Is it possible to give melee weapons such a kick too? I noticed Veronica's fist would punch people back a bit with the killing blow, but if I use the baseball bat then the killing blow just makes them drop straight to the ground as if there was no force behind the blow at all.


I'm not sure about weapon balance. Energy weapons seem to be widely considered under powered, but so far I haven't used any energy weapons so I can't tell.

Yeah, the DPS of shotguns currently is fine on paper, but in practice its actually very low because the damage is implemented as X number of hits for X damage, which means that they end up doing almsot nothing because we use DT now and not DR. So say a shotgun does 10 hits of 10 damage each, once per second, giving it a theoretical DPS of 100. In practice, someone wearing minimal armor (10DT) would take 10 x 1 damage once per second, assuming your min damage threshold is 10%... I think thats what it is now, right? DR makes them just do a percentage, whereas DT makes each of those shots worthless. It gets a little better with slugs, but still not great.

The damage threshold damage was increased to 15%.

Shotguns are currently more useful against unarmored animals compared to (armored) NPCs. On the one hand it's a nice idea that one weapon type is more effective against this, and one weapon type is more effective against that, but I agree that shotguns should still be able to do some decent damage to NPCs. Especially since it's not very difficult right now to find armor with a higher DT than the damage of the average normal shotgun projectile.

But increasing the damage would probably make it overpowered against non armored opponents. You could also increase the damage and reduce the number of projectiles, making it more effective against armored opponents but not overpowered against unarmored opponents, but then it's not a real shotgun anymore.

Damn, I can see why the Damage Threshold system is such a pain to balance right.

Arr... I was having the issue in 1.2 when I started the new playthrough and had the armor for the nice DT. Since then I've upgraded to 1.3 wiped out the Powder Gangers and sold the armor due to lack of need. Let me quickly check it.


Edit: Yes, in 1.3 it is fine.

Yeah, exactly. And shotguns are really going to be impossible to balance right based purely on the DT mechanism. That's why I think a model that just takes into account the type of armor might provide better results, but its hard to say until I try it out when I get some time.

Here's another idea I was playing with when I was brainstorming for my realism mod:
Shotguns do damage based on armor type, as discussed earlier, but their chance to wound limbs is based on the damage before DT is calculated, and based on the total damage amount rather than individual rolls for each pellet. In real life, armor that might stop a bullet would still leave bruises, but armor that would negate a shotgun shell would still easily break bones.

Another idea I was playing with was having DT be more area specific, leaving arms and legs more open to damage. This would indirectly benefit shotguns much more than single projectile firearms.

Also, we need laser shotguns.

I'm going to try this mod in a couple hours and whether I like it or not I wanted to thank you for taking the time to put this much effort into helping fix this game. This sounds exactly like what I am looking for, a challenge.

Exactly!

I understand the way the number of projectiles work. But shotgun shells that contain a bunch of small pellets should be pretty ineffective against any decent armor . . . since it was designed to spread out over a much larger area, to improve the chances of hitting a small, moving target like birds and small game. But I do agree that the slugs should do more damage.

Good point. I guess my main complaint about is that you need to take the shotgun surgeon perk to be really effective with them.

The games representation of shotgun damage and armor mitigation seems accurate...Body armor today is quite effective against shotguns with soft body armor capable of stopping pistol and shotgun rounds...whereas rifle bullets require 'rifle plates'.

Not an expert but it seems to work well right now. It feels like modern combat armor should negate most of a shotgun blast...but leather or lower should have some problems.

Well, I agree, against ballistic plates with kevlar and dyneema shotguns -should- do nothing. But in fallout, people don't wear kevlar. They wear leather for the most part... :liplick:

I think the real problem with the game is the lack of laser shotguns. Laser shotguns would fix everything.

Laser shotguns already exist (Tri-Beam Laser Rifle, Laser Rifle with Beam Splitter mod).

The problem is the incomplete armor system. If you look at F1&2 you got several damage types, DT ofc, AC and damage reduction. With all those option it would be much easier to balance armors and weapons.

Leather armor had DT 2 but additional a 25% DR, now you can see how you balance it with just DT, not making it useless or too strong

This is an overhaul mod. It'd be pretty easy to include DR as well as DT on certain armors, such as Leather.

You think so, why has no one done this for fallout 3 then?

Fallout 3 did not have DT at all, it's a new feature in New Vegas. Or an old feature restored, as you could say.

Because DT didn't exist in fallout 3. In this game, you could balance armor using a combination of DR, DT, and ER (energy resistance). I noticed a mod on the Nexus that was using a combination of DR and DT to balance the armor. Armor with DR would be effective against the majority of attacks while armor with DT would pretty much stop all small arms in their tracks but only negate some of the effect of the heavier hitting weapons. ER and FR (fire resistance) would grant an armor additional protection against energy attacks and fire attacks but you would have to make energy weapons ignore normal DR and/or part of a targets DT for those armors to be balanced due to Obsidian nerfing them considerably in this game.

