Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

[snowblizz]

To me Fallout shouldn't be about the loot.

It's not an apocalypse until you scavenge the bones of the old world.

[Brookshw]

It's not an apocalypse until you scavenge the bones of the old world.

Fair, though I'm with Erloas that loot isn't something I want emphasized. It's just not necessary and breaks my immersion after a certain point, especially with some of the more magical legendaries we saw in F4. Weapon scaling is tricky but I felt 1 & 2 did an okay job of placing weapons where it kind of made sense, sans early luck alien ray encounter. Then again, there really hasn't been a point in any of the games to date where you need to farm or felt particularly cash strapped.

[Triaxx]

Fallout 1/2 were on a different sort of power curve to 3/4/NV. With DR/DT in action as well as individual type resistances, you wanted a couple of very powerful weapons to cover the types. Fallout 1's Turbo Plasma Rifle and Rocket Launcher really covered the bases, because you weren't really fighting power armor. F2 you needed a Big Ballistic for crit seeking, like the Bozar, or Gauss Rifle, a Plasma Rifle, and a rocket launcher. So you could say oh, he shrugged that off, how about this instead.

Fallout 3/4 and NV do their damage scaling differently. Early on, the .32 pistol in F3 is the absolute worst weapon in the game. Late game? I can take a high-level character out with nothing but a .32 pistol, a few rounds of ammo and a T-shirt and come back home safely loaded down with enough firepower to form my own country.

Fallout 4 scaling is more about modifying the weapons themselves. I can take the moderately okay 10mm pistol I get at the start, and still be using it at the end of the game as I'm assaulting whichever faction has crawled to the top of my must die list.

In New Vegas, scaling combines the Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 approaches to an extent. It's very much a function of individual skill, but you can also modify the weapons. Starter 9mm can barely hit the enemy directly in your face? It's because you suck, because you lack the skill and haven't put a scope on it. But, there's one more layer of depth. And that's ammo. Barely scratching those heavily armored critters over there? Toss in some Armor Piercing ammo and don't worry about it. They don't have armor, and are still sucking up bullets like they're going out of style? Hollow point, and make them reconsider that armor thing.

Energy weapons are weird. In Fallout 4, they feel like they lack punch even more than normal guns, and they definitely lack the variety of ballistics. With the exception of Plasma. Plasma Rifles feel like the hardest hitting things in the entire game.

Fallout New Vegas is all about cowboy Chic. Energy weapons are cool, and we had most of the assets left over from 3, so you know, why not, but wouldn't you rather a 6-shooter? Look at the loading animation we spent forever on.

Fallout 3 is where they really shine. Except for a bit at the start with the 10mm, you can be an energy weapon user from the start almost. Reach Megaton, get sent to Super Duper Mart, get your first laser pistol and never fire a ballistic again. There's enough energy ammo around to keep it fed, and enough energy weapons around to keep it repaired. You can upgrade to a laser rifle later, though that's a little less easy to feed. (All the robots drop energy cells, not microfusions.) Plasma, when it arrives is a rather significant game changer, giving you a bunch of alpha damage you were probably really missing.

[GloatingSwine]

It's not an apocalypse until you scavenge the bones of the old world.

On the other hand, Fallout was about the post-apocalypse where someone else has scavenged the bones of the old world and you get to come along and find out what they've done with them.

Fallout 3 is where they really shine. Except for a bit at the start with the 10mm, you can be an energy weapon user from the start almost. Reach Megaton, get sent to Super Duper Mart, get your first laser pistol and never fire a ballistic again. There's enough energy ammo around to keep it fed, and enough energy weapons around to keep it repaired. You can upgrade to a laser rifle later, though that's a little less easy to feed. (All the robots drop energy cells, not microfusions.) Plasma, when it arrives is a rather significant game changer, giving you a bunch of alpha damage you were probably really missing.

And then you get the Metal Blaster and every other gun in the game is suddenly irrelevant and pointless.

[LibraryOgre]

It's not an apocalypse until you scavenge the bones of the old world.

However, I don't really think that goes along with "loot".

In FO1, I carried around a lot of knives. Why? Because they were relatively low-weight and of a pretty fixed value. I could trade them to anyone, because they were useful. But I never really reached a point where I could buy out an entire shop, because money was still VALUABLE.

In FO3+, money reaches a point where it's not valuable. You get to a point where you start ignoring what might be decent loot, because it's not worth nearly enough to consider stripping the place.

