My opinion on this subject is that even though the patch nerf of the sniper rifles was too heavy handed , the real issue is that some Cow-boy guns are way too overpowered ( like the Brush gun for instance ) when combined with some perks (the cow-boy perks with +25% dmg which is a lot and hand loaded ammos that can punch through armour )


Had the devs made the Cow-boy guns using ammos with great stopping power but unable to penetrate armour as well as the more modern guns using more modern ammos , then it would have been more balanced . Cow-boys guns would have been better agianst animals and humans not well armoured , and higher tech weapons would have been better against well armoured foes or creatures . But as it stands , cow-boy guns have no real drawback ...

I think a decent solution is to nerf the cow-boy perk (give only 10% more dmg ) , give the regular sniper rifle and Gobi a 1.5 critical chance instead of 1 , and nerf the Brush gun in dmg , it shouldn't exceed 70 dmg . That would address the most visible issues

Interestingly, loaded with slugs, with fast shot and at quite middle - long zoomed range, I was getting sneak criticals, so it's not that poor in my personal experience.
And using buck shot you are given a certain ( although often weak damage ) hit in V.A.T.s at high distances.
I tried it out, it often crippled arms of fiends doing this, torso shots may have done full damage but I did not try..
Just saying the system is prone to chaos in a lot of things that don't make sense irl, gotta love it though.

Because you say so?

This argument is so nebulous it's ridiculous.

I agree that it shouldn't be the most powerful as there's the AMR for that, but it currently costs (in caps/ammo costs/weight/AP points/whatever else) as much as a mid/late-game weapon, while inflicting the same damage as an early game weapon.

No because I guessed so and it happened. The very things I thought were going to happened came to be and I expect for the reasons I thought of. Now IF im right the ONLY way the sniper rifle would get boosted is if those nasty baddies get nastier so even the boosted sniper cant kill them effectively/safely.

As for the cowboy repeater.. no doubt its powerful fires and reloads alot faster then I was expecting. But im gona let sawyer the gun nut supreme ponder that bugger until next patch. And I can no longer realy look at game balance anymore anyway as I just modded the high holy frapdoodle out of the game...

I'm sorry, but that's a big pile of BS. Just because you "guessed" right (as many others have), and it happened...this makes the over-nerf justifiable?

The sniper rifle IS a mid/late-game weapon. It directly compares with the trail carbine in terms of their respective specialization paths. On the sniper specialization path (yes, this is vague and heavily player dependent), it is the second most "elite" weapon, next to the AMR.



That's also ridiculous. Unless you are going to balance ALL the guns in one giant balancing patch, you should balance guns relative to other guns, not to the targets. Otherwise, it just becomes a viscous cycle of over powering and over nerfing....pissing *everyone* off.

Another possible "fix," without increasing/decreasing DAM of Sniper Rifles/AMRs vs. the Cowboy Guns: give an inherent armor-piercing advantage to .308 and .50 rounds. These are modern military rounds to begin with.

The .357, .44 and the .45-70 are all incredibly slow compared to the .308 and .50. This trajectory plot is taken from Wiki: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/.45-70vs.308.png

Therefore, for the sake of "balance" and so that people can keep the Sniper Rifle at 40 DAM, the more modern military rounds can be given armor piercing, like MF ammo.

For example:

Normal .308 given -10 DT
JSP .308 given -10 DT
AP .308 given -25 DT

Normal .50cal -10DT
Match .50cal -10DT
AP .50cal -25DT

If you factor in these numbers, against a target with 15 DT:
SR+JSP = 60 DAM
Hunting Rifle+JSP = 64.5 DAM
Trail Carbine+SWC = 61.2 DAM

Against a target with 20 DT:
SR+JSP = 52.5 DAM
HR+JSP = 57 DAM
TC+SWC = 55.2 DAM

The TC+SWC still does more damage (along with its other ROF/weight/item HP advantages), but it's counter-balanced by the fact you need the Cowboy Perk and the Sniper Rifle can be silenced. The Hunting Rifle also sits in a pretty comfortable position, doing more damage than both SR and TC.

