How many firearms are enuff for FOT ?

[Ripper]

Personally i find there are too many SMGS and pistols.

I prefer 3 of each type.

The M249 is plain annoying since its 7.62mm and i had to change it to 5.56 X 45mm.

Certain glitches in the guns & ammo too. For example AK47s use the 7.62 X 39 mm round, so how can this round be compaitable with the M60 ?

And FOT takes place in the USA, there should be more M16s than AK47s, this is definitely unforgivable. :mad:

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Personally i find there are too many SMGS and pistols.

I prefer 3 of each type.

The M249 is plain annoying since its 7.62mm and i had to change it to 5.56 X 45mm.

Certain glitches in the guns & ammo too. For example AK47s use the 7.62 X 39 mm round, so how can this round be compaitable with the M60 ?

And FOT takes place in the USA, there should be more M16s than AK47s, this is definitely unforgivable. :mad:

I always wondered where all the AK47's and Skorpions came from, maybe leftovers from the Chinese invasion force? : ) Though then what happen to all the guns of the American Forces?

Anyway I would of prefered that they had kept to the guns from FO with only a couple from FO2 ie the H&K G11.

[OnTheBounce]

Though then what happen to all the guns of the American Forces?

The "Assault Rifle" (AK-112) was the shoulder arm being used by second-line units of the US Armed Forces when The Bomb dropped. First-line units had upgraded to energy weapons by that point.

As to how many weapons make for a good FoT catalogue...well, I'm sure that's wide open to debate. If you're looking to mod the game it would depend on which of the following two paths you want to take:

1. Give players a gradual curve when updating their weapons.
2. Give players a radical curve when updating their weapons.

In the first case, there isn't a huge difference between weapons, usually only a two point increase in damage with each step, but -- since in the case of most small guns I stick to the classic FO formula of mostly JHP and AP ammo -- it's enough so that you definitely see a difference and it is noticeable enough to make you want/need to upgrade. This is basically how the FO RPGs work and that's primarily why I'm using this method. In this case you will need about 5 or 6 of each type of weapon to accomodate a campaign as long as the core campaign. It would probably also be a good idea to throw in some extras to give players choices. ("This one's damage is a bit lower, but the ranger is longer and the AP cost is lower that the other, so...")

In the second case players will be seriously undergunned when they first encounter enemies w/the next generation of weaponry. They will pretty much need to up-gun as quickly as possible, or to alter their tactics to compensate for markedly inferior weaponry. In that case you could probably get away w/only 3 weapons of each type for a campaign as long as the core campaign's.

That's my $0.02,

OTB

[Ripper]

Given the option, i will take option 2 anyday. It makes the game more challenging.

[OnTheBounce]

How foolish of me: I forgot the third option, namely, a hybrid approach.

The thing to do w/this approach would be to have a gradual increase like mentioned in Case 1 above, then have the PCs hit a wall where they are suddenly scrambling for new weapons (perhaps even different skills to use them) at some point. This seems to be what the FoT designers were aiming at, or perhaps some of them were. (From what I've gleaned from the designers' comments one of FoT's problems was a case of too many cooks spoiling the brew.)

This last approach has the advantage of giving the player a rude shock when they encounter that wall for the first time, but only adds perhaps one or two games to the replayability of the game since an unprepared player will want to play again w/a distant -- and to his characters', unknown -- obstacle in mind.

OTB

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

The "Assault Rifle" (AK-112) was the shoulder arm being used by second-line units of the US Armed Forces when The Bomb dropped. First-line units had upgraded to energy weapons by that point.

Hmm and how many AK-112's were there in FOT? I'm going to start using energy weapons more in my maps, I think there should be far more around.

In the second case players will be seriously undergunned when they first encounter enemies w/the next generation of weaponry. They will pretty much need to up-gun as quickly as possible, or to alter their tactics to compensate for markedly inferior weaponry. In that case you could probably get away w/only 3 weapons of each type for a campaign as long as the core campaign's.

I like this senario the best, too many games give you a brand new weapon and then before you really have a chance to get some use out of it you stumble across an even better weapon. Then the game just becomes a treasure hunt.

[OnTheBounce]

Hmm and how many AK-112's were there in FOT?

Zero: The number of AK-112's in FoT.

I'm going to start using energy weapons more in my maps, I think there should be far more around.

I agree. One thing that I think stinks even in the RPGs is that the player generally has access to e-weapons far too late. Starting the game w/e-weapons tagged in the RPGs is a waste, and in FoT you essentially just have the tag and pump points into your other two tags, then when e-weapons finally become available in the game you jack it up really quickly. ("Yeah, I've been practicing a lot lately...")

