Fallout New Vegas

» Tue Jan 19, 2016 11:23 am

Hello.

Recently it has come to my attention that any and all attack speed boosting buffs in the game do not affect automatic weapons. This includes perks like Fast Shot, Ain't Like That Now, Slayer, and Melee Hacker, but also includes Rushing Water. While on the surface it seems this would cause Blood-Nap to be an absolutely godlike weapon, I believe there is a max attacks per second in the game. I recorded myself with all the bonuses I just listed, spamming attack with Chance's Knife (tied for fastest non-automatic weapon in the game with all perks), and I could only get 4 attacks per second, give or take. This is contrary to what I calculated of course: The GECK lists 4.1538 attacks per second with this weapon, and that x1.1x1.2x1.2x1.3x1.5 would net over 9 attacks per second. I don't think it's just due to the limits of my clicking speed, although there's no way my fingers can click 9+ times per second.

I believe I did manage to click over 4 times per second though. So that's weird. So I wonder: Did Obsidian know that the weapon is already basically at max attack speed?

All of these things have a large impact on which weapons have the highest DPS in a given scenario.

EDIT:

With a simple mod that increases the buff of Ain't Like That Now from x1.2 attack speed to x5 attack speed, I think I have shown that attacks per second can't go any higher than 4 attacks per second on Chance's Knife. With Medicine Stick it looks like it's stuck at 3 times per second, same with Old Glory.

» Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:36 pm

Have you tried Greased LIghtning? I think it most definitely goes over 4 attacks per second by how ludicrous the animations go through, sometimes you're still doing damage when the animation doesn't even play at all.

» Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:27 pm

Thanks for the reply.

Since I started my thread, I've been testing my hypothesis the entire time. Here's what I found:

Bloodnap, Chance 4.1666

Laer 5.333, 4.666

Tribeam 5.333, 4.666

Gehenna 3.6666, 3.6666

Medicine Stick 2.75, 2.5

Oh Baby 3, 2.75

Old Glory 3, 2.75

Fist of Rawr 3, 2.75

Seq 3.583333, 2.96666

Mercy 2.75, 2.5

The first number is attacks per second with all the bonuses, the second is without Ain't Like That Now. It was really tough to get these numbers. There is no way to autofire, and I had to manually do 60 second trials where I record myself firing nonstop, and reviewing the footage in slowmotion to try to figure out the attacks per second. If that sounds like a pain, it's more of a pain than you think. I must be slightly crazy to care this much.

I ran a quick test with Grease Lightning and got ~3.5 attacks per second. My assumption initially was that the weapon with the fastest attack speed without buffs would be the fastest with all buffs. That's not true, because Elijah's LAER and TriBeam laser rifle had the fastest times, and they don't have perks like Slayer and Melee Hacker to buff them up, and they also have slower attack speeds in the GECK than Chance's Knife. I believe they are all hitting a cap, where getting another 5000% boost would amount to no benefit. But I don't understand why some weapons have faster max attack speeds compared to others.

EDIT:

I have referenced my calculations for the ROF for the Sequoia and the Medicine Stick. My estimated ROF from the slow-mo footage matches the calculated ROF almost exactly. This means those two weapons are not speed-capped, at least not without cheating. Glad to have some confirmation that my testing is valid.

Fallout New Vegas - Max Attack Speed