Regarding the AMR vs. the Brush Gun, this would also alleviate the imbalance that currently exists.

And .308 JHP instead of HP, that sound right.

But then you need to add -5DT to 5.56mm as they should.

Well, whatever. I really don't care what happens. As long as something happens in a future patch. Cowboy Repeater damage on a sniper rifle is kinda inexcusable.

I think you're on to something here. I decided to get out the slide rule and make a few calculations. I thought I would list the energy available for each round in the game (energy = mass x velocity², expressed in foot-pounds), based on common loadings at standardized SAAMI pressures:

Pistol/SMG rounds from a short (<10') barrel @ 25yds
.22LR - 120'#
9mm - 310'#
10mm - 400'#
.357mag - 480'#
.44mag - 790'#
5.56mm - 990'#
12.7mm - 1260'#
.45-70G - 1650'#

Carbine/Rifle rounds from a long (>20') barrel @ 100yds
.357mag - 715'#
5mm - 860'#
5.56mm - 1000'#
.44mag - 1015'#
.45-70G - 1830'#
.308 - 2300'#
.50BMG - 12090'#

As you can see, there is an incredible amount of difference in the energy available to defeat armor and damage a target from round to round. You'll see I ranked them by energy. I feel this should corralate very closely to the base damage of the weapon firing that round. As far as armor penetration goes, bullet design and area cross section mean a whole lot. If you divide the energy available by the cross sectional area, you have a good idea of the penetration potential of that round (ft-lb/in²):

Pistol/SMG rounds from a short (<10') barrel @ 25yds
.22LR - 3157
9mm - 3163
10mm - 3200
.357mag - 4800
.44mag - 5197
12.7mm - 6428
.45-70G - 10377
5.56mm - 25384

Carbine/Rifle rounds from a long (>20') barrel @ 100yds
.44mag - 6677
.357mag - 7150
.45-70G - 11509
5.56mm - 25641
5mm - 28666
.308 - 31081
.50BMG - 61683

As you can see, things kinda makes sense. Faster smaller bullets put more energy on a smaller area, and therefore should have an easier job of penetrating protection. It looks to me like it falls nicely into about three distinct ranges: less than 12000, around 25000-32000 and then 60000. Base ammo DT bypass could be applied to these groups, ie: group one, no bypass; group 2 good bypass; group 3, holy crap, it exploded bypass. And this makes sense. All the big, slow pistol rounds would have no bypass, while the high velocity rifle rounds would have a good amount of bypass while the huge machinegun round that can penetrate .5in thick steel in real life would go through anything.

Bullet design would also have an effect on this. Both the shape of the bullet and the composition of the bullet also helps/hinders armor penetration. Here's a list of bullet shapes in ascending order (poor to good) of penetration capability:

Hollow point - .22,HP .308HP, .357HP, .44HP, .45-70HP, 5mmHP, 5.56mmHP, 9mmHP, 10mmHP, 12.7mmHP
Semi wad-cutter - .44SWC, .45-70SCW
Flat nose - .357JFP
Round nose - .22, .22plinking, .357, .38special, .44, .44special, .45-70, 9mm, 10mm, 12.7mm
Spitzer (pointed) - .308, .308JSP, .308AP, .50MG (all), 5mm, 5mmAP, 5mmsurp, 5.56, 5.56AP, 5.56surp, .223

So you could give DT bonuses/penalties by bullet shape. Hollow/flats a penalty, round nose no modifier, spitzer a small bonus. You also have bullet construction:

Frangible - hollow points
Unclad - .22 rounds
Semi-jacketed - .308JSP
Jacketed - I assume all non-special ammo (except .22) is jacketed. Maybe not.
Armor piercing - self explanitory

So you could give DT bonuses/penalties by bullet design. If ball (jacketed) is the standard, then JSP, unclad and HP should all have penalties, and AP a bonus.

(I used some pretty ballpark figures for this stuff. I know you guys could find loads that vary greatly from those I've listed, but I've tried to keep things simple and in the middle of the common loads.)

