this is why I prefer the 12.7 mm smg it gets the job done with more power with the cost of accuracy but the assault carbine is an excelent weapon for crippling limbs on an enemy so by ther time they can get a hold of you theyre useless

Smaller diameter bullet, ergo: Less weight and when you build 5mm at the reloading bench it takes 5 units of powder vs. the 4 of the heavier/larger 5.56mm. More bang means bigger zoom.

-Gunny out.

Ehh, sounds like some weak argument to me. It is a Military Assault Rifle that is a tier 3 gun. Either make it more common, cheap with less skill requirement or make it better. Gameplay > Realism. Right now this is a high tier gun and it is getting outperformed by low tier guns. That IS the bottom line. Make it competive or get rid of it.


That makes no sense. Should be more like the orginals, It needs DR and DT vs specific weapon types - ballistics, energy, explosives, and melee. Power Armor should be the tops, high DT and high DR. Or create some penetration model. It makes no sense when PISTOL rounds can out perform RIFLE rounds on getting through armor. When in reality Rifle Rounds beat out pistol rounds in almost every category. Even a crummy 5MM rifle round should out penetrate and shoot farther then a 9MM. Right now it does NEITHER, If you are not going to do it right then revert back to DR. The system in FNV is just bad.

Ding we have a winner! If the game balance philosophy is that automatics are only good vs low DT enemies at close range, one would assume that balance would dictate that high damage per bullet guns should excel at long range and be poor at close range against low DT enemies. The problem with DT is that there is a HUGE penalty for low damge per bullet, and no penalty at all for high damage per bullet against low DT enemies.

Assault weapons (many bullets, low damage) are only effective on low DT enemies, and only work at close range (high spread), and get less benefits from sneak attack criticals (low dmg/hit), and appart from the minigun, do not have a lot of dmg/ap in VATS. In fact, assault weapons in this game fill the same niche as shotguns.

The anti-materiell rifle does have some drawbacks on short range combat - long reload and high AP cost in VATS, and this is a good thing. That's a semblance of balance at least.

The Cowboy familiy, and the Brush gun specifically, are arguably the best guns in the game with cowboy perk and wadcutter ammo, work on ALL enemies, works on close range, medium range and can even be used on long range (low spread), has high dmg/AP cost in VATS, and produces astronomical sneak attack criticals. These guns are good at everything!

There's just no point in dragging around any automatics+ammo for low DT enemies when your good ol' cowboy gun will do that job AND serve all your other needs as well! Inventory space is quite precious in this game, esp. in harcore, and there is just no need for the automatics as long as they are limited to close range, low DT only.

Well specific damages might be fine (the resistances are in the game already), but a non specific model will work within reason. Also the problem with the Fallout 1 & 2 system is that it provided a very linear progression through armors, whereas NV and to some extent Fallout 3 tried to make light and medium armor still viable beyond just for sneaking. In general I agree that Power Armor should rank at the top in terms of protection, there should however be a viable light and medium alternative, which doesn't feel like self gimping (have some sort of advantage over the other categories that off puts their lower statistics).

A DR only system suffers from it's own problems. It puts a big emphasis on how much health you have and doesn't provide more penetrating power for high powered gun than say a pistol (the rate is flat no matter the tier or type of weapon).

If anything, FO3 and NV gimp Power Armour into bliviongate:

While the Pitt and Broken Steel introduce some more viable Power Armours, Tri-beam and Point Look Out enemies flat damage per hit screw it all over.

In NV, enemies damage is either low enough for high DT light armour or medium armour, or twice as much as Power Armour which they offer little advantage while slow down PC.

The armor system in FO1&2 actually worked quite well, however there was no real reason to go back to anything less once one acquired PA of some kind. Then again, that was the intent, since the armor progression was based on the staple RPG assumption that by the time you acquire the best equipment you're fighting the hardest opponents and the games were essentially set up such that you would be doing just that during a 'normal' sequence of play. Unfortunately, that does not work in a free-roam game since there are far more weak opponents than strong ones and the stronger armor can be used against all of them any time the owner so wishes once he or she obtains it.

