This confuses me.
I have 100 guns skill, and I am testing some guns on heavy armor (ranger vets)

My All-American with .556 AP ammo does 25 DAM & -15 DT; for a total of 40 (I know it is not extra damage, just more penetrating power).
This damages the ranger vets as normal.

My sniper rifle with JSP ammo does 64 DAM & - 0 DT; a total of 64.
This does not penetrate the armor. Instead a red shield appears and the gun does very little damage.
When I use .308 AP it looks like this:
40 DAM & -15 DT; a total of 55. This damages as normal.

Note: Sneak criticals to the head work just fine with .308 JSP.

What is going on here? This makes no sense, I am sensing a bug- or the sniper rifle ammo got nerfed...

What you don't realize is that DT is applied before an ammo's damage multiplier.
So in the case of JSP ammo its 42DMG -DT x1.5. The pip boy only displays the damage vs an unarmored target.

In F:NV, the red shield appears next to a target's health meter when you hit it for damage that is equal to or less than the target's damage threshold.
How this actually works out is a the red shield appears if the base damage before multipliers but after DT is applied is equal to or less then the DT the shield appears.

OK here are my "test" results.
All are non-sneak attacks to the chest.
No critical strikes were made either.
100 Guns Skill
Normal Difficulty
Enemy: Ranger Vet
Weapon: Sniper Rifle

Ammo .308 JSP: 26 shots to the chest to kill target
Ammo .308 AP: 11 shots to the chest to kill target

You may want to double check your difficulty, as your numbers make absolutely no sense and doesn't look to match anyone else's experience as your the only one hear complaining about it.
Also keep in mind with ranger veterans may also use stim packs which can heal there wounds which obviously would make combat with them more difficult.
Unless you have living anatomy to let you know exactly how much damage your doing per hit. We can't be sure if your hitting, missing or if stimpacks are involved.

All I can say is I think the plan was to make a sniper truely a sniper.
So sneak criticals at range are the goal here, unlike as before it was used as a V.A.T.s and free style accurate scoped BAR.

Right or wrong it's still effective and when combined with a silencer is still game changing.
With the right perks it can still take down most things in one shot on normal.

However what your post does show imo, is that ranger vets are the gods of NV and should be feared by even demi gods like the player or deathclaw alphas.

I may have an old backup save of a character with living anatomy on my thumb drive I'll have to check, trying with regular .308 ammo may also be helpful data.

OK I know I was on Normal, because I turned the difficulty up to very hard.
I only had 20 .308 AP rounds on hand.
Again, no sneak criticals, all shots to the chest- POINT BLANK - no misses.
I fired all 20 rounds (and hit) the chest all 20 times and he still had 1/3 of his HP left over.

Also on very hard I had to use 2 Mags of .556 AP instead of the usual 1, from the All American to kill the ranger vet.

Additionally, 1 sneak critical to the head with .308 JSP killed the ranger vet;
but 1 sneak critical to the head with .308 JSP when I turned the difficulty up to very hard did not.

That is how I know I am playing on normal. Also I can drop them in one shot from stealth, this matches other peoples experience.
But for non stealthy shooting ... it requires several mags of ammo; Meanwhile, my All American can smoke 'em all day in 1-2 clips of .556 AP,
depending on normal vs very hard.

While I try and track something down I have to ask, you do realize how to edit posts right?

oh I guess there is a button for that....

I wish I could see postings real time, instead of backing out and returning to the topic.

You do realize Veteran Ranger have like 200hp? Of course 17.5 damage seems to be little compare to it.

Another possibility is when you firing you gun point blank, the gun's barrel is inside of the Ranger's mesh, result in the hit not being registered; or if you are moving, then you shot can miss even tough if it was point blank.

I watched his HP decrease with every hit. Also I can smoke the ranger with 1 clip of AP from the all American in approx. 5 seconds.

There is a reason they lived long enough to become veterans. Also this is the reason I dont touch the higher difficulty settings in fallout new vegas (or any game for that matter ). The sniper rifle svcks IMO anyway, I use the hunting rifle with the scope attachment, a fully repaired hunting rifle does 5 more damage than a fully repaired sniper rifle. Plus I like the reticule on the scope attachment better than the default sniper rifle's.

Edit: nevermind I saw you were using jsp ammo which makes the overall damage higher...in that case.....ummm....idk?

