[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[antistar]

What I have in mind for WARS should address most of what you've said there.

 

The "10mm Pistol" has been replaced by the Glock 20, but that's also a 10mm pistol... just a real-world one. I'll likely have 9x19mm and .45 ACP variants available too, and at earlier levels it will probably be the 9x19mm variant that you encounter.

 

I'm not getting rid of the pipe weapons; I think they make a lot of sense. Well... maybe not how elaborate they can get, but that they exist. Before FO4 was announced I was considering adding them myself, actually - though I probably would've called them "zip guns".

[Athanasa]

Probably not, sorry. Part of the idea behind WARS is to go closer to the real world, rather than further away from it.

That said, I'm not planning to absolutely go ham in that area and use real-world brand names for specific after-market gun parts, or anything. I want to use common (but descriptive) names for things as much as possible - like "AR-15", for example.

 

 

I don't mean change the whole thing. Just subtle.

 

The Fallout universe already has paralells for existing US weapon companies. Because Fallout isn't our world - they diverge around 1945.

 

So, AR-15. Who's to say they didn't call it AR-14 in Fallout? Some people will go, "What's the point?" Well - the point is that isn't an AR-15. Our real-world AR-15 was designed in 1956, after the timeline divergence.

 

 

... ACTUALLY! Scrap all of that, because I found this on the Wiki. SPAS-12, same name in Fallout as real world, designed IRL 1972, WAY After divergence. So, naming all your stuff exactly as they are IRL is not lore breaking at all in any way shape or form.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Athanasa

[genolune]

I would like to see a Steyr TMP, a P90 and Steyr AUG (because bullpup rifle designs fascinate me) but I don't have the skills to make those. Maybe one day. On a different note, after reading the divergence entry, if plastics and polymers were used for power armor then why is there rust on power armor? Though on the topic of divergence and metal being more prevalent, perhaps a metal Glock? That way you get the closer to real world analogy of the weapon, while maintaining that alternate reality of Fallout for an interesting effect.

 

Not to go off topic again, perhaps less elaborate pipe weapons like Antistar suggests. Something like the silenced .22 in New Vegas which looks like modern zip guns.

 

Out of curiousity, I'd like to see the material you were looking at for the "thunderous laser weapons". Kind of interesting.

[HanFyren]

Sounds great!

Isn't the weapons not reloading on switch already a thing?

If not the it's definitely possible with mods - and I don't know which in the myriad of mods I have that do it :tongue:

[antistar]

... ACTUALLY! Scrap all of that, because I found this on the Wiki. SPAS-12, same name in Fallout as real world, designed IRL 1972, WAY After divergence. So, naming all your stuff exactly as they are IRL is not lore breaking at all in any way shape or form.

 

Yeah, I think some people forget that the Fallout games have always had a bunch of real-world weapons in them - and not just pre-"divergence" ones. Maybe due to the way Bethsoft have approached weapons in FO3 and FO4. But just look at Fallout Tactics for example.

 

(Fun fact; I used to work at Micro Forte, the studio behind Fallout Tactics. Tactics was before my time there, but I heard some interesting stories about its development, and a bunch of the character portraits in the game are actually photoshopped photos of people I worked with there.)

 

In any case, I'm not too concerned either way with Fallout lore when it comes to WARS. I'm not trying to be lore-friendly, but I'm not going out of my way to break it, either.

 

 

I would like to see a Steyer TMP, a P90 and Steyer AUG (because bullpup rifle designs fascinate me) but I don't have the skills to make those. Maybe one day. On a different note, after reading the divergence entry, if plastics and polymers were used for power armor then why is there rust on power armor? Though on the topic of divergence and metal being more prevalent, perhaps a metal Glock? That way you get the closer to real world analogy of the weapon, while maintaining that alternate reality of Fallout for an interesting effect.

 

Not to go off topic again, perhaps less elaborate pipe weapons like Antistar suggests. Something like the silenced .22 in New Vegas which looks like modern zip guns.

 

Out of curiousity, I'd like to see the material you were looking at for the "thunderous laser weapons". Kind of interesting.

 

I have had a soft spot for the TMP (slash B&T MP9) ever since Resident Evil 4 - that's why it's in the Modern Weapons add-on for WMX. So I am considering it. Don't know about the P90. I think I remember Shiny Haxorus working on some P90 animations though, so that might make it more likely. I also don't know about the Steyr AUG, but there'll probably be an L85 (another bullpup assault rifle) at some point. That was actually Hitman's suggestion; he was keen to get some bullpup animations out there for people to use.

 

Oh, the laser noise stuff was just an aside during this LP of Factorio I've been watching. Somewhere before episode 20, I think; can't remember exactly, sorry. From memory he was basically saying the same things it said in the wikipedia article I linked to, though. Rapid, high-pressure expansion of air around the beam due to its heat.