The Laser Pistol isn't exactly a viable weapon simply because it's introduced too late in FoT. Making it available at an earlier point makes perfect sense to me. Not only that, but you can also throw some enemies at the players that are wearing Tesla Armor. That would definitely encourage a player to have a balanced squad. (Which, IMHO, is what a squad-based tactical game should do...)

OTB

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I think that I might change Small Guns, Big Guns and Energy Weapons to Handguns, Rifles and BFG's altering the skill group of the weapons so that all pistols come under Small Guns, smgs and rifles under Big Guns and Mini-Guns and Rocket launchers etc under Energy Weapons. Then making laser weapons available to lower level characters. Or would that be too much of a sacrilege to change the Special System?

Two of my dislikes about the Fallout series were that there was too much ammo and pre-war weaponry around, even for America. Plus there is too many types of armour especially in FO2. The Brotherhood Combat Armour is totally superfluous, in FO I managed to stumble on the gang holding the BOS initiate before I knew much about the BOS (my character that is) so when I got to the BOS Bunker I was awarded PA even before I got assigned some Brotherhood Armour, in FO2 by the time you get into the BOS outpost you've already got at least 1 PA and 1 APA. I can understand leather armour and I actually agree that the BOS made leather armour in FOT should be different from the LA in the RPGs. Metal Armour on the other hand always struck me that it should be a Ned Kelly sort of affair, made from whatever scraps of metal you could find and not particulary effective against modern weapons, so I can't see the need for it. Though the metal armour in FOT comes across as more of a ceremonial uniform than a practical defense. Tesla armour is not something I've bothered with much but if there were more energy weapons in the games it would become much more valuable. The Environmental armour is a total waste, there's no map that really requires that you wear it, as there is plenty of Rad X and Rad Away available. Perhaps some of the maps that didn't make it into the final game were toxic wastelands?

Now that I've got that out of my system, I've always thought that having Energy Weapons seperate was a waste of a skill and enough of a handicap that I've never bothered with them much. Easier to max out your small & big guns and use one of the mini-guns or gauss rifle. Since the game doesn't require you to maintain your weapons like SS2 or Arcanum it seems pointless. A lot of the pre-war weapons would need a fair amount of proper training or expert knowledge to keep them in working order anyway. Since energy weapons had been issued to front line troops they must be fairly easy to maintain and use. Not putting down Soldiers but personal weapons designed for the battlefield should be robust and easy to maintain IMHO.

[axelgreese]

Actually I would think that the advanced optics or whatever would be used to make lazer rifles and what not would require quite a bit more work to keep them running than your average wasteland double barrel shotgun.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Actually I would think that the advanced optics or whatever would be used to make lazer rifles and what not would require quite a bit more work to keep them running than your average wasteland double barrel shotgun.

I was thinking more along the lines of mini-guns than shotguns, but it's a valid point. How many people outside the BOS and the Vaults would have the knowledge to keep the more advanced weapons in working order, or even the right materials to clean them? Which is why I say there are far too many guns in the Fallout Series.

[axelgreese]

I was thinking more along the lines of mini-guns than shotguns

I have never really liked the miniguns. I don't feel they belong (for similar reasons as the energy weapons) but also on account of their ammo consumption. But their are part of fallout, and some people will throw a fit if you take them out...

[Ripper]

i would not agree to having too many Energy weapons. They wont fit FOT. You can have a Laser Pistol early in the Super Mutant Campaign. If i even had one in the Raider Campaign. The game goes down hill quickly. Because it becomes too easy.

Energy weapons are meant to be rare. Since energy weapons were mostly used by frontline troop during the War, they should be rarer since not many guns/soldiers can survive if a nuke dropped upon them. Having too many energy weapons takes the fun away because the game becomes too easy.

In FOT, the brotherhood are no different from scavengers, they dont have uber tech and most of their men require more on tactics (isnt this FOT ?) unlike FallOut where your main Character can hit insane levels and become so strong that you feel no pain as such.

I disagree that armour is more ceremonial in FOT. My guy marching around in APA with 3 toughness perks can reduce almost all Ballistic (small/big guns) by 95%. SOmetimes i even take no damage at all. Toughness also allow me to wear Tesla Amrour and still have high DR against normal.

Energy weapons makes the last campaign feel more like StarWars. If you complain ya cant get enuff, well be a packrat.

Just do the campaign where you have to defeat the Reavers in Junction City and pick every Laser weapon you can find. I guarantee there is more than enuff for a squad of six.

Unconvinced ??? I have once gather more than 20 laser rifles and at least 18 Plasma rifles by time the games ends (not including the ones equipped on my team or sold). Now is that too little or too much ?

Still need more ???

