Forum Stuff 08.06

[Section8]

In every single fallout game, you really only have the choice of picking Small guns, Unarmed, or Melee at the beginning. If you were to take none of those, and tag, Big or NRG, you would have a VERY tough time getting to the point in the game where you could actually use those skills.

I think the real problem with this is evidenced by Fallout 2's sloppy design. In Fallout, you could start with a 10mm pistol if you were a small gunner, but in Fallout 2, you had to go through quite a bit just to get a pipe rifle, and like you said, god help you if you want to tag Big Guns or Energy Weapons.

The obvious solution is to provide some low level weapons for each category early in the game. The only thing that needs to be addressed is world continuity, as I can imagine it would be hard to justify an energy wepon of any kind in the predominantly low tech starting locales in previous Fallouts.

But thinking about it more, what if Big Guns and Energy Weapons are intended as "extended" or supplementary combat skills? It's obvious to some extent that both are high end weapon skills, but I don't think it's entirely fair to a player who chooses to NOT tag Small Guns to have to compensate for the lack of suitable weapons early in the game. Not to mention that having skills intended as supplementaries clashes with the whole philosophy of an open ended system.

Which brings us back simply making the choice of Big Guns or Energy Weapons more valid during the early stages of the game.

[~Kagemaru~]

I mean, it seems really silly, if your character knew how to use a minigun, yet didn't know how to shoot a pistol.

Maybe, for having the 1 gun skill in FO3, you have to reach a certain rank to start using the big guns?? like when you reach 80, you can use rifles and smgs, 150 use minigun, 200 use rocket launcher? Something like that. That could be what JE's doing. It's not like you know all the weapons in the first place, and move up from there.

[Sol Invictus]

That -is- what he's doing. But we, frankly, disagree with it. I prefer my rifles and my pistols to miniguns.

[bloodbathmaster2]

The only flaw I can really see in JE's arguments about fewer gun skills is that he believes that pistol = minigun, when in fact the reality is that no matter what the case, in any action game or movie, pistol < minigun. Trying to balance smaller weapons with bigger weapons can't work because bigger weapons are simply better. Which is why they need their own skill. Not for reality's sake, but for the sake of balance.

Edit: let me clarify myself. Here's what I posted at the Iplay boards...

Having read a lot of what JE has had to say on the subject, I am yet unclear what he intends to implement in a hypothetical Fo3. He has sujested at a time the merging of gun skills to two, and at other times one skill. In case of the latter scenerio, to compensate for this, one must spend perks to get better at specific weapon types. This lends a lot from the 3e DnD ruleset. but the problem I see in this is that in the SPECIAL system you don't start the game with any perks, whereas in the 3e ruleset, you start with two feats (if you are human). Now if that was to be changed, there would also have to be a lot more non-combat perks for the non-combat people to start with. I mean, as it is, almost all non-combat perks do little more than improove your skills.

Also, in regards to attempts to make pistols more viable, while putting more restrictions on heavier weapons, its kind of silly. At a first glance, it seems a good way to balance out guns. But the notion that pistol = assault rifle is insulting. Not just in reality, but in any action game or movie, pistol < assault rifle. Trying to balance smaller weapons with bigger weapons can't work because bigger weapons need to be better. There is a reason we don't fight wars with spears anymore. Melee is always going to be a secondary fighting option. As are pistols. The SPECIAL system worked this fact into its fold by making the path of a fighter a progressive one, abandoning small guns for bigger guns. It kept them from using skill points in other areas, too, allowing only diehard stealthboys to successfully sneak, and only science wizzes to hack military computers. I thought this was already balanced.

Now I'm not saying that what you've suggested is wrong. I think that if you put your mind to it, you Black Isle boys can find a way to balance SPECIAL with only one gun skill. But what I think would be more worthwhile would be to find ways of making the current system work better. Fallout 2 make unarmed a fun skill to tag. Fallout Tactics made use of sneak for the first time. Balancing guns I feel can be done by making the big guns the badass weapons they were intended to be. And, as you yourself have said, removing the armorpiercing instant crit of death. Making a minigun actually useful (which it wasn;t in any previous Fallout game), yet making the ammo hard to get balances it out. I'm probably not saying anything new here, but I just feel like you're looking in the wrong place.