love affair with C-4? You seem so opposed to having mini nukes pack a bigger punch. It makes no sense to me.

And are you forgetting how heavy the Fat Man and mini nukes are? Yet another reason why it is not a go-to weapon but simply something that is fun and hilarious to use.

I am having an affair with C-4. :sadvaultboy:

I just don't see any point in the fat man anyways.
But if for entertainment?

I could use one of them things for a giant C4 explosion. bergh.

Forgive me for not understanding but I want to clarify. The weapon called the Fat Man (reference to the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki), with the ammunition called Mini Nukes, with an upgrade called Fat Man Little Boy Kit (Little Boy refers to the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima), with a unique weapon in Fallout 3 named Experimental MIRV (MIRV stands for 'Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicle, which refers to the delivery mechanism of modern nuclear armaments), which was named 'Nuka Launcher' in Japanese versions of the game, and a mushroom cloud accompanied by a flash of light and radiation upon detonation; isn't a nuclear device?

I have a saying. If it looks like a horse, walks like a horse, smells like a horse, sounds like a horse, and everyone else calls it a horse; it's probably a horse.

This is a difference in interpretation of the game world I guess. In my mind certain aspects of the world should be plausible within the context of the setting. Science!™ does allow for some technology to exist that's outside of the realm of our real-world understanding of things, but Fallout (until Bethesda re-imagined it) only crossed into the realm of utter ridiculousness in Easter eggs and glimpses of humor. The rest was mostly somewhat plausible sci-fi. The Fat Man contradicts conventions already established in the game world, IMO, and is therefore out of place. I mean, water is irradiated enough to eventually kill you, but you can detonate a full-on nuclear warhead half a block away and not die or be seriously injured by it? That's crossing a line. Yes, there is some out-there sci-fi in the Fallout setting, but that doesn't open the door to no-holds-barred silliness. Yes, it's a pretty subjective notion, but I don't think the point is as completely arbitrary as you're making it out to be. Even a fictional, humorous setting like Fallout needs to have some kind of established boundaries in order to maintain its integrity.

Just because someone calls it something, does not mean it is. I can call myself studly all day long, your not going to agree with me.

Vault Tec or whoever made these things, thought Nuclear Weapons were the Bomb (Pun Intended). So, I can see them naming something so it sounds all Nuclear Like, and make it look like something that is Nuclear. Packaging and Naming do not make a Nuclear Bomb. However, even in Fallout 3, the Mini Nuke was clearly not a nuclear weapon. Just a high explosive charge. I don't remember any radiation effects from the Mini Nuke, but there could have been like with the cars that you blew up.

IN Fallout 3, I used the MIRV on a barn filled with Raiders and scored a direct hit on the structure. I still had to fight 5 of the 8 Raiders after the Salvo. If they had been Nuclear, the barn would not have been left. OK yes, FO3 does not have destructable enviorments, but still the MIRV Volley should have vaporized the entire group. I am comparing this to the near misses from the Boomers that just about wipes you out unless you hide in very specific places and we know they are not shooting Nuclear Rounds. In fact, even if you are hiding in those places, you still lose health and can die if you are not placed just right. However the blasts from their Howitzers have much higher blast effects than the Mini Nuke ever did.

Oh, MIRVs don't have to be Nuclear Tipped to be a MIRV. MIRV is a Weapon Delivery System, not a Weapon.

SCIENCE!

True, since I have no idea what you look like.



See I don't where to start with this really... Mini Nukes did have a radioactive element to them after you fired them. The impact area would remain irradiated for a short period of time after the projectile detonated. I don't know if this carried over to Fallout: New Vegas (perhaps some curious mind could test that out since I don't have any characters with access to the weapon yet).



Of course the building wouldn't collapse. You said it yourself "FO3 does not have destructable environments". It's a game... How does the fact that the weapon doesn't annihilate everything it hits prove that it's not a nuclear weapon?



You're right here. However, the term came to popular use with the introduction of the concept into nuclear warhead delivery systems. Very few weapons use this sort of technology and the majority of those that do are nuclear ballistic missiles.


Want more damning evidence that the Fat Man is a nuclear weapon? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrvtj_Y2xSk.

