Its 20% not 10%. You can also think of it as 20% of shots are hitting vulnerable spot on armour or unprotected parts (in case of power armour: visors, joints, life support openings, etc...). Not that unrealistic if you think of it.
Now if 20% is right is open to debate but it works both ways, it enables player to take on highly armoured enemies with some chance of success. Giant radscorpions for example. Its not that there are different rules for NPCs and player.

Really Seti your complaining that DT doesn't completely negate weak attacks against you, and yet you also complain that your weak attacks are virtually ineffective against armor.
Automatics vs heavy armor =failure, what part of that don't you under stand. And if you want to use a shot gun, make slug rounds. They deal all there damage in one slug instead of divided among 7 pellets.

If somehow you are still dying after all of this advice, have you considered taking toughness, sub-dermal implant, med-x, hell even

I whooped him as a level 30 combat ranger.

3 doses of turbo + psycho + med x + Ranger Sequoia + 45-70gov SWC + real time combat in third person view = one dead lanius on my first try. This was also on very hard + hardcoe, i have the save file to prove it

My speech skill is 100


No, I'm complaining about power armor being so ineffective in comparison to their bullet-gobling scrap metal. I killed three BoS soldiers, while they were wearing power armor, with only an assault carbine, a caravan shotgun, and a cowboy repeater. Those BoS soldiers should have killed me with ease. How could I defeat "walking tanks" without being one while, once I become a "walking tank" myself, I can't even take down some Praetorian Guards without running backwards while shooting? My problem is just with how weak power armor seems. It was once, indisputably, the most powerful type of armor one could have. Now, it's a joke. Why is a piece of scavenged metal more damaging to my high-tech military outfit than my military minigun or my shotgun? I will be using AP rounds, but what is the point of DT if damage can still be dealt when below the DT rating (I'm expecting it not to work like this for both me and my enemies) and what is the point of getting the Fallout icon known as power armor if scavenging a car bumper and dressing up in a Halloween outfit is more effective? Any reasonable explanations for how I could so easily kill power armor wielding soldiers? Why didn't they slaughter me? I want this "true" DT to work both ways. I want to die when I challenge tanks, but be able to take out some half-naked tribals as a tank. Looking at the DT stats of some other armors in this game and anolyzing how DT works in this game suggests that power armor really isn't much better than some other, weaker armors.

This is by design, (not a design that I particularly like).
There were actually arguments here (with dev input) that were about this, weeks before the game would ship.

If you play on PC there are sure to be re-balance mods that take care of this.

I killed him with 3 shots from the AMR. I got a sneak crit and then entered VATS to finish him off.

It wasn't until later that I found out you could talk to him. :shifty:

Sadly, I do not play the PC version, but I'll come to peace with it. With AP rounds, I could easily dispatch of the Praetorian Guard, but I still couldn't kill the Legate. I just turned the difficulty down and just finished watching the ending. That last battle was frustrating, but I love that ending. Although it may seem that I was just ranting throughout the thread, it's just one problem I have with the game, but I think Obsidian did an excellent job. It's a great game and the ending is brilliant, in my opinion. :thumbsup:

It really feels like you were experiencing the Rebreather bug. Because when I was tooled up in PA I felt like a tank. Small arms just didn't scratch me at all, I just walked around gunning lesser enemies down with impunity. Of course they did some damage, but I just rolled a couple Sasparilla HoTs on myself and it was all good.

Even the final battle was disgustingly easy (and this is on very hard). But that probably was because of how overpowered the Sniper Rifle is.

Doesnt bother me much, my enemies usually have a 50. MG heading for the skull by the time they spot me, and I just use armor pericing for deathclaws. Damage Threshold makes perfect sense to me, its just basic math.

When I was fighting legion at the Hoover, getting shot by 5+ enemies at a time, and I barely took any damage. I say power armor works just fine.

Personally I found the last battle disappointingly easy (playing on normal difficulty, only 5 endurance). 2 shots to the head from a gauss rifle (one of them a sneak attack), and the Legate died. As for his friends, only 3 came after me because I killed everyone else I could in the camp before hand with a silenced sniper rifle. The gauss rifle had a HUGE advantage here, because it sent those 3 enemies flying backwards when they were hit. Even if it didn't kill them in one shot, it kept them away from me.

