Do you still require the schematics from Jules to craft .44SWC? This is reported as a bug for patch 1.01 in the wiki, and I was wondering if the conditions have changed... 60 skill in Survival is a pretty big investment (for me anyways) just to get this ammo.

Yep. Still broken.

Even if they unbroke it, I'm betting it still require a 60 survival your not fining any of the other hand loaded ammo schematics outside the perk like you do the .44 SWC.

But you know what with comprehension, four skill books +16 and a magazine+20 equal out to +36 Survival, wear a Brahmin-skin outfit and take some buffout for +4 Endurance and its +44 to your survival combined with aove.
Assuming your base endurance was 5 or 6.
Now account for your base survival due to your base endurance and luck, and its not such a big investment anymore.

Is it broken? I thought this was a purposeful design decision.

But yes, you do still need both the perk and the schematics.

I consider it broken.

On one hand, you get a perk that gives you access to all hand load schematics.....except for that one obscure one where you have to run across the right guy and use the right dialogue, but we won't tell you about that. Seems stupid.

On the other hand, you have a guy who gives you a schematic for a specific type of bullet.....but doesn't bother mentioning you need a mystical perk to use it.

Either the perk should give you all hand load schematics and not need this one separately. Or the perk should unlock the ability to learn the schematics, and you should need to get all of them from people/locations.

The way it is is just plain dumb.

edit: Heck if it was a design decision, why not just make having "hand loader" be a requirement for getting the dialog at all?

Aiight, thanks guys.

The way you get the .44 SWC ammo was done like that to balance the Trail Carbine. Need to put out the slightest bit of effort to get the best multi-role gun in the game.

Not a bug at all, but a very intentional design choice. The incorrect information on the Wiki calling it a bug (again it's not) needs to be removed as it's just plain wrong.

Got a statement from the developers to that effect?

The difference is possibly forgetting to switch an "AND" to an "OR" with "AND" being the default.

Seems silly to me to make one type of ammo special when every other hand load ammo is also a good boost.

I read a post in the GECK section of this forum a few days ago which detailed the coding behind the .44SWC ammo. The author demonstrated how simple it was to fix. As such, it's still anyone's guess whether the dual requirement was in fact a programming error or fully intended by the devs.

Do we need one for the only ammo schematic in the game? That's the massive clue right there it's intentional. If all the other ammo types under hand loader had schematics and they didn't need the perk then you would be right. Anyway the extra requirements is trivial with the hardest being finding Jules in the first place.

I too at one point thought it was a bug, or just a bone-headed typo. Then I use a scoped Trail Carbine with this ammo and changed my tune quickly. Taking things slightly farther an EW specialized character can chuck Raul, their BFF who specializes in Leaver-Action/Revolver weapons, a Trail Carbine with this ammo and have some really nice backup. Need the perk requirement there to keep that from being too easy as the Hand Loader perk does nothing for a EW character.

The other ammo types under hand loader don't plug into weapons that are universal like the Trail Carbine is. Yes, I blame that one gun for this. Find me a weapon in the guns skill that's better in all things than a Trail Carbine loaded with SWC ammo and used by a character with the cowboy perk. Hitting power, ROF, accuracy, VATS, weight, durability, it has it all in one neat package. The "Schematic+Perk" requirements for the SWC ammo are just enough to keep the gun from being a "captain obvious" bandwagon weapon like the pre-patch sniper rifle was.

So....entirely supposition on your part then?

Huh? I haven't talked to Jules at all and I mass-converted all my .44 ball to SWCs after I got Hand Loader.

Have you used the Brush Gun? I thought not.

^that is the ultimate goal (Brush Gun) but was strongly considering the Trail Carbine as a stopgap between it and the Cowboy Repeater. Having .44SWC would just make it that much nicer.

Brush gun using SWC ammo needs to be repaired every 50 shots fired, or 75 with the forged receiver mod installed. Having Raul as a follower can extend this out to a maximum of 300 shots with "Full Maintenance". Trail Carbine with SWC ammo in contrast starts off at 500 shots between repairs, again with Raul around the number goes up to 2000. Also, the last time I checked the brush gun lacked a scope leaving the Trail Carbine with much better long range performance.

