The hunting rifle could use a buff too. The V1.2 patch advertised that one of the reasons the sniper rifle was nerfed was because it had a higher rate of fire than the hunting rifle. But on the other hand, people who actually use sniper rifles as sniper rifles (and not battle rifles) would never hit the max rate-of-fire of the sniper rifle anyway, as they are taking the time to aim/scope every shot.

If they actually wanted to make the hunting rifle a viable alternative to the sniper, they should have increased its rate of fire while decreasing the rate of fire of the sniper. Currently, the sniper rifle does 1.6 attacks/sec, and the Gobi 1.76 attacks/sec. Honestly, who fires the sniper rifle that fast? I mean, on paper it might mean something, but in practice, rate-of-fire is a non-issue - sniper rifles are burst damage type weapons, not damage-per-second weapons. Using the poor ROF of the hunting rifle to justify/rationalize lowering the DAM of the sniper is all kinds of stupid.

The more I look at this, the more...wrong...this whole thing is. The patch was wrong for the sniper rifle (and the hunting rifle, which needs a buff if anything) in almost every imaginable way.

A late entry: To me the problem isn't damage, it's accuracy. The .44 magnum round is not known for being all that accurate past a hundred yards. For one it's a really huge non-aerodynamic chunk of lead that is easily affected by wind. For two, even out of a carbine the .44 magnum will become transsonic if we're playing the hundred yard game; once a bullet passes from supersonic to subsonic, its own shockwave catches up to it and knocks it around badly. And three, because it's not traveling all that fast to begin with, you're dealing with significant amounts of drop.

All of this points to the Trail Carbine being a very good medium to short range weapon; not one that compares in any way to the accuracy of a sniper rifle firing high velocity .308/7.62mm NATO rounds.

The point is mudhen they do factor range into things.

Oh and I was one of many that expected the sniper rifle would be taken down to 1x crits and mid 40s damage. Its easy to see why when you look at the other rifles in its grouping. But your just never going to see it and frankly that doesnt matter as sawyer sees it this way.

Actually PC cannot see beyond 1500, which is in line with "15" of the maximum actor fade. The long reach on the Sniper Rifle is suppose to allow it to be more accurate in VATS.

The Sniper Rifle, or DSK 4XX model, would be some sort of G3&M110 hybrid; which means it is suppose to be use like a battle rifle when needed. And when you compare Sniper Rifles' 80HP to Brush Gun(150), Trail Carbine(500) ans Hunting Rifle(300), it degrades rather quickly at max RoF.

Momaw: I agree with you, but you also have to remember the weapon stat have to consider how it effect by skill and combat range in current game is no more than 500m.

Where do you see that in the Geck?



I don't think the range numbers mean anything on the Geck on the weapon. You can hit any creature at max view distance provided the spread is low on the gun. It may play more an VATS - but for free hand firing it does not do anything. Using in game distance measure the maximum distance is 7500 - not 1500. Checking the Game Setting in the Geck shows the maximum range for VATS is 5000. (variable is fVatsMAXEngageDistance). My in game testing confirmed that. Besides a lot of the distance stuff is on the projectile, not the gun in the Geck. Changing the projectile can drop the range. Almost every bullet has a range of 10000.


Shrug, but I do think the Sniper was hit a little to hard. Leave DAM the same, drop crit rate to 1 and drop ROF. Cowboy Repeater should not be competing with the Sniper Rifle.

BTW, my previous calculations with SWC ammo used by the trail carbine is wrong. Apparently, in addition to the 1.2X DAM modifier, SWC ammo also impresses upon the weapon a -6 DT; i.e. it has some sort of armor piercing.

The revised calculations are, again, with all applicable damage perks to both weapons:

Sniper Rifle w/ JSP
(45-DT)*1.5
=67.5 - 1.5DT

Trail Carbine w/ SWC
[60-(DT-6)]*1.2
= (60-DT+6)*1.2
= 79.2-1.2DT

Against a target with a DT of 15 (like a deathclaw), the Sniper rifle+JSP would do 44.5 damage. In comparison, the Trail Carbine+SWC would do 61.2 damage, or 37.5% more damage.