[DigoDragon]

Fallout 3 is where they really shine. Except for a bit at the start with the 10mm, you can be an energy weapon user from the start almost. Reach Megaton, get sent to Super Duper Mart, get your first laser pistol and never fire a ballistic again. There's enough energy ammo around to keep it fed, and enough energy weapons around to keep it repaired.

It was... The second or third time I did the Super Duper Mart quest and got the random encounter of that alien ship crash that gives you the powerful energy weapon (firelance or something?)

Yeah pretty much had to go energy weapon for that precious. XD

By mid game if you've done Mothership Zeta, then you have a stockpile of energy ammo and what I felt was the most powerful weapon, the disintegrate rifle.

In FO3+, money reaches a point where it's not valuable. You get to a point where you start ignoring what might be decent loot, because it's not worth nearly enough to consider stripping the place.

Yeah, in FO3 and NV money was easy to get, so I didn't feel I ever had to strip a place clean. Early on in both games I'd harvest land mines and sell for easy cash.

Well, so long as I didn't sneeze, but it was just that one time. XD

[Brookshw]

In FO1, I carried around a lot of knives. Why? Because they were relatively low-weight and of a pretty fixed value. I could trade them to anyone, because they were useful. But I never really reached a point where I could buy out an entire shop, because money was still VALUABLE.

Then again, if you tagged Barter you were buying combat armor at lvl 5 without having to do much scrounging. Run around with that and the burst shotgun and you were golden for a long time.

Re: F3+ and plasma from upthread, never liked plasma because of the slow projectile speed. Better for vats, but I preferred run/gun.

[Triaxx]

It was... The second or third time I did the Super Duper Mart quest and got the random encounter of that alien ship crash that gives you the powerful energy weapon (firelance or something?)

Yeah pretty much had to go energy weapon for that precious. XD

By mid game if you've done Mothership Zeta, then you have a stockpile of energy ammo and what I felt was the most powerful weapon, the disintegrate rifle.

I meant the fixed spawning laser pistols, but yeah that one's good too. Energy weapons specialists in Mothership Zeta are more or less completely unfair. 'Success, we have kidnapped a primitive... wait, why is it so much better with our weapons than we are!?'

Re: F3+ and plasma from upthread, never liked plasma because of the slow projectile speed. Better for vats, but I preferred run/gun.

I always treated Plasma in F3 as the shotgun of energy weapons. The slow speed doesn't matter when the thing you're using it on is a couple feet away.

[Cikomyr]

Oh God...

I found a mod that removed all limitation on clothes vs armor pieces. Oh man. I was literally naked under my armor pieces all the time.

Also, I have found a mod that allows me to know WHAT MY CHARACTER IS GOING TO SAY BEFORE I SAW IT. JEsus Christ it allows for me to more carefully pick my choice. I think it literally makes me more involved with the dialogue.

[Erloas]

It's not an apocalypse until you scavenge the bones of the old world.

Yes, but it is the context and design which I was referring to. Yes, finding the "technology of the fallen" is important, but the whole point is that "everyday items" from the past are great, not that this 9mm pistol has a special name and has "magical" properties compared to "other" 9mm pistols. Or putting on a lab coat suddenly makes you smarter.
But a high quality pre-war knife is going to be a lot better than some crude knife made from scrape metal.

And I think that still leaves plenty of room for not-real things like energy weapons, power armor, and even things like cybernetic implants, but they have to be rare, not something that you're constantly upgrading and there are dozens of small variations of the same items.

It is also clearly a design decision that can go either way, but I much preferred 1&2 where energy weapons were relatively rare mid/late game items, rather than NV were everyone and their dog has energy weapons and many of them hardly even match mundane ballistic weapons. It did also require having a skill system where you could pick up a new skill fairly late into the game and still have it be useful.

[Vinyadan]

Also, I have found a mod that allows me to know WHAT MY CHARACTER IS GOING TO SAY BEFORE I SAW IT. JEsus Christ it allows for me to more carefully pick my choice. I think it literally makes me more involved with the dialogue.

FO4 I guess? I think that such a mod is pretty much essential. I have no idea of what Bethesda was thinking with the dialogue. Maybe they thought, "hey, reading is boring, let's just add the titles of the answers".

It reminded me of various European versions of Oblivion. Ever heard of "All your base are belong to us"? The texts in Oblivion were translated like that.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oh God...

I found a mod that removed all limitation on clothes vs armor pieces. Oh man. I was literally naked under my armor pieces all the time.

