I think Weapon Degridation is possibly the best thing that Bethesda introduced to the series. The stuff you're likely to find post apocalypse is likely to be in a poor state. I think it would actually behoove Bethesda to develop this mechanic further (maybe have each weapon split into components that you can replace with components in better shape from another weapon. The Jury Rigging perk allows you to slot in components designed for other weapons with varying effects.

I think it does a lot for the "junkyard feel".

:foodndrink:

Why exactly?

I agree, but IMO the earlier games had it right.. A PC that can fix the esoteric internals of just about anything and structurally repair combat armor to be equal (or better than new ~like the factory did it), runs afoul of the same principles that Oblivion did when the PC could master any and every guild (at the same time).

Is it plausible (or even desirable mechanics) that the player character be the best man (or woman) at everything in the game? To not have any acknowledged experts? (cranky old men with a workshop full of a lifetime's collecting of specialized tools? No savants in their basemant? ), C'mon...

It would be fine with me if Bethesda implemented repair after the way Arx Fatalis did it, where the PC's skill can be used to affect repairs, but they are not specialist experts and their (amateur) work may improve the condition, but also degrades the maximum condition of the item (each time they repair it!); reducing the maximum durability, or perhaps damage resistance ~certainly resale price... What sane merchant would buy an assault rifle repaired with duct tape?). ** Also [IMO] it would be good if the PC's repair work added weight to the item.

** Would this not also be a both plausible and an excellent 'gold sink'? High cost for high-end work by a professional, and improvements not available to the PC's home-brew jury-rigging.

IMO, if the PC is going to be an expert gunsmith, they should have to center their character around it all but exclusively... but that does not make for a well rounded adventurer ~hence, I don't see the point of making it an option as they have in FO3 (by making it relatively easy to attain without serious cost to the rest of the character's development).

What if you could also spend money to hurt the town? Or maybe hire mercenary's of your favorite faction to "guard" the town?

wasn't also used to repair jammed weapons?

I don't know. !?
I never tried (or ever noticed that). IIRC a weapon jam (in any of the games) would just count as a delay.

In Fallout anything like that would lose (loose ) your ammo and maybe cause them to lose their turn that round. :shrug:

I seem to remember having to use the repair skill on the weapon in the inventory to clear the jam, but how knows it's been a while since I've played and got a jam.

Lol fair play pulling the experience card on me But I think even though it clearly started with Fallout 3, it's one of the best things they did as far as illustrating the desperation of the post-apocalyptic world. You now have to scavenge for parts to repair your weaponry, as well as carrying backup weapons for when your primary weapon inevitably breaks at the most inconvenient of times.

Something I think new vegas did particularly well was the jury rigging perk, IIRC that wasn't in FO3, but made the repair system far less punishing without taking anything away from immersion.

The originals I think did better, For those of us who remember in Fallout 2 finding the 10mm pistol a there first gun in king Rat's layer with only like what 12 bullets

Originally it was that your weapon could break in combat with no option to repair it at all. (And truly, you shouldn't be able to 'stop the world' while you repair a damaged gun; no?)

What's your perspective on my points in Post #28?
____________

To topic: (while not applicable to civic support (or harassment), I do think its a better option as a 'gold sink' ~one with a lot of potential). I do like the idea of the option to charitably improve a town... but I question the believability of it happening in the Post Apocalyptic setting, and the town's less than naive residents accepting a free fortune without apparent strings attached.

I agree with it in principle, that the PC should only be capable of shoddy repairs and such, which would be harmful to the item in the long run, but I'm unsure on whether it'd be enjoyable in practice. Perhaps if the damage the PC does to the weapon wasn't permanent, and could only be 'reversed' by a proper gunsmith, then it would be more bearable.

I do agree though that the world shouldn't stop while you repair weapons, but that can easily be solved by not allowing repairs or other time consuming activities while in a fight. That would also enhance the necessity of carrying a backup weapon, and not just a few more of your primary weapon, so that you could repair it when it breaks.

The game could implement a sortof tariff where you find it harder to barter with vendors until you've gained the acceptance of the community, by presenting it as a discount that can be earned by being a good 'citizen' rather than as a tax I doubt it would receive too much negative feedback.

