Why are New Vegas canine companions inferior?

[XTgrndr]

I've been wondering about this lately.

 

Dogmeat was a highly useful companion.

He could take damage well and dish it out even more, regardless of the fact his enemies have guns.

 

 

I've never really used Rex, but when I used Roxie and B-6-R-K (from Project Brazil), I was distinctly unimpressed by how poorly they perfom.

 

Regardless of what settings I tell them to use, if they're within 10 meters of aggressive enemies, they charge in suicidally.

 

And by the 3rd enemy, they're defeated.

If they're lucky enough to make it that far, sometimes they don't even survive the second one.

 

And they don't follow direction well, Dogmeat worked with you, these ones, they don't give me that same feeling of teamwork.

 

 

Compared to Dogmeat, this is incredibly substandard.

I didn't have to worry about looking after him, he was tough enough to hold his own and he'd always follow direction properly.

 

 

Is there a reason why the New Vegas canine companions aren't as effective as Dogmeat is?

[dangman4ever]

At least in the case between Dogmeat and Roxie, there's actually multiple Roxies in the game files that have increasingly higher levels. Obsidian made it so that when you create Roxie, what spawns is a Roxie that's close to your level at the time. Nor does the Roxies that do spawn actually increase in level along with the PC. There's also a slight element of chance in that you may be a level 50 character but accidentally spawn a level 10 Roxie.

 

In the case between Dogmeat and Rex, Rex has a level cap of 40. Dogmeat doesn't have any level cap.

 

In the case of between Dogmeat VS Rex and Roxie, there's a massive difference in HP. Roxie only had a max HP of 625 at its highest level. Rex is somewhere between 485 and 600 HP IIRC. Its HP was a tied to a formula involving the PC's level and a percentage of that. Dogmeat started with 500HP and could get as high as 2500 HP or even 15000 HP if wiki is to be believed. Clearly Bethesda and Obsidian had very different ideas as to how much damage a dog should take before it dies.

 

To follow up on that differences in damage, don't forget that by default FNV companions are set to "Essential" and can't die. FO3 companions could die by default. Hence a possible reason as to why Bethesda chose to massively increase the HP of Dogmeat.

 

In other words, Dogmeat was created to be a very overpowered companion. Rex and Roxie were designed to be more balanced and to account for the Essential and respawning features each had respectively.

[GimmeBackMyMoney]

Rex seems a little tougher than other companions unless you charges head-first into a swarm of deathclaws, then he'd die, just as I'd expect any companion to (which is exactly why I take them on myself, or don't bring a companion). Everything dangman says is spot on.

[llamaRCA]

I've been wondering about this lately.

 

Dogmeat was a highly useful companion.

He could take damage well and dish it out even more, regardless of the fact his enemies have guns.

 

 

I've never really used Rex, but when I used Roxie and B-6-R-K (from Project Brazil), I was distinctly unimpressed by how poorly they perfom.

 

Regardless of what settings I tell them to use, if they're within 10 meters of aggressive enemies, they charge in suicidally.

 

And by the 3rd enemy, they're defeated.

If they're lucky enough to make it that far, sometimes they don't even survive the second one.

 

And they don't follow direction well, Dogmeat worked with you, these ones, they don't give me that same feeling of teamwork.

 

 

Compared to Dogmeat, this is incredibly substandard.

I didn't have to worry about looking after him, he was tough enough to hold his own and he'd always follow direction properly.

 

 

Is there a reason why the New Vegas canine companions aren't as effective as Dogmeat is?

 

 

Dogmeat is just as bad at following directions as all of the vanilla companions are in both FO3 and NV because we don't really have any useful directions to give companions for controlling them during combat and the ones we have don't work in vanilla (in FO3 ranged/melee doesn't really work and in NV passive/aggressive doesn't really work). So we cannot do much with them other than watch them go wherever they want to and hope it works out.

 

You would need a mod to handle their combat behavior in a more advanced fashion. I'm wondering if you had a mod for Dogmeat in FO3 since you remember giving him directions for combat.

 

And, yes, you can ignore Dogmeat in FO3 when you have Broken Steel installed because there is a Beth bug that kicks in that gives all of the creature companions (that includes Sgt. RL-3 and Fawkes) an insane amount of HP. If you play without Broken Steel, Dogmeat dies very easily, because his favorite thing to do is charge into fights (just like all of the other companions). That enormous amount of HP is Dogmeat's greatest advantage, but it wasn't by Beth design that he got it.

 

Dogs here in NV with an ordinary amount of HP definitely hit the floor a lot, even when they are under stricter combat controls. But if you were to give them huge amounts of HP they would seem unnaturally strong just like Dogmeat does with Broken Steel installed. I mean, Dogmeat is a load of fun to travel with as super dog, but he can take down three raiders in a row all by himself and be ready for a Yao Guai. If Beth had done a bugfix that HP would have been dropped back down to proper levels.

[BuffHamster]

A good subject. I would like to add that there is quite a bit of custom content in New Vegas for dog, and, yes cat companions. It is possible that the scripting for the four-legged custom companions is more detailed for better control and balance. Here are a few:

 

"Four Legged Friends"

"Balls the Talking Dog" (evil aligned)

"Orion the dog"

"Rex the Cat"