I'm not really alleging that FNV combat mechanics are going to be screwed; I haven't seen more than gameplay demos that give us vague ideas about the new combat system.

Back to the example you provided though - why should we assume 15 DT would have the same effect as 75% DR? The T-51 is something that you do not get in Fallout 3 until much, much later into the game. To do an accurate comparison, we'd have to take an armor (or DT level) comparable to the kind of protection that the T-51 offers in Fallout 3. So yes, based on the example you gave, DT would yield more damage, I'm not denying that. I just don't understand where you got the 15 DT from.



We're wading off into a tangent here but I still don't agree. I'm talking about a situation where you attack a raider camp with 100% health. Will the guy with an assault rifle in hiding be the one to bring you down to 0, or the heavy-hitter in hiding bring you down? Especially if your stims heal over time and not the lame vanilla stimpaks.



It does make combat more skilled if you take more damage from foes. Damage is a joke on Normal mode, you have to slide it up in unmodded Fallout 3 in order to get a challenge.

@stromm yea I agree the 15 dt comparison to the 75% dr is bizarre at best. Reinforced leather armor in new vegas has a dt of 12 so there will be plenty of armor well above 15.

Did you ignore the bit where I said I was using Fallout 3 numbers? I've proven that, with FO3 numbers, you can remain weak to high level weapons whilst being invulnerable to low-level ones. The principle can be altered to fit whatever the numbers are in New Vegas.

I ballparked 15 DT as 'a number you would use to make PA immune to low-level small arms using FO3 numbers'. I even overshot by a decent percent. That's simply my point- you can manipulate DT values to make the player immune to low level weapons, whilst being vulnerable to high-level ones so the assumption you made that this would by default make combat more grindy was a false one. I never claimed to be using NV numbers, and the fact I'm not hardly invalidates my point- as you say we have little data on it so we obviously can't use it.

The guy who does large single-shot damage will be the one who kills you, the guy with the AR will deal the most damage. Because once the AR has taken you down below health = the damage the heavy hitter does, one hit from him will one-shot you. If you've got say 100 HP, the AR does 25 DPS at a roughly constant rate, and the hunting rifle guy fires one 20 damage shot per second you will almost always die to the hunting rifle guy, even though the AR guy does the most DPS, because during the 4/5 of a second the AR guy takes to drop you from 25HP to 0HP the hunting rifle guy can oneshot you and probably will. E: Again, these are ballpark figures based on the Fallout 3 numbers, but the principles behind them are evident- frontloaded damage kills more often than DoT in mixed groups, even with lower DPS.

Eh, it doesn't make it into a challenging, roughly even-sided fight, it becomes an R-Type-esque 'dodge bullets and keep firing until the health bar hits 0' battle.

Keep in mind that the armor was poor quality in that picture, the DT could go above 20 if it is repaired fully.

Yes that's what I was supposed to type. I wonder what happened to the 1 before the 5.

Good point so that makes the 15 dt/75% dr comparison even more bizarre.

I don't see how you overshot with 15 DR. If what has been said here is true about a reinforced leather armor having 15 DT in poor condition, I can't imagine what FNV's power armor must be. Unless you are immune to low level small guns in FNV with leather armor, I still say Fallout 3's T-51 and 15 DT are apples and oranges when it comes to the result of being hit.



If you've been shot by a sniper rifle or .44 magnum in Fallout 3 you know that when it comes to the AI using 'heavy hitter' weapons, it's nothing like a player using them. They don't have to correct their aim, they don't have FPS issues, and that makes a huge difference. You get shot at a rate just as if it were an automatic weapon. If I hear a .44 magnum sound, the first person I try to take down is him. I can always get away or take cover from the guy spraying at me. I'm just going to leave this issue here though because I honestly think it's how we play the game or what mods we are using that is causing this difference of opinion.



Of course, I wasn't saying that Fallout 3's difficulty system provides sufficient game balancing, just that playing Fallout 3 on anything but Hard/Very Hard is pointless, therefore difficulty isn't irrelevant.

This.

I'm not really sure how it's going to work out. It's not like weapons will do no damage if they don't exceed DT in damage. There's a minimum amount of damage that any weapon will do, and from what I've heard, they've been tweaking that little feature for a long time to find the right balance. Only 54 more days until we can all find out exactly how it turned out.

It's in the game, it's just not implemented on any armors. AFAIK it'll still be there for chems (Med-X?) and such. Plus, it can be modded back in with the GECK.

There's an interview today posted on Fallout wikia news that says each gun has a set amount of damage, not a range. If DT reduces a set amount of damage as well, then it is indeed possible to minimize an attack to the point of 'no damage.' That was how you'd see that in previous fallout games, but not Fallout 3. The only way you'd be able to achieve that would be with 100% DR.

Link here: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Ausir/Sawyer_discusses_armor_and_damage

Additional points also discussed in that interview are relevant to this thread.