Pick up everything you can carry. means you become encumbered but can still walk. Pick up whatever stuff you cant carry and throw them on the floor 1st otherwise they will disappear with the corpses. Drive back to base to trade, reorder inventory, get briefing etc
then drive back to the same mission area and pick up anything on the floor. You will have enuff of laser weapons till ya are sick of it.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

i would not agree to having too many Energy weapons. They wont fit FOT. You can have a Laser Pistol early in the Super Mutant Campaign. If i even had one in the Raider Campaign. The game goes down hill quickly. Because it becomes too easy.

I think they would fit a lot better than the WW2 weapons that litter the game, and if energy weapons had been planned for earlier in the game then obviously the enemies would of been toughened up to retain game balance.

Energy weapons are meant to be rare. Since energy weapons were mostly used by frontline troop during the War, they should be rarer since not many guns/soldiers can survive if a nuke dropped upon them. Having too many energy weapons takes the fun away because the game becomes too easy.

Well the nukes were more likely to have been aimed at static targets like cities and military installations, not mobile targets like troops so there is a good chance that plenty survived. Plus given that the game is set in an alternate future there's a good chance that lower powered energy weapons were becoming available for the domestic market.

In FOT, the brotherhood are no different from scavengers, they dont have uber tech and most of their men require more on tactics (isnt this FOT ?) unlike FallOut where your main Character can hit insane levels and become so strong that you feel no pain as such.

The BOS are meant to be scavengers but they are all pretty well equipped, except for your squad that is. Those bunkers would require a certain level of infrastructure to be built, and if they just took over existing Military Bunkers there was a good chance that they had found them well stocked. They certainly had enough tech to create their own version of PA diferent to what the main BOS has. They also had plenty of vehicles, look at the number of crashed BOS hummers at Vault 0.

I disagree that armour is more ceremonial in FOT. My guy marching around in APA with 3 toughness perks can reduce almost all Ballistic (small/big guns) by 95%. SOmetimes i even take no damage at all. Toughness also allow me to wear Tesla Amrour and still have high DR against normal.

I was refering to metal armour not PA or APA.

Energy weapons makes the last campaign feel more like StarWars. If you complain ya cant get enuff, well be a packrat.

Well we'll have to differ there, personally I thought it made more sense to have lots of energy weapons in Vault 0 since they would of been stocked with the best of the best.

Just do the campaign where you have to defeat the Reavers in Junction City and pick every Laser weapon you can find. I guarantee there is more than enuff for a squad of six.

Unconvinced ??? I have once gather more than 20 laser rifles and at least 18 Plasma rifles by time the games ends (not including the ones equipped on my team or sold). Now is that too little or too much ?

Still need more ???

Pick up everything you can carry. means you become encumbered but can still walk. Pick up whatever stuff you cant carry and throw them on the floor 1st otherwise they will disappear with the corpses. Drive back to base to trade, reorder inventory, get briefing etc
then drive back to the same mission area and pick up anything on the floor. You will have enuff of laser weapons till ya are sick of it.

I just think that there should of been more energy weapons than real world weapons available through out the game, Obviously the bad guys would have to be adjusted to make them toughter, as OTB sugests many of them equipped with Tesla Armour.

Have you noticed not every body has disappeared when you return to a map? Don't know if it was meant to be intentional, or if someone forgot to mark everyone remove on exit. : )

[Ripper]

But more energy weapons still mean easier gameplay.

A char with 10 PE and 10 AG can easily turn all those bots into scrap metal and those bots are so utterly stupid or blind that they cant even hit something at long range. Except hit my teammates when the Vindicator was pointed at me and not them.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

But more energy weapons still mean easier gameplay.

Not if the game had been planned to accomidate them.

[Ripper]

But more energy weapons still mean easier gameplay.

Not if the game had been planned to accomidate them.

Energy weapons are meant to be powerful and rare in the Fallout Universe !!!!!

i strongly believe in that.

if a raider can take more than 1 blast from a Laser Rifle
and still lives, im prepare to quit FO for good. Also certain weapons like the Pulse Rifle should be even rarer since in FOT they are only recently manufactured.

anyway, energy weapons should stay where they are, they sync well with the FOT armour technology and timeline. I mean its not nice to be zap by a Laser Rifle while ya still stuck with Leather Armour MK1. Anyone who attempted to obtain a 4th fusion battery in Peoria can testify that.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Energy weapons are meant to be powerful and rare in the Fallout Universe !!!!!

i strongly believe in that.