There's also the question of whether or not the lighter armors should remain useful at later stages of the game, since allowing them to do so obviates the need for heavier armors in the first place. This is an age-old sticky question, however in many older RPGs it's dealt with by class-based or skill-based armor limitations. F:NV doesn't employ either one, so the light(er) armors tend to fall by the wayside as heavier/better sets are found. On the other hand it does give at least some advantages to wearing lighter armor, such as a perk that increases your movement rate while so clad and a significantly lower penalty to Sneaking, however there are not really any good opportunities to leverage these benefits since the former is rarely used in combat and is not that big a boost anyway, and the latter can be massively overridden by Stealth Boy use in those few areas where sneaking is really worthwhile.

All that said, I, myself, have sometimes wanted to stop a character's armor progression at a certain point, so I would welcome a means of improving the usability of the lower tiers of armor provided it did not render the higher tiers pointless. How to do that in the current system is something of a problem, since it uses universal protection values save for those few items that offer some protection against an additional damage type or two and straight upwards adjusting of these would cause more problems than it fixed.

I'm currently playtesting the first version of a mod I've made using real life ballistic performance to generate damage and spread numbers for each weapon. Based on the very high velocity of the 5mm round I've got it doing Assault Carbine at 19 dam and the Minigun at 21 dam. I have also modded in some respectable DT modifiers for all high velocity military rounds. For the first time, I'm actually using the Assualt Carbine and the Minigun. The Minigun absolutely shreds, as it should. I came up against a SM with one last night and I was the one who got shredded. I've never died so much since I modded the damage, DT bypass and took out that stupid sneak critical damage multiplier. Any enemy with a gun has instantly gotten much tougher to kill. I'm using tactics to approach enemies now, and absolutely fear shotgun wielding crazies that rush at me firing from the hip. I might need to recheck the shotgun numbers. They seem a little too powerful. The game feels much more real now and all guns perform like I expect them to. Moving on to the top tier gun testing today, as I just finally picked some up at Gun Runners last night. All the coyboy guns have more realistic damage and spread numbers set to more accurately represent their bullet's ballistic performance. In a nutshell, cowboy guns = less overpowered, military guns = more realistic.

@ .46ACP -- Are you going to release that mod when it's finished? I'm going to try Arwen's difficulty mod soon I think, but even tho it sounds like it'll make things a lot harder/fun, it may also change a lot more "things" about the game than I personally prefer. Yours sounds more my style.

Haven't really thought much about that. First things first, I gotta make sure what I do feels right. The guns now seem more realistic (but need some finishing, like rate of fire, ammo type overhaul, etc..) but that leaves some problems:

1. Non-gun toting enemies (except Deathclaws and night stalkers) now seem a little too easy. I didn't boost the damage up very much across the entire range of weapons, but cazadores just don't seem that big of a deal now. I may have to look at upping damage on a few creatures to compensate.

2. Explosives are really wonked now. They will need just as coprehensive overhaul as guns, but it might be much harder. I don't have the faintest idea how area effect weapons work in this game, and if some things can even be changed. But upping the damage on explosives weapons is certain. Hand grenades, 40mm and 25mm grenades all have a kill circle of about 45 feet across.

3. Energy, Unarmed and Melee might also need to be looked at some. I don't want to leave them in the dust. Then again, some dufus running at me with a pool cue while I spin up my minigun just deserves to explode into little giblets of fleshy bits. TBD.

That said, would a guns only overhaul be desired, with other weapons coming down the pipe later? Or wait until it's all done right?

-Gunny out.

Hm. Well I wouldn't mind a gun-only mod, especially just to try it out, but generally speaking probably a more complete mod (for the balance aspects) would be more sensible.
I could change some of these things myself but just don't have to time/energy to try and get the balance right etc. Don't know how explosives work either...but I know when enemies use them a lot more often against you, it can make things tougher.

I think there are more gun specialists than energy or explosives specialists among both players and NPCs, so guns only would be a good place to start. You get feedback and beta testing while you're working on the next module. [Naturally, I'm saying this just when I'm starting an EW character.]

Glad to see you making a mod! It should be interesting. I would recommend starting with guns and go from there. Also, you should try to limit your changes as much as possbile. Focus on weapon balance, do not worry about trying to balance the criters. In the computer development world that is called scope creep - where the job keeps getting bigger and bigger - and is never finished!

