Weapon Ideas

[Kashluk]

Yes, I know that... FO can't be made realistic, it's just a dream. But shotguns "lost their edge", when you couldn't kill an unarmored opponent with a one shotgun blast to it's head

[Blarg]

These were the problems that I had with shotguns in the game as well. A shotgun shouldn't have 1/2 to 3/5 of the range of a sniper rifle, nor should being hit by one be trivial.

However, shotguns are devastating to unarmored or lightly armored targets at close range. To paraphrase Viktor, 12 or so .30 or so caliber pellets hitting at the same time should sting a bit. I propose the following mod to 12-gauge ammo to reflect this:

AC mod -25 or so to reflect the spread of shot.
DR mod +35 or so to reflect the relatively poor penetration of buckshot vs. bullets.
Damage mod 2/1 due to lotsa pellets all at once.

I like the idea of rifled slugs for shotguns as well. They would give longer range and better armor penetration, being essentially big (about 17mm for 12 gauge) bullets.

[OnTheBounce]

I like the idea of rifled slugs for shotguns as well.

This was something that I thought that FoT addressed until I accidentally tore my squad up with slugs. Hey, the item description said "slug", so I figured it would be a safe thing to use when you were worried about friendly fire. Boy was I wrong...

I'm not saying that shotguns don't need work in the FO universe. Not at all. All I'm saying is that arguments based on physics aren't really applicable since this isn't a realistic game. The final arbiter of weapons statistics is game balance.

However, I do think that no shotgun should have a range of more than 15 hexes/meters/metres.

OTB

[Kashluk]

--- or at least the damage beyond that range should be dramatically lowered

[Kozmo_Naut]

--- or at least the damage beyond that range should be dramatically lowered

...and have a wide spread...

[Slider]

...and have a wide spread...

Well if you played FOT then you would know that shotties had a very wide arc in that game unlike in FO & FO2.

[Kashluk]

Yup... Actually, the only good thing in Fo:T (IMHO) is the more realistic damage delivery

[Viktor]

I like the idea of rifled slugs for shotguns as well.

This was something that I thought that FoT addressed until I accidentally tore my squad up with slugs. Hey, the item description said "slug", so I figured it would be a safe thing to use when you were worried about friendly fire. Boy was I wrong...

I'm not saying that shotguns don't need work in the FO universe. Not at all. All I'm saying is that arguments based on physics aren't really applicable since this isn't a realistic game. The final arbiter of weapons statistics is game balance.

However, I do think that no shotgun should have a range of more than 15 hexes/meters/metres.

OTB

I take it you've never played "What will my shotgun do to this?" in a scrap yard before, OTB???

If you miss the engine/steering system in a modern car, your standard 3/4 ounce 12 gauge (2 3/4" chamber - non magnum) slug load will penetrate 'fender to fender'......

My ideas on weapon max ranges:-

Pistols & Shotguns - 15 hexes

SMG's - 20 hexes

Assault rifles/grenade and rocket launchers - 35 hexes

Light/medium machine guns and full size rifles - 40 hexes

Heavy machine guns and sniper rifles - 50 hexes


As stated previously, damage done by any weapon is a balance of gameplay and realism. However, I do believe a face full of shotgun or a head/eye hit on an unarmoured target should be fatal....

[Kozmo_Naut]

My ideas on weapon max ranges:-

Pistols & Shotguns - 15 hexes

SMG's - 20 hexes

Assault rifles/grenade and rocket launchers - 35 hexes

Light/medium machine guns and full size rifles - 40 hexes

Heavy machine guns and sniper rifles - 50 hexes

It seems very balanced to me!

There should be some difference between various versions of the same kind of weapon, though...

[Kashluk]

In which category would you place my signature gun, Vik? :twisted:
"Worse than shotguns", maybe? Heheheh

[Viktor]

In which category would you place my signature gun, Vik? :twisted:
"Worse than shotguns", maybe? Heheheh

Some where between SMGs and assault rifles maybe?? Since the barrel's so short, I'd imagine that a good amount of propellent is still combusting as the bullet leaves the barrel - resulting in far lower muzzle velocity than the standard rifle.....

[Kashluk]

Right... Well, the .338 Magnum sure does have a punch

But I'm not all sure how much in total the length of the barrel affects the firearm's range?

Please civilize me, Vik!

[Viktor]

Right... Well, the .338 Magnum sure does have a punch

But I'm not all sure how much in total the length of the barrel affects the firearm's range?

Please civilize me, Vik!

I think you're already pretty civilised already, Kashluk!

I'll just try to inform instead, eh?