I might try use a combination of DT and AR to better balance things out, but I'm not yet convinced that there's anything wrong with the DT only system. Yes, it is a bit tricker to balance out, but I've already made some changes that I feel have greatly improved the balance. And I haven't even added my scripts yet that affect armor of weapons.

This is my understanding of AR (Armor Resistance, which is Damage Resistance for armor):
Damage Suffered (the ratio of damage subtracted from the actual damage) = weapon damage * (1 - DamageAbsorbedByArmor):

So for Power Armor (including Helmet) Example:
With 50 AR a 60 DAM (from a 60 DAM weapon) = [60 * (1-0.50] = - 30 HP. (Most PA=45 AR + 5 AR for Helms = 50 AR)
Now if that same weapon was used against a person wearing armor that had 38 DT = (60-38)+(20%*60) = 14+12 = - 26 HP (38 is the highest DT I have seen in NV, and is the combined DT of some PA with Helmet)

Leather Armor: hit by 12 DAM weapon (average pistol or melee weapon)
FO3 = 24 AR: [12 * (1-0.24] = -9 HP
NV = 6 DT: (12-6)+(20%*12) = 6 + 2 = -8 HP

The end results are not all that different. (The above examples are with the default values.)

That's not quite how the DT damage calculation works. It goes MIN(12-6,20%*12), not 12-6+20%*12, so for the leather armor hit by a 12 DAM weapon it'd do 6 HP of damage, while for the Power Armor it'd do 14 HP of damage.

Oops! Sorry about that, I was under the impression that the Threshold Resistance was always part of the total DAM that bled through.
(There's next to nothing in the GECK Wiki about all the NV changes.)
My mistake, thanks for the correction.

But I'm still thinking that I can balance this out without adding AR to all the armor (and also adjusting all the DT). For instance, most of the weapons (with the exception of most of the Energy Weapons) in NV do more damage than their FO3 counterparts, which sort of makes sense . . . except it isn't always balanced all that well. A 10mm pistol in FO3 only did 9 DAM, but in NV a 10mm does 22 DAM. The same is true for the Sniper Rifle: 40 Dam in FO3, and 63 Dam in NV.

So if you were hit by a sniper rifle in FO3 (40 DAM):
With 24 AR Leather Armor: [40 Dam * (1-0.24 AR] = -30 HP
With 50 AR Power Armor: [40 Dam * (1-0.50 AR] = -20 HP

And if you were hit by a sniper rifle in NV (63 DAM):
With 6 DT Leather Armor: [63 Dam - 6 DT ] = -56 HP
With 38 DT Power Armor: [63 Dam - 38 DT ] = -25 HP

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_combat has a little formula showing how the combat system works in New Vegas, though it doesn't mention the minimum damage bit.

Hey, enjoying your mod so far, but I've run across a little bug. You seem to have changed the "40mmgrenlaunchprojectile" to be "alt. trigger" instead of "on impact" and now the Grenade Launcher weapon's projectile doesn't explode correctly.

Thanks uberbanna,

I had made that change just for play testing, and neglected to set it back. It will be fixed in v.1.4.

Arwen
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So if you were hit by a sniper rifle in FO3 (40 DAM):
With 24 AR Leather Armor: [40 Dam * (1-0.24 AR] = -30 HP
With 50 AR Power Armor: [40 Dam * (1-0.50 AR] = -20 HP

And if you were hit by a sniper rifle in NV (63 DAM):
With 6 DT Leather Armor: [63 Dam - 6 DT ] = -56 HP
With 38 DT Power Armor: [63 Dam - 38 DT ] = -25 HP
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Are you saying that you don't agree with the change in damage compared to FO3?

I don't know ,but I think it is better in two ways: Realistically, wearing leather armor, and being shot with a powerful ranged weapon would probably kill, much less just remove 1/2 to 1/3 of your hitpoints. Where as Power Armor is much stronger protection than leather and should be represented as such. Which leads to point 2; The bigger difference in protection from leather to PA in NV is more believable imho. Only 10pts damage difference in FO3 is too low. Anyway, just wanted to see what you thought and if I missed something...

Mahalo,
Nemesis.

Not at all, if you go back a few posts, I wrote: ". . . I'm not yet convinced that there's anything wrong with the DT only system. Yes, it is a bit tricker to balance out, but I've already made some changes that I feel have greatly improved the balance. And I haven't even added my scripts yet that affect armor of weapons . . ."

Personally I like the way that DT works, and I'm finding that NV has expanded some thing like the Ammo Effect, that allow more modding possibilities . . . it's just takes a little while to get used to these changes.