Also, I have found a mod that allows me to know WHAT MY CHARACTER IS GOING TO SAY BEFORE I SAW IT. JEsus Christ it allows for me to more carefully pick my choice. I think it literally makes me more involved with the dialogue.

Don't get too excited. Just because you now know what you're going to say doesn't mean that it will make any difference in the outcome of the discussion.

[Cikomyr]

Don't get too excited. Just because you now know what you're going to say doesn't mean that it will make any difference in the outcome of the discussion.

I know. I realized that when 3 of 4 of potential replies to Captain Kel were practically the same thing.

I still love it a lot more

Edit: here's the real kicker: having the ability to read my dialogue before answering kind of got me to pay more attention to the dialogue overall, and therefore be more invested.

I think the real problem of Fallout 4 conversation system is that it's structure in a way to specifically make it less worthy of your attention.

[DigoDragon]

I meant the fixed spawning laser pistols, but yeah that one's good too. Energy weapons specialists in Mothership Zeta are more or less completely unfair. 'Success, we have kidnapped a primitive... wait, why is it so much better with our weapons than we are!?'.

Right, figured you mean the fixed stuff. But yeah Zeta gets downright game-breaking if you have invested into energy weapons. By the final bridge fight I managed to disintegrate the captain before he finished getting up from his char, his first officer, and the helmsman (I guess, based on where they stood).

always treated Plasma in F3 as the shotgun of energy weapons. The slow speed doesn't matter when the thing you're using it on is a couple feet away.

Until you get that plasma perk that makes your enemies explode. Fun effect tho when you fire into a crowd. XD

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Villa's fairly simple as long as you have good endurance and the Phoenix Monocyte Breeder. It's powerful enough to keep up with the background drain and keep you from having the constant health drain in hardcore. Then it's all down to being a damned good shot and remembering where all the blasted traps are. (And not getting lost looking for the stupid bobblehead)

Looks like you were right. The constant cloud damage wasn’t nearly as bad with the regeneration implant ticking in the background.

Once I got Dog’s ghost stay dead perk I was able to consistently take out ghosts within a single VATS sequence, largely with the police pistol.

Light step helped a lot of course.

[GloatingSwine]

I always treated Plasma in F3 as the shotgun of energy weapons. The slow speed doesn't matter when the thing you're using it on is a couple feet away.

But then the Metal Blaster is literally the shotgun of energy weapons, and has Fallout 3's broken shotgun crit mechanics where each individual beam crits seperately for the full crit damage of the weapon. So on a sneak attack where you get automatic crits it does the 55 base damage then 9*27 crit damage, and then all of that gets doubled for a sneak attack.

For one MFC charge.

And it repairs with ordinary laser rifles and has about 5x the durability of the Terrible Shotgun, the other shotgun critmuncher.

Which means that it can seriously inconvenience and even kill the stupid bullet sponge Broken Steel enemies from stealth before they've turned round and had a go back.


(If I ever played F3 again I'm tempted to do it without Broken Steel, because the new enemies it adds are just unfun hitpoint sacks and cheating* super mutant overlords.


* Tri-Beam laser rifles, when used by a Super Mutant Overlord, do an extra 40 damage per beam that ignores armour, but only to the player. This is the desperate attempt to reinsert challenge into F3's broken-ass armour system after they accidentally gave you power armour with basically infinite durability (the Winterised T-51b has like 1000000 durability HP compared to 1000 for the standard set, and both give 85% damage reduction). Some point lookout enemies have the same cheat.

Looks like you were right. The constant cloud damage wasn’t nearly as bad with the regeneration implant ticking in the background.

Once I got Dog’s ghost stay dead perk I was able to consistently take out ghosts within a single VATS sequence, largely with the police pistol.

Light step helped a lot of course.

Them's good eatin' is also a great way to keep your health up through Dead Money. The food items you get from humanoid opponents once you have it are some of the more powerful ones in the game.

[Triaxx]

Winterized Power Armor is a mistake. They gave you the simulation version instead of the intended one. But yeah, Point lookout was just screwed up.

Metal Blaster... was just so far away for all but the one playthrough I did where I went and found absolutely every single ingot, with the Wiki open, that I just ignore it.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

That’s an interesting perk; most of the time I have plenty of healing so it doesn’t look useful. But it gives me an idea for a theme build.