It'd be nice if there were also more opportunities to invest your caps. Rather than just hand money over to a digital accountant and watch the game employ street sweepers to get rid of all the bent tin cans and empty nuka cola bottles you could put money into trading caravans which would hire extra guards to accompany them and thus be more comfortable with carrying a larger selection of materials for sale (and perhaps increasing the cost to pay for maintaining the extra guard), or buying into a repair shop and then having access to higher end gadgets or armour or whatever the shops' specialties imply.

Alternatively, if you came into possession of permanent accomodation in richville then having a vault full of caps overseen by a diving board and an animation allowing me to watch my character http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzba7V8uB04 through his accumulated wealth wouldn't svck either.

I can't speak for agent_c, but I agree with the sentiment to a certain degree (although possibly for different reasons). If looking repair in Fallout 3 purely from mechanical standpoint, it was quite possibly the most succesful implementation of a skill in the whole game. Even better than that of New Vegas, as it incorporated the PC's ability straight into the task offering skillrelated limits on how much the player could repair. There was nothing really player driven about it aside from initiating the task in the menu.

Of course it all went down the drain when the item health didn't mean anything worth mentioning (before zero -- the reloading disorders were never really in the way of combat), replacements (and repair duplicates) were practically drowning the player and brought in by the wind (possibly due to the high rate of wear the weapons suffered, which in turn was possibly because the item HP did nothing in particular before it reached zero), and being able to repair everywhere and at any time. But the core idea was something I actually liked, and had the rest of the game supported it properly, it would've actually been a good feature.

hmm.. I always have too much money & stimpacks. on FO3 I have 300+ stimpacks & on NV i hav close to 100 stimpacks . I hav 26,000 caps in FO3 & I Had 116,000 Caps in NV but I went around repairing & trying to have one of every gun in top condition, so now I hav 29,000. I wish they let you like hire people to run personal unending businesses that you could invest in. Maybe as your business grows you could keep putting caps into it for advertising on the radio, or upgrading your business,or building more stores.It gives u something to spend caps on. Idk.....

Solutions:

Jack the price for everything way up. It cost tens of thousands of caps to buy PA in Fallout 2. This includes getting medical help and repairs.

Have locations that you need to pay to get into, not like the Strip were you need to have 2000 caps to get in.. You need to give them 2000 caps everytime. A quest so you can get in for free or for really cheap.

Decrease the number of items in the game world.

Make armour unlootable. The very least.. have a "broken beyond repair" for armour and weapons. If you don't have the skill to fix it you can break it for good and no one would buy it. New Vegas has a good syste, were the items condition = the value.

Give us the ability to buy slaves and mercs.

Go back to the original companion system.. You have to give your companions ammo and healing items. If you don't they run out. No more magically healing or unlimited ammo.

Wat can you even do after u discovered all Locations & beat all quests?

Finish the main quest and start a new character :fallout:

I agree with styles, I never personally let my companion's use there unlimited weapons, and if there was a mod out that made the nilla companions not heal full at the end of combat I'd use it too. as long as they auto use stuff like stims and antivenom from there inventory at thresholds you set them at. When you have to supply both you and 6 other companions you'll really start to see how your no longer hording truckloads of caps. I personally have the mod that uses the fallout 2 charisma/2 formula for companion limit plus I have 3 mod companions in. (Willow, Marcus, and Melisa)

Increasing the cost of buying stuff to the originals games limits and making selling back items vastly smaller then buying said items would go a long way. As well as having to supply companions. In my present game heavily modified of course, I didn't really start to earn alot of caps profit until I was level 18 or so because I had to constantly be buying up ammo, and supplies for all my companions. I only really got consistently over the 10K caps range and over after level 35.

AS for your comment KDMvP, I also agree with styles, after you "do everything" the game is just a pointless combat grinder, I fins it fun sometimes since I have lots of companions and with IWS and mods like AWoP you can have some awesome big scale fights.

Except that you could repair a damaged baseball bat with a 2nd damaged baseball bat (or even a 3rd).

I can understand the concept of swapping parts from different 10mm pistols to get one that works, but (personally) I feel that the repair mini-game adds maintenance hassles to 'fill' empty gaps in the gameplay. Pistols don't break like that (do they?), and if you have a rifle worn down to being non-functional would anyone really take it apart? Use the barrel on another rifle? For that matter... Seriously speaking its 200 years later and there has been no manufacturing of guns... It would have reverted to small town gunsmiths making custom firearms by hand (that don't have fully interchangeable parts). When I envision the PC repairing a generator in cave.. I don't envision them dismantling, cleaning; re-machining, or custom fabricating replacement parts... I see them as bypassing and hammering, twisting and hot wiring the thing to get it running (short term); and that would apply to equipment repair IMO (to actually use duct tape for instance, to hold parts together ~short term). And it just doesn't seem appropriate for them to spend the time to do those repairs ~and in fact it takes no time at all. If you have 16 pistols, you just press "R" until you have one good one out them.