I think his complaint is more about the unbalanced weapons than it is the "useless" armor (which I actually found quite useful).

I don't understand how that can be a complaint when using the minigun. You could kill god with that thing. Even on very hard you can ventilate a deathclaw in under two seconds.

DT of 25 vs 20 which is the highest DT of any non powered armor is 25% more DT than non powered armors. It is not impervious but is very substantial and a lot better in the DT department than other armors. Given the other characteristics such as weight, it is debatable if it is better than some of the other top end armors but strictly from a DT perspective, it is significantly ahead of other armors.

I am quite surprised no one mentioned that at Courier level 21, killing Lanius would be quite a challenge. He scales 130% of the player's level with a 30 cap, his HP starts in the mid 700s and scales up from there and his DT is 19 making the non unique mini or the LMG fairly ineffective without AP ammo. His guards, presuming I have the right ones, are level 20 (their max level) making the final boss fight probably the toughest set piece in the game.

I took him out pretty easily at level 30 with a sniper, ap ammo and some chems--he was less than half health by the time he got to melee range--but at only level 21, that would be a lot harder.

You would have to factor in the average damage too. Since DT always lets atleast 20% through if no weapons rated high enough to get past some of the weaker armors or in this case Combat armor then effectively the extra DT of PA would be "wasted" as the same amount of damage(20%) would still be getting through.

The Producer does not explain to us properly i guess. I also don't understand it at all, or there is a miss calculation on the programer line. I just concern the bigger the number the better it is.

i can walk through camp golf getting shot in the face and i barley got hurt i then beat them to death with only my fists with 100 unarmed

in fo1/2, you could also be hit for upwards of 2-3x your max HP in a single attack. 95% DR and 10+ DT was needed to survive a burst for 700 base damage. Gatling Laser is a perfect example in the old days... A burst from that on an unarmored target was minimum, 200-500 damage, without a crit for a potential 600-1500. Add in MA MK2 for 80% damage reduction, then 8-10 DT and the gatling laser was only going to hit you for 20-50. The math was a lot more complex then, or at least used bigger numbers for damage '

fo3/nv are not nearly as "hard" as the originals, but maybe thats why they are popular too

edit: i prefer using ncr combat armor, dt 20, only medium speed penalty, and they never see me coming, because they think im friendly on VH its about as good as it gets, using unique displacer/bumper sword

I agree DT is quite nerfed, I've been killed by pea shooters due to superior numbers, and have killed radscorpions and giant ones without penetrating their DT with a 9mm so it seems a little strange.
Health though seems the issue as a few npc's encountered at various levels are on the realm of bullet sponges, combine this with npc numbers, npc DT and npc attacks a pc is on the back foot.
I did not find Lanius tough tbh as I just sneak crit everyone with a HP loaded, fully repaired sniper, but he still took 2 - 3 head crits with the full sniper perk allotment.

Go to free side find this kid with a gun take the gun got the the power plant north i think from novac do the quest but dont help the ncr take the super weapon called arcameidies something like that (best gun in game) only get to shot it calles down a huge beam that you can use for a while and kills everything in a second try it is amazing the boss guy was pathetic hehe couldnt find any bodys after i call in the weapon amazing get it

They should have made it so that there's damage only bleeds through DT when it's either a headshot or a critical.

However, the problem with that is that it would make the Legion too weak. Sure they have Ballistic Fists that do huge amounts of damage but those enemies are rare and they're still pretty easy to kill, they're only a problem if they have you cornered. NCR on the other hand, have a ton of combat armor wearing troops with at least 50% more DT than even the toughest Legion soldier.

There are quite a few things you can do mass damage with. The highest efficiency I found to be with the Gauss Gun, It even works as Deathclaw exterminator. Very good range, very high damage, good enough RoF. It's the best gun in the game for.
Nuking indoors is also quite efficient for instant-cleanup and plasma grenades are exceptional if you throw them right.