Now what does all this mean? Well it could be a guideline to start to balance the weapons. You would need to look at range capability as well as other factors but it's a start. It's all relative also, as any DT bonuses/penalties you assign to ammo has to work with the armor DTs. Take for example, Vault 34 Security Armor. It looks like high quality riot gear. It has a DT of 16. What ammo should we expect to fully penetrate this? Certainly .50mg. And all the AP variants. .308 should do a pretty good job of penetrating, but 5.56mm less so. Let's say you give all .308 -5DT for energy and -3DT for FMJ and -2DT for spitzer. That would take off half of the armor's effectiveness, a pretty good rationalization of what a .308 round *should* do on a kevlar vest.

-Gunny out.

308 round is a long range high power accurate round designed for long range. 357 44 45.70 are more or less bricks with a ton of powder behind them to propell them into large game in shortish ranges.Brick is fat heavy and slow perfect for just carving a big ass hole in something

Sorry, double post.

Fantastic post.

This sounds like more of an idea for a mod though - I don't think we'll ever see such balancing in a patch (a shame). I'm personally all for it, though there still needs to be some way to assign base DAM values to weapons.

Furthermore, reflecting the differences between guns that use the same ammo would be impossible, if armor piercing is assigned only to ammo. For example, both the Varmint and the Marksmen Carbine use 5.56mm, but I would expect the latter to exhibit much better performance.

Another example is that altering .308 ammo would affect the sniper rifle, hunting rifle, the automatic machine gun (DLC) and This Machine/G1 Gerand. Buffing the sniper rifle by buffing .308 ammo would also buff This Machine. The solution would obviously be to assign armor piercing values to the guns themselves, but I'm not aware of any weapon in New Vegas that has its own armor piercing stat.

Do Fallout developers actually peruse these forums?

Assigning base damages is easy. The most important contribution to a weapon's effect on it's projectile's damage (other than accuracy) is it's barrel length. There are some other things, ie: barrel types, rifling types, etc, but mainly what we're talking is barrel length. We can easily determine the energy produced by a .357 round from both a 5" revolver barrel and from a 20" carbine barrel. You chart all the weapons in the game, determine what the most damaging single shot is reasonably and the least damaging single shot and then tier the weapons' damage accordingly. (Determining just what those ranges should be is a completely different argument). Base damage would be using ball (FMJ) ammo. You figure the other ammo types' damage and/or DT modifiers by some system like I have described above.

In the case of the Varmint rifle and the Marksman Carbine, there's a reasonable likelyhood that the Varmint Rifle should do more damage. It would probably have a longer barrel. I would expect the Varmint Rifle to have a 20-24 inch barrel while the Marksman Carbine would have no more than a 20" barrel. The base damage for each weapon would be the result of the energy the weapon produces, and since a longer barrel produces higher velocities, the Varmint Rifle would have a higher base damage. Damage/DT modifiers would apply to both weapons equally since each could fire the same exact ammo. The Marksman Carbine's strengths are it's accuracy, rate of fire, mag size and reload time.

In the case of the .308 weapons, again, you're looking at barrel lengths. 24" is a common barral length, and also the lenth of the M40 rifles i fired in the Corps. Hunting rifles have barrel lengths all over the place, but 24" is common. The M1 and M1918 also have a barrel length of 24". Guess what? All these weapons firing the same round would produce energy very close to each other. Even if the base damage of each of these weapons is close to similar, there are other mechanics you can use to differentiate them. The hunting rifle would be very common. There are millions of Remington 700s, Winchester 70s, Browning A-bolts, etc out in the general population. You make this weapon the commonly found, inexpensive and easy to maintain weapon. The M1 has the advantage of a higher ROF, while being a little less accurate (purists don't start. I can shoot 1" groups with any of these guns, but you gotts balance them somehow) and slightly heavier and rarer. The Sniper rifle would be the most accurate with better optics and the Automatic Rifle would fire fast, be heavy as hell and hard for a normal man to control.

