A lot of games set in the modern type settings have problems with making the Assault rifle the be all and end all but in true Relic-style hatchet balancing I think Obsidian over whacked it to the point of uselessness. You need 75 guns to use it without any penalties which is a significant investment combined that with its cost indicates it's not an early game weapon and yet it does a whopping max damage of 12... Vance's submachine does better than that at much lower skill req and it's probably one of the easier and earlier special weapons to find since you find out about it going through the main quest and it's part of the 9mm family that in my current first playthrough was pretty much skipped over as I found 10mm weapons right at Primm.

I like to test my guns on a save game on the gun runner goons and even with AP ammo you have to mag dump a whole 30 round clip on average to kill a soldier that has less HP then the courier does at standard Endurance at the start of the game. Without AP ammo it takes like 2-3 mags. Honestly crap like this really steams my beans, chaps my buns, and roasts my toast. I did a search for "assault carbine" on the forums and while there were often off handed remarks about it being bad it didn't get the outrage that the big huge sniper rifle discussion got. The only mods I saw on the nexus was one that increased it's damage to 14 and DROPPED ITS FIRE RATE making it even worse and a bunch of skins giving it boobs or whatever. So I don't know am I alone here? For me it seems like a good rule a thumb that a lot of games with shooting in it follows is that for a "level appropriate" enemy you should be able to drop their ass (assuming every bullet hit in the chest) within one clip and without having to reload much less multiple times, and generally it's somewhere around 7-13 rounds for games with Arcade logic (Goldeneye, Timesplitters, Combat Arms).

As far as solutions go I was thinking about how other RPGs handled this and unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of WRPGs not set in Tolkein Rip off World #9001 but I think that Shadowrun may have a decent solution. Shadowrun is similar in what Fallout tries to accomplish. It tries to unify multiple and extremely different playstyles onto an even playing field. You can have sword wielding Samurai, a wizard, a diplomatic "Face" person, and an old fashion gun slinger and they all can contribute well to the adventure. For Automatics versus armored dudes (and there a lot these in Shadowrun) for instance a single bullet fired from a gun like the assault carbine might not do anything versus their defenses but a full burst hitting them would as the game sort of abstracts this as like being hit with a really big bullet rather than individual weak shots. So I was wondering maybe if there was a way to make successive shots do more damage for the assault rifle. Like say the first shot does 12 and the one right after 16 then 20 and so on (just an arbitrary example ). So tagging them wouldn't do much but if you were in the ideal range and held them within the stream Ghostbusters style they'd pop pretty quickly. Is such a thing possible in the engine? Any thoughts?

I thought you needed a STR requirement to weild weapons, not skill requirements (though skill helps with damage output of the weapon.) And even then, if you don't meet the requirements, you take a hit to accuracy.

Have you tried using the Assault Carbine in VATS, targeting the head?

It's not the same M4 clone that are featured in your standard fps slugfest - it uses the tiny tiny 5mm rounds which is why it svcks.

It does have the advantage over the smgs that ap ammo is readily available, whereas the 9mm +p only comes in small quantities and isn't that good, and the 10mm jhp must be handloaded and is pretty poop as well.

In attempting to re balance the game; which many people complained that it was too easy to become too powerful in FO3, it seems that Obsidian totally hosed both energy weapons and regular guns. Just look at how badly they hosed the sniper rifle, it used to be a pretty powerful weapon, but it is now utter garbage.

IMO Obsidian went too far in the other direction in attempting to address some of the complaints of FO3.

I would have to think twice before buying another game from them.

Well, what can't the sniper rifle kill in one sneak crit?

I was disappointed with the Assault Carbine as well. It is an ammo hog that does little damage. And you are right that Vance Submachine Gun is just as good and available much earlier. One way to improve it would be to decrease the spread, since it is using a small round.

Sure, the assault carbine might not rain death down from the sky, but there are plenty of times where it's saved my @$$. My primary weapons are revolvers (Lucky and Mysterious Magnum) and I make it a solid rule NOT to take the cowboy perk because it makes things too easy. So when I come up on a situation with a bunch of armored enemies, I can switch to the AR with AP rounds and clean house.

I like to use the Marksman Carbine and LMG, but my strength and guns skill are lacking slightly at this stage in the game, so the AR is the perfect solution. However, by the time I get to level 20 or so, I'm fully prepared to use my weapons of choice so the AR does become a thing of the past.

I seriously not sure want you mean. Assault Carbine is actually very good compare to other 5mm rounds. Not to mention you can buy 5mm in much greater quantity than 9mm.

Its called irony lol ppl wanted a nerf and it became next to useless X D.If obsidians keeps nerfing my weapons i will black list future purchases.

0.o
Sniper is fine.


Agreed. It saved my ass against lanius.

The best weapon to cripple and kill cazadore's at any range outside of VATs, even with fast shot is the assault rifle I've found.
The only problem it suffers from is a very low condition and eats itself up in a very short fashion.

If given surplus ammo it gets better, but at an even greater drop to condition.
It really is a fun weapon and not ott in power.

Sniper WAS fine until they hosed it.

So true. I was so disappointed with what happened with the Gobi Campaign Sniper Rifle in the last patch that I made my first-ever mod. I tweaked 2 numbers and now it's useful and strong again. I didn't want a god rifle; I wanted a good rifle. I'm not good at Guns so it was the only one that made me feel confident about using a gun instead of EW.

If you need a 100 Lockpick Skill to get it and 75 Skill in Guns to use it, the gun should be pretty amazing...the original Gobi.

Head shots in VATS didn't make a difference in the need to mag dump into everything in my experience.



