Precisely. They carry belts of .50 cal rounds in ammo boxes loaded on vehicles. You do NOT walk around with a box of .50 cal rounds in your pack. The machine guns are mounted weapons on vehicles or fixed emplacements. Rifles are dissembled and carried between a 2-3 man team. Clips are ~4 lbs, and contain 10 rounds max. You'll take only the amount of ammo you need for a mission, again shared between the team members. This is often far less than people believe. No soldier is going to be told to shoulder 200 lbs. of ammo and walk with it up a mountainside unless it's absolutely necessary (or a part of training). This is stupid, dangerous, makes a soldier less effective or takes them out of action altogether, decreases morale, and is far less efficient that splitting gear up among multiple soldiers, or just waiting for a @#$%!ing ride.

One person carrying the number of rounds displayed in the game is obviously impossible, but it's a game. Frankly, I'm perfectly settled on the way the guns are presented in FO4. And I learned stuff I never knew about both .50 cal and .44 cal weapons. It does seem balanced enough given the perks -- and you become god-like by the late game anyway. Arguing damage values at that point is like arguing whose gold is shinier.

As for bone -- no. Bullets cannot bounce off of bone. Not dense enough. A bullet will either hit bone and stop or break the bone.

They can deflect though, Plebeian, but that's a function of what is being hit and at what angle.

Sure, because enemy will gentlemanly close his eyes as enemy vehicles bring supply of ammo to sniper or to machine gun nest just because girls can not carry something as heavy as a box of .50bmg. Totally logical. And if brass can not send ammo by truck, it will send special helicopter, just so that their soldiers does not tire hauling ammo around. Everything for comfort of grunts on the ground!

Supply of ammo is crucial in modern war. In a infantry firefight, side which have more ammo and manages it to last longer will often win the fight. Soldiers often take more ammo on battle missions then is required by regulations because they are well aware of that. Running out of ammo is among worst if not the worst thing which can happen to soldier. Right besides weapon jam.

Okay, I KNOW they DO use .50s as anti-Materiel as well as anti-personnel weapons (on occasion)... and believfe it or not, the weapon's crew actually determines to a large extent the the type, number of rounds, and how they are carried. Some carry the magazines loose in large pouches, others carry them in various pockets or have bandoleers made. After all that is said and done, the .50 gets a max of about 70 rounds, which is considered adequate for it's purpose.

The difference between that and what we are talking about is that, according to your statements, you've got this notion that every man in a squad would be using .50s if they did more damage. That means you'd have the entire squad going out with that 70 rounds each instead of the hundreds of rounds of 7.62 or 5.56 or whate4ver that are carried in combat as it is now. There is a huge difference in having one man with a very limited amount of ammo for a specific task than having an entire squad with limited ammo for general purposes.

So, as long as we're on that topic, how about this... You do know that by treaty, the military uses a specific type of ammunition BECAUSE it's less lethal, right? Dum-Dums (soft tip or hollow-core bullets, or generally any bullet that expands on impact) were outlawed for military use by the Hague convention. FMJ is used BECAUSE it is less lethal. Given that, I'm not sure it's logical to assume that because a weapon is more lethal it will be used across the board as a general tool.

Moving on, we have at least one more area that we haven't discussed at all, and that is cavitation. Unlike stories about shock waves from bullets passing nearby, or "hydrostatic shock" cavitation is a known and verifiable effect. The basic scenario is that when a bullet passes through human flesh (and this is where you screwdriver comparison falls apart, by the way) it leaves in its wake a sort of tunnel that is opened as a result of the simple fact that the bullet first pushes material like flesh and blood out of its way, then it takes a second or so for the path to close behind it.

Since it's not been mentioned at all, I have to presume you don't know that the "little tunnel" is not the same diameter as the bullet... and in fact it can be up to 30 times the diameter of the bullet itself because because of the force with which high velocity bullets push flessh and blood out of the way. So, imagine that scenario for a moment. A bullet passes through a body leaving an open "tunnel" behind it , and the more high velocity, the more kinetic energy is used to displace that flesh and blood.

Now consider that the .50 BMG round is more or less half an inch in diameter, and think of what that means for a tunnel 30 times that size... a hole, closing almost instantly, but 15 inches in diameter...

However, it's not the hole itself that is the focus of "bullet forensics" on this matter. It is the cavitation... the closing of the would that sets up shock waves that damage or destroy nearby organs. How nearby do they have to be, you say? Well, one can be fairly certain that a kidney, heart, lung, liver, etc., that is in the primary cavitation area itself is sure to effected. Then there is the matter of blood pressure variances throughout the entire body resulting from that momentary spike of blood trying to find a place to go. Where the bullet hits is all-important to determining damage from cavitation, but the simple fact is that the higher the velocity, the more extreme the cavitation...

