Agreed. A simple .38 police special would have fit perfectly. Or forgo that and add in a .357 that will shoot both .357 and .38. See, this is the kind of gun stuff I was hoping for. They should have learned more from New Vegas, improved upon it, then added the mod system on top of that.

Then this game would have been near perfect. Those who don't care about such things, can ignore it. Those who want it...there it is. Its not about resourcing. Its about hammering and hamfisting their mod system into the game, and "artfully" doing the retro steampunking thing with weapons. Not a fan of it.

But I still love the game.

It's a game & they where looking for something different I am guessing so what if your sporting an MG-08 / FG-42 hybrid looks very unique w/ my PA hell I cant wait to see am M-2 BHMG crossed w/ an M-1 Garand

What's interesting at this discussion is that people who express their disgust at the fact that assault rifle is supposedly based on the "outdated" tech from 1914 can with the strait face at the same time demand to have lever action shotgun ....from 1860. In the next line they then go on and demand Colt 1911 ...from, you can guess it, 1911.

Hypocrisy?

I think you could make a very solid argument that the 1911 and its derivatives are still viable in a modern context. The Model 1887, not so much.

Couldn't agree more. I was really excited for the weapon modding when I first saw it confirmed. For the most part, I'm still satisfied but there is a lot of room for improvement that will likely be fixed by mods. Understandably, I don't expect Bethesda to focus their assets on these minor quibbles as it really doesn't have much impact on the gameplay aspect but it's painfully obvious that Bethesda doesn't understand how firearms work.

Th guns never developed properly because rock 'n' roll didn't exist so the gunsmiths had no music to create with

Close enough with .380, 9mm Makarov, and 9mm Parabellum. That 9mm bore, anyhow, is pretty much THE most common out there, thanks to the proliferation of privately-owned firearms in my country (I have reloading dies for three different 9mm cartridges). So yeah, .38 should probably be used more frequently in pre-war weapons, especially those common to lower-level trash mob NPCs like common raiders and entry-level Gunners. And a light .38 SMG would probably be a good idea (upgradeable to the venerable 10mm). You could build a legendary .38 SMG with increased accuracy, suppressor, and massive critical hit buff, as a tribute to the greatest-ever MP5.

.45 for a 'Combat Rifle', though? Kinda wild. The .308 makes sense--thing reminds me a lot of the BAR, and .308 is a VERY close approximation of the NATO 7.62 (NATO 7.62mm blanks will chamber and fire easily in a rifle chambered for the Winchester .308 cartridge, though I don't recommend it and WON'T tell how I KNOW this).

But again, it's a game and it's leaning back away from the realism (in this one facet of the game, anyhow) that we had in New Vegas. I'm honestly surprised we didn't see the old .32 cartridge again...

I think they understand firearms. Everything they did was purposeful, but it was more for aesthetics and creating limitations than anything. They have a particular vision of what they think weapons should be and look like in this universe. I'm just not a fan of it, when previous entries did so much better in offering choice and variety in the primary means by which we engage this game world. New Vegas really invigorated firearms for Fallout and added in ammo types, reloading and handloading to enrich the experience even further.

Bethesda wanted none of that it seems, and pulled it all back severely limiting weapon choice and variety, condensing the ammo system back down, and jettisoning ammo types and reloading. None of the weapon designs make much sense...outside of feeding a particular aesthetic vision, and severely limiting variety and choice for the sake of the mod crafting system. Its a little disappointing, since I'm not much of a fan of that vision...but the game is still great. Could have been more though. There's simply no good reason many players are sitting on piles of 5.56 due to weapon limitations and restrictions. Restricting players and limiting choice has never been a Bethesda trademark.

It's a bit difficult to discuss design or performance decisions in a video game with a rather strange world, isn't it? My theory for the assault rifle is that after the Fallout world gun engineers noticed that the 5.56 mm rifle round has roughly the same energy/damage (instead of three to four times as much) as the weak .45 ACP pistol round they were so mentally destroyed and desparate that they decided to construct a totally strange and ugly assault rifle in correspondance. To show anybody, don't use it, it's stupid, perhaps? Who knows. But in a world with handheld 18th c. ship cannons, handheld nuke throwers or laser guns with a crank from a whirlybird, who cares?