[GloatingSwine]

One of the other good uses for it is that on Hardcore mode where healing isn't instant, you heal faster from a stimpak and food at the same time than either alone. Blood Sausages also have a base healing amount of about 3x that of a stimpak. (+5 for 20s vs. +5 for 6s)

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Funny story; because this current playthrough isn’t continuous (might have been months between loads) I genuinely forgot what quests I’ve completed and other details.

I go to my weapon footlocker and realise A Light Shining In The Darkness is missing. I check every container in the motel, and even go back to Zion to check the reward box.

I scratch my head and assume the game must have glitched or I stashed it in an outside container, so I give up on seeing it again.

With not much else to do I decide to reconnect with my companions. I can’t remember offhand who they are but checking my quests I figure out it’s Raul and ED-E. Find Raul in his shack and turns out he had the gun all along. As well as a bunch of .45 ammo. Must have given it to him after finishing HH and forgot while I was doing OWB.

The perils of taking long breaks during an RPG run.

[GloatingSwine]

I go to my weapon footlocker and realise A Light Shining In The Darkness is missing. I check every container in the motel, and even go back to Zion to check the reward box.

That's not a gun you want to lose track of, it's one of the best, if not the best pistol in the game. .45 has some decent ammo choices and the .45 auto base is affected by the Grunt perk. (HH sets you up for life if you take that plus Hand Loader, with A Light Shining in Darkness and Survivalist's Rifle both affected by it).

[Triaxx]

It's nice, but give me a Lucky or Mysterious Magnum any day. Or That Gun if I'm feeling in need of AP rounds.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

A Light is a fine gun, but by that point I was running Lil' Devil as my main pistol, and 12.7mm ammo wasn't hard to come by.

Now that my Luck 10 Courier has cleared out Sierra Madre, it's time for a new Courier. When I start playing New Vegas I just can't stop.

This time my gimmick is that I can only use weapons that aren't explicitly weapons. Things like knives are ok because the in-game model is a kitchen knife, but bowie knives or combat knives are out because those are weapons. The knife actually worked pretty well for a while, but then you quickly pick up Chopper from the abandoned house just after Nipton.

I thought the sledgehammer would be good, but it's heavy and its dps isn't actually great.

Protip: trying to fight cazadores with a baseball bat is a terrible idea.

Also, Animal Friend seems to initially work against Violet's dogs, but stops working if you kill her.

Now I'm just waiting for any of the vendors to stock a chainsaw, or else I have to off Motor-Runner for his. Legion safehouse...not going to even try.

[Cikomyr]

So I started a quest that is actually intriguing. The Cabot House.

At first when I was recruited in Bunker Hill, I was *high fine I guess* but talking aboit ancient aliens sparked my curiosity.

If anything, this sounds funnily wacky.

I also decided, on recommendation from YT Joseph Anderson, to give myself unlimited carry weight, but no fast travel. Let's see how the loop evolves.

[Triaxx]

I honestly went with Salvage Beacons, which functions similarly, but requires I find an accessible container. So I can't dump loot in the institute, because settlers can't reach the area.

[Caelestion]

That's the mod I thought of too. Made by Kinggath, I believe, who does the Sim Settlements mods.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I run with WMX, which lets ALSD have the same mods as the basic .45 ACP, which lets it have a silencer attached. Combine with the plentiful ammo once you are done with HH and the Grunt bonus, and it is pretty much my number one favorite pistol.

HH is like a Christmas Vacation... it's a nice relaxing place without all the stresses of your work-a-day life, with gorgeous scenery, and you get some pretty awesome presents for your troubles! I mean, ALSD, Survivalist's, and the +5% crit from the armor are all pretty dang amazing.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Because the vendors wouldn’t stock chainsaws I went and clubbed Motor Runner to death with Nephi’s driver. Motor Runner seems a little slow to react for some reason but whatever.

And I discover that I can actually safely melee cazadores by kiting them. I just hold down attack on the chainsaw and run backwards, letting the bugs effectively jump onto the spinning chain. I did take Travel Light, so maybe that’s how I can keep them at a safe distance.

And as absurd as New Vegas sneak kill system is, I will admit that it gives a fair bit of flexibility in getting things done.

[Triaxx]

Mick's special inventory or the Khan's armory usually have Chainsaws. But since you have it now that info's useless. :P

[halfeye]

Mick's special inventory or the Khan's armory usually have Chainsaws. But since you have it now that info's useless. :P

I dunno about chainsaws, but it seems to me that the Khans give you much better prices than any other buyer/seller I remember meeting.