Weapon Worth Overhaul?

[Celice]

I've noticed one of the most boring things for me in this game is running around, and always knowing what gun you're going to use, or what melee weapon to bash with. Part of the problem lies in some weapons are inherently better than others. The developers in some interview had said the reason for giving you all the weapons was due to their low ammo availability--even with scarcity mods, you'll have enough ammo to take out your favorite weapons each and every time, especially if you're one to scavage a bunch, or at least explore.

 

This is a somewhat large pickle, though, in attempting to reconcile usefulness of weapons in the game. There's some which raise the worth of the useless Chinese Pistol and .32 Pistol, and some new unique weapons to try and balance out the whole thing. However, one of the best adjustments I can think of is removing both weapon condition and the ability to repair. A static weapon condition, if modified to the extreme, would give perhaps a number of Chinese Pistols at different ranges of damage, giving the player an incentive to part ways with his 10mm as the Chinese Pistol is in a condition better enough to warrant an extra point or two of damage. This may attempt to capture Oblivion's sense of getting the next best weapon, rather than where in Fallout, you grab your average choice (for me, Combat Shotgun, Chinese Assault Rifle, Hunting Rifle, and Shisky) and run with it for much of the rest of the game. I realize, though, that perhaps it's not so much removing the condition and ability to repair a weapon, but perhaps have it modify the weapon in different ways.

 

I just have little incentive to stop using the weapons I'm always using, other than personal limitations. Unlike Oblivion, I find myself with what, to me, seems like a limited arsenal. Armor suffers from the same thing--and even with all that Raider armor, everyone ends up using Combat Armor, or the Tesla Armor, due to their high default ratings.

 

Any others who feel this is a somewhat good balance to introduce into the game?

[Kryztof]

Not QUITE.

 

While I do agree on most points here (I personally use Combat Shotgun, Reservists rifle and FN FAL[mod] and sometimes I'll use an assault rifle I've picked up along the way and use T51-b armor), but there has to be a better way of approaching this.

 

Something like...

Modifying the Raider/merc Sets to be better at higher levels? or adding in a whole variety of different armors.

Maybe putting in less firearms in the game as a whole would help?

 

But don't take away the repairability of weapons. Maybe just make it slower, unless it's a direct hit to the weapon.

Most guns are actually very durable, and only need cleaning during regular usage every week or two, not everyday. That is, unless you let the weapon condition get so carried away downhill that parts start cracking and breaking and failing.

 

 

 

Random Ideas from me:

Decrease weapon degradation during firing, and increase it on direct weapon hits.

Add more weapons and armor, and make firearms more scarce and expensive.

somehow create a system where ammunition randomly fails (Doesn't fire? Jams weapons and automatically makes you reload?)

Make craftable weapons harder to craft and more expensive

leave less ammo just lying around!

add in different instances of weapons (Such as three kinds of 10mm pistols, one doing good damage, but no accuracy, one with mid range accuracy and damage, and one with good accuracy but low damage?)

 

 

 

 

 

Just some ideas, but it's a work in progress.

 

 

And I realize not all people are going to follow the suggestions stated in this post or in this thread, but we can modify mods int he future with the GECK to our suiting (Chance price and drop tables).

[Wreckless1]

I'm working on tweaking the value calculations so that one doesn't see lead pipes worth more caps than laser pistols. Its a few simple numbers in the .esm but getting it to a logical, playable setting is proving to be trickier than I anticipated. Especially when I don't want to modify the individual weapons' files so that won't conflict with other weapons mods.

 

As for the 'gun unbalance' you see... PLEASE start thinking of the ways that Fallout 1 and 2 worked and not how Oblivion worked. Fallout 1 and 2 were much the same way as FO3 in that you'd get a good weapon and then do your best to keep it fed and usually you were successful at that if you were methodical and sold off a lot of different stuff to buy that ammo whenever it was available.

 

The problem is that Fallout 3 is horribly lacking in the variety department when it comes to weapons, and the way damage resistance and armor works is also vastly simpler and basically garbage when compared to the Threshold/Resistance system that Fallout 1 and 2 enjoyed. The Fallout 1/2 system of armor added a nice dynamic in that some weapons and weapon types were effective against different enemies and different kinds of armor, they also had AP/JHP ammo, etc... areas where Fallout 3 is vastly oversimplified and causes these sorts of balance issues by nature.

Plus, the Fallout 1/2 system made a gun capable of burst fire a vastly different beast - whereas in V.A.T.S. if its full auto its always a burst, and a small one at that..

 

With the Threshold/Resistance armor system in FO1 and FO2, Power Armor basically made you invulnerable to wimpy melee and small caliber firearms unless they got lucky and got a critical hit - but more powerful weapons like plasma rifles were still very much effective against you, but the power armor still made a big difference in your chances of surviving.

Power Armor was also a HELL of a lot harder to find.

 

As for just reducing the overall number of guns, It'd be unbalancing to do so because of how stupidly fast the guns all wear out. This also makes a true variety almost impossible because you need to magically rub two of the same guns together (complete with nonsensical duct tape repair sound) to actually repair them.

The same goes for the narrow variety of ammo - there's always ONE gun that is particularly better than all the others that fire a given ammo type. I think that if they wanted to make one assault rifle do way more damage than another, make the one doing lower damage wear out at a much slower rate and make it much more accurate at distance to give it a reason to exist.

[Kryztof]

I haven't played FO1/2, so I have no clue about any of that, but I have a good understanding from what you've told me.

 

But if someone DID make a mod to decrease the number of weapons, even by a small amount, and also tied into that mod a weapon life extension, then that could balance the conflict of little weapons and short life.