My problems with the Fallout weapons are others:

- too much gun culture, too few melee weapons for a rather destroyed world

- no shields

The weapon damage makes even less sense. a pipe rifle that fires 308 does less damage then a bolt action rifle that fires a 308... a 308 bullet is a 308 bullet. if it hits you, no matter what it came out of, it does the same damage.

Yes the F4 Assault Rifle looks like, ass. We already have plenty of weapons from Fallout Lore, but none of them made it into the game in favor of some new junkie looking crap. We have AK47's in Fallout, we had 10mm submachine guns, we had the military grade semi-automatic sniper rifles, the 223 pistol, no one remembers that gun? or should I say. The Gun..

They ditched a lot of the lore's weaponry for some new designed crap that looks out of place.

The armor is extremely unbalanced and most of it looks like crap as well, considering we have long standing examples of what the military in the Fallout universe issued soldiers, the OD green combat suit, the Sturdy Combat Armor does its best to look like it, but its so freaking bulky it looks utterly stupid in comparison, it should feel more like the leather armor, but it wears more like plate armor from the 1500's. The full suits of armor, ie Kellog's armor, drifter armor look good and people want to wear them, but they are so inferior you can't bring yourself to wear it over the layered armor and plan to survive.

There is 2 clothing items, Army Fatiques, and baseball outfit, that are far overpowered compared to any other clothing, they offer +stats and are modifiable by the railroad, all other clothing either is not moddable or offers nothing more then 2 dmg reduction.

Why the hell are these 2 suits of clothing so much better then the others? Why the hell do we need the modding community to fix this crap, does Bethesda not see how utterly crappy the game balance is here?

Everyone that wants to play on a harder difficulty is going to end up using the exact same weapons, because certain ones simply do more damage then others even if they use the same ammo, they will wear the same clothing for the best bonuses and the same armors.

How the hell is modifications a game play feature? Its just a linear progression till you have the best stuff and then thats it.. that's not Customization thats a leveling system.

Some of the weapons we have now are also so stupid like the tommy gun. a 45 cal round that does 10 dmg while a 32cal round is doing like 27? That's just moronic.

This isn't realism or anti realism, its just plain stupid, they are essentially scraping immersion for cheap gameplay and the lore for crap they think the new people will like.

The Survival difficulty is just a complete [censored] in a toilet bowl. How damn generic can you get to just crank up enemy damage and hps and call it a difficulty setting? screw you.. that's so half assed and lazy I can't even voice my real feelings on it in public.

Well, I for one like how the Assault Rifle looks and like to use it.

Still should have named it Light Machine Gun though.

I must admit, that from a purely aesthetical point of view, I don't like these guns as much as the ones from other games.

The assault rifle could work as a light machinegun tho... It just seems too... bulky for a rifle.

Absolutely not a gun not, so whether the designs are practical or not, I have no real oppnion on

One "football sized" nuclear device coming up!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29#/media/File:DavyCrockettBomb.jpg

. . . okay so it is a rather large football but roughly football sized.

I don't know what level you guys are at. I'm at 22 and my main weapon is a .308 pipe rifle heavily modded. I take out most things I tangle with with a single head shot. The modded combat shotgun does a decent job for up close.

One thing that irks me a bit tho... The... what's it called... overseer's something, legendary combat rifle. I've modded it to do something like 98 damage.

It's a bit freaky... that it does, as far as I can remember right now, more damage than my fully modded 0.50 cal sniper rifle. Even if it's a non legendary.

honestly i do think the weapons look goofy BUT ... and this is a big BUT , the new weapons fit the world better then a Steyr rifle would , anyway there are 3 more dlc's coming so they can add modern weapons there

Fallout is not taking place in the modern world.

Pipe weapons are pretty decent until mid game when properly modded and they use ammo which is relatively plentiful.

The phrase "in a modern context" isn't the same as "in the modern world". Fallout (especially pre-war Fallout) is "a modern context". But, since we're arguing semantics...

Better?

