Some posts have gone away, discussion of child killing is not a topic for these forums, don't bring it up again please.

One shot kills remove all challenge from high level encounters, a deathclaw may as well be a bubble you pop for free experience with the way NV is set up. I've never been of the opinion that the PC should make everyone cower in his presence once he hits level cap. Gibbing everyone just feels like a cheap way to make you feel powerful. Felling a powerful and difficult foe after a grueling battle imparts a much greater sense of power than one shotting endless fodder. But it seems everyone just wants to be a god at level cap.

The Mojave Wasteland bores me to no end at level cap, I don't even keep my saves once I finish the game.

And as far as the weapon selection goes, it can and should be made plausible in every game. If it worked in BG2 it can work anywhere.

As I see it... two level one opponents have (say) a 50/50 chance of winning (even odds). One may kill the other in one hit.

I do not see why two 30 level opponents do not have the same 50/50 odds. I can see the defender being able to lessen the damages of the attacking strike (with skilled dodging and parrying); I can see the variant character development paths coming into play (like a master thief against a master Paladin), but a bullet sponge is the same in every game IMO.

The PC is usually over-matched by a boss fight (not counting the boss's henchmen), and it makes for a good challenge.

Deathclaws are not human, and level for level don't compare equally with humans. They should have a lot of hitpoints, but then... they should also be blind-able with a .22 :shrug:

Consider a D&D Cleric that escapes a jail cell, and finds his way into a room full of knives. Proper "Role Playing" would keep him from using them (silly or not). Later on his flight to the outside world he may find a club and feel much relieved that he can defend himself with something he's used to, and that won't accidentally pierce the skin of his opponents.

I don't see the plausibility in FO3 of finding a rocket launcher inside vault 101. This certainly points toward preferring big guns as end game weapons, but I still prefer not to be forced down a linear progression except by chance. If I can acquire a super sledge at the beginning (like I actually managed in New Vegas), then I call that an accomplishment. With that PC, I immediately began specializing in Melee too.

NPC's can't see you from the same range you can see them, it's never going to be a fair fight unless that changes because you will always have the jump on them. It will never be 50/50 unless they have enough hitpoints to survive your ace in the hole advantage of human sight vs a predetermined sight radius.

If they want the game to work as is they need to make both your and your enemies visual ability completely dependent on your PE. IE; beyond your PE limited vision range that enemy is invisible to you both on your compass and in the game world. This is how it worked in the top/down fallouts and a number of TBS games like Jagged Alliance.

If we both had the ability to one shot each other and my sight ability was not unfairly altered outside of the games mechanics I'd be fine with it.

Same opinion here.
(IIRC It was like that in Tactics, but not Fallout 1&2; In Tactics you could hack a PC's stats, give them a sniper rifle,
and they would snipe the whole map clean from where they stood )

*My example though, was hand to hand or melee ~not sniping, or charging them with a minigun.

*** I wonder if FOSE could be used to check PE, and alter the Actor Fade distance. :laugh:

Unfortunately that wouldn't help me as I play on the PS3, my PC is horribly outdated. I still enjoy PC gaming with the classics, however.

But yeah, I'd be fine if it worked that way with any weapon type, with exceptions to smaller caliber firearms/dinky melee weapons with higher rates of fire balancing them.

A person with a 9mm pistol/SMG will not be able to kill someone in combat armor or power armor because it is NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE for the projectile to penetrate the armor. The weapon tiers are based on ability to counter defensive measures and they fill that role exquisitely. A real life example would be in LA when a group of robbers stole from a bank wearing full combat armor and AK 47's, but their get away was botched and the police could only follow them around until the robbers ran out of ammo and/or picked up some rifles from a sporting goods store. I watched it on TV while it was happening and the police pistols and shotguns did absolutely nothing to the robbers.

A flamethrower is an energy weapon. It does not explode or use a metal projectile to deal damage. It uses heat energy and just because the projectile is a burning fluid does not make it any less about heat energy. Other energy weapons use various other sources of power to generate energy for delivering HEAT based attacks so it makes sense that they are included with them. If this concept is too difficult to grasp you failed the science skill check.

DnD is far from realistic...about as far as you can get.

The dispersed "Big Guns" follow the natural progression of weapons within each category. The AMR is a larger scale sniper rifle with a specialized purpose. The LMG is a larger scale automatic rifle followed by the very specialized minigun which excels at suprpession/crowd dispersal. The flame throwers are AoE energy weapons that deal damage over time because they do not generate the intense, localized heat of others in the energy category. The grenade machine gun is a mobile artillery platform.... not very realistic, but no any less than high end energy weapons. The missile launcher is an evolved form of grenade projectile...heard of the term RPG or "rocket propelled grenade"? So yes, they all make sense if you actually understand the weapon's function. This is no less plausible than lumping 4 completely different types of ammunition and firing mechanisms together just so all of the heavy hitting weapons are in one category (which makes me think that people are butt sore for having to generalize skill to be able to use all god weapons effectively).

All shooter games use HP, but the ratio of damage to health varies depending on the proposed game mechanics in each one. It is a means used to differentiate weapons and increase the function of their tactical use. a .22 at a distance (and even probably a short one) has a very low chance of penetrating a cow's skull. That is why my father uses a .357 magnum or higher powered weapon when slaughtering cattle, to get the job done with the lowest chance failure (he has been trampled more than once after missing/grazing his target) and greatest efficiency. The "super" mutated species seem to have extra dense exo/skeletons and the game was not designed for "blinding" other than reducing an opponents chance to hit when injuring eyes. All of the Fallout games have worked pretty much that way and it would take 2 shots to take out both eyes anyway. You can blind a deathclaw with a .22 but it takes a few shots...