If I end up working on these damage values in the geck some day, it'll work as I have described above. DT +/- will be based on bullet design while raw damage will be based on the weapon. Both figures will combine to make sure a gun that you feel should penetrate armor will penetrate it.

As for the last part, do this: go find some of my old gun nut threads from before game release. They were titled "Weapons, Ammo and Mods" and I think we got up to about 11 of them before release. Josh Sawyer (and others at times) not only reads these boards, but posts frequently. Or you can use the advanced search function and search for posts by him.

-Gunny out.

I know this is stupid and childish but i fell in love with the m40a3 in cod4 lol.It was so smooth so light so damn accurate trully a beautiful weapon.If i could buy a military item it would be that or the upgraded m40a4 X D.And tbh this is by far the most reasonable balanceing post ive heard=excluding the ones demanding nerf all the weapons -_- .and -Gunny i got to ask woudl you enjoy a M2 browning ingame?

There is only one circumstance under which I would accept an M2 in the game: Make the ST requirement 15 and make Power Armor add +10ST. There is no way in hell any single human could hump a Ma Douce. I also think the *other* squad automatic weapons should be made unobtainable without PA. All gatling guns, 'nade MG included.

As far as getting a real nice sniper real for personal enjoyment, go get a nice Remington 700 with a match grade barrel and have a good gunsmith glass bed and accurize her for you. That's basically what an M40 is.

-Gunny out.

LOl i do find it rather humorous that you can shoot a supposed stationary weapon without the power armour.Tbh i would enjoy if they made it that way for realitys sake but i can imagine all the light and medium armour users screaming for blood X D

That would be perfect. Something I would love to see in a patch, but unfortunately I doubt they'd tear down everything they've done thus far and essentially start over.



I see. Thanks for the correction/clarification.

So, if I'm understanding you right, the rifles (or guns) would have to be tiered/balanced using accuracy, weight, item HP/maintainability, AP cost, caps cost. And the desirability of the various mods - for example, a silencer. The (final) total DAM per shot would be determined by the -DT bonuses of each gun as much as the assigned basic DAM (which would be tiered, and largely dependent on barrel length).

Aside: it would be nice if they incorporated bullet drop over range. The rounds fired from longer barrels would have an unquestionably flatter trajectory, another way the guns can be differentiated/distinguished.



I don't see why I should, or how it helped. If these gun nut threads did help, then one, I don't get why the current DAMs are so seemingly arbitrary, and two, I can't see how someone can rationalize nerfing the sniper rifle so badly. The removal of the 5X crit I can understand, and indeed, fully support.

But I'd have to try real hard to rationalize a >30% drop in DAM.

Tough crap. You wanna use light armor, you don't get the .50. You can run, though, which would probably be a good thing since you got light armor and are gonna die if you don't run. But seriously, Power Armor should be just that, powered. And gyro-stabilized. It should grant you accuracy bonuses. When you need to make a long shot, you set your rifle down on something. You can't hit [censored] standing up folks. But with power armor, YOU are the something you set your rifle down on.


Josh does explain the whys of a lot of things he did (he did all the weapons). But I was mainly just answering your question about whether the devs read the boards, not directing you to answers for questions you might have. His posts are a good read, though, as you can get a good idea of what he was trying to accomplish in the game.
-Gunny out.

The trouble-- well, troubles with .46ACP's method, the "scientific rebalance" as I'll call it, is that you would end up reworking a lot of the game to make it work. Firstly, different weapons are available at different character levels, and this is a huge factor in how "good" each weapon should be. Secondly by making some weapons undeniably better than others you're reducing the potential for roleplay and Rule Of Cool. Sure in the real world a semi-automatic 5.56mm carbine is a fantastic weapon, but if you make the old fashioned .357 lever actions completely pointless by comparison, you've basically eliminated the "cowboy" player who likes that style. And third, if pistols are busted down to real-world levels (i.e. next to pointless if you have a rifle), that is going to have a very bad effect on game balance. Some significant advantage would need to be added if you want the pistols to remain relevant to the game.

Such is my opinion anyway.

