Fallout Perpetual Debate of Bethesda Versus Interplay/Obsidian Fallout World Design

[Scooby Doo]

It is that one, When you find the Chinese sub the captain all but confirms it.

FO1 Game manual said that most nukes were 250-750 kilotons but there were some megaton yield nukes that were getting retired.

I'm gonna assume that the Chinese officer used a megaton nuke which also hit a nuclear reactor for the double whammy radiation.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Did some napkin maths to figure out just how shit the FO4 weapon balancing (for a given caliber) is.
FO1-2 .223 small guns (Classic fallout doesn't have .308 with the given reason it was exceedingly rare)
-Hunting Rifle
-Sniper Rifle
-.223 Pistol

Respective damage per action point.
-Hunting Rifle: 4 damage
-Sniper Rifle: 5.6 damage
-.223 Pistol: 6 damage (technically has armor penetrate perk so it's even more in practice)

All righty so we have three weapons ranging from 'weapon you can find at the start of the game' to 'literal best .223 small gun in the game'.
Difference per action point? 50% bonus damage comparing the worst to the best. Against heavy armor it's even better, but against a naked target this is what you get.

Doesn't sound like much but that can be the difference between killing an enemy per turn, or every 2 turns. Which means you take double damage in return. This is very important.

Fallout 4 .308 small guns, same 'class' of 'punchy relatively slow firing guns'.
-Pipe revolver
-Bolt action pipe rifle
-Hunting Rifle
-Combat rifle

Respective damage per 10 seconds. (no perks, just base max-modded stats)
-Pipe revolver: 294
-Bolt action pipe rifle: 102
-Hunting Rifle: 165
-Combat rifle: 2793

Alrighty so we should see an obvious problem here, the worst weapon is doing 1/27th the damage of the best weapon, that is to say you need 27 times the time to kill an enemy despite firing the same rounds at them. Hypothetically lets say it's a rather tanky enemy who requires 30 seconds of concentrated fire to put down, this means it's going to take a fun 13 minutes to actually put down. Dear lord and hope it doesn't regenerate either.

Now granted the pipe guns are meant to be thrown away pretty quickly, shockingly the pipe revolver has three times the DPS of it's pipe rifle counterpart, and nearly twice the DPS of the actual proper maxxed out hunting rifle.

To make this clear, a fully upgraded 'actual firearm' is outcompeted by a fucking pipebomb waiting to happen.

The worst culprit of the .308 saga is the combat rifle, which utterly renders every other gun in it's ammo type worthless by a stupid degree, to get the same parity the fallout 1-2 .223 pistol would have to be doing some 540 damage per shot, which would 1 shot everything in the game aside from Frank Horrigan. That's how outlandish the scaling is.

Now granted obviously there are going to be disconnects between turn based and real-time combat systems, and DPS generally scales with fire rate. Except a proper competent game developer would ensure guns of a given caliber aren't doing 27 fucking times the damage of weapons in it's class, the combat rifle should not have been able to load .308, and the .308 weapons should've got a huge damage buff to counteract how slow they fire.

 

[DarthOne]

Did some napkin maths to figure out just how shit the FO4 weapon balancing (for a given caliber) is.
FO1-2 .223 small guns (Classic fallout doesn't have .308 with the given reason it was exceedingly rare)
-Hunting Rifle
-Sniper Rifle
-.223 Pistol

Respective damage per action point.
-Hunting Rifle: 4 damage
-Sniper Rifle: 5.6 damage
-.223 Pistol: 6 damage (technically has armor penetrate perk so it's even more in practice)

All righty so we have three weapons ranging from 'weapon you can find at the start of the game' to 'literal best .223 small gun in the game'.
Difference per action point? 50% bonus damage comparing the worst to the best. Against heavy armor it's even better, but against a naked target this is what you get.

Doesn't sound like much but that can be the difference between killing an enemy per turn, or every 2 turns. Which means you take double damage in return. This is very important.

Fallout 4 .308 small guns, same 'class' of 'punchy relatively slow firing guns'.
-Pipe revolver
-Bolt action pipe rifle
-Hunting Rifle
-Combat rifle

Respective damage per 10 seconds. (no perks, just base max-modded stats)
-Pipe revolver: 294
-Bolt action pipe rifle: 102
-Hunting Rifle: 165
-Combat rifle: 2793

Alrighty so we should see an obvious problem here, the worst weapon is doing 1/27th the damage of the best weapon, that is to say you need 27 times the time to kill an enemy despite firing the same rounds at them. Hypothetically lets say it's a rather tanky enemy who requires 30 seconds of concentrated fire to put down, this means it's going to take a fun 13 minutes to actually put down. Dear lord and hope it doesn't regenerate either.

