yeah on very easy but on normal they know what there doing . I will try it again tomorrow i remember it takeing 3 to the torso 1st being sneak crit.

On Very Hard. I think your full of it.

The cowboy guns aren't extremely powerful because Obsidan has a hard-on for the cowboy guns, it's because of the ammunition they use. A 5mm round is roughly .2 inches, that's a hell of a lot smaller than a lot of the older, mostly magnum using guns.

You also have to bare in mind that most NATO standard rifles and pistols aren't designed for killing power, they're designed to wound(mostly because of the Geneva convention and the idea that if you badly wound a soldier you're not just taking him out, you're also disabling the 1 or more guys that have to take care of him). I'd recommend you look for a mod that makes it easier to cripple limbs, as well as increased penalties for being crippled.

I'm not particularly familiar with SMGs, as I've never used one, but the carbine should hit with a lot more energy than an SMG, but you do have to consider game balance, it's much easier to aquire large quantities of 5mm rounds. Maybe the best idea is to rechamber the carbine to use 5.56 rounds and raise it's DAM?

Sorry, you're wrong. Sawyer does have a hard-on for Cowboy guns. Size is not the only determinant of tissue damage - energy of the round plays a part as well. I fully expect a 5.56mm rifle round to do more damage than a 9mm pistol round.

Every tier you look, the Cowboy guns destroy their military counterparts. If they don't win outright in damage, then they more than make up for it in DPS/rate-of-fire, AP cost and item HP. The Brush Rifle is an example of this - it does like 10 less DAM than the AMR, but it has like four times the DPS.

.357 Cowboy Repeater = .308 Sniper Rifle, Hunting Rifle >> 5mm/5.56mm rifles
.44 Trail Carbine > .308 Sniper rifle, Hunting Rifle, This Machine
.45-70 > .50cal AMR

EDIT: The only reason people weren't complaining prior to the patch was because it was like this:

.308 Sniper Rifle > God of Death >>>>> Everything Else

The "range" parameters on the weapons are there for AI actors only, the range on the weapons are governed by the stats of the projectile, see for example the G.E.C.K wiki:

http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Weapons

The New Vegas wiki also lists the the values from the G.E.C.K so it's just as usefull btw (minus mistakes but I haven't found any)

The problem with full auto weapons in this engine is that there is no recoil and only "spread" to model both recoil and "reticule bloom". Thus the full auto weapons are at full "reticule bloom" from the first shot fired, which makes them useless for anything but short range engagements (even something as "small" as 1.5 degrees is huge if you imagine a "cone" of possible random hits). Also, Automatics have low damage per bullet as a "balance" feature. In a game with damage threshold, big hits = good, many small hits = very bad.

Other shooters with better engines model full auto weapons by giving them the same accuracy and damage stats as similar rifle calibers, but then they also model "reticle bloom" (increased spread with sustained fire) and recoil (makes gun harder to control). This is a much better way of balancing full auto weapons - they are powerfull, but hard to control.

There is no way to model this in the default settings in the NV engine, but you can mod it via scripting with NVSE (someone modded recoil to FO3 at fallout3nexus).

One of my mod ideas is to add recoil + proper reticule bloom, too bad my ambitions are higher than my scripting skills

I wouldnt mind the short bursts=good accuracy .Make lmg's assualt rifle lil more then for the jokes.I dont have a pc but couldnt you put a enchant ment on the first few rounds in succession,beyond that incease penalties?

^ @EscapedGoat:I noticed the fake recoil too recently trying out the Assault carbine from greater distances to see if it would perform the same but instead it was way worse with even more bullet wasting and trying to burst didn't do anything, although I couldn't put my finger on what was occurring exactly until I read your post. I think Half Life 2 did the same thing with it's rapid fire guns. No matter if you tapped the trigger or held down the bullet would fly out randomly from the barrel.



The thing is though since all guns are unified under one umbrella as to where a 9mm pistol is in the same category as an AMR comparisons between everything are fair because there's nothing stopping you from switching to a different gun other than weight. New Vegas uses the http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=984 system of inventory management unlike the Halo or Call of Duty 2 Weapons plus Specials Volume system of management where regardless of how strong the character is they have a hard item limit so there's no reason not to switch.

In those other games if you pick an Assault rifle you miss out on the benefits of a sniper rifle or vice versa but the problem is in New Vegas as EscapedGoat and others pointed out is that weak rapid fire is inherently bad in the system and there is no real choice if you have an always optimal choice available to you.

