Duck and Cover

I've read plenty of posts on the experience levels of recruits in the recruit pool vs those on your squad. I'd like to share my findings and await confirmations.

Squad of 5 plus PC goes on a mission comes back having gained 1000 XP each. Head to the recruit pool, toss your 5 squaddies back into the pool and get any 5 OTHER recruits INTO your squad (viewing them is not enough). When you view them, they will show the xp increase, but the increase is only permanent after you ADD them to your squad. Those that you ADD INTO your squad will gain the same XP as those you just tossed out.

Eg, after returning from 2nd mission, I went to the recruit pool and took a look at Jax (who had stayed at home) he showed the exact same xp increase as farsight and stitch (who did all the killings). I did not add him to my squad. took new squad to the QM and then came back. Looked at Jax again. No increase in XP.

My story: I tossed stitch as soon as I got back from the 2nd mission. but everytime i get back to the base, he's the first guy i yank out of the recruit pool so that i can use his barter to offload the junk. My char is now lvl 16, and so is stitch, but i can show you that he has approximately 1 raider kill from Brahim Wood. Mandy who also appeared after mission one however, is still a stinky 1000XP recruit, cos i never added her to my squad in between missions.

What this means is that you can effectively manage a pool of 10 recruits for maximum XP gain. It makes for great gameplaying

One of the problems that many fallout players face is ammo shortage. It takes a lot of 7.62s to kill a brahmin. simply not worth the ammo for the xp you get. Furthermore, it is unlikely that ALL your gun wielding team mates will be able to tell the pointy end of a spear from the other. end result, in order for the gun slingers to gain levels you have to kill a lot of muties just so that you can recover the ammo. looting bodies is a time sucker.

Exploiting the XP gain 'bug', I have created a two teams - one to go on the missions. A healthy mix of guns, guns and guns. (you wanna melee the 300HP heavy weapon turret? be my guest)

The other team is pure fist, fangs, claws, feet and flying hair. Melee Mothers each and everyone. give them a gun and they WILL use it.... like a big club. in between missions, this is the group that goes around pummeling deathclaws for 600-1000 xp per encounter per team member. Dun forget that the shooters lazing around in the recruit pool are getting the EXACT same amt as the brawlers.

The trick is to remember to add the shooters to your squad the moment you get back to base.

advantages - no ammo expended, no need to waste time looting bodies. Melee in CTB is bliss.

cons- the AI is stupid, after gang-raping one deathclaw, the entire team will just stand around until you point them at the next luckless victim. no such problem with shooters who will just shoot the next available target.

Your PC character will at least have to be well armoured, if not versatile. Good idea to dump all driving and outdoors books on him so that he can serve both squads. Charisma of 6 is a MUST if only to get the leader perk - plus one AG and 5 AC to all the melee ppl

This way, I get to enjoy playing shoot and hide as well as brainless brawling and sharing that lovely XP all around while hoarding ammo for the missions.

Very little has been expounded on melee combat, here is what i found out:

APs are absolute critical. Go action boy and Faster HTH bonus to poke em 4 times with the diamond spear. by the 3rd poke of 20-30 damage each, they should be on their backs trying to keep all the air in their peforated bodies from leaking into the atmosphere.

Finally found a use for stonewall. being knocked down makes me lose APs

HTH evade increases the AC of your chars by up to 37 points!!!! (unarmed 300%) A real reason to increase skills beyond 150%. Works best with deathclaws cos they do plenty of damage with their bare hands. human fingernails tend to break too easily.

Might be good to have Doc tagged for your PC, cos of the high occurences of crippled and blind when you get down and dirty with deathclaws. However, with increased AC, this stopped being a problem. after taking on 12 baby deathclaws, just some scratches. hence the advantages of LEADER perk

Melee against Muties... gonna hurt unless you do it TB which is too slow for my liking. besides, they are worth less XP then deathclaws.

Well... that's my dissertation on XP in FOT. comments?

I've known that recruits left behind tend to still gain xp, but I've assumed that it's only the ones that you've already had in your party and swapped out, I didn't realise that it affected recruits that you had never taken before as well. But then I tend to stick with the same recruits until the end maybe swapping out one or two for a single mission if I need an explosives expert etc. That way I have more control over their development.

