Automatic Weapons ? Why ?

[Moraelin]

Yes, that's working as designed. NPCs only need 1 (ONE) round to use the weapon.

 

And it's how it worked since FO3 too. NPCs just get a handful of rounds that you can loot off their corpse, but can still shoot at you as much as they have time to. That way, if you snipe Ack-Ack before she can fire her minigun, you don't get like 1000 rounds, like she'd need to keep chasing you all through the bunker with it, if she used ammo. Basic game design, really.

[tomomi1922]

I gave my corporal a never ending guass rifle so I would not have to provide her with ammo.

 

This is what you wrote. It was just misleading. I don't know who your corporal is. A settler, or a custom companion. If a settler, they need 1 ammo with or without Never Ending, with companion, Never Ending doesn't even help with ammo, just help with no reloading.

 

Don't mean to call you on it (don't take it that I am trying to be rude). I have a custom companion too, so at once I have 2 NPCs following me, like in Dragon Age.

 

Today for some reason I found this .... "Never Ending Automatic" appears on my Legendary crafting menu. No idea where that came from. But it seems combining Never Ending with auto shoot (but the game still considers it semi auto). Should I use it? This is a cheat lol.

[Relativelybest]

I'm still trying to figure out why the receiver of the gun changes the damage output. I mean, I'm not what you would call a gun person, but isn't the damage mostly determined by the caliber and velocity of the bullet? It seems strange to me that a semi-automatic gun would do more damage than an automatic gun that fires the exact same ammo.

 

So, yeah, never found a reason to use automatic weapons, it just doesn't seem cost efficient. I guess some legendary effects would make up for it, but I already have a maxed out wounding shotgun that can kill pretty much anything, so it doesn't matter much for me.

[Moraelin]

Well, and the barrel affects range but not damage, although IRL the difference between a 2 inch barrel and a 12 inch barrel can make a dramatic difference in energy. And adding a bayonet reduces the range. Etc.

 

The weapon mod system is all around... weird.

[robhartman9]

I never used the never ending legendary mod before. I was hoping it meant my NPC would not need ammo and it did work out that way but are you telling me if I changed that to something else she still wouldn't need ammo? If all never ending does is take away reload that makes it totally lame.

[tomomi1922]

I'm still trying to figure out why the receiver of the gun changes the damage output. I mean, I'm not what you would call a gun person, but isn't the damage mostly determined by the caliber and velocity of the bullet? It seems strange to me that a semi-automatic gun would do more damage than an automatic gun that fires the exact same ammo.

 

So, yeah, never found a reason to use automatic weapons, it just doesn't seem cost efficient. I guess some legendary effects would make up for it, but I already have a maxed out wounding shotgun that can kill pretty much anything, so it doesn't matter much for me.

 

Although I am a girl I have used guns extensively. Not a lot of guns as I hoped, but I shot them. For example, M16 has semi and auto mode. Flipping to auto mode will NOT reduce the damage output of the rifle, at all. What it will do to you is to fire 2-3 rounds with just 1 squeeze of the trigger (depending how hard you squeeze). Each time you fire off 1 round, your rifle recoils, you would have to align the shot again (it is not as automatic as the game, instead will require some efforts, expert shooters can get there much faster than novice). So most of the time I would not use the auto mode because of the control and accuracy (even ammo is not a concern).

 

The lowered damage is sort of a quick-fix way for Bethesda to "balance" weapons. What they should have done is to make a better FPS model. Make recoil matters a lot more. In some other more realistic FPS, going full auto means your muzzle will end up pointing at the ceiling due to upward recoil. So it does you no good just spamming bullets non-stop. And also make accuracy a skill: level 1, your spread sight is gigantic and takes longer to narrow down after running or a burst. Expert will have much tighter spread and can focus aim almost instantly. I believe Ghost Recon does this. And It was a pain using someone who has low gun skill. Their .50 cal sniper rifle has the spread box of almost the entire screen when not using the scope, which makes sniper rifles very poor assault weapon.

 

In case you guys have no idea what I am talking about, the spread sight is the 4 lines that form the crosshair in game. When you run or shoot, it tends to spread wider. When you aim, it grows smaller.

 

I never used the never ending legendary mod before. I was hoping it meant my NPC would not need ammo and it did work out that way but are you telling me if I changed that to something else she still wouldn't need ammo? If all never ending does is take away reload that makes it totally lame.

 

By Vanilla, NPCs do not use ammo anyway. All they need is .... literately 1 bullet of that kind in inventory and they can shoot forever. You can give your settlers a shotgun and ONE shotgun shell, and they will last for life.

 

Companions will use up ammo just as you do. So if you give them something like a mini gun, make sure you have enough ammo for them, or backup weapon in their inventory so they can switch weapon as needed. Or else they will have to run up and punch the enemy. They won't die, but likely be useless to you for the entire fight.

 

Yes, Never Ending means the magazine magically contains ALL the ammo (of that type) from your inventory. So if you have a machine gun, you can shoot non-stop until you completely run out of some 1000+ bullets, no magazine changing ever needed. It has its own merit. Sometimes I wish I had this mod for my close combat weapon, because I tend to die when I run out of bullet and the reload time takes forever (feel like forever when 10 people are shooting at you, and interrupted by being shot too). I used to use Assault Rifle as my close combat weapon because that rifle is the only weapon in game I don't need to re-cock the handle: just swap magazine and shoot again. Yes it looks bulky and shouldn't turn fast enough for real life, but FO4 cares nothing about weapon size (Deliverer the tiny handgun feels the same as a minigun when it comes to agility).