It looks pretty awesome in my opinion, so that's why I use it.

Well if that's the case then we'll meet in Freeside at high noon. You can bring your 10mm pistol, and I'll bring my assault carbine. Winner take all. The guns may be under one umbrella, but different guns do serve different purposes, which is why, if I'm outnumbered 10 to 1, I'd rather be using my assault carbine or light machine gun instead of my little 10mm pistol.


I'm not trying to defend one weapon over another, I only posted the stats of some of the automatics. Simply comparing stats of one automatic to another so everyone can see where they stand. I offered to post the stats of other weapons, but that largely went ignored.

I still maintain that comparing the Cowboy repeater or trail carbine to the assault carbine, light machine gun, or any of the smg's is an unfair comparison, since THEY DO SERVE DIFFERENT PURPOSES. They are all guns and fire bullets, but beyond that, the comparisons end.

Can't really compare Fallout to those games though, as Fallout is an RPG and those are FPS. In an FPS, the player does the shooting, and the player's skill provides accuracy. In an RPG, your character does the shooting, and it's the character's skill that provides accuracy.

It's the fact that it uses DT only instead of Fallout 3's DR only. As such the auto weapons see more use in unarmored or low armored targets.
Fallout 3 however had automatics in general being superior. DR meant the penalty would be the same percentage for every weapon, meaning single shots would lose a large part of their power, where as automatics could compensate with DPS.

That's funny because it's not true anymore. :sadvaultboy:

You may have meant that comment in jest but a 10mm pistol user probably would beat the pants off an assault carbine user. 22 Damage per shot, higher critical rate, and a lower AP cost too boot. The intent was most likely that different guns serve different purposes but it doesn't effect the reality of the game as is. It takes longer and consumes more resources to kill a single opponent compared to other guns of its tier and quite a few below it. How would fighting more enemies work in its favor? The way the game models combat damage is simply too one dimensional.




RPGs that incorporate action mechanics shouldn't get a free pass if they have bad action mechanics. There is a wealth of material for them to look at and there's no reason whatsoever for devs to ignore how other folks succeeded and failed on similar design issues otherwise they wind up repeating mistakes over and over.

I just don't understand why Sawyer and Obsidian try so hard to get game balance, but then ruin it by over powering cowboy guns. And I don't get why all the lever action rifles have almost no spread, but one shot from the 12.7 MM SMG can't even go straight out of the barrel? I think until Fallout adopts a new, better engine that can actually include accuracy and spread the RIGHT way (by having accurate first shots, then recoil as someone else mentioned) I'm taking a break from buying Fallout games.

That's why it's called spray and pray. An assault rifle is not meant to be as accurate as a sniper rifle or even a 10mm pistol, but at least you are getting the idea that it does use more resources (in this case that would be bullets).

Oh, and yes I did only mean that in jest, but I was trying to get the point across that a man with a pistol and a ,man with an assault rifle meet, and it's likely that the assault rifle will win simply by the sheer amount of bullets being sprayed in the enemies direction, 12 shots for every 1 shot from 10mm pistol ; hence the spray aspect. You then pray that some of those bullets reach their target. An assault rifle does require some ability to aim and hit something smaller than the broad side of a barn, but is not and never was meant to snipe enemies from 1000 yards out with a single shot. That is not the function of an assault rifle, that is the function of a sniper rifle.

At first I liked the DT system, now not so much a fan. It really favors big damage weapons. And does not seem as realistic. Reinforced Leather/Metal Armor basically protects from 5.56 rounds - even a Flame Thrower. If it was Power Armor then OK, but not metal armor.



Uhh, noo. Go look at the effective range on assault rifle vs a 9mm. US Army states the point range of an M16 is 550 meters. Glock 9mm is 50 meters.

And body armor will stop most pistol rounds, but not a 7.62 or 5.56 rifle ammo.

The problem is the Cowboy lever guns rule at long range and at close range. Even friggin melee distance where someone would just grab the barrel.

this from the Wiki:



there we go again with comparing one type of gun to another type of gun...again...with different a range...with a different function. Well obviously a Glock will not be accurate 550 meters, I think we know that, but an assault rifle will tear apart someone standing 50 meters away.


