Hello there

I'm a bit confused about the chance to hit mechanics in the game, I understand when in vats the percentage number next to each body part is chance to hit, however there has been times when I've been in the 90-95% chance to hit bracket and unleashed 4 or 5 shots and not one of them has affected target health. The red shield indicating the opponents damage threshold is higher than your damage outpur wasn't there either. I'm talking point blank headshots that fail... and just got me killed by a legion mutt who had one bar of health left><

Cheers

VATS is extremely buggy when your target is in melee range, right in your face (or nipping yer nads!) You will frequently miss with it once your target gets a lip lock on you, in my experience.

Ah ok, so it's good old new vegas glitchiness. At least I know now , cheers.

Its not so much glitches in VATS as your weapon is cliping through the enemy thus you miss.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say, more or less. In my experience, weapon length seems to have an influence on this. When the enemy is up close, a shorter weapon seems to work better/miss less often.

I third the statement. Once the enemy is past the end of the barrel you are actually shooting past them. The same applies for the player. My melee char can charge an enemy, with a rifle, and once inside the end of the barrel the shots miss. Allowing for a belting with a Lead Pipe.

hmm, that's a bit more odd then as this was with the .357 magnum and it wasn't clipping. oh well..

Its possible to miss five times in a row. :shrug:

Also VATS shoots to the center of the target, this means that you might hit a wall in front of them even if the head and shoulders are clearly in view. As far as I know, the weapon is only for show and it does not really matter if its pressed to the target's forehead, you can still miss the shot (and this is by design). In all previous Fallout games there was a 5% (minimum) chance to miss an aimed shot, no matter how skilled they are with the weapon, the odds get worse with distance, and lack of skill.

There is a bug where VATS camera freezes up, which makes your character shoot all the shots in the same place as the first one, even if the enemy is no longer there. I experience this very often in F3.

Y'know it was in Fallout 3 as well.

IMO fallout 3 had a lot more "invisible walls" and other hitbox glitchiness

True but this was at 95% chance to hit with no obstruction in the way, the chances of missing 4 shots at 95% is extremely remote and it's happened on several occasions.

No I didn't know, not having played it.

I doubt you'd miss five times in a row ~in several instance, unless the PC skill was incredibly low. I don't know what would cause the missing of that many shots with no obstructions. :shrug:

*This is a failing of the VATS design IMO. In the rest of the series, most PCs cannot manage two aimed shots consecutively, and so missing 5 times in a row is an impossibility; (even though theoretically possible).