 

In real life modern combat, reloading is the part where you likely get killed (most true in close combat urban warefare scenario). Most experts will tell you to "count bullets" so you know when you are getting low, swap magazines without using up the last bullet so you can skip the re-cocking process. This may throw off your opponents too because they don't get to hear that reloading sound they were hoping for. In some movies, some "badass" can count the bullets his opponents fired and know exactly when the guy ran out of bullet. But that's movie. In reality you don't take that chance. Since you don't actually know the magazine size. Most modern assault weapons have magazines with 30 bullets, but smart people usually put 27-28 in there only to minimize jamming (less bullet=stronger magazine spring that pushes next bullet into chamber). I have seen 40 round magazine for M16. Handguns even vary greatly. Some 6, 8, 10, 12, and it is easy to custom make magazine that loads more bullets.

[Moraelin]

I guess it depends on the weapon and the shooter. I'm not, shall we say, Gun Nut 3 or anything, but I have had to use guns in the army. I definitely don't remember ending up pointing it at the sky, or anything near that, when shooting controlled bursts. In fact, personally I find that most games ridiculously exaggerate recoil.

 

If any gun sprayed lead wildly in the kind of cone most games model, they wouldn't be rated for the kind of range the army uses them. I mean, spraying lead even in a +/- 0.5 degree arc (which is way smaller than what weapons do in game) would mean +/- 1 yard at 100 yards, so you'd miss most shots against a guy standing up. Not just miss the center of the target, but bloody miss the target entirely.

 

That's smoothbore musket accuracy, not something any of my squad mates would do.

 

Someone just poking their head from behind cover would pretty much have no reason to be suppressed when you shoot at them, because, well, you'd be very very unlikely to ever hit that.

 

Admittedly, I was a strapping young lad back then, and fairly strong with all the army training. Plus, I suppose the training itself must have counted for something.

 

TBH, it's more like handguns where the recoil bothered me.

[Moraelin]

I don't usually watch gun videos, but I kinda had to check if my memories of shooting in the army were rose-tinted. Here's a video where a guy shoots only full auto, whole magazines. The shooting starts around the two minute mark.

 

Notice how, no, he doesn't end up pointing at the ceiling, and in fact the muzzle climb isn't anywhere NEAR the stupid ideas that games gave people on that topic. In fact, at the end of a whole magazine, the muzzle is still pretty much in the same direction.

 

[tomomi1922]

He is shooting a version of M16, it is a light weight low recoil assault weapon. But he never shows his grouping in the end. Shooting like that is only good at close quarter. What I mean to say is aiming a gun is not as easy as it is in game. Automatic firing has a lot more limitation than it looks in real life that we don't get to experience in game. In FO4, there is almost no reason why you don't want to use auto mode but in real life, you are likely not to hit anything at all some 50-100 yards away.

 

Bethesda uses lowered damage on automatic mode as the only way to curl using machine gun. It is a very poor balancing choice. People use it only for asthetic and roleplaying. Like ... how a Thompson is not automatic? But in survival mode where everything should count, every bullet, every shot, automatic weapons just don't make sense.

 

Honestly you can't just use a video to argue your case. A gun is a lot more than just the power output of the bullet. Like a race car is more than just the horsepower (then we don't need racer anymore). Ever wonder why they don't use something like M16 in place of MP5 when M16 has much more powerful output?

 

Or this age old question: M16 vs AK47. Ak47 has higher power output and will shoot through almost all modern cars without fail, and literately impossible to jam. Nothing is 100% but AK47 can be filled with mud, sand, dirt, water, and can shoot like new. Drop an M16 into mud and it may become paper weight, at least for that moment when you need it most. A poor maintained M16 will jam more often than it shoots.

[Moraelin]

I'm saying that in the army we all shot at 100m and more, and yes we did hit the frikken target.

 

And the AK-47, since you mention it, only becomes inaccurate past 300m because the trajectory becomes too curved. That's 1000 ft, for you imperials. So, yeah, the notion that you can't hit with it at 150 ft is rather ridiculous.

 

Even the MP-43 on which it was based, was designed for engagement ranges of up to 300m. The debate between the designers and the high command as to whether they need these new assault rifles or rifles, was about how often you need to engage at 1km range as opposed to 100 or 300m, not about hitting under 50m.

 

Frankly, if on auto it couldn't hit at 50m or even 100m, there wouldn't have been any reason to move to it from submachine guns. And the fact of the matter is that the troops very much preferred the new MP-43 BECAUSE they could hit farther than a SMG, and could do burst fire at those ranges.

 

You might not have a good grouping, and yes you won't on full auto, but, you know, you need to hit the target at all to have a grouping on it at all.

 

The whole notion that you don't hit on auto, is in fact silly, since shooting bursts is in fact to have a higher chance to hit. That's WHY just about every army in the world uses automatics.

 

If I'm to be frank, as someone who actually was in the military and actually shot automatics, it sounds to me like you're actually just rehashing the arguments that usually come from video gamers that never actually used a gun. Starting with that silliness about ending up aiming at the ceiling after a long burst. That just doesn't happen to anyone who has even minimal training in using their assault rifle. Hell, it doesn't even happen when shooting a belt-fed light machinegun. Just going once or twice at a range and shooting untrained, well, I can see how you wouldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but that hardly makes you qualified to complain about how a veteran in the game has no problem aiming the same rifle he used in China. As someone who actually has even less experience than the male protagonist does (I did have army training, but no actual war), I find that the muzzle climb he has is actually newbie-class.