Weapon requirements?

[miguick]

As you may know, in Fallout New Vegas all weapons in the game list both a strength requirement and a skill requirement in order to, supposedly, be wielded without drawbacks. The common knowledge seems to be that for strength at least, not meeting the requirement results in lower accuracy for ranged weapons, or slower swing speed for melee ones. I have to wonder what do the skill requirements would even do.

 

The drawbacks from these requirements would supposedly be controlled by two game settings, fWeapSkillReqPenalty (default value 0.01) and fWeapStrengthReqPenalty (default value 0.025).

 

I did a little testing, and other than the strength requirement for ranged weapons, I fail to see them having any noticeable effect in game. Melee weapons swing at just the same speed regardless of strength or skill level, and I don't think the differences in their damage output are any different than those granted by the respective strength or melee weapon stats regardless of meeting the requirements.

Ranged weapons do have their aim affected by strength... but it would seem that they are affected regardless of meeting the strength requirement. Upping fWeapStrengthReqPenalty will increase the player's wobbling no matter his strength. The results are quite hilarious if you increase it to insane values like > 10. And again, if there's any difference in damage output or accuracy between meeting the skill requirement and the progression of those parameters from the skill level itself, I don't know how I would be able to tell them apart.

 

And then one has to wonder what requirements even do for thrown weapons, grenades and mines. In my experience all those can be used just fine regardless. Strength does not affect the throw speed of lobber type projectiles like grenades. It does affect missile types, like thrown spears, as per the fThrowingStrengthPenalty (default value 0.05) but again no idea how do requirements play into that.

 

I suppose my hope is that someone with more insights into the game's code, or with better testing methods, could shed some more light onto this, or at least that it gets someone's curiosity. If requirements are as broken as I suspect them to be, I'd try working on scripted replacements to better implement them. Any ideas are welcome.

[JimboUK]

I've got a few thousand hours in New Vegas and I can't say I've noticed any difference with ranged weapons and strength, I have noticed it with Melee damage for obvious reasons but nothing else, I wonder of those settings even work or if they're so low that the result is unnoticeable. I know these days that I only put points into strength for a melee character, not for any other type.