Personally I don't see how exploiting a bug is any different than opening the recruits up in the editor and boosting their xp, saves time doing it the latter way. As to saving ammo, well there's so much available anyway, sure it can be a bit of a drag searching all the bodies and containers but that is such a part of this type of game and I can't seem to stop even when I tell myself not to waste my time. : )

There aren't that many Deathclaws to be taken out anyway, not unless you are wandering around looking for random encounters. Which the way they are done, I don't believe really fit into the type of game and storyline line that is FOT anyway. I've never discovered more than 2 special and a handful of random encounters each time I've played through, and I usually still manage to reach the level cap by the end of the game.

Well since AFAIK this doesn't affect MP then I suppose whatever rocks your boat goes.

Quincy has alot of angry deathclaws.

I have found that for some missions a squad of 3 melee guys with a backup of aimed snipers is very deadly. As long as they have good armor the melee guys can take down an enemy quickly and only have to contend with a little damage. Once they hit, the enemy does not have a chance to fire back. The goal is to knock the enemy unconcsious with the snipers and then quickly take them out with melee. Or you can flank and sneak in close with the melee and then jump up to hammer away.

It seems really difficult for me to knock anyone unconscious with a well placed shot to the head. Even with critical chance of 31% finess, luck 6 and more crits (x3).

I have seen my deathclaw knock down a baddie with the first blow, stand over the poor sod and just slap him silly without him being able to return a single shot in CTB.

CTB is really advantageous to the melee types.

Higher chance of knockdowns, which effectively reduces APs to zero and it starts regenerating. will require at least 4 for a single shot if enemy does not have perks or traits. Meanwhile, by the 3rd AP, my melee guy will deliver another bash that keeps the bozo counting stars on his back.

Deathclaws rule at knockdown, and it doesn't matter that they don't do as much damage with their claws. I equip my melee types with micro-sledge if only becos it appears to give me more knockdowns.

I wonder if anyone has tried completing FOT without firing a single shot?

I can imagine that some missions like St Louis and Kansas city will be a real bitch.

I'm not disputing the usefulness of melee/unarmed characters, though after mission 7 unless you have a ripper or powerfist they don't tend to last very long. Just the exploitation of a bug in the game and spending so much time building up two sets of recruits. I've found on the easy and normal levels of play a recruit with 50-60% in unarmed or melee armed (normally the default starting level with a min strength of 5 and agility of 6) with a suitable weapon can survive until they meet the Super Mutants. To that end I normally have all my squad carry combat knives as a back up weapon. Of course I try not to have people with only such a lightweight weapon take on a Deathclaw toe to toe, although by the time I meet the Deathclaws I usually have plenty of ammo.

elmoo wrote:It seems really difficult for me to knock anyone unconscious with a well placed shot to the head. Even with critical chance of 31% finess, luck 6 and more crits (x3).

What weapon and ammo are you using? Having my riflemen take down and keep down foes is a standard part of my tactics. Though leg and groin shots can be very effective at making some foes immobile. : )

elmoo wrote:I wonder if anyone has tried completing FOT without firing a single shot?

Yeah I've tried a similar route but with more emphasis on throwing, I even made throwing knives and throwing stars lighter, cheaper and available in great quantity to equip a squad of ninja type characters, but once you start taking on the SMs it starts to become a chore, and I always seem to lose at least 20% of my throwing weapons each mission, the enemy always seem to fall onto the last knife/star thrown which means I can retrieve it.

Well, I've finished FOT like 3 times with a very heavy reliance on guns. Seeing as how the game is SOOOOO linear, I thot I'd just try to finish it pure melee.

Unlike previous FO1&2 where having really dumb characters opened up whole new dialogue options as well as having a whole gamut of choices and NPCs to affect the storyline, i guess with FOT its just figuring out how to kill in different ways.

My shooter has PE 9 Luck 6 More crits (x3) and is using the sniper rifle aimed at the muties head (95%). Small arms skill at 150%.

Unless having a higher skill will give you better criticals, I rarely manage to knock the mutie unconscious before I kill him.


BTW, I couldn't find the races.txt file in any of my dirs.

elmoo wrote:BTW, I couldn't find the races.txt file in any of my dirs.

Ah yeah sorry you'd need to unpack the '.BOS' files, to save you unpacking them all the races.txt is in 'entities_0.BOS' along with the punch and kick entities and the items.txt is in 'locale_0.BOS'. You can open them up by opening a winzip window and then dragging and dropping the '.BOS' file into the winzip window.