BTW: are we now talking about real life, or a video game? I was under the impression that this thread was about why OP felt that the assault carbine wasn't any good, not about the effective range of real world guns...something I do not wish to quibble over. I have repeatedly stated that a pistol, assault rifle and a sniper rifle all serve different functions. All of them have something that they can do better than the other.

And on that note... :bolt: I'm outta here. have a nice thread.

Where is it said the 5mm is close to 5.56mm in power?

"We" don't know how fast the 5mm round is going, nor how heavy the projectile is, and given that it's fired from a minigun at a massive ROF (which means it must have low recoil), I'd bet it's in-between .22 LR and 5.56mm. The only commercial 5mm round was the 5mm Remington Magnum ("was" as no one makes rifles for it, even if ammo is still made by one company), which is a necked down .22 Winchester Magnum; it's in-between .22 LR and 5.56mm in power. (.204 Ruger is "5mm", but it's the same power as 5.56mm for the most part.)

Comparing the Service Rifle and Marksman Carbine (both 5.56mm) to it is pointing to the same thing above too.

It's a little more powerful than the Silenced .22 SMG (incidentally, ".22 LR" is 5.6mm), but it has a smaller magazine; they're both similar in rarity.

Actually, there is some candidate for that the 5mm is based on; namely .204 Ruger and 5mm Remington rimfire magnum.

.22LR doesn't pack much powder in there.

The thing is though is that "spraying and praying" can work in some situations with different damage models (real life included :ahhh: ) because each individual bullet is so very deadly. So hitting somebody ONCE may be enough to make them no longer a factor in combat. But in New Vegas the combat model is such that each individual bullet from an Assault carbine is not worth very much at all which means funnily enough that each hit is more precious. Because of the crit heavy nature of combat "spraying" with a western gun can still be very effective as one good hit could easily pop an enemy or two whereas with the assault carbine you need to mag dump for each individual target hitting that target with as many bullets as you can means that spraying and praying is the least optimal thing you can do.




The fallout lore's 5mm round was used in assault rifles and the damage is only 4 points less than max from the hunting rifle and that may very well be a function of accuracy and not so much the caliber of the bullet.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Assault_rifle_%28Fallout%29

Fallout 2 mucked things up a bit by including real world high tech guns and confused people on what the calibers meant.

The 5mm Assault Rifle from Fallout 1/2 is definitely a different beast though (I would have really liked them to include such). With the damage-per-shot of the minigun known in Fallout 3/New Vegas, they obviously went with that as the new standard for 5mm in the universe, so we have an Assault Carbine firing the same round as the Fallout 3/New Vegas minigun (hence, it'll have a similar damage-per-shot as such).

I really miss the uberness of the Chinese Assault Rifle on Fallout 3. With the DT system, the Assault Carbine just doesn't work well for me. I would love for the Chinese Assault Rifle to come back in a DLC, and it should be similar to the one in Fallout 3. The major change is its power should be increased from 11 to 18 (to match the DPS of the Assault Carbine). This might make it a superior weapon in combat (surpassing the DT of many enemies), but it will use the 5.56mm round that doesn't come in quite as large quantities. I find the Assault Carbine will still be more useful on enemies with low or no armor as more rounds per second will cover more area.

My mistake: the minigun had a damage-per-shot number in Fallout 1/2. I guess they just went with 5mm weapons being similar in power as they're firing the same cartridge in Vegas (consistency is often a good thing).

I liked the Chinese Assault Rifle too, but like with the Carbine, I didn't like its inaccuracy with single shots.

If CAR comes back, it would be likely to be a lighter and easy to handle version of Light Machine gun, just like Assault Carbine is a light and easy to handle version of Minigun.

Although I do agree it should require less Gun skill, it makes little difference unless you use it in VATS.

I think I would prefer a combination (kind of like the originals had). DT stops a certain amount of damage, while DR helps reduce the rest. Heavy armor and light armor would differ by the former providing higher DR in comparison to their DT, while heavier would provide a high DT, with in comparison less DR.
It accentuates the way it's supposed to be now. With DPS weapons being better against lighter armor, while high DAM weapons are less useful in those situations and vice versa for heavy armor.


The intention is that DPS weapons should be more useful against non or lower armored enemies, by virtue of it's higher throughput. In reality, though, the DT only system doesn't present much of a disadvantage for using high DAM weapons on low DT enemies.
The cowboy rifles are an overall overpowered bunch and seem to have been given the advantages of both, with only the minor inconvenience of a long reload.