 

 

Sounds great!

Isn't the weapons not reloading on switch already a thing?

If not the it's definitely possible with mods - and I don't know which in the myriad of mods I have that do it :tongue:

I'm not aware of any mods that do this, but if you were able to track it down, I'd be very interested to check it out.

[genolune]

I had a bunch of ideas earlier that I can't recall but making a Nail Gun a thing since it could be a common household item turned into a weapon. There was also the abundance or scarcity of ammo. If your personal version of lore says that a lot of ammunition factories were wiped out, then ammo could be scarce, and therefore who gets guns. That would make melee weapons more common with pipes being the easiest to come by, since they are in literally every building, and baseball bats after that. Police revolvers and other revolvers could be more common due potentially due to how sturdy they are made. The amount of available ammo would make 5.56 and 9mm weapons common as well.

 

Miniguns should be very few and far between since that wouldn't be an easily made and distributed gun like a revolver or AR-15 platform or 9mm handguns. Instead of 5mm rounds it could use 5.56 rounds due to how common they are. Flamethrowers should be completely gone since they were more or less phased out I was thinking due to real world conventions and stuff, but again, depends on what your personal version of the lore is. Grenades/mines should definitely be a rarity as I think the supply would be limited, with most raiders having molotovs since they are easily made. Another throwable item could be a big fist sized rock that causes stagger allowing someone to follow up with some gunfire. Missile launchers should be a rarity too (most explosives now that I think about it since most engagements happen too closely to warrant kill the operator or comrades with splash damage/shrapnel).

 

All of this is my take on civilization as it is in Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 as 1 and 2 and potentially New Vegas showed plenty of built up cities capable of having the scientific know how and facilities to produce these types of weapons and ammo. I generally would think military type technologies would be hoarded by powerful groups like the Enclave and Brotherhood of Steel (which brings to mind the questions of why or how the Gunners have such advanced equipment in such an abundance compared to raiders).

 

So the real question is, what do you view the story to be in regards to production capacities, availability, etc.? That might steer you in a better direction for what needs to be developed for the game.

 

Tell me if I'm making sense because I feel really mentally off today.

[antistar]

Oof, that's a bit of a rabbit-hole, and I'm not sure how far it's worth going down it. Mainly because Bethsoft's world design didn't stretch far enough to cover that sort of detail, so there's not much to grab onto there - if you know what I mean. It's the sort of thing Obsidian gave a lot of thought to (for FNV), but not Bethsoft. (Or if they did, they didn't act on it.)

 

I mean don't get me wrong; Bethsoft make worlds that are great to explore... they're just not so great to think about very hard - at least post-Morrowind.

 

Anyway, it's something I have given some thought to - you could say that there were massive stockpiles of weapons, ammo, equipment, etc thanks to the war with China, and then suddenly very few people to use all those tons of guns/ammo after the bombs fell. You could also say that some organisations do have access to weapons/ammo factories (e.g. the Gun Runners). And hey, maybe others still bought the Contraptions DLC. ;)

 

I don't know, it'll be what it needs to be (in the context of WARS), since it's mainly just background detail. For what it's worth though, when I'm designing something I do usually use reality (or believability) as at least a starting point.

[gamefever]

Something that I have been thinking about is the Damage Resistance system.

 

On the character sheet in the Pipboy we have a locational display of the player characters Damage Resistance per part. Example: Chest, Head, Right/Left arms and legs.

Then at bottom right we have a Total Damage Resistance.

 

I think that most players believe that the Total Damage Resistance is their actual score for calculating the amount of expected damage to receive.

 

There are some things that seem to suggest that the game however does in fact only figure the location that damage was applied.

Most of us understand that in battle the players Limbs can become damaged to the point of hindering gameplay. This would seem to indicate that damage was applied to those spots specifically during the course of play.

Weapons that apply damage over an area should in fact and seem to apply damage over several locations, there is quite a lot of observation to support this idea that AOE does in fact apply its damage multiple times but I am suggesting this is because the damage is applied to several locations on the body of the effected target. Thus the hit point loss is applied more than once.

 

Basically your damage resistance is not actually the total number in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. It depends entirely where you are hit.

 

In the early game when I first get my power armor and take it around for a spin I tend to notice that the first part that tends to break is the legs....Thing is more often than not its due to fighting creatures that would only normally hit those area's. The next source of damage that breaks the legs first tends to be pesky explosives such as land mines, grenades, or other explosive device going off.

 

There are of course "under armors" its my belief that this applies DR evenly across the spots that disallow equipping other parts to those area's.

Then of course there are Railroad Linings, these are understood to be very powerful but I have a feeling that since Damage Resistance is in fact based on where the hit is registered this modification is in fact a whole lot more potent than many players realize.