So no, the Brush Gun with SWC ammo is hardly an ideal weapon that can be used to kill nearly everything at all ranges.

Now .357 JFP ammo in the "La Longue Carabine" can come remotely close. Still loses out in durability with only 150 Item HP, has a huge spread (0.16) for a scoped rifle and does less damage. The silly high spread of this gun may be a typo in the game data. The Cowboy Repeater is 0.04 spread.

10mm JHP doesn't even have a high powered accurate weapon for comparison.

.308 JSP has already had it's time. 100% criting Sniper Rifles are no longer the answer for all the world's problems. Still good but are now are out preformed by the Trail Carbine. "This Machine" lacks a scope, has a 0.5 spread and is 4Wg heavier translating directly into an extra 93 rounds of .44 SWC ammo. Hunting Rifle has that poison pill (60 AP cost) with VATS usage.

.50 MG Match Grade...Do I really need to outline why the AMR isn't a universal weapon?

You could forego the cowboy guns entirely on account of them being OP'd...

I'm lookin' at you, Cowboy perk. :glare:

Looking at Josh (Hey! I put my Rossi 1892 in the game! Wow is it powerful!) Sawyer, would be more accurate.

-Gunny out.

But isn't that balanced by the fact that this machine is semi automatic?

Wait what? I thought it required

Handloader Perk (repair 70)
Find Jules
Gun Check (50)
Survival Check (60)

AND

have a repair of 75 to craft it. (thought this was weird, I just started crafting my first batches last night)

Also I don't really mind the excessive hoops to jump through to get the ammo specs. I think all the ammo that is similar to 1.20 x DAM / -6 DT should be rare as hell. There is not really a downside to firing that ammo type, aside from the price and effort. Straight up damage boost.

And en bloc clip for the win.

However Trail Carbine still fire reasonable RoF; thus it is better as "general purpose".

I take a semi auto rifle any day over an leaver action.

Except those maple stock level-action is almost as light as carbon fiber semi-auto.

I am attached to the Garand, after everything we have gone through together in MoH; however it only really shine when you get it at your teens and BoHD.

This is true. When you shoot at something, there are some basic mechanical things that must go on in order to hit the target. Of those things, two of the most important are sight alignment and target aquisition (called sight picture, but we'll use the previous term so as not to confuse anybody). Every time you move a weapon you must first get these two things correct before shooting at the target again. Target aquisition is putting the top of the front sight post on the intended target area and keeping it there whilst you draw back on the trigger. Sight alignment is getting the correct sight picture where the front and rear sights are in the proper aligment. Without correct sight aligment, you may have the front sight post on the target, but your bullet will shoot to the side (or up, or down).

Computer games have gotten pretty good at duplicating what target aquisisiton feels like in real life with a computer modeled weapon. What they don't do is model sight alignment. You don't have any controls that allow you (or force you) to have to align the front and rear sights in the verticle and the horizontal. Just press RMB and the game automatically does this for you. This is where some of the modeling differences start to deviate from real life to the point where you would do things differently in the game.

Take for instance the above comment. This is completely true IRL. The advantages of a semi auto rifle are not just in the increased rate of fire, but in the weapon's stability while shooting. When firing a semi auto, the rifle moves a negligable amount (from recoil) and quickly settles back to the shooter's natural point of aim. This means that the sight aligment will stay very close and the target aquisition not much worse. You can easily shoot properly aimed individual shots with a semi auto almost as fast as you can squeeze the trigger. With a lever-aciton, the process of racking the lever disturbs not only your target picture, but also sight aligment. For every shot on a lever-action, you must align the sights and aquire the target with a proper sight picture each shot. This takes a lot more time, in my experience than with a semi-auto. Clear advantage to the semi-auto.

But in a game, things are different. Even the game mechanics may be skewed. Josh, for some reason allowed us to fire a Winchester 1873 much faster than an AR-15. Fine. Whatever. That's the game we got, unless you get PC mods, so in the game, the lever-actions work much better than the semi-autos. So much so that halfway through an Idiot/Savant Cowgirl playthrough, I took out all the Deathclaws at the Gypsum Train Yard with a damn BB gun. (Seriously, I'm not kidding. +70 crit damage on a BB gun FTW.)

-Gunny out.