On explosives - after playing a lot with explosives I think the damage is not the central issue. They do good damage, it is the cost, rarity and projectile speed. To mod the damage you have to go from the Weapon (which the damage in the Weapon does not actually get applied except in VATS!) to the projectile to the explosion. You can make explosives really powerful by editing the speed of the projectile. Just for fun mod the 25MM HE and 25MM Projectile to have a speed of 50000. Then go take a GMG and find something to kill. Let me tell you NOTHING will surive that. It will make the AMR look like a kids toy. 5-8 Deathclaws will become kibbles and bits in no time. Long range mauling. You should play with the numbers to come up with a good balance. I like going 2 or 3 times default projectile speed.

As for cost, the Frag Grenade costs 200. It should really cost 20. Grenades are not so weak when you chain 2-3 in a VATS attack. Same goes for Dynamite. I think a lot of players have a hard time when they drop 200-400 caps to kill a Raider with 1-2 grenade. When it only costs 20-40 - not so bad.

The last point is rairty. It is a little bit harder to mod, (have to edit merchant leveled lists- let me know and I can email you the exact lists) but the 40MM Grenade Launcher is brutal when you have a steady supply of grenades. Not a problem at all to drop 3-4 Viper Games members at once.

The Brush Gun does 35 DAM less than the AMR, and all of the "cowboy guns" also reload much, much more slowly. The Cowboy perk does help make weapons like the Cowboy Repeater, .357 Magnum Revolver, and Brush Gun very powerful, but when it comes to sniping, I'll always use weapons like the Sniper Rifle and AMR over other Guns because of the accuracy of the former and the extraordinarily high crit damage of the latter. You can put .45-70 Gov't SWC in the Brush Gun for huge damage but it has no scope. You can put .44 Magnum SWC in the Trail Carbine but it doesn't zoom in as much as the Sniper Rifle, isn't as accurate as the Sniper Rifle, and you can also put .308 JSP in the Sniper Rifle.

Most of the weapons in F:NV are very application-specific, but even within those applications there are different considerations for each weapon. To be honest, I do think the Assault Carbine is still an odd weapon in the overall mix of things. I need to look at it again in the context of other Guns, but people have brought up some good points in the thread. Thanks.

I say replace it with the 5.56mm R91 Assault Rifle.

Gobi Campaign scout rifle= sniping goodness

bigcrazewolf

I think you are placing to much weight on reload speed. Seven shots is more then enough to kill most encounters. Key word is encounters. And it is really easy to snipe with the engine in Fallout. With the double crits from sneak attacks, even a distance body shot is deadly against every critter in the game. Shrug, who cares if you hit in the head or not. Dead is dead.

Ahh, times like this I wish I went into game development instead of database development. No one seems to care about about databases in work. Other then to gripe it is not working!

@ JE Sawyer, not to rain on you parade, but the cowboy guns are a bit (more than a bit) overpowered, we have several topics about it, Mudhen is most livid about it.

The 12.7mm SMG has an extremely high DAM and DPS. Also, it can be silenced. When used at close range, the 12.7mm SMG destroys most enemies extremely quickly and almost nothing has the DT to seriously slow it down.

People have asked about modeling progressive spread before, but I'll give the same answer now as then: I also prefer a progressive spread model. It didn't exist in F3 and programming did not have time to implement it. That said, balancing weapons with progressive spread is even more difficult than balancing weapons with fixed spread. If we did have progressive spread, I probably would have cut down the overall number of weapons for more tuning time.

Hey Mr J.E. Sawyer while your talking about guns, I kind of recall in one of the many dev pre-release video interviews you guys did(might of been one of the ones with Liberty in it) there was a gun with a Poseidon Energy logo on it......where is that gun or am I way off :bonk: .

bigcrazewolf

Most of the upward DAM tuning on looping reload weapons during development was because people said the reload speed was so slow that the DAM couldn't make up for it.

Well, the real problem I see is just how damn fast the Courier works the action, perhaps you can lower the RoF about 40% and have Cowboy add +25% RoF as well as +25% DMG. Just a thought.

Thanks Styles .....so how do I get it?, does it work?, it did in the interview video it had a really cool shooting animation.

bigcrazewolf

I up dated my last post to give more detail where it is. Number of ways to get it.