Now granted the pipe guns are meant to be thrown away pretty quickly, shockingly the pipe revolver has three times the DPS of it's pipe rifle counterpart, and nearly twice the DPS of the actual proper maxxed out hunting rifle.

To make this clear, a fully upgraded 'actual firearm' is outcompeted by a fucking pipebomb waiting to happen.

The worst culprit of the .308 saga is the combat rifle, which utterly renders every other gun in it's ammo type worthless by a stupid degree, to get the same parity the fallout 1-2 .223 pistol would have to be doing some 540 damage per shot, which would 1 shot everything in the game aside from Frank Horrigan. That's how outlandish the scaling is.

Now granted obviously there are going to be disconnects between turn based and real-time combat systems, and DPS generally scales with fire rate. Except a proper competent game developer would ensure guns of a given caliber aren't doing 27 fucking times the damage of weapons in it's class, the combat rifle should not have been able to load .308, and the .308 weapons should've got a huge damage buff to counteract how slow they fire.

I suspect they really really wanted to push the pipe weapons because they’re more ‘post apocalyptic’. Nevermind that the ones in the game are ugly as sin, even for pipe weapons.


Edit: the autocorrect has been taken out and shot for its failure.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

I suspect they really really wanted to push the pipe weapons because they’re more ‘post apocalyptic’. Nevermind that the ones in the game are ugly as sin, even for pipe weapons.


Edit: the autocorrect has been taken out and shot for its failure.

Its a weird design choice because the pipe weapons almost universally become redundant the instant you find a 10mm pistol.

...Which is the first firearm you find in the game. X_X

The only usage for pipe-guns is wounding and explosive variants, which thanks to Bethesda also sucking dick at balance, exceed the power of 90% of guns in the game.

 

[Typhonis]

• Dust Storms (Perception Debuff, removed by short resting)
• Cold Temperature Drops (Agility Debuff, removed by short resting)
• High Temperature (Endurance Debuff removed by drinking water)
• Random Deathclaw attacks (Just "Hard" Fight)

How bout any of the following can happen?

If you want weather and terrain rules look up an item called Dirtside by Zozer games. It gives rules for hostile environments. Also it gives rules for damage taken by being in such conditions.

Dust/Sandstorms. Wearing protective clothing and eye protection is a must. Even then have the party make either a wisdom or intelligence check every hour to avoid getting lost.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

I use the above so I don't have to manually replace a bunch of shit myself in Xedit

Oh boy the wonders of altering weapon spawns in FO4...Such a nightmare. X_X

 

[Typhonis]

A real life pipe gun. The Sten gun.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

A real life pipe gun. The Sten gun.

D:> Whoah! Notice how it applies several rules of gunsmithing? Like the fucking magazine being in line with the bolt!? And what's this? It's not made of rusty nails and splintered wood!?

 

[Typhonis]

I blame lazy creativity on their part. I mean look at it. Swing the magazine down 90 degrees and you have a functional pipe weapon for Fallout and given the picture you already have two mods for the stock, 3 mods for the barrel. It also has a nice rugged look to it.

Another 'pipe' weapon from WW2. M-3 Grease Gun.

Stamped metal. Very little welding required. A bike shop could turn one out. Perfect for the wasteland. Also already has that 50's vibe.

And now for a real kicker....a pipe rifle perhaps?

M-1 Garand with folding stock.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

I blame lazy creativity on their part. I mean look at it. Swing the magazine down 90 degrees and you have a functional pipe weapon for Fallout and given the picture you already have two mods for the stock, 3 mods for the barrel. It also has a nice rugged look to it.

Another 'pipe' weapon from WW2. M-3 Grease Gun.

Stamped metal. Very little welding required. A bike shop could turn one out. Perfect for the wasteland. Also already has that 50's vibe.

And now for a real kicker....a pipe rifle perhaps?

M-1 Garand with folding stock.

