Energy Resistance, and How We Can Fix It.

[BourneMcReady]

In Fallout 4, Energy Damage interacts with Energy Resist differently than Standard Damage interacts with Standard Damage Resist in a way that causes Energy weapons to become much weaker than Standard weapons.

 

 

 

Examples

 

Standard Weapon Example: Weapon says it does 25 damage in the pip-boy. A regular shot against an enemy with 50 Damage Resist will result in 9.7 damage being done. If you get a sneak attack with 2x damage, that same weapon now does 25 damage. The standard weapon did more than double damage for some reason.

 

Energy Weapon Example: Weapon says it does 25 damage in the pip-boy. A regular shot against an enemy with 50 Energy Resist will result in 9.7 damage being done. If you get a sneak attack with 2x damage, that same weapon now does 19.4 damage. The energy weapon did exactly double damage with a sneak attack, as expected.

 

 

The Formula

 

Fallout 4's armor system reduces the final damage dealt by comparing the difference between the incoming damage and armor values. In other words, the closer the incoming damage is to the armor value, the more final damage it will deal. If the damage and armor values are the exact same, it happens to be a 50% reduction in final damage. If the damage value is twice that of the armor value, the final damage is only reduced by 30%. If the damage value is half of the armor value, the final damage is reduced by 61%.

 

It's a little confusing, but it makes sense, right? Armor has diminishing returns, it's not linear. In-game, this means that very strong weapons are only reduced by very strong armor. Very weak weapons are only reduced up to a certain point, so they can remain usable.

 

 

So Why Doesn't Standard Damage Follow The Formula?

 

The difference between Standard Damage and Energy Damage is that Standard Damage applies the sneak attack multiplier to the formula before and during the check against the armor rating. Energy Damage applies the sneak multiplier before it is checked against the armor rating. This is why standard weapons do more than expected from sneak attacks - the sneak attack is being factored into the armor damage reduction formula in addition to the damage output formula, changing what should be a 50% damage reduction in our example to only 36%!

 

So 25 base damage gets doubled to 50 for both weapons in the example, but only Standard Damage takes this bonus into account when determining how effective the armor should be. This simply does not make sense with the way armor works in Fallout 4. Remember, as damage gets closer to the resistance value, the % of damage reduction gets reduced. It is effectively applying the x2 sneak increase as some bugged out form of armor penetration in addition to the increase shown in the HUD.

 

Note: I am only using the sneak multiplier as an example. It's important to remember that all multipliers suffer from the same problem, and they even stack. Other than sneak, this also includes crits, perks, magazines, bobbleheads, chems, and more. Literally everything. This is why this problem becomes bigger and bigger as you progress through the game. This is why enemies that are specifically supposed to be weak against Energy Damage still take more damage from non-energy weapon depending on your characters build.

 

This is up for debate, but my conclusion is that standard weapons are bugged, and energy weapons are actually how it should be handled. Standard damage is the only damage that acts this way - even radiation and poison use the same formula as energy resist!

 

This why my solution it to change the Standard Damage Resist formula, rather than everything else. With my proposed solution to this issue, the game actually becomes more difficult - but only very late in the game. It also perfectly balances Energy and Standard damage types, and makes things react exactly how they are supposed to. If something says you will do 5x damage, you will now do exactly 5x damage. No random surprises and confusion. Standard weapons will not seemingly ignore all armor during critical hits and sneak attacks.

 

 

My Hacky Solution

 

The solution I am brainstorming is to change all standard damage types and resistances to cryo damage (an unused damage type), then change the HUD icon of cryo to appear to be the regular damage icon. In-game this would make everything seem exactly the same, except now the new "standard damage" type does not factor in anything extra into the resist formula. If something does 2x damage, it will do exactly 2x damage. If I can make an entirely new damage type, that will be preferred. But if not, cryo can be used and edited to appear as standard damage. The pip-boy and awareness interface files will likely have to be edited. An alternative would be to simply hide the new cryo resistance value and set the players standard damage resist (which actually does nothing, now) to match whatever their hidden cryo resist value. Either way, the only problem is to find a way to make the HUD accurate which I'm pretty confident that I could get help with.