Against a target with a DT of 20, the SR+JSP would do 37.5 damage while the Trail Carbine would do 55.2 damage. Relative to the sniper rifle, the trail carbine does a whopping 47% more damage.

As the .44 SWC hand load ammo had a hidden armor piercing feature, I investigated the .357 hand load ammo. It turns out that there is a -3 DT armor piercing feature for .357 JFP ammo as well. Thus, the Cowboy Repeater with .357 JFP hand load ammo also compares quite well to the sniper rifle, considering you can pick up a Cowboy Repeater at level 3.

JFP ammo:
1.25X damage
-3 target DT

Cowboy Repeater (with perks) using JFP ammo:

[46.6-(DT-3)]*1.25
= (49.6-DT)*1.25
= 62 - 1.25DT

Against a target with a DT of 20, the Cowboy Repeater does 37 damage, which compares VERY favorably with the 37.5 damage that the sniper rifle does.

Against a target with a DT of 15, the Cowboy Repeater does 43.25 damage, which compares VERY favorably with the sniper rifle's 44.5 damage.

Did I mention that this nerf is all kinds of stupid?

Easy to see what? Are my numbers lying? Tell me my numbers are lying.

In weapon tweaking experience mainly, and even with max zoom and scope the Brush gun can hit as far as Sniper Rifle can.

This is exactly what I thought when I realized just how much they'd nerfed the sniper rifle. I do agree that it was too powerful before the patch, but to me it would have made more sense to only reduce its damage potential a bit while reducing its rate of fire. As you pointed out...it's a weapon typically thought of as one made for accuracy and an ability to do a lot of damage with only few (well-placed) shots, right? Seems to me it and the Hunting Rifle ought to be the best firearm at doing that outside of the AMR, which IMO should fire even more slowly than the sniper. Let it keep some of its one-shot takedown power and pull back on the DPS. Give the Hunting Rifle just a bit of a damage edge and allow the sniper to be silenced and more accurate.

Yes, the hunting rifle needed a buff in the patch just as much as the sniper rifle needed a nerf - though why the sniper rifle had to be "balanced" with the hunting rifle in the first place eludes me.

All this is irrelevant though, when the fracking Cowboy Repeater - a weapon that players can pick up on the road to Nipton! - does as much damage as the sniper rifle. Seriously, I can't believe I missed this before, but given Handloader (which is required for JSP .308 ammo anyway), the Cowboy Repeater with JFP .357 ammo is arguably a better weapon in the late game. It already fires faster, weighs less, has a higher item HP, has a bigger clip size and costs less in AP.

Target DT 24 (the DT of an NCR veteran Ranger)

Cowboy Repeater + JFP ammo
62 - 1.25DT
= 62 - 30
= 32 damage

Sniper Rifle + JSP ammo
67.5 - 1.5DT
= 67.5 - 36
= 31.5 damage

Sniper Rifle + AP ammo
= 42*0.95 - (24-15) DT
= 39.9 - 9
= 30.9 damage

This is actually amazing. The only way I can possibly describe it is a hate crime. What was done to the sniper rifle is honestly a hate crime. I invested over a hundred hours in my sniper character, which is now level-capped, and now I'm stuck with a retardedly gimped sniper rifle/AMR with no option to take the Cowboy perk so that I can switch over to a character build that is skilled with the Cowboy Repeater/Trail Carbine/ Brush Gun.

It's actually really hard to stay objective right now. I apologize, both for now and in advance.

There are only a few weapons at the hghest end iof accuracy.

The gobi the sniper ratslayer and finaly the varmint rifle. Thats it. Going from the sniper to the varemint increases area covered by your bullet by 44% thus making you that much less likely to hit.

Going to the cowboy repeater increases the area covered by your bullet cone by 400% In simple terms you have to be twice as close to get the same accuracy.

I use the sniper tpo headshot at distance I also use the varmint rifle that way tho not at that distance. I dont aim for the head with most other weapons other then lasers and even them at much closer distances.