JSP handloads are supposed to be for unarmored targets like fiendsss and you're trying to kill Ranger vets.

JSP rounds are not the be-all end-all of ammunition. If you're trying to drop an armored target, then you need Armor Piercing rounds.

Oh, and it's a sniper rifle... it's meant to be used at range. The target should never know when that first (and last) shot is going to come from either - so, Sneak Attack Critical with AP loaded should drop most anything.

Alright I leveled up the old save and took Living Anatomy and did some intensive testing here are the testing results.


First test was against against ED-E who has a DT of 8. and as a companion I could easily view his HP
*with companion nerve DT of 12*
I did this before taking the perk as Living Anatomy increases the pipboy display of damage but doesn't actually robots.

Sniper Rifle 42dmg:
Regular .308:31DMG. (42-12DT=30)
AP Round 41DMG. (42 x0.95=40)
JSP Round 46DMG (42-12DTx1.5=45)
All of these mathematically were off by only a single point of damage. However a stray decimial point normally hidden from us caused by lord of death can easily account for that.

After getting living anatomy the real testing began first on some nearby fiends.
Base DMG 45
Fiend=DT 5. 70HP
Regular .308:40DMG. (45-5DT=40)
AP Round 42DMG. (45x0.95=42.75)
JSP Round 60DMG (45-5DTx1.5=60)


But how does it fair against those guys in black armor? My test subject had 270HP and a DT of 24.
Regular .308:9 DMG. (45-24DT=21)
AP Round 21DMG. (45-9DTx0.95=34)
JSP Round 9DMG (45-24DTx1.5=31.5)
It didn't appear to matter if my sniper rifle was silenced, unmodded or the gobi.

I then tried other weapons, like the dinner bell loaded with slug rounds. Its listed damage was 80. And as a slug DT would be applied once.
Dinner Bell 80dmg base[*remember slugs are a single projectile*)
Slug: 31dmg (80-24=56) The damage is off by 24.
Mysterious Magnum: 45dmg base
.44: 9dmg

From here we can tell the problem isn't the sniper rifle, I tried a couple other weapons and the damage was still off.

So then I moved on to a nearby unarmored ranger.
She had 195HP 0DT
Sniper rifle dealt 35dmg.
Mysterious Magnum: 35dmg
Dinnerbell: 56dmg

My conclusion is that rangers have a built in damage resistance, one that is probably applied before DT.

My response to Granite and the thefalloutfanboy

Well DR is still in the game technically, it just hidden...IIRC nerve and med-x use it right?

Ferocious Loyalty uses DR.

From my experiences using Living Anatomy I can say Companion Nerve is still DT but invisible to the player.

Well I didn't mean nerve exactly I was just referring to the chr based Companion bonus.

That is companion nerve.
+5% to DT and Damage per point of charisma.

try using the sniper rifle for what its made for (sneak crits) and if u must go close range invest in the AMR. i have no complaints with my sniper rifle, use it more often then my amr becuase ammo is cheaper and easier to find. just scout area ahead frequently, stick to hire grounds and try to sneak crit everything. i have 100% gun and 30% sneak and average about 85% sneak crit kills with my sniper rifle

Why is everyone completely missing the point? the issue is not sneak attacks we all know they work. Take your sniper rifle and go try and shoot down some ranger veterans in a stand up fight., and you'll see the damage is not what it should be. 45dmg should not become 9dmg on a hit to the chest on normal difficulty when the guy has 24DT.

Don't forget the basic the basic armoured ranger armour is DT 15 so that's a bump of 9 due to a perk.
If they also have DR it would explain the feeling of getting screwed by many new players if they PO the NCR with a new lowish level character.

The other point you've shown is that most weapons HP's are really not that much better against low armoured foes than AP rounds.
If you take on a fiend leader say Violet with HP's you deal less damage even on a crit with a HP loaded 5.57 rifle, than you would with a AP round.

Open console, select target, "getav damageresist"



Uh. Hollow points *dominate* unarmored targets. If you look over http://momaw.kikaimegami.com/fnv_ammo2.png, you'll see that hollowpoints deliver vastly more damage than standard or armor piercing ammo on unarmored targets; and the bigger the gun, the longer hollowpoints continue to be advantageous. If there was a .50 BMG hollowpoint round, it would probably do more damage against a DT of 15 than the armor piercing round does against no armor at all.