 

The only flaw in this method that I can see right now is that armor penetrating effects will have to be changed, because they only work with standard non-hack damage type. This is an entirely different, more well known bug that also causes armor penetration effects to not work at all with energy weapons. Currently, I have changed these effects to armor shred instead of ignore % of armor. This feels pretty good in-game, and I'm happy with it. So this "fix" would indeed change the game slightly, rather than just the resist formula. This also naturally makes lower damage, higher fire rate weapons shred more armor - which is exactly what was intended. See: Armor piercing effects that you can only get by changing the receiver to automatic on many weapon, because those lower damaging weapons have a hard time matching up to resist values. This would allow Rifleman and the "Penetrating" legendary effect to work on energy weapons like they are supposed to!

 

Thoughts? Opinions? Anything I missed? Any flaws in this potential solution other than massive compatibility issues due to having to edit every single non-energy weapon and anything that references the standard damage type? I'm absolutely going to spend the time making this if I can't find any major flaws in the logic.

[BourneMcReady]

Swapping to cryo works, and I've fixed all the interface files. Now just need to swap all instances of standard damage into cryo damage.

[HeyYou]

That's gonna bring up some major conflicts with other weapons mods....... unless you are planning patches? If this problem affects slug-throwers in general... There are a LOT of mods that add one or two or three dozen.......

[ozzyzzo]

Are you sure you're not just mistaking the magazine effects of ballistic damage weapons? Because energy weapons have no armor penetration or other effects.

[robotized]

Because energy weapons have no armor penetration or other effects.

I'm not so sure about that. Legendary Penetrating mod tells otherwise. It works for ballistic and energy weapons. There is nothing mentioned there about specific damage type.

[ozzyzzo]

 

Because energy weapons have no armor penetration or other effects.

I'm not so sure about that. Legendary Penetrating mod tells otherwise. It works for ballistic and energy weapons. There is nothing mentioned there about specific damage type.

 

 

I meant from the base mods, not legendary mods. They don't have penetration on receivers or magazines.

[robotized]

 

 

Because energy weapons have no armor penetration or other effects.

I'm not so sure about that. Legendary Penetrating mod tells otherwise. It works for ballistic and energy weapons. There is nothing mentioned there about specific damage type.

 

 

I meant from the base mods, not legendary mods. They don't have penetration on receivers or magazines.

 

Well, looks to me it's because the laser receivers' Object Mods are missing two Property Modifiers(compared to ballistic weapons). One Property adds an Actor Value called ArmorPenetration. The other Property adds an Enchantment. Through a Magic Effect, the Enchantment adds to the user(of the weapon) a Perk - ModArmorPenetrationPerk. The Perk changes the target's damage resistance. In the formula for calculating this, a part takes the same Actor Value mentioned earlier. Anyway, that's the science stuff. Again, there is no mention about the type of damage. Judging from what these Properties add, they should work regardless of damage type. So why aren't they a part of the laser armor penetrating receivers? Hasn't anyone tried to add these to the object mods? Are the Properties working at all?

[robotized]

To answer my own question - no, these properties don't work for energy damage. It was mentioned in the first post, but I just had to try it for myself. The reason they don't work is the effect of the perk, to modify the target's damage resistance. Damage resistance as in normal/regular damage, it does not include any kind of energy damage resistance. So we are limited to options for the so called Entry Point of the Perk. For anyone that wants to know how it works...

1. The weapon modification adds Actor Value(AV) to the user - ArmorPenetration. The value is usually 40 in automatic armor piercing receiver mods.

2. The weapon mod also adds Enchantment, which applies a Perk to the user.

The Perk's effect is to modify the target's damage resistance(DR). This is how it is calculated:

Modified DR=DR*X

X=1+AV*(-0.01)

AV is set to ArmorPenetration

So X=1+[(40)*(-0.01)]=1-0.4=0.6 => Modified DR=DR*0.6

The conclusion - for most of the auto receivers, the armor penetration works by reducing the target's damage resistance by 40%. Assuming I understood everything right from the game files. It's clever the way they(Bethesda) have set it up. There was no need to create more perks for different % of armor penetration. They just used the same perk and set different amount for "ArmorPenetration" Actor Values.

 

@BourneMcReady I am curious about this "armor shred". Is this done with a perk, magic effect or both?

Edit: I'm thinking, If you switch the damage type, the weapons aren't the only ones that are going to have conflicts. You will have to switch the damage resistance of all armors and clothes. And all the object mods that increase the armor's rating(armor upgrades, weave).