I dislike the 'belief breaking' aspect of equipment degradation; Hand-me-down-guns and armor that lasted generations, and break in days once you get them.

IMO the PC should not (should never) have the option for ultra-specialized training in anything. They can be well read (or not), they can be handy and mechanically inclined; but IMO there should be no nuclear physicists, no surgeons, no electrochemical engineers , no ballistic missile designers, and no virologists specializing in FEV... These (non-adventure related) disciplines should be beyond and off limits to a player character IMO ~but perhaps such individuals are available to talk to; buy from or sell to.

Another way to deal with the issue of to many caps..

Cash only vendors, merchants, doctors and repair guys. I am not saying every one should be cash only, but have 25% at least be cash only. The ones with the best stuff, or the best doctors and repair guys. Really way would someone selling the best stuff around take payment in wasteland crap?

CASH ONLY :stare:


Also back my idea of having places you need to pay to get in.. Bars, Strip Clubs, Night Clubs and a like would have a cover charge. Many do in real life so why not in Fallout? Some of those places could have "Ladies Night." So one day of the week ladies get in free. Would also work with black widow and confirmed bachelor, can talk to the bouncer to let you in. Or if you have really high charisma.

Understood... (But caps were for squaring a trade, not paying for an item ~though technically you could, and folks did... but it was supposed to be more like you see in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4aUGqfDfjA#t=00m28s. You go in and trade boots (or a lighter) for something you want; Adding caps just to even a trade).

Retro-edit:
That won't go away, and in this case they are stagnant in all things progress (despite FO2), so I don't see them moving away from barter [IMO].
** When it comes down to it... the merchant either has a collection of useful items, or a sack of bottle caps; and (outside of the game...) IMO there should be merchants that don't accept caps. :chaos:

Yes but it has been over 200 years. I think the barter system would be all but dead. Not saying remove it. Just have some people that will only sell or help you for cash and nothing else.

The devs could make it so you discover one cash only vendor has a drug problem and you can trade drugs for items. Little things like that to keep things interesting.

Well, yeah the idea of breaking down a baseball bat or a kitchen knife for parts to fix the next one is laughable. However I was speaking solely from the gameplaymechanical pov (I never imagined that my character would break down an item for parts to fix the next one because it didn't feel like it was happening), the skill placing the threshold at which potency the character repairs. The game as a whole didn't really encourage me to think about what was the concept behind any given task (using stims for example, felt mechanically more like the character was eating the syringes rahter than injecting them to him/her self) -- I only knew about the "breaking down to parts" concept since I read it from an interview during the developement (and seriously expected something else than "consumable weapons" as the presentation). All in all it could've been done better both conceptually and mechanically, but aside from that and that the game didn't really support it, the core mechanic alone felt fairly satisfactory in how it worked which is what I tried to say.

And agreed with the last sentiment on the "ultra-specialized" characters.

I'd say just have gun and other gear come in several "stages" of disrepair. that you can then Fix with varying degrees of success depending on the method you used.

Some thing like:

Jury rigged: penalties to accuracy and maybe damage, but still shoots. Found on like Raiders, and other bandit types that usually are no very well organized or nomadic. something you'd do in the field to get the weapon working "right away". IF critical failures comes back they have higher then normal chance of failing.

Worn: damage penalty but otherwise in working shape. well used and somewhat maintained thick a trusty side arm. Maintained fairly regularly.

Broken: A weapon destroyed, by being shot or no maintenance and is unusable until repaired of "broken down" for parts.

good condition: a freshly repaired from new parts or professional repair shop. bonus to accuracy, ROF, damage possibly.

normal: an average specimen with no bonus or penalties. most common type found by your typical bad guys with some brains and resources.

Now it would take many hundreds/thousands of rounds to "degrade" your weapon unless it took damage from outside sources or overcharged/poor ammo.

Why would a person who owns a bakery buy my 10mm pistol? If so, how does he/she know its value? Why don't they either make you go to the right vendor or just lesson items value at certain vendors? It will keep some people from "rollin in caps". Just a small idea.