The 5mm assault rifles in the first 2 fallout games were pretty decent IIRC. I assumed they were using some made up caliber for the same reason that Counter Strike uses made up names to describe real world guns.

Ammo availability and number of bullets aren't really advantages because of fast travel and plenty of places to sleep vendors can be farmed quite easily. Also in hardcoe mode carrying all that ammo (and you would need a LOT of it for the assault carbine) is not efficient. Plus it's availability is hampered by the availability of the gun itself as it's pretty flimsy (Another thing vances submachine beats it in outright) and in my game was very rare so you need make even more investments for upkeep (repair kits) and it consumes even more resources. 5mm is only useful for harvesting it's lead and powder for better bullets.

I never had problems taking down Cazadores from a distance using a hunting rifle. I think some of you are experiencing a placebo effect thinking the rapid fire is having an effect but the slower guns work just fine the lever Western guns in particular.

Edit: For those who see no problem with the Assault Carbine (!) do you just not mind reloading and reloading to kill one enemy? I know some people tolerate a lot weird things in RPGs but this is something that I can't wrap my mind around as it is just WAY too goofy. Especially since there are guns present in the game that can kill things more efficiently and use the same gun skill.

Anything that a Cowboy Repeater cannot kill in one sneak crit.

Sniper was OP. %100 crit chance for something that's so easy to get? Really?

At what level and difficulty are you talking about it being ineffectve.

On Normal hard core with a gun skill of 86+, agility 4, no rapid reload and the cross hairs off, I was still killing Cazadore's on average 1.5 clips with surplus..
The most clips used for one was 2.5, the least 1 or under.
With ordinary ammo the count was only slightly higher.
The build itself lacked the uber perks normally used at level 18 such as finesse and better criticals.

I'll try later on a trooper, however..

Honestly I see no problem with the gun.

Assault Carbine is ok on VH difficulty, but since the Marksman Carbine exists, I rarely use the Assault. With the Assault's comparatively giant spread, there seems no point, unless you're roleplaying a chr. who really loves the weapon or something, of course.

Even Boone doesn't like it overmuch.

Sniper rifles are meant for taking out enemies from afar. Try clearing out Cottonwood Cove from up the hills with a repeater. (something I did with the ratslayer)

I tried to use it instead of my 12.7 SMG (Its a great gun, mag empties really fast) and got killed by Simon, I had 42 DT, i couldn't do crap to him. Its a 75 Guns weapon (Like the sniper, trail carbine, and L-A Shotgun) with a hefty price tag. But its less useful than a .44 Magnum, which 1-hit killed Simon, i am disappoint

Um, how does that justify nerfing the sniper rifle to Cowboy Repeater level of damage? You do know that the Cowboy Repeater can be picked up on the road to Nipton? At level 3?

Nobody is going to argue against the reduction from 5x to 1x crit multi. But the further reduction in base DAM (from 62 to 42) was completely unnecessary. Sawyer whacked the sniper rifle twice with his nerf stick, and the second time was for fun-sies.

What he means is it takes huge amounts of ammo to kill anything with what should be at least as strong as the Service Rifle, but comes up as being worse than many pistols. plus it costs like 8,000 bucks as opposed to a 9mm smg that costs like a couple hundred max.

I don't like that the harder difficulties are basically a multiplier to enemy damage with a nerf to player damage instead of say more intelligent/better equipped enemies. So yeah I'd consider Normal mode along with hardcoe to be the default game when talking about balance discussions. I just recently encountered some Cazadors myself and I had no problem taking out an advlt and two babys within one clip of an All American and another hip firing my Hunting Rifle with JSP in under five hits so Even without the extended mag I wouldn't have to reload. I tested the surplus ammo on the Gun runner goons and didn't notice a change in the number of clips needed to drop an 18 armor 150-180 HP human. It's still 2-3 mags without armor piercing. Meanwhile even though I have around 300 HP now I lost almost half my health with a 20 DT from their Hunting rifles shooting standard .308 while I was whittling a dude down....




Pretty much. The Assault carbine at max damage cannot pierce the standard boy scout uniform of an average NCR goon. NCR armor is 10 plus their pith helmet for 2 is 12; the same damage per bullet coming off an expensive hard to repair gun. The trail carbine is actually valued at 50 caps cheaper and when I tried it against those gun runner goons I wacked one with 3 shots with regular .44 ammo. It simply doesn't justify it's presence when compared to what's available. Maybe if it was right by the door of the docs house when you start the game. The Varmint rifle used for picking off things far away and the Assault carbine up close. Even looking at this video where a guy is attacking the sub 100 hp powder gangers (40-85 hp according to the wiki) he still has to reload alot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NMKJsNhQaI

This. Crap man, Vances 9mm SMG is better then the assault carbine! Even a regular 9mm SMG is pretty close to a Assault Carbine. Give me a friggin 5.56 Assault Rifle. Or a 7.62 Assault Rifle. Some full auto weapon that is not a turd. It is like the devs got caught up in this Lever Action world. Some darn Cowboy/Brush/Trail Carbine beats out most modern weapons. People are not morons, they are not going to equip there armies with sub-par weapons...... In the Fallout World 1800's tech beats out everything modern, blows my mind. Why not bring back black powder muskets so they could do more damage then an assault rifle. Or missile launcher or a grenade rifle or laser or plasma. LOL, 1800's tech beats all! Dumb, just dumb.

And if you are sayin a Assault Carbine is good then go get Vances or a 12.7 SMG. They blow this gun out of the water! Even a 10mm Smg blows this gun out. Sad, just sad.

I like the Assualt Carbine. Works just fine for me.