Because the bullet form a gas tight seal in the barrel, the expanding gases (from the propellent combusting in the cartridge) are contained behind the bullet until the pressure increases to the point where they overcome the friction of the bullet against the rifling in the barrel and the bullet starts to move towards the muzzle.

The longer the gases push the bullet for, the higher the velocity of the bullet when it leaves the barrel. Basically for the same bullet weight, increasing velocity = increasing range (or distance travelled by bullet)

The trick is to make the barrel long enough to get the maximum 'push' from propellent gases, but not so long that the friction of the bullet against the rifling starts to slow the bullet down again...

A faster burning propellent means you get max 'push' on the bullet earlier and can then use a shorter barrel. The slow burning of black powder is why muzzle loading rifles had such long barrels...

[Kashluk]

Thanks for "informing" me, Viktor!

I was guessing something like that, but wasn't sure if it was total BS or not. Thanks again

[Darwin_187]

My Remington 870 (26" barrel - modified choke) used to put all 12 pieces of '0' buckshot (2 3/4" shell) in the standard NATO charging man target at 25 yards - as each .30" ball should have about the same energy as a .380 ACP bullet; that's around 3200 Joules of energy put into the target (if they don't exit!).

That's the same as 2 x 240 grain .44 Mag JHPs or 6 x 240 grain .45 FMJs! Imagine a five round burst from a Pancor using the same 'average' 12ga round....If all 60 pellets hit you, that's like 10 .44Mag rounds or a whole 30 round clip from a .45 Thompson SMG!!!

Even wearing totally bulletproof armour, the impact would be like walking in front of a car doing 30 MPH! No F**king way would you just shrug that off!!

Good point, but you actually seem to be underestimating the potential of a 12 gauge- I know for a fact that 00 buckshot does as much damage per ball (with typically 18 balls in a 3 inch magnum round) as a 9mm submachinegun (ie +p+) round. 00 Buck is capable (In my experience) of hitting and killing a man sized target (well, a rather largish rodent, in this case) out to approximately 75 meters.

The problem with shot guns is that most people assume the load used is a #8 to #6 size shot, when these loads wouldn't ever be used against anything larger that a rabbit if the shooter knew what they were doing.

As far as the relevance of all this crap to fallout... well, I always just went with the assumption that the HP were your 'toughness' while the majority of your protection came from the armor you had (yeah yeah, don't ruin the mystique for me, damnit.)

ah well, peace all.
Darwin.

[OnTheBounce]

I take it you've never played "What will my shotgun do to this?" in a scrap yard before, OTB???

If you miss the engine/steering system in a modern car, your standard 3/4 ounce 12 gauge (2 3/4" chamber - non magnum) slug load will penetrate 'fender to fender'......

Actually I have, but you're talking about slugs, while I was talking about buckshot. I did learn not to shoot 7-1/2 shot from my 12 gauge at fiberglass camoflage net supports. They can - and will! - bounce right off and come back at you!

My ideas on weapon max ranges:-

Pistols & Shotguns - 15 hexes

SMG's - 20 hexes

Assault rifles/grenade and rocket launchers - 35 hexes

Light/medium machine guns and full size rifles - 40 hexes

Heavy machine guns and sniper rifles - 50 hexes

*hehe* This morning I was sitting on the crapper and thinking about lowering the pistol ranges almost across the board. The low-AP cost of pistols and the fact that they have longer range than the SMGs in my mod/campaign is actually something of a balance issue. I'm going to look into this. I will be leaving some pistols w/longer ranges than 15 hexes, though, e.g. Cassull and .44 Mag. Revs., which do not feature the low-AP cost that other pistols do.

I'm going to leave the range of 46-50 hexes the domain of the sniper, though. It's a balance issue, since I think that the Sniper characters should basically be able to sit back and cover the rest of your squad's advance. If you don't give them that extra edge in range, you're looking to have your assaulting/advancing elements cut to ribbons by stray fire as the enemy HMGs continually try to hit the sniper(s) w/ineffective, long-ranged fire.

I noticed that you have the RPG pegged at 35 hexes. I'm going to putz around a little w/this one. Perhaps I'll keep it at 40 hexes w/"Short" range categories, or drop it to 35 w/"Long" range categories. These weapons are so dangerous to the user that I think they need to be terrifying to the enemy to make up for it. (Not to mention that there needs to be something to knock out vehicles w/2-3 hits!)

Thanks for the input. (Even though this was for FO3!)

OTB

[Viktor]

I noticed that you have the RPG pegged at 35 hexes. I'm going to putz around a little w/this one. Perhaps I'll keep it at 40 hexes w/"Short" range categories, or drop it to 35 w/"Long" range categories. These weapons are so dangerous to the user that I think they need to be terrifying to the enemy to make up for it. (Not to mention that there needs to be something to knock out vehicles w/2-3 hits!)