Not in our modern world, but in its world it is much more modern when the bombs fell. And there is a difference with pistols because they haven't really evolved much because they are relatively simple and effective at what they do. But assault rifles and machine guns did evolve since they are more complex and had lots of room for improvement.

So, why, when so many better options are available, would they revert to using old and clearly obsolete(when clearly other "modern" weapons were being used and made at the time) and inferior technology when they are so many years into the future when so many superior designs are available. And don't say that they were manufactured after the war coz that would just be BS, and there would still be no reason for guns like that to be made.

And even though it is not the same timeline as ours, MANY things were still the same, it's not like the whole world suddenly changed to something strange. And don't forget, the whole 50s outlook was only in the US. You think they would lag behind other countries when it came to weapons technology? Other countries were still making their own new weapons(and many of the "modern" guns are not made in the US).

I agree with a lot of people here the guns look stranger than a duck with no bill. That said I like some of them.
.45 smg for the win but the small mag should be a stick mag
The 10mm looks like something IWI might produce.
The .38 pipe weapons look like they'll explode in your hands if you shoot it too much, as for the .45 pipe weapons ...they look awesome.
The hunting/sniper rifle looks like a left handed (what gives?) Remington 700, the first .308 gun I ever shot.
The .44 pistol looks like some Smith and Wesson revolver.
Those are just about all the guns that are aesthetically pleasing.
The combat rifle looks exactly like the combat shotgun (and why the hell does it shoot .45 rounds?)
The so called "assault rifle" is a [censored] Lewis gun ...it even has a water cooler. Ergonomically speaking it looks like it was designed for soldiers in power armor(which I like) and personally I don't hate it I just hate that it's called the assault rifle.
I also hate the fact that there is no pump action shotgun which means absolutely no middle ground between the double barrel and the combat shotgun.
Someone pm me when a combat rifle reskin comes out (hopefully to a M16A1 looking rifle) and the AR turns into the "Calvary rifle" or light machine gun or some [censored] (with a replacement for the AR of course)
And for you badass veterans, thank you for your service and congrats on getting airborne ( I know that was probably a while ago but I know that's not easy)

The whole argument about modern weaponry or not is absurd, concerning the world of Fallout.

The Fallout universe, is by all means, how people in the 1950's would percieve their world in the future. So of course, people in Fallout, will take presedence from what is already in their world, and then futurize it. Just like we, often speculate on going from cars using roads, to cars being flying vehicles. When a flying vehicle becomes the norm, I bet in the future it will look nothing like a car, simply because that design, is not good for flying. So in the future they will laugh about the notion of "flying cars" Bladerunner could be a good example of this "flying car" idea.

The Fallout universe is also very much a satirical take on the future, hence why we have low-tech and high-tech mixed in together, and often it doesn't make sense, which it shouldn't. So take anything with a grain of salt, and leave realism at the door into the Fallout universe.

No, it isn't.

Upgrade it to .308 to get its full power, I use it as a sniper now its fully upgraded after using it as an assault rifle for most of the game since I bought it at a vault.

Lets define world "modern" before we continue the discussion:

of or relating to the present time or the recent past : happening, existing, or developing at a time near the present time

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/modern

Fallout is not hapopeing in present time nor in recent past. It's happening in the future, moreover in the alternative future. Using world "modern" in relation to anything Fallout is wrong plain and simple.

Posters here keep repeating this "old and obsolete technology" in relation to assault rifle. But non of you said so far what's supposedly obsolete. So let's look at the technology of assault rifle:

Visually it resembles Lewis Automatic Machine Gun introduced in 1914. It was gas operated automatic gun with piston and spring mechanism, rotating bolt, air cooled barbel and circular magazine. Let's assume our Fallout machine gun uses the same technology. Save magazine which is obviously box shaped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_gun#Design_details

This is exactly the same technology as used in M16, AK and other MODERN (see definition above) assault rifles!!!

So what the hell you guys have problem with again???

People that play games with magic and think it's ok not to provide scientific, semi-realistic stats/explanations apparently.

It works in Diablo. This isn't Diablo. At least give firearms semi-realistic stats and not magically abilities. Infinite ammo just isn't acceptable and breaks all immersion.