When soldiers fought with bows and arrows, they carried 20. What is limited amount of ammo is relative thing. How do you know 600 rounds is not very limited? Because your enemy is also carrying 600.

As I said, if .50 caliber main weapon was what would allow generals to win battles, soldiers would carry .50 ammo. Enemy would likely carry the same.

Yes, Dum Dums are forbidden because they cause massive wounds. That however does not mean that military prefer less lethal weapons. If that would be the case, soldiers would be equipped with stun guns and tear gas grenades and artillery shells would explode in to a cloud of confetti.

Dum Dums are like poison gas. Since it terrifies population whose sons serve as a canon fodder on the receiving end in wars, it thus can make subjects bit unenthusiastic about new wars for enrichment of upper 1%. So for the sake of profits of those in power, generals just agreed that gas and Dum Dums are not worth the trouble, especially when generals have much more lethal toys like thermobaric shells and nuclear bombs. So why bother? You can svck all the air from lungs of whole platoon of soldiers dug inside their trenches with a single thermobaric round, but they will all look good in coffins. Parents will not write to White House annoying letters about having to bury their son with bloody mess instead of chest. Or yellow eyes pulled out of sockets and foam and vomit in his pockets in case of gas.

Indeed, and that's exactly why cartridges like .50 doesn't do all that much damage. You see to start pushing blood and flesh, bullet have to first push through lot of air. Air might not seem like hard to push through, but only until you don't try to push trough it speed of sound or more like most bullets do. Once bullets like .50 are done pushing through air, they often are expected also to push through brick walls, trunks of trees, kevlar, even few millimeters of rolled steel. Preferably without loosing all it's energy so they still can push through bit of flesh and blood.

For this reason .50 and other similar cartridges have their bullets shaped in such a way, that they push through as gently as possible, so they cause as little resistance in the material they push through as possible. They have pointy tips, aerodynamically shaped bodies and hard caps which does not deform easily. And that includes pushing through flesh and blood.

Also flesh is very elastic. You can see it on the video I posted. Ballistic gel is made to resemble human tissue as close as possible.

So cavities which bullets make are of two types. One is temporary cavity. That's cavity which bullet creates as it passes through tissue. This cavity exists only for milliseconds as tissue flexes away and then back toward bullet path. This cavity does not cause any damage. Then there is permanent cavity. It's much smaller and that's the one where tissue is actually permanently damaged. That's the wound bullet causes.

For this reason bullets like .50 does not cause large cavities inside their targets. Unless they start to turn, deform or shatter inside the body, cavities they create are only slightly larger then their diameter.

.50 creates cavity only slightly larger then it's diameter. You can see it on video I posted. It's only past 40 centimeters of gel when .50 starts to turn and shatters that it starts doing large cavity. But here's the problem: human body does not have many parts which you can shoot which have at last 40 cm of tissue. Usually it's much less. .50 have tendency to shoot clean through body leaving only small hole bit more then .50 thick. So unless you hit some vital organ (in which case it's irrelevant with what you have being shot), .50 bullet is not that much dangerous. I guess it's less dangerous then 5.45x39 which starts to turn and twist inside body almost immediately (something it is specifically designed to do).

Is this for real? I'm saying you don't pack a brick of .50 cal in a knapsack, then shoulder an M2 before setting off cross-country on foot, hip-firing as you go. The game is SCIENCE-FICTION.

In real life, you can pick up a case of .50 rounds and hand it up to the gunner. You can run, not walk, with a case in each hand while under fire, to bring it to the weapon. This is a "life-or-death situation with no other options". That's what "combat" is. And the military will do whatever is in their power -- trucks, helicopters, air-drops, more troops on foot -- to support anything they can support. That's what all of those fancy Humvees and Chinooks are for, kids. They don't sit on a base so tourists can visit them and take pictures while officers in a board room worry about the expenditure overhead of sending a jeep to an infantry unit that requested it. They'll send 3 if the unit is in trouble and they have the vehicles to spare. With backup. (During heavy engagements in larger wars...yes...unfortunately there are times when there is just no help to be had. And this is where folded American flags come from.)

Seriously, people need to start differentiating between what is real and what is a game.

Yes, you do. Minus hip firing. You don't want to find yourself sitting in a mud after each shot. .50 BMG kicks. And people don't do it only for war, some do it for sport or hunting too.

