I've duplicated my NV files, so when the patch comes out I'll be able to give you specific numbers on what was changed.

That would be grand :celebration:

Dge is good but thats under lying .The problem is the farther u get from the epicenter of the explosion the weaker the dge becomes.How dt works if any critter is beyond a few feet from the center it becomes a breeze of hot air./explosives for some reason also lack any kind of true dt.Even without a explosive tip if u got hit by the body of the missile it would rip thru you lol.Easiest thing they could do is make a dt missile capable of seeking the target/make a very small explosion(extremely high dge* but what ever gets hit by it is a dead crispy critter lol.

I love you long time haha/But pc and xbox getting the patch same time rite?

Fatman explosion: Dmg increased 165 to 325. Radius decreased 2100 to 1700. IS Radius decreased 4290 to 3800
Missile explosion: Dmg increased 100 to 200
HE Missile explosion: Dmg increased 100 to 200

olool 325 dge thats it for the fat man hahaha -_- im insulted tbh

Hang on, so even after the patch the Fatman is only doing 325 DMG? Well that svcks . . . . :unsure2:

lol yeah c4 still does more its brilliant haha

300 Dmg from a missile is PATHETIC. A Gobi sniper rifle with better criticals and finese will hit a regular critical shot at 150. A critical head shot will score 300. And a sneak attack critical head shot will hit for 600. The anti material gun will hit a sneak attack critical head shot at 860. And that is before using hand load ammo.

Explosives svck for three simple reasons - No Criticals, No Bonus damage for hitting the head and No Sneak Attack Criticals. A sneak attack head shot from a crummy .308 is more deadly then taking a Missile to the head. Even getting punched in the head from a balistic fist on a crit is more deadly then getting hit in the head with a missle. The ballistic fist and AMR even out damage getting hit directly from a NUCLEAR BOMB. LOL, Something is wrong here.




That is an improvement - but still pretty sad

Damage scales from the center of the explosion to the outer radius with an inversely square progression. This means that it drops very quickly. The initial tuning I did for explosives was based off a misunderstanding of how the explosion radii worked. I addressed the Missile Launcher and Fat Man for the most recent patch, but did not get a chance to tune other explosives.

EDIT: Also, the Gobi doesn't hit an area the size of a small city park. Fat Men and Missile Launchers aren't intended to be used against single targets. From the way some of you guys talk, I get the impression you won't be happy unless Fat Men/Missile Launchers one-shot every BoS Paladin in T-51b and Deathclaw Alpha Male in a 100 yard radius.

From what I can see it also looks like the Grenade Launcher was buffed? I thought it was previously ~80 DAM @ 100 skill (3/3 explosives perk) and I think it is now ~129 (60% increase).

Edit - I may not be remembering that correctly (80 DAM might just be the pre-perk base DAM)...

I may have tuned a few other explosives, but the Missile Launcher and Fat Man were definitely tuned up significantly.

Because of their inverse square damage falloff, capital-E Explosives are difficult to tune. Many of them hit a large area, but their damage drops very quickly. They should do enough damage to significantly weaken or outright kill certain types of enemies, but if they reach a point where they easily wipe out everything in a huge area, there's little point to leveling the Explosives skill outside of qualifying for perks. If the base DAM is tuned extremely high to allow the falloff to be dangerous, hitting the target (or even coming close) stops being relevant, which further discourages advancing the Explosives skill. More than Guns or Energy Weapons, Explosives has been hard to balance.

Explosives have 2 ways of killing people. Most people know about the shrapnel, but many overlook the sheer concussive force of the blast. Many times people get killed without ever being hit by shrapnel, the concussive force can liquify your inards quite easily. And standard body armor wont do anything to stop it. As far as this game goes though, i think a -DT effect would be the best way to go about this. But if i could design it, it would be -DT and then once you got inside a certian radius the explosion would just ingnore DT (like a deathclaw gauntlet) But thats just my opinion

For what it's worth, I agree with you. I felt the main problem with Explosives was the heavy weaponry (the two you mentioned) being ineffective relative to their cost/weight requirements. 3 pounds per missile was hard to justify at the previous DAM values; I think it looks pretty clean now.

I still believe flamers should have wound up in Explosives but that is a debate for another topic I suppose. :spotted owl:

Thanks for the insight into the explosives balancing Sawyer, glad to hear it's being considered !

