Duck and Cover

I wouldn't recommend getting rid of energy weapons - just make them harder to get.

An energy weapon is like a magical sword +5 in a fantasy rpg... I'd say make lasers and plasma about as hard to get ahold of as gauss and pulse weapons... Then it balances things out more.

And why the hell do energy weapons do such crappy damage anyway? I mean, the .223 autoloader is more effective than the plasma pistol or the laser pistol. The bozar does more damage than the Gatling laser...

I mean I can take a .223 autoloader to the face of a enclave guard and do more damage per shot than a plasma rifle. And we all know that the bozar has the same average damage rating as the gatling laser - just it shoots 5 more shots (25+35 = 60, 20+40 = 60; 60/2 = 30, so both of them have the same average dmg rating), and it seems that .223 bullets are so superior to normal bullets anyway...

Get rid of ernergy weapons? Well they are stupid but they are already there so FO3 woud need them.

I don't know about you but when I shot someone in the eyes with a laser rifle it did more damage than using a sniper rifle.

As for PTTM's reasoning(which there is none) about taking out energy weapons, I really don't see a valid reason to take them out since the industry was making a shift to fusion power.

Anyone ever play starsiege (prequel to tribes 1 & 2)?-
I want a motherfucking Micro Fusion Assault Cannon- basically a large bore plasma rifle that uses a whole (ie- 50) fusion cell per shot and does high damage- like a gauss minigun, only more realistic and in keeping with FO cannon (maybe only one in the game, found in a high tech research facility?).

Another highenergy weapon noone has mentioned is the particle beam/ion cannon (more or less the same thing, IMHO)- if FO3 winds up being 3d, this would look sweet....

Hey, what about a sonic gun. A large gun that has this big dish in front and fires a wave of sound that blows the enemy off the map or makes them completely deaf.
It could be high tech stuff in the Fallout universe!

To have some fucking gun full of mortal stuff is good, but some more ordinary stuff is good too. Some food from prewar times, capable of dealing with all Enclave. Some super-duper rock launcher with laser tagert is good too. Spears and arrows with some drugstuff - let's smb have fun. Fists are good too - to smash one's brain with one hit - especially if it is mutans brain... Well, I don't know. I am tired of all that high tec stuff - old good shotgun is better!

i'd like to see the option to put anything in the weapon slot, a boot, a twig, etc. funny, AND useful in a pinch. :idea:

I have always wanted to use the shovel as a weapon...

*THWACK!* :twisted:

You TOO. My dream is to get super-mega shovel with nuclear reactor and laser support system... But an ordinary shovel is good enough too. To smash so Gecko's head with it... Feels, like blood is covering it's rusty iron... Yeah, splendid...

http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/ga ... 0/1732.htm

The pancor was the best fucking gun in Fall Out, always was, always will be.
It's what I'll use when I track down and kill you all.

Pancor, well oh...maybe shotguns should do just a little less damage in fallout 3 so there would be a reason not to use them.
Personaly i would like to see some more handcrafted firearms that have been constructed with residu from pre-war times.

Lynxer wrote:Pancor, well oh...maybe shotguns should do just a little less damage in fallout 3 so there would be a reason not to use them.
Personaly i would like to see some more handcrafted firearms that have been constructed with residu from pre-war times.

The main reason to use them in FO 1 & 2 is that 95% of your enemies are either within the 'Pancor Zone' when combat starts or rush straight towards you making all your long range weapons that do less damage per shot or don't have burst fire a bad choice unless you like reloading your last saved game a lot....

Making enemy AI smarter (FO:T was an improvement..), where an enemy in cover with a rifle outside shotgun range will use this advantage rather than charging you with a lead pipe, would be the best way to ensure players save combat shotgun for 'wave' attacks.

Yup... The range of shotguns in FO1 & 2 was ridicilous, but the damage wasn't really realistic either I mean close shot to the head from two-barrelled, doesn't leave you up with "no scars" in RL, doesn't it?

uh, oh, it is though. Shotguns have been made to tenderly strike ones flesh without inflicting damage haven't they? I'd say leaving a face unscathed after an assault at point blank range where the barrel nearly got swallowed by the person you were aiming at is quite logical indeed.

Kashluk wrote:Yup... The range of shotguns in FO1 & 2 was ridicilous, but the damage wasn't really realistic either I mean close shot to the head from two-barrelled, doesn't leave you up with "no scars" in RL, doesn't it?

Too short or too long range, Kashluk???

My thoughts on realistic shotgun damage and range:-

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!!

I mean too long range. It was easy to cause full damage and have 95 hitting percent from a mile

And that nice formula you have about that 870 remington... But what about, when in reality most of the pellets won't hit, some will go through and the energy they have in their movement slows down because of some outside effects (wind etc.)?

Propably not even close to the same damage as 10 rnds of .44

a mounted gun on a car would be really nice

Problem with that. How could you drive the car AND fire the weapon? You party members would no doubt lack the intelligence to drive and would end up shooting the car more than the enemies.

you could have a system like a panel in the car to aim the gun and fire it. or you could have FO:T style squad, controling where to drive and where to shoot. imagine a mounted Browning Or Bozar.

Before everybody starts getting too carried away w/trying to calculate weapons' damage potential from various physics forumlae - probably already too late for that! - I have to remind everyone that all of the FO games feature a Hit Point-based system. (It's not called "health", this is the mark of the console munchkin!) Hit Points are an abstraction that represent a variety of different factors including, but not limited to physical damage.

Basically, your HP represent not only your capacity to absorb physical punishment, but also your skill at evading attacks that would have laid a lesser mortal low, will to carry on in the face of adversity, and even luck/divine intervention. This is why discussions about kinetic energy, temporary vs. permanent wound channel, etc., are in effect bunk since there are metaphysical as well as physical factors at work here. The amount of physical damage that your character can absorb peaks out not long after his/her adventuring career begins and all of his/her muscles have hardened up as much as they're going to. After that it's all skill and the other factors mentioned above.

Basically, game balance is the final arbiter just how much damage a weapon does. A Hunting Rifle should be as deadly to your character when he/she first encounters it as a Gauss Rifle is when it is first encountered.

OTB