Thanks for the input. (Even though this was for FO3!)

OTB

Oooops....I kinda forgot it was the FO3 form...Sorry!

I think I had a bit of real world realism on board for the RPG = 35 hexes thing. I guess I expect your average RPG/LAW/LAW80 or descendant to have a top range around 300 metres, i.e. the same as an assault rifle.

Because of the high AP cost to fire an RPG, I like to have snipers (just out of 'RPG own goal' range) to keep the target from taking my RPG dude out before he can fire...

[Saint_Proverbius]

*hehe* This morning I was sitting on the crapper and thinking about lowering the pistol ranges almost across the board. The low-AP cost of pistols and the fact that they have longer range than the SMGs in my mod/campaign is actually something of a balance issue. I'm going to look into this. I will be leaving some pistols w/longer ranges than 15 hexes, though, e.g. Cassull and .44 Mag. Revs., which do not feature the low-AP cost that other pistols do.

That depends on the pistols really. It sounds like you're talking about the gauss pistol, but a lot of the pistols aren't exactly cheap in terms of bang for the buck unless you use One Hander. I'm talking about Fallout and Fallout 2 though, not FOT. I'm ot even sure One Hander works in FOT.

Pistols should have a longer range than an SMG though, for their equivalent power level. It's a trade off between ease of hitting and just spamming bullets.

I'm going to leave the range of 46-50 hexes the domain of the sniper, though. It's a balance issue, since I think that the Sniper characters should basically be able to sit back and cover the rest of your squad's advance. If you don't give them that extra edge in range, you're looking to have your assaulting/advancing elements cut to ribbons by stray fire as the enemy HMGs continually try to hit the sniper(s) w/ineffective, long-ranged fire.

I agree with that. 40-50 range should be hunting/sniper/guass rifle ranges. One of the worst things about FOT was the gauss minigun. IIRC, it had a range of 40, which was basically insane for a burst weapon that did the kind of damage it did.

Just for balance issues alone, burst weapons should alway have less range than the shot shot weapons. After all, a burst weapon is going to do a lot more damage than the sniper weapon, and to more people per turn.

I noticed that you have the RPG pegged at 35 hexes. I'm going to putz around a little w/this one. Perhaps I'll keep it at 40 hexes w/"Short" range categories, or drop it to 35 w/"Long" range categories. These weapons are so dangerous to the user that I think they need to be terrifying to the enemy to make up for it. (Not to mention that there needs to be something to knock out vehicles w/2-3 hits!)

Even 35 hexes is a huge range for an RPG/Rocket launcher, given that they do area damage. This is especially the case if you're refering to FOT where the explosions are larger and do more damage.

[Viktor]

Obviously, there would be some variation within the weapons classes.

I wouldn't expect a .25 'Saturday nigh special' to have the same range as a 6" barrelled S&W M29 or a Micro Uzi to be capable of 100m headshots like an H&K MP5 can.

The trick is not to balance the range of the weapons, but the 'effective' ranges, i.e. the max distance a weapon could hit the desired target and do actual damage to it.

The PE and small guns skill of the user should be a modifier to the user's chance to hit the desired target, but not at the expense of game balance.

For example, even the most accurate sniper rifle known to man shouldn't give an NPC with PE 5 and small guns 50% a 95% chance of a head shot at 45 hexes. The reverse should also be true in that even an NPC with PE 10 and small guns 150% should not be able hit anything at 25 hexes with an UZI if the weapon's max range is 20 hexes.

I don't know what the big guns skill of your average Super Mutant is, but I know their PE is pretty poor which really pisses me off as it appears that any SM with a .50 BMG can can regularly hit my prone or partially in-cover snipers at around the 45-50 hex range, when my snipers (avg. PE 8 and small guns 100+%) are doing well to make 3 out 4 shots count at this range!

I know that the high ST of SMs means that they might well be able to keep a .50 BMG on target during a burst, but their low PE means they shouldn't be able to f**king see my squad at over 35 hexes, let alone hit them!!

I remember reading in the old forums that the .50 BMG was a heavily bugged/unbalanced weapon, so may be it's not the SMs fault, but I know my 2 troopers that can use this weapon (one is PE 6/ST9 and the other PE 9/ST7 + Bracing perk) don't get half the extreme range hits the SMs seem capable of pulling off.... One thing I learned the hard way about this weapon is that it's friendly fire arc seems to be about 120 degrees and anyone in front of the muzzle in any direction better have lots off stimpacks handy!!!

[Headroom]

something that can squish powersuites like bugs