Problem with batteries : Fallout 3

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:01 am

Hello

This is my first "problem with mods" topic in FO3 forum, I'm sorry to bother people with those things, but I don't know what causes this little boring problem.
It is simple:
I have a laser rifle with 28 microfusion cells, I should be able to shoot 672 blasts, but I can only shoot 28: a single blast discharges an entire cell. This sounds odd to me.
Any idea of what could cause this?
Thanks in advance.

EDIT: The same happens with my laser pistol, looks like a problem with all energy weapons. It's strange that a battery can yield only one ammo

Load Order:

Spoiler

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» Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:34 pm

No, thats how the guns actually work. One microfusion cell per shot. Where do you get the idea you can shoot 672 times on only 28 cells?

to add a random edit, i took think that as a energy weapon user, I should be entitled to oddles of free ammo (28 mf cells is what, 100-150 caps? I mean, thats cheaper than minigun ammo..) However, if they did work like that, energy weapon ammo would be worth in excess of 50 caps, around 2 caps/shot...

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:17 pm

What are you talking about? You should be able to get a number of shots from a laser rifle before you reload.

The Gauss gun is the only gun that uses up an entire cell per shot.

Now, if he is misreading the number of shots instead of the number of cells, that's a different matter.

The gun should show 24/240 with Eleven cells. The readout shows the number of shots, not the number of cells.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:09 pm

*frown* unless a mod changes the way energy weapons work (the only one i note is EVE really, but that shouldnt do that) each 'microfusion cell', should allow you to shoot one time, because thats how ammo works.. one 10mm round shoots one bullet...

Why do you expect this to not be the case? have you installed a mod that changes how this works?

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:08 am

Its probably from the confusion where you get 28 shots before you have to reload, so it appears you should be getting 28 shots per battery, which in theory makes sense, otherwise you should be reloading after each shot. However that is not how the game works.

What you can do to justify it to yourself and in a game friendly way, no battery is going to be 100% charged after 200 years, so you can say that you find batteries and drain their power to fill up other batteries, giving you that 28 per battery.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:33 pm

To prove myself I have http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Laser_rifle_%28Fallout_3%29. It says clearly that the laser rifle shoots 24 ammo each microfusion cell.
With 28 cells the gun shows me 24/4 instead of 24/648. Not misreading

I re-read all the readmes I have and I didn't notice any change in the way energy weapons work.
So, to explain another time, I have 28 cells in my inventory, I shoot 24 times, then I reload and I can shoot only 4 times more, when all my microfusion cells are disappeared in my inventory. The same happens with my laser pistol (Small energy cells).
Initially I thought about CALIBR, but it does not change batteries.

For now, I'll try to see in FO3 Edit if there is something wrong, but I doubt it.
Thanks for your help, it is much appreciated

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:03 am

I think that article means that you get 28 shots per MF cell as in, per load. Hit r to reload... and that's what they mean. A cell as in the visual clip. I've never noticed getting multiple shots per single ammo.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:37 pm

That's how weapons work it should be pretty obvious, no idea why you would think otherwise. The easy solution to find out? Turn off all your mods, load save, see we are right.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:14 am

24/4 is just game weirdness. You have to put it down to always having one partially charged cell.

Visually, and logically, a single cell equals a single reload equals 24 shots. However, the game treats the cells like clips loaded with 24 individual shots and does the same magic refilling that is does with bullet clips. All your clips (or cells) are full except the last one, all the time.

So if you inventory says "Microfusion Cells (28)" it doesn't actually mean 28 cells. It means 28 shots spread over two cells.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:51 am

To prove myself I have http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Laser_rifle_%28Fallout_3%29. It says clearly that the laser rifle shoots 24 ammo each microfusion cell.
With 28 cells the gun shows me 24/4 instead of 24/648. Not misreading

I re-read all the readmes I have and I didn't notice any change in the way energy weapons work.
So, to explain another time, I have 28 cells in my inventory, I shoot 24 times, then I reload and I can shoot only 4 times more, when all my microfusion cells are disappeared in my inventory. The same happens with my laser pistol (Small energy cells).
Initially I thought about CALIBR, but it does not change batteries.

For now, I'll try to see in FO3 Edit if there is something wrong, but I doubt it.
Thanks for your help, it is much appreciated

If that is what the Wiki says, it is wrong.
I have no mods that modify laser weapons, and this is how it works in the vanilla game:
Say you have 100 MF cells in your inventory and an empty laser rifle. You reload the rifle. Your display will say 24/76. 24 is the clip capacity of the laser rifle; that is, you can shoot 24 cells before you have to reload. 24+76=100. It is one shot per cell.

So, if your display says 24/4, that means you have a total of 28 cells, have 24 cells loaded, and 4 cells left unloaded in your inventory.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:28 am

24/4 is just game weirdness. You have to put it down to always having one partially charged cell.

Visually, and logically, a single cell equals a single reload equals 24 shots. However, the game treats the cells like clips loaded with 24 individual shots and does the same magic refilling that is does with bullet clips. All your clips (or cells) are full except the last one, all the time.

So if you inventory says "Microfusion Cells (28)" it doesn't actually mean 28 cells. It means 28 shots spread over two cells.

That explains a lot, thanks and sorry to bother.
This thread has no more reason to exist.