Hope you'll consider the grenade rifle and grenade launcher in your balance changes too, love them just feels like they're pointless with poor range or/and ineffective damage even when landing a direct hit against just about everything.

Sure there's the grenade MG but what about a weak character build who relies on explosives ?

I can understand the balance issues. But right now the Explosives character does not have any weapon that is competitive with Guns or Energy Weapons against a single target. I would much rather see the Missile Launcher being a single target type weapon(high dmg/low radius) and the Grenade Launcher/MGL being a low dmg/bigger radius type weapon. Of course the Fatman should be extremely overpowered.

Now, here is a thought - how about boosting the damage from direct hits, but leaving the radius dmg the same. This way you reward players who can hit a target directly (incentive to put points into Explosives) vs just shooting at there feet looking for splash dmg. Plus it is more realistic to the player to see more effective dmg from direct hits. It is disappointing to hit a target dead on and hardly scratch them and at the same time I can understand you don't want to have them kill everything in a huge radius.

I think that the Fat Man need to be used only for fun, i mean, IS SCIENCE! COMPRESSED IN MINI NUKES!!!!

Here's a possible way to do that: create an 'Armor-Piercing' round that has a rather small blast radius but high damage effect. This is similar to the old HEAT rounds used in Tank-vs-Tank combat, which acted very much like an oversized blowtorch upon detonating and burned right through the armor plating.


@J. E. Sawyer:

I'm no physics expert, but would a falloff progression other than inverse-square be a reasonable method for determining damage reduction the further one is from the epicenter? I ask because if a model can be found that is not as harsh then it might be possible to tune Explosives weapons such that they are not so ineffective against single targets. I do realize that these weapons have a large area of effect, but given that very few spawns are either large enough or sufficiently spread out for said radii to actually come into play, there is something to be said for improving their performance against smaller numbers of foes.

If it's so hard to balance the damage of a single explosion going off, maybe it would be easier to add two. Have two explosions go off when an explosive weapon is used. The first one has extremely high damage with an inverse square falloff to pulp whatever you actually hit, while a second explosion has a broader area with NO damage falloff, simulating the effects of shrapnel on everybody nearby.

For the missile launcher, say 150 damage on the first effect and 60 on the second effect.

This is actually a decent idea, no? Since the projectiles themselves already have a damage value (that is generally set to like 1), you could just modify these to be higher to encourage and reward players for accurate strikes against single targets. Preferably I'd like to see that on weapons like the Grenade Rifle/Launcher at least, as those weapons do not have the destructive AoE power of weapons like the Missile Launcher or Fat Man (which personally I'm fine with being relegated to more AoE usage), but also don't perform terribly well against single targets. This would give the Grenade Rifle in particular a much stronger role in the Explosives repitoire.

On a side note, I'd like to also see Thump-Thump modified in some way that more substantially differentiates it from the normal Grenade Rifle+. They seem like the exact same weapon except for the unique model skin (though that one is one of my personal favorite models in the game).

^^ Yep that is exactly what I was thinking. Bumb up the base weapon damage a lot! I think the Missile Launchers base damage is only 20. Make it 100, able to score criticals and impacted by head shots. Leave the radius and AOE dmg the same. It rewards skilled players who can target Missiles and Grenade Launchers without making Explosives overpowered. Plus it is just more realistic

@General Masters - Part of the problem with explosives is the lack of criticals and head shots. I don't think they can add criticals to the explosion script and they can not get what part of the body was hit by the explosion. That is why I think they should boost the base damage.

Thank you Sawyer, Now I can use mah Fatman when the Xbox patch hits


Level 3 Demo-perk-Man Huzzah!

As it is now a direct hit from a Fat-Man (found and used in desperation at the quarry and admittedly badly worn) won't kill an advlt Deathclaw with one shot. As rare as mini-nukes are in NV, the results of actually using one should be pretty spectacular.

^^Very true. Explosives as is does not encourage direct hits. There is no real bonus for skillfully landing a shot. You are much better off just trying to shot for the feet. Now if the Base dmg (from a direct hit) for a Fatman was 300 and the explosion radius caused an extra 200-300 points of dmg you would pretty much one shot a Deathclaw, BUT you would only wound anything nearby.

I like the idea of Explosive projectile base damage