Im against nerfing further weapons because ppl can use self control and not abuse the game.If you dont want a over powered weapon why use it?Since when does this game force upon you the need to use a specific weapon>?.If you disapprove of a weapon simply 1 dont use it or if ur a glutton for punishment use it with aforementioned self control*not tryign to be an ass*
.never in any board of any game have i ever seen such protests that weapons are to good i dont want them making the game easy in a single player game.not exaggerating honest truth*

IF a weapon is over powered and u dont like it seriously thou W H Y do you abuse it ?Not sure what the term best fits this insanity or irony? am i wrong lol? Just because i got 15 thousand 25mm grenades i dont got the uncontrollable impulse to vaporize every chimp who gets ornery with my pc .I just hope for god je stops approvign of the unholy army the Nerf squadron X D :whoops:

Sorry while I do agree that the sniper is nerfed by some effect now, the hunting rifle never has been.

Fix the sniper a bit fine, but the hunting rifle has always been able to the same job as a sniper without the silencer.
It still can, boosting its stats is one thing I can't agree with.
Before you say I'm biased I use and have used the hunting rifle pre patch, post patch all game and never picked the sniper up after my first game.
To me the hunting rifle is the sniper rifle, as of yet with the right perks, traits, ammo and mods it almost equals the snipers pre patch version.

And note to make the trail carabine equal / best the hunting rifle, you need to.

A. Find or buy one, apart from one easy steal mid game they're not as common as hunting rifles ( I'd provide a list but "spoilers". )
B. Require cowboy and 45 melee skill, as well as gun skill.
C. Pass a gun skill check at quite late game stage if you play to the linear story ( heck in an area that is entirely optional ).
D. Then pass a survival check at a higher pass rate.
E. Have 70+ repair and take hand loader, ( which for hunting rifles is also needed / a good idea ).
F. Find the scope to the Trial carabine, which I've found in 7 complete playthroughs and countless other unfinished ones twice, and this is with using the restock glitch.

So all that work and all that fudging of stats to make one better than the other at all things, is not role playing just power fudging the rules imo.

Well, you could always test out modded weapons (on PC) and see what floats your boat.

personally, im a big fan (sorry to toot my own fluglehorn) of the guns in my PotG_Cowpoke_Pack, especially the regulator and the rose. They top out at around 65 or 75 damage on the Rose, a bit less on the regulator, and a fair bit less (being slightly more potent than vanilla) on the .45 revolver.

Right now they are easy to get and a bit monty haulish, but I'm working on plans to make it much more difficult to obtain either of the two 'unique' weapons (rose and regulator).

Still, its great for a test drive or a third or fourth playthrough.

You get to pop on an armored cowboy suit (duster) and hat (both custom jobs, btw), grab a classic looking Model 1858 Army revolver (refitted for standard cylinder and quickloaders instead of removeable cylinder(s)) in one of three flavors, a lever action shotgun (Winchester Model 1877), or a lever action rifle (Winchester Model 1866) and sally forth to play Cowboy.

Nothing beats the feeling of shooting a guy center mass WITHOUT vats and watching him fly 20 feet backwards because you got lucky and got a crit.

Well, I aim for the head, with all weapons. At least for my first shot. And honestly, especially with sway that is present even at 100 guns skill, I notice no practical difference in accuracy between the sniper rifle, the AMR, the trail carbine and the brush gun. The only reason for me to close the distance is if the gun is using iron sights.

Personally, I think you are too focused on paper stats - especially ONE particular paper stat. Let's be real - does anyone really have any trouble getting headshots with a scoped weapon, like the trail carbine? Despite its higher spread? If I never saw it on paper, I would've never even noticed that such a stat exists in Fallout.

It is absolutely inexcusable that the ONLY thing the sniper rifle has over the Cowboy Repeater is the ability to be silenced. Again, people can pick up the Cowboy Repeater on the road to Nipton. It's crap - IRL, there wouldn't even be a competition between a .308 round and a freaking pistol .357 round. And it's not like it requires much effort to get the Cowboy Repeater to Sniper Rifle levels of damage - Hand Loader is required for both JSP and JFP ammo, and the Cowboy perk you can get like at Level 6 or something (and is a pretty fantastic perk in its own right).



Hey, I'm just responding to the "rationale" of nerfing the sniper rifle's DAM (to compensate for the hunting rifle's ROF). I personally never thought the hunting rifle was nerfed, but apparently the devs did. They thought the sniper rifle was firing too much faster than the hunting rifle, so instead of adjusting ROF, they nerfed the sniper rifle's DAM to Cowboy Repeater levels.