Hmm... It sure does say at the end of the video "Tactical Nuclear Catapult".

Build your straw man argument! I will be here with the Flamer of Evidence, lighting him on fire! :flamethrower:

I was refering to the Organics inside the building. I went after a barn just like the one I tried this with but in New Vegas and with the Grenade Machine Gun and it vaporized the Viper Gunslingers inside the building. The barn I am refering to is open sided so you can shoot through it if you want to.

If the thing is supposed to be Nuclear (and maybe it was intended to be) then it needs to have a much bigger boom when it is used. As said above the thing is super rare in New Vegas, so it should be super powerful too as you may only ever want to use it once (like the Davey Crockett was designed to be a last ditch weapon).

Well the Experimental MIRV was incredibly inaccurate. It's possible that none of the projectiles actually detonated inside the building or in a manner that would allow the explosion to harm anyone inside. Explosions are really weird in Fallout 3 and New Vegas anyway. I planted dynamite in a room and closed the door before it exploded and didn't taken any damage (the Highway Partol station in New Vegas. I was clearing out the Mantis' with dynamite).



That's what the thread is about here. The Fat Man was intended to be powerful yet rare, but for some reason it's only moderately powerful and extremely rare. It would seem that the weapon should be modified to be more deadly (on par with the original Fat Man perhaps) and leave the current ammunition availability as it is.

What would be really cool was if it was made to be extremely powerful but the targeted area would become permanently irradiated. For instance, powerful enough to kill anything in a single shot, but leaves the area it hit with a permanent +5 rads per second and reduces the targeted enemies to ash.

#'s attained from the G.E.C.K.

FO:3 FatmanNukeExplosion

DAM=1600
radius=800
Radiation level=10
RAD radius=616
RAD dissipation=12sec

FO:NV FatmanNukeExplosion

DAM=165
radius=2100
Radiation level=10
RAD radius=616
RAD dissipation=12sec

The damage falls off according to the inverse square of the radius, so 1600/r^2 for FO3 and 165/r^2 for NV.
The NV mini-nuke deals 1/10th the damage over 68.9X the area of the FO3 mini-nuke.

The Fatman shouldnt be in this game anyway. Its a ridiculous concept thats the product of Todd Howards misguided attempts at humor. Shooting stuff with a mini-nuclear device =/= Humor.

It's a stupid game


But while we're chattin and stuff...


You could survive a mini nuke if it was launched fur enough away and ya had good enough cover to survive the blast.

The radiation would be the problem after that and we all know you can just pop some Rad Away.

Oh yeah, no such thing as Rad Away, oh yeah, it's just a game.



The Fat Man is a turd in FLNV and there is basically no ammo for it so no biggie. I never even fired one atfter trying it to no avail on a big death claw. It went from 1600 damage in FO3 to 165 damage in FLNV. That's just stupid.

They probably just didn't want you to have a "iwinlulz' button for some of the hard battles in the game. I personally never used the thing in FO3 anyway just 'cuz I thought the idea of a hand-held ballista that throws nukes to be offensively stupid in the first place.

I personally think it would have been cooler to have seen something like destabilized microfusion cells you could fire at people with a slingshot or something. Then again, it is Fallout, so you shouldn't be able to take three steps without tripping over some sort of nuclear weapon, right? /sarcasm

This leads me to believe that they have a typo (not the person who posted this, but the Devs) This thing is not as strong as two bullets from the AM Rifle? A lowly Time Bomb is almost as powerful?

Wonder if this will be addressed in the Patch.......

It's important to keep in mind that no enemy in NV has any where close to 1600 hit points

You know how they say, "When you want someone really dead...."

But it's not a full-on warhead, it's a Mini-Nuke, which is undoubtedly a ridiculous concept but I still don't see how it's more ridiculous than car-sized ants or whatever. Eh, I dunno, where the line is is a subjective thing I suppose.




There's loads of silliness in every Fallout except maybe the first one. And even that had Super Mutants and the like, which don't scream gritty realism. A fictional setting needs to maintain internal consistency but with the Fat Man I don't see the inconsistency myself. What in-game rules are being broken by an extremely localised nuclear blast?