I've been making a high Sneak skill character, so I decided to find out more information to figure out how the Sneak system actually works.
The problem is there is a bit of conflicting information out there, as well as information that seems to have no source. The Fallout wiki actually
has some misleading information.

They state that Silent running negates the armor penalty for movement, when it was actually supposed to
negate the sneak penalty for running, as opposed to walking. Armor weight is still a factor.

[DANGER] does not neccessarily mean they have discovered you, but have noticed a "detection event" and are proceeding
directly to the source. For example, if you fired a Gun, and they heard the sound, it will show [DANGER] and the enemy
will proceed directly to that spot. If they don't discover you within a few seconds and remain hidden, they will drop back into
[CAUTION] and begin a search pattern starting at your last known location, and any additional "detection event" locations.

Also, according from what I understand of the GECK and Oblivion CES faqs, each enemy has a "Detection level"
so the more alerted they are, the longer they are going to search for you, including any areas they had found you before.
So killing an enemy and wounding another and going into hiding can cause an enemy to search for you for around 3 minutes in
some cases. While a single wounding shot causes more like a 30 second search.

At least this is how I understand it


So I have a few questions.

1. It seems to be commonly accepted that wearing heavier armor makes sneaking harder, does an equipped weapon add to this weight rating?

2. Do enemies have a better chance of noticing you from the front instead of from behind?

3. Does a Silenced weapon reduce sound generated by shots to 0? Or just reduce it by a certain amount?

4. Where did people get the information saying that Sneak can be raised above its displayed 100 skill, but is tracked in the background? And is it true?

1: I wouldn't think so but im not sure at all
2: Yes he does, a very very improved chance.
3: Im not sure use meele or unarmes, those are quiet.
4: it can?!

Also when you sneak, stay out of light, move slowly and make sure your pip-boy light is off

ive got 100 sneak! It greatly improves sneak. You can sit anywhere in the room, regardless of who's looking at you and you will still be hidden - great fun!

1. I have my gun out to limit my speed, which im sure others may do. It doesn't seem to affect effectiveness of sneaking
2. Yes
3. Proberly by a certain amount that is near-or-enough close to 0. If it wasn't 0, somone would have complained by now.
4. In the game codes, proberly. It proberly adds up the sneak skill, environment bonuses, apparel, etc and the codes would say that your currant sneak skill is above 100. But im only guessing, PS3 ftw!!

1. Equipped weapons shouldn't add into the formula. Sneaking with a Knife and sneaking with a rifle leads to basically the same results if the same circumstances occur. However, you'll end up stop sneaking quite a ways further with the rifle.

2. Depends on their perception rating. There is a difference between sneaking up to a Deathclaw and sneaking up to a NPC. The front may be as visible as their back if their perception is quite high. If it's average, being behind generally means you'll get a melee stealth kill whereas the front will get you detected.

3. Reduces by a certain amount. The game goes by several sound settings for "Sound Level". "Loud" is generally most associated with a lot of ranged weapons. "Silent" is most melee and unarmed weapons. Putting on a silencer most likely drops it from "Loud" to either "Normal" or "Silent". I'm inclined to say "Average" just because a misplaced shot can lead you to get a [CAUTiON] warning. However. the silenced .22 SMG does have a "Silent" rating so I guess it's probably "Silent" for all suppressed weapons where as Normal and Loud are just two varying degrees of unsuppressed weapons.

4. Every skill can be tracked over 100 but none, in New Vegas, do anything over 100 I believe. In Fallout 3, you could actually still obtain more and more damage with Unarmed beyond 100 vanilla wise. I tested this with the Unarmed Booblehead and it does hold true.

Just some things to add: a lot of Melee/Unarmed weapon is actually set to "Normal" sound level in their weapon data sheet; however they are hard coded to be silent weapons. Even "Silent" weapon can cause [CAUTION] if you missed, because bullet bite dirt/wall/rock/whatever would make a sound. However if [CAUTION] doesn't mean the player is not actually discovered.

That is true. Forgot about the Silent part being on the weapon sheet and not on sound level. I would like to note though that [CAUTION] will never flash; only transitioning into [DANGER] will. Going from [HIDDEN] to [CAUTION] is instantaneous with no effect and staying in [CAUTION] will not make it flash. This is most likely decided to be like that simply because the "flashing" effect will draw the player's attention as well as the combat music initiating.

Edit: Looking at your post again, did you mean [DANGER], not [CAUTION] ? [DANGER] has never flashed for me aside from transitioning into that state unless I'm blind.

I fixed my post.

There is [CAUTION] in red, [CAUTION] in HUD colour and [DANGER] not flashing. All three indicate the mob is aware of hostility but didn't know players existence.

As far as i'm aware, and from my experience of the game, [DANGER] always means they have already seen you, and know you are there, whereas [CAUTION] means they are trying to find the source of whats got their attention and actively looking for hostility in the immediate area. But there are different levels of how cautious they are being, sometimes only pottering around in a small circle, and other times they will actively seek you out in a large radius, with a very good idea as to where you are or where that shot/noise came from

Thanks for the input guys, I checked something just before.

I had my Guns skill at 100 and found the VATS hit percentage at the same range against the same mob exactly the same as when I have 130 guns. So I wonder if the Sneak 100+ results in better sneaking actually true.

As for the [DANGER] I've noticed that sometimes I'll get it to appear, while attacking in stealth. But moving away and keeping hidden will result in the enemy staying in [DANGER] until they get to the location where they discovered me shooting at them.
At that point the enemy with transition straight to [CAUTION] and begin a search. That's been just my experience.

However once in a [CAUTION] state an enemy will get a bonus to their perception level compared to when you are [HIDDEN].
This only applies to the enemies that are actually searching for you. Enemies that have not noticed you still have their normal perception level.

Some links on detection are here: http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Category:Detection
and here: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Detection