Thank you to everyone.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:04 am

24/4 is just game weirdness. You have to put it down to always having one partially charged cell.

Visually, and logically, a single cell equals a single reload equals 24 shots. However, the game treats the cells like clips loaded with 24 individual shots and does the same magic refilling that is does with bullet clips. All your clips (or cells) are full except the last one, all the time.

So if you inventory says "Microfusion Cells (28)" it doesn't actually mean 28 cells. It means 28 shots spread over two cells.

24/4 is not "game weirdness". It is 24 cells loaded in the rifle, which has a 24 cell clip, and 4 left in your inventory. You shoot 24 cells, then you reload, then you have 4/0 , 4 cells loaded in the rifle and none in your inventory.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:58 pm

24/4 is not "game weirdness". It is 24 cells loaded in the rifle, which has a 24 cell clip, and 4 left in your inventory. You shoot 24 cells, then you reload, then you have 4/0 , 4 cells loaded in the rifle and none in your inventory.

Well, it's gameplay logic differing from logical logic and lore. They're called "Microfusion Cells", but you only see yourself putting one cell in, from which you can fire 24 shots!
IMO it would have been better to just have every energy weapon have a "charge level", and be able to recharge that with any energy weapon ammo - lore does state that all the MF cell is doing is recharging an internal battery.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:27 pm

24/4 is not "game weirdness". It is 24 cells loaded in the rifle, which has a 24 cell clip, and 4 left in your inventory. You shoot 24 cells, then you reload, then you have 4/0 , 4 cells loaded in the rifle and none in your inventory.

If I did not misunderstand, he intended that a cell inserted in the rifle contains 24 shots and the inventory shows the number of cells like the number of ammos (or the charges of the cells).
The cell inserted in the rifle is only a visual thing, while the inventory shows the exact number of ammos you have.
It can be compared to a bullet in a cartridge. The bullet is the inventory cell, and the cartridge is the cell inserted in the rifle. You are saying the same thing.
The difference is only the cell we are referring. I intended the inventory and I was courious of why the cells in the inventory discharged in one shot, when showler intended the cartridge cell (I repeat- If i did not misunderstand), the one inserted in the rifle when loading.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:52 am

Yes, I was referring to the fact that the "cell" you are seen to be inserting into the gun when reloading is visually identical to the "cells" you may find laying around the ground (or by dropping a single piece of Microfusion Cell ammo from your inventory).

Physically, the cells are identical, same as if you drop 12 shotgun shells or one shotgun shell you end up with a "box" of shells on the floor.

But since the cells are essentially batteries, we can't think they contain individual little batteries in them. So, a full one with 24 shots must be simply fully charged as compared to the one with only four shots left which is partially charged.

As I mentioned, the game does some magic for you in the background, making sure that all your individual bullets are neatly sorted into the minimum number of clips, and making sure that all your batteries have their energy transferred into the minimum number of cells. Ensuring you get a full reload every time unless you actually run out of ammo.

It is only game weirdness in that the game treats battery charges identically to physical bullets, and cells identically to clips. The result is that you find a lot of nearly depleted cells, and a lot of nearly empty clips/boxes of ammo in the wasteland.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:10 pm

Well, it's gameplay logic differing from logical logic and lore. They're called "Microfusion Cells", but you only see yourself putting one cell in, from which you can fire 24 shots!
IMO it would have been better to just have every energy weapon have a "charge level", and be able to recharge that with any energy weapon ammo - lore does state that all the MF cell is doing is recharging an internal battery.

I understand what you are saying and do agree with the lore part, although, I must say, personally, I rarely use energy weapons; I prefer the firearms.

The issue here is the way the laser/plasma rifle are treated in-game: they are treated just the same as firearms. Cells are treated as "bullets", going into "clips". I take it the animation you see in-game is meant to be the main character loading a clip of cells into the laser/plasma rifle, just as you'd load a clip of bullets into a firearm.

The way it would've worked, the cell should've been treated as an entire clip, so each cell is a clip containing 24 (or whatever) shots.

I am guessing they did it the way they did it because it was more convenient to treat the cells as bullets and have them fit the firearm ammo/clip model, rather than create another ammo/clip model for the energy weapons; although, treating a cell as a clip with a number of shots per clip seems like something that could be done through a script/mod.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:21 pm

It'd be a waste of time to do so, because you'd still need to keep track of the number of rounds in your 'clip', and you'd still refill clips like all the other weapons, so really all that would happen is instead of having 100 MF Cells you'd have 4 MF Cells + 4 MF 'Current Cell Charge' and when current charge hit 0 or the player hit reload you'd convert 1 Cell into 24 Current Charge, and presumably the remaining X charge in the clip would get converted to "X half-used charge" which you'd consolidate up to cells.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:03 am

It'd be a waste of time to do so, because you'd still need to keep track of the number of rounds in your 'clip', and you'd still refill clips like all the other weapons, so really all that would happen is instead of having 100 MF Cells you'd have 4 MF Cells + 4 MF 'Current Cell Charge' and when current charge hit 0 or the player hit reload you'd convert 1 Cell into 24 Current Charge, and presumably the remaining X charge in the clip would get converted to "X half-used charge" which you'd consolidate up to cells.

I actually got a little head rush when I read that.

It felt so good, I read it again.