All this despite the fact that in practice, nobody would ever hit 1.6 attacks/sec (the sniper rifle's rate of fire). I mean, they advertise the nerf as "encouraging players to use the sniper rifle as a sniper rifle," but they nerf its DAM on the basis of its maximum rate of fire, which would never be reached if players use the sniper rifle as a sniper rifle.

Ridiculous.

[img]http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3959/fnvx.jpg[/img]

DAM vs. DT chart, comparing the Sniper rifle (both JSP and AP ammo), Cowboy Repeater and Trail Carbine. You can see that the Cowboy Repeater compares very favorably to the sniper rifle, while the Trail Carbine blows them both out of the water.

All I know is now I use the sniper to snipe and the other guns for general combat and close combat. Before I was using it for everything. The only other gun I was using before the patch was a 10 mm smg.

That's just you. I respect that you have your own way of playing, but for me, I've always been scoping with the sniper rifle (except for "oh sh!t" situations where I've used VATS). I've maybe fired ten rounds total from the hip with a sniper rifle in over one hundred hours of gameplay - generally, I don't fire from the hip with any weapon except shotguns.

So I've been using the sniper rifle "properly," as people put it. Yet, now I have the Cowboy Repeater going toe-to-toe with the Sniper Rifle in terms of damage post-patch, just because "some" people "may" fire from the hip? In a single-player game where it doesn't even matter what "some" people may or may not do.

Or equally absurd, the sniper rifle's DAM was nerfed to "compensate for its higher rate of fire compared to the hunting rifle."

Again, it's ridiculous.

I am kind of glad that I fell in love with the AMR on my first playthrough and have not used a Sniper Rifle much in this game. So, this patch adjustment does not effect me.

I agree with this. In a SINGLE PLAYER action ROLE PLAYING game, if I feel like using a weapon that is way overpowered I will.
If I feel that all guns are overpowered then I can balance this out by developing my character a certain way with skill, SPECIAL
attributes, gear, type of ammo,etc. rather than demanding that an entire class of weapons be changed for everyone because I and
a few random others want it that way.

First we have some people demanding that all guns be nerfed, then next we will likely have people demanding that some/all melee
weapons be nerfed, then others might demand that some/all unarmed weapons be nerfed, and on and on.

Please explain your graph to us. How are you getting 80 damage from the Trail Carbine? The basic damage is 45, and SWC have a bonus of x1.2 DAM and -6 DT. It should be doing 54 damage against a DT of zero, not...80.

Sorry, the graph is inaccurate with the trail carbine (up to a DT of 6 on the X-axis) and also with the Cowboy Repeater (up to a DT of 3) at low DTs. At DTs over 6 and 3, respectively, the data is accurate. This is a consequence due to the formula I plugged into Excel and "filled down."

Trail Carbine:
Base damage is 45.

Cowboy perk +11.25
Bloody Mess + 2.25
Lord of Death + 1.35

Total Base damage = 59.85

For the record I applied the Bloody Mess and Lord of Death damage bonuses to the Sniper Rifle as well. The SR obviously doesn't benefit from Cowboy.

The formula I used to calculate damage (with the 1.2X multi using SWC ammo) is: [(59.85-(DT-6)]*1.2

Unfortunately, for the parameter of (DT-6), if the DT is less than 6, than the difference gets added to the base damage in Excel (which doesn't happen in Fallout - the -6 armor piercing simply negates any DT that's 6 or less). Hence, the graph is only accurate for the trail carbine at DTs over 6 on the X-axis.

The Cowboy Repeater suffers from the same problem with JFP ammo, which has an armor piercing ability of -3. Thus, it's data set is only accurate for DTs that are greater than 3.

Ergo, with regards to your specific scenario where a target's DT is 0, the trail carbine with SWC would do 72 damage, and would continue to do 72 damage until the target DT exceeds 6.

Thank you for pointing that out, but I wouldn't have manually entered in each data point anyway. It doesn't change the point behind the graph.

Use the max() function.

=max( weaponDamage - max( DT - armorPenetrationBonus, 0), weaponDamage * 0.2 ) * damageBonus

Updated damage chart:

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/2340/fnvy.jpg