Balancing damage

[BulletSix]

Hi there :)

 

I´d like to hear some opinions about the damage-balancing of weapons. (just for the record: i do not have intentions to make "another weapon revamp" ;) )

 

So how do you balance this? If you up the damage per bullet of a automatic weapon to come close to the one of a single shot weapon, it gets vastly overpowered in VATS. If you give them the same damage per AP spent, its getting very unattractive in real-time mode or firing single shots.

 

What do you think?

[Wreckless1]

Hi there :)

 

I´d like to hear some opinions about the damage-balancing of weapons. (just for the record: i do not have intentions to make "another weapon revamp" ;) )

 

So how do you balance this? If you up the damage per bullet of a automatic weapon to come close to the one of a single shot weapon, it gets vastly overpowered in VATS. If you give them the same damage per AP spent, its getting very unattractive in real-time mode or firing single shots.

 

What do you think?

 

 

There's no way to make V.A.T.S. balanced - honestly the idea of neutering the per-bullet realistic damage of an automatic weapon for the sake of 'balancing' anything is almost as frustratingly unrealistic and stupid as how quickly the weapons wear out in vanilla FO3. I've said it once and I'll say it again - there isn't enough ammo in the entire game of Fallout 3 to actually wear out an AK or G3.

 

But back OT, Honestly the level-based bad guy stats are partially to blame. Raiders that take 5 or 6 rounds of 10mm to an unprotected head to kill is just as bloody stupid, and the idea of Super Mutants that get pwned by one round from the Combat shotty is just as lame.

 

The best fix IMO would mostly lie in altering the number & nature of bad guys to make combat more difficult. Raiders should be raiding your ass in groups of 10-15 regularly, not the "Please kill and loot me" groups of 2-4.

But an unhelmeted raider should get dropped with one or two headshots at the max, and regardless of the 'level' they are.

 

Similarly, the wimpiest Super Mutant around should make your poohole pucker if you're anything lower than level 10 to 12. Super Muties shouldn't be carrying around *kittie kittie* trash like Hunting Rifles and Nailboards, either.

Super Mutants should take a hell of a lot to kill - It should take a critical hit with the shotty to drop them in one headshot. The same goes for anyone in Power Armor.

 

So, I think the best approach would be to bump the damage of everything to around 200% after bumping the 10mm pistols, chinese pistol and .32 pistol individually by a lot beforehand.. as well as make it so weapons always do max damage regardless of condition or skill. This makes gunfire/grenades/run-by-battings from badguys a LOT more lethal, but also means your on-target effects are much better too. Low skill should really affect your shot spread in real time by a great deal, as well as your %'s in V.A.T.S.

 

 

Then implement some inventory changes like the one that Khan_Raider made for Super Mutants that actually helps puts the 'Super' back in their name.

(available here: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=914 ) I highly recommend it.

I hope that someone does something similar for the Raider inventory lists - I don't see *any* Raider rushing at a guy with a lead pipe when that guy is in power armor and wielding a plasma rifle.

 

After that, all that's left to figure out is a way to actually make Power Armor *POWER* Armor.. despite mods that up the DR by a ton and other things, what the game needs is a threshold/resistance armor system like FO1 and FO2 - hopefully the GECK makes this possible.

I'd also pump up the HP & DR of the Muties to make them actually tough to kill on 'normal' so that 'very hard' is actually 'very hard'. I'd probably also beef up Sentry Bots, Mr Gutsy's, Mirelurk Hunters, Deathclaws, and Giant Radscorpions by a lot as well, and bump the hell out of the damage done by Feral Ghoul attacks to the same ends.

[Moraelin]

Well, personally I'd go with the formula the game uses to show you the damage of a weapon. It already takes at least rate of fire and accuracy into account for automatic weapons. The AP use, I'd leave alone. You don't need that much more time to aim and fire a three round burst than a single shot, so there's little justification in settting the AP sky high.

 

That said, it won't be balanced either way. Best thing to do IMHO is figure where you want your weapon to be, compared to other similar weapons in the game.

[BulletSix]

... and then raise it by about 50% as i did with the vanilla ones ;)

 

something different:

did anyone play with the "Damage vs. defense modifier" (labelled in FOMM that way) in DNAM?

could this be the key to make the damage of a weapon more armour-dependant?

for the

- 10mm pistol : 1.0

- chinese pistol : 1.0

- .32 Revolver (i hate calling that pistol ^^) : 1.5

- hunting rifle and assault rifle : 1.333

- chinese assault rifle : 0.7333

- .44 Magnum 2.6667

- railway rifle: 2.0

- shotgun 1.6667

- sniper rifle 1.8333

- Minigun 3.5

- laser pistol 1.6667

- laser rifle 1.3333

- laser gatling 2.3333

- plasma pistol 1.3333

- plasma rifle 1.6667

- 10mm smg 2.3333

 

did anyone notice any differences in performace of weapons to armoured/unarmoured targets?

i know thats difficult to try ... maybe change the values of two weapons, e.g. the regular 10mm and the chinese pistol to mach each other except aforementioned value and try in vats against a neutral target (neutral target because you can can change weapons w/o getting fired upon and vats because it shows the expected damage) in hevy armour (power armour) and again one in light armour (Moira? ^^)

 

 

or am i just talking (aggain) about the obvious?

[Seinfeld]

To me, the balance comes from the fact that the enemy gets to do just as much damage to YOU. It always felt silly to me when I'd take a burst from an assault rifle or minigun and my health barely changed. To me, the name of the game is "don't get hit!" Where's my G.E.C.K.? ;)