Yeah it makes sense in the fact what would be the point of pistols/ect weapons if they blow ass in comparison

But his system does account for it, through the other stats. The DAM of each gun is still arbitrary - you can have both the pistol and the sniper rifle at 40 DAM, for example. The pistol would have a higher spread, making it impractical to use at range, and no -DT piercing bonus, as the rounds are slow. The sniper rifle would have minimal spread, for engagement at long ranges, but be much heavier, higher recoil, have a much slower rate of fire and a ridiculous AP cost, offsetting its usefulness at close range.

Furthermore, sniper rifles would be tiered with each other. Rifles would be tiered with each other. Pistols would be tiered with each other. Sure, there will be some functional overlap - for example, you can go with just snipers and pistols and skip the "middle" class - but there would be enough reason to use each class.

Then there's item HP (Snipers would require constant maintenance), bottle cap cost, ammo availability/cost, available mods, strength/skill requirements, etc.

EDIT: Oh, how can I forget. The criticals. You can further tier/differentiate guns with criticals.

All true points and probably the reason why I'll only screw with a few numbers in the geck rather than try a comprehensive overhaul. Not only would I have to look at weapons, but I would have to look at armors and creature health/DT also.

Cowboy guns would do what they've done best for 150 years: kill unarmored targets at close to medium range. For the longest time in the US, the epitome of the hunting rifle was a lever-action carbine. They're just gonna svck against armored targets, and that's how it should be, but they should drop Fiends at 100yds with one shot all day long.

As far as pistols maintainint relevance, I would have to find a way to make certain that pistols will kill unarmored targets at close range. I think if I did this correctly, the difference between the lowest powered pistol and the highest powered rifle (barring the .50) would be a lot less than what the game offers now. You can kill stuff quite readily with a .22 pistol. I would want the game to reflect that.

Differentiating is not that hard
Example: Sniper Rifle vs. .22 pistol

Even if we give both 40 DAM, we can:
- Sniper Rifle gets inherent -10 DT bonus
- .22 Pistol gets higher spread to limit effective range to 100 yards (or whatever)
- .22 costs significantly less to use in VATS
- .22 gets higher critical multiplier (e.g. x2 vs. x1). Thus, provided that it's able to land rounds on target, which is dictated by range vs. weapon spread, it will critical better than the sniper rifle
- Sniper rifle has lower ROF and/or significantly higher recoil that limits close-quarters combat

There, both weapons differentiated, with (good) reasons to use both.

EDIT:
Other criteria
- .22 Pistol and ammo costs less in bottle caps
- .22 does not require constant maintenance
- .22 weighs significantly less, both the weapon and the ammo
- .22 has bigger clip
- Weapon mods to further specialize the two different weapons

If Call of Duty can do it, Fallout can do it. In CoD, all weapons (of comparable class) do essentially the same damage per bullet, yet there is a distinct difference between weapons, even weapons in the same class.

Going down a Call of Duty balance route is the wrong route, because in CoD, you kill or die in a second. The actual damage inflicted by your weapon is almost irrelevant beyond the division between "kills in one shot/burst" and "doesn't". It's a twitchy game. Inconducive for a slower-paced RPG where you have worry about healing, ammunition, and repairs. Rebalancing F:NV to CoD type weapons is only going to work if you add the other things that make that style of balance work for CoD, namely rapidly regenerating health, enemies that die in one or two hits, free ammo, free guns, and respawning.

I used Call of Duty as an example - I didn't mean for a literal adoption of its combat system.

I provided ways to differentiate pistols and sniper rifles, in a way where pistols still maintained their relevance. Nothing in your post invalidates what I said in mine - I'm certainly not advocating for a combat system where NCR Rangers die with a single 3-round burst. The point is, the system in place in New Vegas offers ample opportunity to differentiate between the different classes of firearms, and within those classes, individual firearms. I was specifically responding to your fears of "making some weapons undeniably better than others." I believe that this is false.

There is nothing "Call of Duty" about my example (Sniper vs. .22 Pistol).