Then there is a Perk....That I think a lot of players totally overlook. "Toughness"

Toughness adds a measly 10 Damage Resistance.

Of course it seems pitiful considering when we look at our total Damage Resistance and think "I have 70 Damage Resistance, whats 10 more points matter to me!"

Well the thing is when receiving damage the game may not actually be considering your Total Damage Resistance.

If for instance the player understood that the game considered only there leg armor when attacked by deadly mutated feral dogs...Well uh cough this is why these things are "deadly" since the leg armor may only be like 10 DR worth of the Total.

Suddenly when understanding that when attacked by Deadly Feral Dog you have only 10DR well then another +10 DR from Toughness becomes incredibly attractive because this doubles your DR.

 

So how is it that certain weapons are underwhelming?

 

Well in the Miniguns case, its obvious...It has 10 damage per bullet so if your opponents have 10 DR on said spot that is hit that is still only 5 damage per bullet....That's before difficulty adjustments, so it could be significantly less damage than 5....Like 2 damage.

Same goes for the Submachinegun.

 

Shotguns.

Most players think they are doing the stated damage in the information panel. However what they are not told is that there are 6 pellets (? sorry don't have the editor open right now).

So in the previous games the damage was divided up amoungst the number of shots in the shot. So 60 damage is only 10 damage per shot against a target with at least 10 DR on each part, which translates to 30 damage IF all the pellets hit and IF you are under the Range, typically meaning that if you empty both barrels into dead center of mass target in front of your character you will not kill them.....(consider that most raiders have at least 20 DR early game on Chest Piece).

Range the biggest issue with the guns in the game.

When we look at range we see a number for shotguns like "90" but we are not told what measurement system this is....Feet, meters what we don't know.

However 60 is about the length of one prefab wooden room in the Settlement maker.

So if your shotgun has 90 range which is basically the Long Barrel double shotgun....You have a range of 1 and a half of those prefab rooms.

If your inside that range you can expect that you will do your full damage before modifiers of course.

If your twice that range you will do 1/2 damage. Basically 3 little wooden rooms. At 2 wooden rooms you are doing 3/4 of your stated damage if all pellets hit.

Shotguns also have spread....So its actually not likely that you can have a consistent grouping.

I find that it would be hard to argue in favor of a short barrel in this game.

I think when you consider that we can agree that shotguns are well competing with the melee weapons for close quarters combat.

The next thing against shotguns is that they weigh a lot and cost ammo to use, which also weigh a lot.

 

I think that for the most part the weapon ranges of the guns don't actually extend out far enough, so in a lot of cases this is likely to be the number one culprit of why weapons don't perform as expected.

Next would be cases like shotguns having their damage spread across several projectiles per shot.

Then the interaction between Damage Resistance, Hidden Resistance (example mutants are typically 100% resistance to radiation however some damage is still done and there is a reason for that), and Difficulty Modifiers.

 

The trouble with Automatic Weapons.

First Person Shooter with Vats mini-game...

Well for the most part I don't use Vats when playing the game. I don't do trick shots either, I tend to fire dead center of mass which means that the bulk of my shots are hitting the opponents highest DR value. This is with a weapon that doesn't get the benefit of "armor penetration" and also it gets a damage reduction cause its apparently somehow fair that although I pay the same amount of caps for my ammo that I should do as much as 1/3 the amount of damage. I have a problem with that....Cause its a tripple penalty for not taking Vats shots and for using a weapon that favors first person shooting gameplay.

 

Just something that I have been thinking about and thought I would share it here. I have tried to look around for information on this but it seems that nothing has come to light in search results at least that don't date back to release date of the game.

Edited November 27, 2016 by gamefever

[antistar]

Well thanks; that's interesting, and may come in handy.

 

Automatic weapons will get a significant boost in WARS as (for better or for worse) I'm not doing the standard Bethsoft thing of nerfing the per-shot damage on them. Recoil may be more of an issue in WARS to compensate, though. Not sure yet.

 

Weapon range will likely be a fairly different beast in WARS as I'm planning to change all hitscan projectiles to ballistic (unless the projectile is literally a laser). I'm not sure yet how that will impact damage drop-off due to range. (Again, if anyone happens to know, fill me in - that'd be great.)

[antistar]

Here's a spur-of-the-moment shot of the AR-15:

 

- AR-15 01

 

I wasn't really planning on showing the AR-15 much yet since it's still using mostly placeholder textures, but I was testing the newly-added bayonet and thought "hey, why not?".

 

This is using Tigg's M16 and variants resource, which is pretty much a goldmine for putting together a modular AR-15 for FO4's weapon modding system. I'll be using other resources too (and touching them up a bit to fit better in the wasteland, as with the Glock), along with the new stuff I make myself. (E.g. the Beta C-Mag.)