Regarding the new armour system.

[WhiteCrane]

While I respect what Obsidian were trying to do by bringing the armour system in NV more in line with the ones from F1 and F2, I don't like the way it's currently handled.

The original system, in which damage was reduced/blocked by DT, then modified by the DR percentage, was damned good.

 

Having only DT alone though is less good. The flat block-reduce mechanic of DT means that most automatic weapons are nigh-useless against enemies wearing even a fairly poor set of medium armour.

Worse, because enemy weapons are in such low condition most of the time, the player is practically invulnerable to half the enemies in the game with even some reinforced leather.

 

Unfortunately, the way that DT and DR (AR in the GECK) interact in NV is completely the other way around: damage is adjusted by the percentage of the AR, then compared to/reduced by the DT.

 

What I'd like is a game where only heavier armours ever completely block damage, so no-one who's not wearing metal/power/high-end combat armour can ever reduce a gunshot to zero damage.

 

The best possible solution I can see is to give lighter armours a low AR, and remove their DT altogether.

The problem with this is that then, AP ammo is actually less effective than regular ammo against enemies in light armour.

 

Does anyone else have any opinions on the armour system in NV, or any ideas on how it could be improved?

I think it's probably my largest complaint about the game now, and I really find it hard to see a perfect fix for it...

[Vagrant0]

Having low caliber weapons which doesn't do much to reasonably armored things, like giant rad scorpions, kinda makes sense though since weaker stuff would just bounce off. Frankly though, I'm more offput by how weak energy weapons are against anything with even a little armor (except NCR soldiers for some reason). If a weapon has the ability to reduce a target to ash or a pool of goo, you'd think it would be able to punch through normal body armor.

 

The only fix I can think of would be to just increase damage overall at the ammo source... Such as:

 

normal ammo dealing 3x damage

hollow point ammo dealing 4x damage with DT penalty

FMJ ammo dealing 2x damage with normal DT reduction

 

Not sure on Melee, but looks like melee damage ignores DT to some degree.

 

Then you could offset this by having people wearing better maintained armor.

 

Or, figuring out a way to limit just how much the player can repair equipment based on skill, so that they're forced to wear less-repaired stuff until later on.

[TheTuna]

I love the way NV's armor system worked out for Power Armor; it feels like how power armor SHOULD have felt in FO3; it seems to actually make you that tough.

 

Can't comment on the other armors as I rushed Power Armor Training.