All pre-war weapons should be powerful and rare in a post apoc. world, really we should be seeing more people with homemade weapons like pipe rifles, zip guns, spear guns and crossbows etc. But since weapons are plentyful in the Fallout universe then laser weapons should be available more.

if a raider can take more than 1 blast from a Laser Rifle
and still lives, im prepare to quit FO for good. Also certain weapons like the Pulse Rifle should be even rarer since in FOT they are only recently manufactured.

Lasers burn a hole in you the size of the beam, they'll cut someone if you move the beam as it's passing through your target, but a straight shot will pass straight through. If the beam doesn't hit anything vital then the target would need to be hit more than 1 time to kill it. If raider wore metal armour they would have a good chance of deflecting a laser beam. Plasma weapons and Turbo weapons would be kept till the latter part of the game. I'm not sure about the pulse rifle, if the reavers had the prototype and the BOS started manufacturing them how did one end up back in SF? : )

anyway, energy weapons should stay where they are, they sync well with the FOT armour technology and timeline. I mean its not nice to be zap by a Laser Rifle while ya still stuck with Leather Armour MK1. Anyone who attempted to obtain a 4th fusion battery in Peoria can testify that.

I was suggesting that the armour be adjusted slightly to compensate. The 4th battery is too difficult to get, once you realise how to go about it. : )

[OnTheBounce]

Energy weapons are meant to be powerful and rare in the Fallout Universe !!!!!

i strongly believe in that.

I'm not talking about making them available at every corner store. What I'm talking about is letting the player get his hands on a Laser Pistol at 6th or 7th level -- along w/a limited supply of ammo -- when the thing is actually some good to him.

RfaSF is right, though, in that you can set up enemies to compensate for this. For instance, you could set up Raider Armor Mk II to be equivalent to Metal Armor, which has decent resistance to energy-based attacks.

I've been playing around w/the set-up I mentioned above, and it does not affect game balance. In fact, I'd say it enhances it and allows the player more choices at the same time. Why? Because a player can't throw all of his eggs into the e-weapons basket as a scenario designer has control over how much ammo is available. Low-end e-weapons therefore leave the player the freedom to have one or perhaps two characters that use them while not providing a squad w/so much firepower that they sweep everything away before them. Look at the damage a laser pistol does, then compare it to other weapons (remembering to factor in Damage Modifiers) and you'll see that even though the enemy will have less resistance to the attacks the lack of DM makes up for it to a certain extent.

Also certain weapons like the Pulse Rifle should be even rarer since in FOT they are only recently manufactured.

Forget FoT. Pulse weapons are experimental pre-war tech developed at Yuma, Arizona. That was why the Enclave and the BoS had them in FO2.

FOT armour technology and timeline.

Again, forget the FoT timeline. The game is probably going to end up being "non-canonical" as the source material goes as there are glaring inconsistencies between what IP/BIS had established and what MF did w/that material.

I mean its not nice to be zap by a Laser Rifle while ya still stuck with Leather Armour MK1.

Again, I'm not talking about Laser Rifles at 6th level, but rather Laser Pistols. I personally like the idea of a BoS tech-geek/scribe running around w/a Laser Pistol when he/she first enters the game rather than being forced to use Small Guns.

For an example of what I'm talking about, play the first phase of the In Our Own Image demo that you can dl here at DaC. The character Anna is equipped w/a Laser Pistol and it's not like she can "run the map". (Especially since she's blind as a bat...) The sniper Allanah also has e-weapons tagged and she's not unstoppable when using a Laser Pistol, either.

OTB

[Ripper]

IIRC, FOT occurs right after FO1 and takes place before FO2. In that 40 year period between FO1 & FO2 anything could happen.

Also in FOT, the Bos knew there was a Pulse Rifle. But they needed a prototype so so they could duplicate the weapon faster and easier, hence they need you to reclaim it.

A char with

S = 8
P = 10
E = 6
C = 2
I = 6
A = 10
L =6

Plus Gifted and bruiser (can be changed after PA is obtained) + all 3 tags into guns = Ownage.

i can easily make such a char and if i had the Laser Pistol early, i can wreak huge havoc with it due to its inherent long range. And i can even handle some of the bigger guns too like the Vindicator.


IMHO, while energy weapons are powerful, they dont have spread which balances it, a Vindicator can turn a huge group of Super Mutants to pulp.

you can get Vindicators if you find the Uprising random event early and use bombs to blown up the 2 guards........they wont suspect a thing...................

[Ripper]

I was suggesting that the armour be adjusted slightly to compensate. The 4th battery is too difficult to get, once you realise how to go about it. : )

its easy if you know how..............;)
have u tried giving all 3 surface turrets 4 afterburns each ??? :D

then slowly kill those inside for 5K Fusion cells and sell themm or keep them...no worries of running out of fusion cells and more money for PA !!!!