I cleared out the super mart near megaton, but most of the raiders fought by simply running up into my face and i just had to click my mouse button as fast as possible. Is this what all the other enemeis are going to do for the rest of the game? Instead of using cover and shooting back?

Not all the time. You probably had them cornered, and they rushed you? I've had enemies try to flank me, and human enemies take cover and fire away. Other animal enemies will tend to rush you. Robots, will advance on you as well, except for the Sentry Bots, which keep their distance for a while, so they can rocket and laser the hell out of you. :spotted owl:

I suggest you add some mods such as Arwen Realism Tweaks or Fallout 3 Wanderer's Edition. Enemies AI and combat is really different.

No, you probably just ended up with a bunch of melee based Raiders. They have different tactics depending on what kind of weapon they're using. While the AI isn't necessarily that great, overall it's not too bad really, and sometimes they actually manage to surprise me. Though I wish that they'd figure out that it's not a good idea to use a car that can blow up as cover. Or at least run like hell if it catches fire.

So far ive done blood ties and ive noticed that even human enemies with guns simply try to rush me.

E.G. I ran past a group of raiders in the wasteland, took cover behind some rocks(was STILL getting hit by raiders running and shooting at the same time...), and all of them, guns included, started running into my face.

Also whats the deal with VATS? The game seems to freeze for a few seconds before VATS will show up fully, and most of the time i just get 0% to all(even if the target is extremely close to me). Sometimes randomly going in/out of VATS will fix the 0% problem even if the position of the enemy has not changed(much).

If you take cover behind some rocks they can't shoot at you. That is why they ran in close to you. When you are out of their line of fire they don't sit and wait, they rush in. This works to your advantage with close ranged weapons like melee, unarmed, and shotguns.

I am still partially exposed so they can shoot at me.

It's not going to be Rainbow 6 or MW2 or anything like that. It's more of an RPG with FPS elements, at least in my opinion. There will be times however, when everything goes to hell... Enclave troops are brutal like this sometimes, in that they will hang back a bit with ranged weapons. Heavy Incinerator fire really hurts. In my experience, the enemy with the most powerful weapons tend to hang back, and let their buddies flank/rush you.

The vanilla AI is not very good at taking cover. It happens, but not as often as it should considering that people should be more interested in staying alive than hurting you as much as possible.

Arwen's Realism Tweaks helps a lot to improve the AI though. They'll take cover much more often, especially when reloading, may retreat for a short while if they're very hurt, can quickly take weapons from fallen allies, etc. It's all much better.

I haven't played with FWE but I'm sure it also has improved the AI in a way.

This is Fallout, a Post-Nuclear Role Playing Game.


Not Call Of Duty or Halo.


-_-

Yes but you have to understand that if they are going to have combat they need some smart AI to make immersive. For instance I had a super mutant with minigun run up to me to shoot me from 2 feet away. Now that kind of breaks an immersive factor. With a game like this you wouldn't asinine morons fighting you, now would you?

Indeed, so your ability to win a fight should be based on your skills, and not how well you are able to hide behind cover to avoid enemy fire, while you can easily shoot all the enemies blindly charging at you. :gun:

Also is it just me or is armor useless?

I ran into an enclave soldier at level 8. When i saw him i thought i was screwed....but i was surprised at how easy it was to kill him with regular small arms. In Fallout 2 if you didnt have high tier energy weapons or gauss rifles, it was near impossible to kill people in power armor. I easily killed him with only a hunting rifle...

That makes perfect sense. Mini-guns have a really wide spread, if you shoot at something from a distance then half your bullets are going to miss the target. The closer you get, the more accurate they become and the more damage they will do. That's nothing different than what I do myself when using a Combat Shotgun. I get as close as I can to ensure that all the pellets hit their target and cause the maximum amount of damage. There have been plenty of times where I've been shot at by a Super-Mutant with a Mini-Gun from a distance and didn't get hit by a single bullet, or very few. Meanwhile I'll take him down with my more accurate Hunting Rifle.

Very true. :spotted owl: I use a unique mini-gun as a main weapon, and it's quite effective at about 20 yards and closer. It takes 2 and a half full backpack loads of 5 mm ammo (Big Guns 100, 100 Repair) of free-hand fire to take down a Behemoth. Which I consider quite good. At any range farther than that though, I have to rake the area to try to pick up hits due to the inaccuracy at that range. This is very fun when you are downtown, with all those cars laying about.... :mohawk:

In FO3 guns are just as effective against power armor as energy weopons used to be. Enclave aren't as elite as they think they are, they die just as easy as everyone else but they can pack a punch in groups though, especially if they have some equipping the helfire armor with heavy incinerators

These dudes don't usually rush in and will spam you with their hellfire from a good range if they spot you.

Fallout 3 does not have Damage Threshold like New Vegas or Fallout 1/2, so even weak weapons can do enough damage against a power armored opponent if you shoot long enough.

About new vegas...is it possible to play the fallout 3 campaign(with all the NPCs, etc) using the new vegas mechanics? Or is it a completely different game and the files cant be ported over?

This. There have been changes made to the engine itself so the two aren't compatible. They're very close, but not identical. Anyone making a mod should be able to convert it to both games, but you can't simply use files from one game in the other, other than things like graphics files. But since New Vegas is largely using the graphics from Fallout 3, there's no really advantage there.

Hmm know of any mods that fixes armor then? And how does DR work anyway?

Power armor is seriously pathetic...even rad scorpions chew through it like its paper.

Combat is basiaclly fire full auto and reload many times while spamming stim packs...

Do shots to the head do more damage? Im tired of emptying 5+ magazines from the xuanlong in a feral ghoul reaver's head to little effect...also seriously, how can a feral ghoul take 480+ rounds from a minigun? Any humanoid should be bean paste by then....

I limit myself to one stimpack being allowed during combat and that's it. I take it when I'm about 25 percent health. This forces me to duck down and use cover, also helps avoiding those pesky bullets. I pop in and out of cover.... I find it very effective.

Reavers, are a serious PITA. But I've found that a couple of grenades to soften him up is good, then I close on him as fast as I can, and switch to either my spiked knuckles or Fisto! At this close range, he doesn't throw his poo anymore, which is what I die from most. And I can block well up close and personal. Death by poo.... :blush: :thumbsdown:

Shotguns up close and personal on those Reavers do wonders, and a well-placed bottlecap mine (read: thrown over your shoulder in his path while you run away screaming) works very well too.

Unfortunately with real time combat i find grenades much less effective since in FPS, the best way to counter someone throwing a grenae is to run at full speed at them while they are holding the grenade and unable to shot back...which also puts you out of the blast radius. This doesnt work very well in real life for obvious reasons. In FO3 enemies start charging for you the moment you duck behind cover to pull out a grenade and they cant see you, especially sentry bots.