I would go on, but I have grown bored of this topic...

People who base their arguments about game balance on what is "plausible" or "realistic" in a game where you have coffee cup sized fusion reactors, flying robots and 15 foot tall bipedal lizards really, REALLY annoy me.

They annoy me even more when said inane arguments consists of an empire state building sized wall of text.

That response whenever someone makes a reasoned argument against the "but its what I want so it should be that way!" argument is getting old, please find something constructive to say or at least elaborate a bit. They could put the Super Sledge in unarmed and you could make an argument for it, and would be relatively the same discussion.

If you think the wacky world of fallout not being compatible with "realism" translates directly to me wanting things my way, I really don't know what to say to you.

I'm puzzled why guys like you show up in the Sci-Fi RPG forums talking about realism but never on the Fantasy RPG forums... Shooting magic from your finger tips is unrealistic... so is magic for that matter.

I remember that, I saw the news video and the re-enactments.

Was it disclosed if they had bullet proof eye-wear and gloves?

If a conventional armor is completely and totally bullet proof, then it likely has no joints and covers your eyes.

In the case of medieval plate & chain armor you were well protected except from Longbows, but if someone got in close, there were many points to stick a dagger, (including the eye holes of the helmet, and backs of the knees)

A flame thrower is a squirt gun; the liquid is flammable, and it bears no relation to the term "Energy Weapon". Plasma casts a blob of Plasma (?), Laser uses radiation. All a flamethrower does is coat the target in a flaming liquid, the mechanics of the weapon are still that of a garden hose.

My point was that training in the use and maintenance of a laser rifle has no overlap with the training in the use and maintenance of a flame thrower. :shrug:
Do you disagree?

I don't see your point with this.

Skill with a grenade bears no relation to skill with a rocket launcher *(beyond recognizing a good place to try to blow up).

god weapons? There should be no such thing.
The original games split the heavy military weapons apart from the conventional (and more commonplace) weapons. Sniper rifles were lumped in with rifles. Grenades relied on the PC's ability to accurately throw the thing at a target; Throwing was it's own skill. Further merging just screws up the game worse than it was from the outset. Now the Pistol expert is also a minigun & rifle expert, and the knife expert is just as skilled with a golf club or a 2x4 with some nails in it.

Originally, you could only pack so many rockets, and could not [sanely] shoot targets in melee with your NPC's (or the PC). Burst weapons had similar restrictions, and dangers. Flame throwers had a very short range, while real energy weapons all had fairly long ranges.

It was not supposed to be a shooter game.

Sci-Fi
Science Fiction
Science.
Science is logical or at least possible to explain logically.
Fantasy is illogical magicky hoo-hoo.

Fallout actually uses SCIENCE! as it's basis, not science. If you don't understand what that means you aren't even a true fallout fan and you are not worth the time spent typing responses.

Not so... Any sufficiently advanced science would appear to be magic to one who did not understand it.

Fantasy that is 'free for all', inconsistent, illogical magicky hoo-hoo, is generally bad pulp suitable for the bird cage floor IMO.

Now why'd you have to go and say that, man? I liked you. Now we have to be bitter enemies.
:gun:

We really knows what are we saying, what is the purpose of staying here then

I'm just tired of people saying things like "It's a game so it shouldn't bear any slight resemblence to reality." or "Games are for fun and any 'realistic' restriction is pointless and subtracts from everyone's enjoyment." because, god dammit i like it when game logic makes sense.
and yes I know what SCIENCE! is don't call my fanatacism for Fallout into question.

Should it be somewhat grounded in reality? Sure. Should it mirror reality? Only if it's a combat simulator, and we all know how fun those are.

I agree, but when people cry "Sci-Fi" on parts of the game relying on real-world properties and logic SUCH AS flamethrowers not being correctly placed AS
1) They rely on the post-departure activation of chemical energy, not the release of chemical/nuclear/etc energy to power the transmission of an energy projectile.
2) As far as gameplay goes the EWs already have a shotgun, the Multiplas, and the Tri-Beam.
3) The EW projectile (Lasers, Plasma) is energized particles, the flamethrower "projectile" is a physical chemical undergoing a rapid chemical reaction.
4) Four.
In all Explosives would be a better place for all flamethrower weaponry.

Now that you mention it, explosives would be a good fit for the flamethrower weapons, balance wise. Should put the Shishkebab there too, as another close range option for a close range-deficient skill.

Yeah but its a little late, i dont think a patch could make such a change.

What is alchemy but a kind of chemistry? (surely with some of the same underlying precepts).

Consider the game (or novel) that lets the hero craft a certain potion from a certain recipe... or what if they can craft a healing potion from anything at hand, or because it was also blue.

**What really annoys to no end, is New Vegas using the established recipe for tribal Healing Powder, and letting the PC make an advanced nano-tech military stimulent for battlefield healing ~out of a flower and root. :banghead:

Skill merging leads to silliness.

I guess the skeptic/realist in me can somewhat see your point, but I love me some fantasy RPG's. So we're still bitter enemies.

I also can't concede that getting rid of big guns was a bad idea, but I do feel the distribution of the weapons could use some work. For example; the flamethrower weapons would fit in extremely well with the explosives tree as a way to help round it out by offering some weapons that won't kill you nearly as quickly as your enemies at close range, and as you pointed out before, flamethrowers are just as dangerous to the end user IRL, and would require somewhat similar training.

And flamethrowers act like Explosives more than EWs, as the "explosive" is a liquid that is ignited. Much more similar than electricity superheating air particles and magnets propelling it out of the weapon.

As much as I hate being wrong I'll give you that one. :foodndrink: Though I definitely do not think it belongs in the same branch as any projectile firing weapon, such as the late Big Guns(RIP :violin: ).