What. New. Vegas. Power. Armour. DT. Is. Is. Irrelevant. You don't seem to have paid any attention to the actual mechanics behind the argument. If leather armour DT is 20, then that means assault rifle damage will be higher, obviously. So PA DT will need to be higher, but you can still get the effect where PA makes you immune to weak weapons. Since AR damage will have to be higher than 10, what if AR damage is 30? Just give PA 30 DT, and you still have the same effect where you're immune to low-level assault rifles and vulnerable to 40 damage plasma. This is assuming they haven't upped the plasma damage, of course, which they undoubtedly will have. You're clearly not even trying to understand the argument.
Double Edit: I guess given that MiamiThrice has repeatedly failed to spot UnDeCaf's maths error it's probably no surprise he's having difficulty, but it is not a difficult one for most people to follow.

And the AI uses automatic weapons with exactly the same accuracy and proficiency. They are more effective than humans with heavy hitters, but that's not relevant- we are not comparing to human performance. We're comparing total damage dealt. Frontloaded damage kills more often even if it deals less *actual* damage, that does not mean frontloaded weapons are more effective.

No its 5 damage not 15.

No, it is 15. If you take 25% (one fourth) out of 20, you're left with 15. The 25 DR absorbs 5 damage and 15 goes through. I mistyped in the original post.

You need to go back and look at your example. Your example assumed that by the time you're shooting plasma damage to a target, he is still going to have 15 DT like when you shot him with the 10 damage bullet gun early in the game. It's only logical to assume that as you play through the game, the protective capacity of new armors will increase similarly to the killing power of new weapons. In your example, only the latter exists.

We really haven't gone into much detail here, our discussion has mostly been about whether your bullet/plasma/15DR example proves that DT will cause the player and enemies to take more damage than they would if DR was in effect as it is in Fallout 3. And the only reason that it does is because your example is based on a low DT level contrasted with a high DR level. I don't see how that's convincing at all, or that somehow I am not anolyzing what you're saying correctly when it is your raw data to begin with, not mine.

@thetalkietoaster this is exactly what I'm talking about

I think there is really no way to get through here unless I take your example and basically do with it what you did. So here is your base example:



Then I change the DT to 30. The 10 damage bullet result is the same, and the 40 damage plasma result for DT is equal to the DR damage. Now, wouldn't you agree with me that by the time you encounter enemies with plasma rifles, your DR is at least going to be double? Why would you quadruple the damage, but leave the DT the same? On paper you may think it makes sense, but it is never going to happen that way in actual gameplay. Nobody is going to be still wearing 15 DT against a 40 damage plasma rifle, so it doesn't represent greater damage balance.

edit: If I changed DT to 30 and then said, 'therefore, there is no difference between DT and DR in lategame' all because of what the results were of that one sample, it would have a resemblance to the argument you were making about it having a big difference.

Anyone else here think that light armor should only have a DR rating, while heavy armor should have the DT?

Consider that just about anything stronger than BB's will damage leather, while BB's (to use the same example) will never puncture metal or high strength plastic armor. IMO it makes a bit of sense that leather armor would reduce the damage one would get in a knife fight, while Full metal body armor would turn most knife hits away with only scratches to the armor. ~~This brings up the point of accuracy where the wielder is concerned. A good knife expert would aim all strikes at the soft spots and totally ignore the metal plates as wasted efforts. So the question is; What 'role' does PC skill with the weapon have against DT, since the only kind of armor that totally protects the whole body [zero soft spots] is an iron box with no moving parts.
(or with moving parts in the case of PA's :hehe:)

To use a middle ages example, The knights in full plate & chain mail armor were pretty well off in a fight if they stayed on their feet and kept attacker at arms length, but they were easy to injure from behind, and when grappled.
(because their armor had soft spots including eye holes for helmeted knights).

**Edit: On reflection, I have changed my mind a bit... The more I think about it, the more a DT of 1 or 2 for leather makes sense. Leather will fall apart under attack eventually, but far less so from blunt weapons than edged, and even BB's would eventually wear into it.

Not wanting to interrupt here, but isn't that entirely dependant on the situation?

Well yea but that's not the point.

Imagine (hypothetically), if there were combat in the turbine room in the Hoover Dam (would you want to be wearing metal armor?).

*I do hope people sink in hardcoe mode while wearing 40 pound metal plate armor.
(but I won't be holding my breath)

**and it does ignore the inventory mechanics of the game.

I haven't followed the thread carefully enough nor drank enough coffee so I'll just stop here before I make a clown out of myself.




That would be fun.

To make it Short and sweet Damage Resistance Reduces the amount of damage that is dealt each time someone hits you. With Damage Threshold unless something does a Certain amount of damage it does no damage at all So for example a bat wouldn't do alot against someone wear power armor while with DR you could still chip away at him.

Would be awesome to have Tesla armour and walk into an area with a busted turbine throwing off bolts and to see them reflecting off the armour.



Would love that. I hope PA would sink as well but it would act the same as an atmospheric diving suit. So we can walk along the bottom.

i dont think 49 posts were needed to explain damage threshold.... i think all that can be said, has