I wonder why military did not figure out yet that it can send those trucks, helos and airdrops to soldiers with other stuff too. Like boxes of 5.56, grenades, RPGs, mortar mines, helmets, ballistic vests, iron rations. Soldiers could enjoy walking to the battlefield without all the heavy burden and enjoy the sun. It's not like enemy will be shooting at those trucks, helos and planes at the front line.

arras, if I may be so kind as to tell you to settle down a bit - first, this is a game we are discussing, secondly, you don't sound like you have served in the military, and let me assure you that we have many current and former service men and women on these boards and my moderator senses tingled due to the amount of eyeroll I felt in the force. And leave off real-world discussion of guns and ballistics... this is a gaming forum.

It's fine to discuss your point of view, but stop treating every response like you need to defend yourself in a court case. Know when to walk away.

In the interest of staying on topic -cuz we don't wanna get the kitten tingled in a wrong sort of way...

What would have been a good idea would have been to make the .50cal a truly anti material round in that it would be the only round to pose a clear and present danger to powered armor (or deathclaws for that matter) from any distance, while nerfing the damage that the 5.56 ammo (and to a somewhat lesser extend the .308) could do to PA from one shot to the next.

Up close they could have done the same for the .44 (I always assume they're talking about Dirty Harry's .44 magnum round in the game), nerfing the 10mm (which is still a .40cal slug btw..) and seriously nerfing the .38 ammo (which should just bounce off PA like throwing gumdrops at an elephant) when firing at a properly maintained suit of power armor.

just a thought

Could work, if they in the same breath, altered the weapon loadout of a good deal of the enemies. Otherwise it becomes a snooze party walking around in PA and the defacto goto Op mode. Not to mention, for some reason Super muties uses a lot of pipeguns, which uses 38's, and nerfing the already low damage 38 would make a joke of most super mutants (most super mutants in FO4 are poor, and can't afford that many miniguns, missile launchers etc. have to write the union on that one! )

What they really needed to do was to simply import the ammo and weapons stats from FONV. The weapons and ammo were nicely balanced, did what they needed to do without being overwhelming... The .50 cal AMR was deadly, so was the Hunter's Pistol, the LMG was a riot, riot shotguns were far superior to the combat shotguns we've got in FO4. Armor was sort of effective, so becoming invulnerable was more problematic as well.

BTW the .44 in FO4 is basically a snub-nose version of a .44 Special or Magnum, but if modded to the bull version, it really does look like an impressive Dirty Harry piece. Looks-wise, the bull .44 is the best looking handgun and perhaps most powerful in the game, IMO... but it's still slow, eh? I like it for RPG play mostly.

It's slow and dumb. A combat shotgun, fully tricked out is an impressive weapon. I carry one with 50% + damage to Robots. My Assultron killer, but it still kills any damn thing. I can't remember but north of 130 damage and a big bayonet make it hard to beat for in your face action. I've found 'stab, shoot shoot' works very well.

Personally, I don't care much for the shotguns in FO4. First, they are slow, even the automatics, and I don't like the scaled damage at any range over ten feet. I've been carrying the combat shotgun for a few days, and impressive is not how I'd describe the experience.

My favorite is the combat rifle when modded out a bit... okay, modded out a lot... It's fast, powerful, and not overly heavy. The ammo is not difficult to find, either.

I'm not sure why you would say that. My .308 Combat Rifle, I made, is slightly faster and holds 40 rounds. It too has a big bayonet, although it does a lot of midrange as well. My Combat Shotgun holds 32 rounds and although slightly slower, will blow away anything in front of it. I never make an auto, they are so weak.

I play on Survival and never, ever, use VATS.

(Noob speaking here lol xD)


I like the pistols in this game. They blend well with my Luck based character.


I think something that balances .44s being too strong is that their ammo is rare(playing on console so I can't just command ammo.) I have kellogg's pistol and while I'd love to use it I'm currently enjoying a modded Deliverer. The 25% AP reduction is just as good as refilling AP on crit. As I can just refill Crit meter and do more crits.


(Not sure if what I'm saying is even relevant to the conversation. lol).


Also I don't see gun balance as an issue for Fallout as a series. If you're feeling you're doing too much damage and are 1-2 shotting everything, just play on a higher difficulty.

Okay, you kinda lost me there... I don't know about you, but I prefer to engage at extended range. If I do that with a shotgun, the damage is laughable because of spread, and rightly so. Shotguns were not designed to very effective at long range, simple as that, and it doesn't matter whether you use VATS or not. I like the combat rifle because it is effective at range even when fired from the hip, and loses none of it's ability at close ranges. I don't have to carry two weapons (though I often do because I like to try out different varieties), though I always carry a pistol of a different caliber in case I run out of ammo.