Stampings are actually kinda hard to do for small-time gunsmiths, they require complicated and large stamping machines. For example even the soviet union post-war struggled to get the AKM operational and they were stamping all sorts of stuff beforehand.
Stamping is basically super awesome for production, but getting said production running is quite challenging. For post-war gunsmiths you're much more likely to find tube-receiver firearms and milled stuff. Relatively expensive, sure, but less difficult to make in return.
Granted the Greasegun shows up in at least 2 Fallout games, so obviously somebody figured it out postwar.

 

[Typhonis]

Still with 5 minutes on Google...I think I found better examples for 'pipe' weapons in Fallout.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

I mean look at it. Swing the magazine down 90 degrees

Funny story about that, because Bethesda is the laziest fucking company and reuses animations as much as possible despite having so many unique models and textures, two guns ingame use side mounted magazines all using the same reload animations.
Assault rifle and pipe pistol have the same animation despite being radically different guns. Also the reason why the game has no pump action or belt fed guns either, why bother making new animations when you can just reuse em?

Still with 5 minutes on Google...I think I found better examples for 'pipe' weapons in Fallout.

Yep, you sure did! <;3

 

[Typhonis]

A pipe assault rifle. Take the Garand and give it a 20 round box mag like a BAR. As for loading animation. A hand pushing down a 5 round stripper clip into the action then popping off the clip.Have it repeat twice for normal magazine and four time for 20 round magazine.

Craftable mod for ammo pouches...the BAR belt could hold 12 magazines.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

A pipe assault rifle. Take the Garand and give it a 20 round box mag like a BAR. As for loading animation. A hand pushing down a 5 round stripper clip into the action then popping off the clip.Have it repeat twice for normal magazine and four time for 20 round magazine.

Craftable mod for ammo pouches...the BAR belt could hold 12 magazines.

"Pipe" is something of a bad term to use for a gun so complicated, really you could call it 'hand-crafted' or 'garage-smithed' or something?

 

[Typhonis]

"Pipe" is something of a bad term to use for a gun so complicated, really you could call it 'hand-crafted' or 'garage-smithed' or something?

Survival? Implying it was designed by people low on resources?

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Survival? Implying it was designed by people low on resources?

"Survival Hunting Rifle"
"Survival Assault Rifle"
"Survival Revolver"

Yeah, those seem decent enough.

 

[Zachowon]

I think tje whole point was to look like something people who dont have actually gins would create

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

I think tje whole point was to look like something people who dont have actually gins would create

We know what 'guns built by people who don't have real guns' look like. They're muzzleloaders, primitive slamfire shotguns, hell even the Luty submachinegun looks somewhat decent in a garage-built way.

But you know what 'real' ersatz guns look like? Not pieces of rusty shit that'll explode in your hands. Presumably all pipeguns ingame are rifled because they're not super inaccurate, so one of the hardest parts of gunsmithing is VERY common in Boston.

You're an army guy, you know how gun reliability and safety is important, right? Mr Forward Assist ring any bells?

 

[Zachowon]

We know what 'guns built by people who don't have real guns' look like. They're muzzleloaders, primitive slamfire shotguns, hell even the Luty submachinegun looks somewhat decent in a garage-built way.

But you know what 'real' ersatz guns look like? Not pieces of rusty shit that'll explode in your hands. Presumably all pipeguns ingame are rifled because they're not super inaccurate, so one of the hardest parts of gunsmithing is VERY common in Boston.

You're an army guy, you know how gun reliability and safety is important, right? Mr Forward Assist ring any bells?

I mean..*Looks at guy who killed Abe in Japan with a gun that almost killed potential congressman Herrera*
Safety is not a concern in the wasteland

 

[Husky_Khan]

I mean..*Looks at guy who killed Abe in Japan with a gun that almost killed potential congressman Herrera*
Safety is not a concern in the wasteland

I think it's just people looking for things to complain about. I'm not a big fan of Fallout 4 weapon design in general but people harping about the realism of pipe weapons was never on my radar of concern. Being overly obsessed with realism in a game that contains very little already due to being a post-apocalyptic science fantasy romp makes me think those particular criticisms are kinda pointless and can be disregarded in general. I'd put it in the same field as criticizing about automotive and sports protection equipment being midtier armor in most games.

If it's an aesthetics thing or whatever sure, but none of the pipe weapons things broke my immersion or enjoyment or even tracked on my radar. Certainly not nearly as egregious as armor sourcing or talking animals which many of the same folks tend to not be bothered by.