Anyway, FONV's Riot shotgun, in my opinion was superior to FO4's shotguns in every way. Oh, and I played FONV on increased difficulty, hardcoe, and Dead is Dead, so weapons and ammo performance was important to me. I presume I will play FO4 the same way after I've gotten a bit of a feel for it. Dead is Dead can be... frustrating.

Honestly, I would not want to see power armor made any stronger. It's already easy-mode on speed using vanilla armor.

Oh. Well I engage at all ranges, kinda goes with my job. Killing things. I do this for various reasons but, it's what I do.

It's all tricked right out. I have a .50 + 50% damage to Super Mutants, good for over 200 meters, sniper, as well as a double damage to unhurt Laser Sniper, good for about the same. I kill things from ridiculous distances.

Baby my Assault Rifle is my workhorse and kills as much as all my other weapons put together. She hits about 80, a little less and I can put 3 in the head from a long way off. I can put so many rounds on target with that gun, from almost sniper distances to very close, that it has become ... my baby. Barby the .308, I made from a regular Combat Rifle is very nice too. Hits a little harder than Baby but is nowhere near as quick to use. As well the medium scope on an Assault Rifle does not fill up the screen like even a short scope on the Combat Rifle. Still a great gun, I use between Baby and the Boomster, my Combat Shotgun.

I have a Stunning Super Sledge for when I feel like beating things to death, saves ammo too.

The point of this thread was lost at sea some time ago. It was originally about the balance of .50 and .44 damage at higher level mods/perks. So, yes! Your post is more on-topic than we've been for a while.

As for your "newb"-ness, not really. Seems like you're a natural. Luck, high crit, and a pistol is one of the classic builds. (Normally paired with charisma or stealth.)

The pistol is useless. The .50 not much better. The game damage is fine.

Now I never use VATS, so this is from an FPS point of view. The pistol is far too slow for anything other than a casual encounter. It hits hard but that's it. If you never miss, I guess it would be almost useful. The .50 hits harder but handles worse than the .44 and is so slow that only a sniper makes any sense. At least it has some use, I sold Kellog's pistol. I sell all .44 and .45 ammo, for a tidy sum sometimes, as I'm in a war zone, not playing as a gangsta in GTA.

Agreed. They were already teed up for success in weapon design, in visual and ballistic design, as well as variety, with New Vegas. Ammunition types, reloading, and fantastic explosives were the icing on an already great cake. I think many of us were expecting an import, but an import with significant improvement. Instead we got something else entirely. Some are fine with it. I wish I could say I was disappointed as I was looking for more of that ballistic New Vegas goodness.

Well, not me. I never ever kill anything. Nope nothing at all. Ever...

Sometimes my weapon accidentally discharges, and I hit something without meaning to, eh?

Hey, did/do you play FONV? In case you're interested, here's a perfect example of and evening's entertainment with FONV's riot gun. This one is modded with an ammo drum, other than that it's just the way it was originally. Check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv_ULS9HgZo out.

Also, if you're curious what the odds were, you can see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJCXpK9ayY one-minute vid.

Those are, for me a classic view of why FONV weapons and ammo specs should have been brought to FO4. My reason for bringing this up is simply that had the specs been imported, this thread would not exist, because there would be no disparity between the .50 and the .44.

Neither do I, but if, it would take some balancing. I wouldn't mind if they introduced some ammo types instead, like we had in NV. AP rounds could add some challenge to raiders, when you are not near invulnerable in PA

I think the "real world" discussion is over? It made me a bit sad that people think a (relatively) slow traveling pistol round with 1500 Joules would equal a high-velocity monster rifle round with 18000 Joules. Would make anything wrong we learned about wounding mechanisms and contradict real world incapacitation data.

For the game the answer is easy. The .44 is a powerful round to give the pistol fan a powerful top damage option. Of course pistols are overpowered in the game. Nobody would choose a handgun as his main combat option in the real world. We are however playing a game where taking a perk makes you suddenly resistant to radiation or doing more damage to the other six. So what?

The .50 is a top damage mod for a slow firing rifle that is only useful as a sniper weapon in my opinion. I stopped using it however because a two-shot combat rifle is a much better option. I think the .50 is underpowered as it is but not because the .44 is powerful but because it adds too little additional damage to the .308 normal version and is meagre compared to energy long gun weapon options. It's easy to get more damage than with .50 out of a fast firing laser rifle.

Aye Aye, Sir