Big Guns

[darthbdaman]

You can't play the whole game that way though, no matter if the skill is there or not. There isn't anything close to an appropriate selection of weaponry for it to work. Most of the Big Guns are end game weapons that you won't be able to get until later. Are you going to only use the Rock-it-Launcher all game? Maybe use the incinerator for a few fights, but repairing them is nearly impossible early on. Just adding the skill pack doesn't let you play as a big guns character the whole game. It takes a substantial change of everything from leveled lists to NPC types

[RoyBatty]

"but repairing them is nearly impossible early on"

Again, forgetting that vendors do repair stuff and it costs caps to get things repaired.

Energy Weapons and Explosives builds are also not feasible early game, they are mostly mid to end game weapons, I see no change there because of class. That goes for higher powered Guns too, they are not only level gated but skill gated, that argument is not a valid one.

The Rock-It launcher is also a powerful weapon useful throughout early game, the lack of diversity is something to consider but there is also flamers and incinerators and miniguns early on.

All the classes have plenty of throw away weapons that are more for NPCs than the player, it changes little in my experiments so far.

[darthbdaman]

Paying to repair is not a viable option considering the exorbitant costs, especially when considering Big Guns usually have higher values than other weapons.

Energy and Explosives are viable. Dynamite is plentiful in the early game, and laser pistols and recharger rifles are fairly easy to find. They have a role in the early game. The incinerator really doesn't it's too rare. Miniguns can't be found early in new vegas, and they aren't common enough, and the ammo not plentiful enough, to be usable in early game DC.

I don't know what your talking about with skill gating. There are tons of explosives and energy weapons with 0-25 skill requirements. In contrast, there is one Big Gun at 0 (Rock-It-Launcher, which we are adding), and one at 25 (Incinerator). We can change the skill requirements, but that's getting into even more serious edits.

I'm not opposed to adding Big Guns, but saying it fits back into the game fine isn't true. It causes serious disruptions that ripple through other parts of the game, and requires lots of further adjustments to implement appropriately

[RoyBatty]

Well it's not designed to work with an FNV start, that's not what TTW is about and never was.

That also backs up my opinion that repair was made OP in NV and was a bad change. The economy is there for it in NV, and there are plenty of vendors who repair there, and it's never used.

Where is this rule written that a class of weapons has to be usable early game? Sure dynamite and laser pistol is available early in Vegas (laser pistol and rifle is just as hard to find as a minigun) but who seriously uses them? Mines and grenades are far more useful. Either way yeah, the rock it launcher, and it's *very* effective and has unlimited ammo for free at the cost of carry weight. The useful weapons outside of firearms are skill and level gated, that's by design, in both games.

Anyways this is diverging back into "I don't like this idea because x" instead of "If we do this how can we make it work".

[EnderDragonFire]

[quote=RoyBatty]

Energy Weapons and Explosives builds are also not feasible early game, they are mostly mid to end game weapons, I see no change there because of class. [/quote]

In which game? I don't seem to recall them being hard to get in New Vegas. You can get a laser pistol from the Doc, buy bulk ammo and mods from Chet, and find two more leveled energy guns on dead Bright Brotherhood followers near the starting area (under the Sloan bridge and in Goodsprings cave). If you get a recharger rifle, which is quite likely, you don't even need to worry about ammo. On normal difficulty, (which is the default, recommended difficult the game was balanced around) laser and recharger weapons are sufficient at early levels of the game.

 

That said, I am not very knowledgeable about the intended balance of Fallout 3's energy weapons, I never used them much, and they may have been less viable at early levels in that game. I always went straight to the hunting rifle, and generally favored small guns in that game. The proposed changes might work OK on the Fallout 3 side. 

[RoyBatty]

Yes that is correct, I don't see how this changes anything about the early game. There's enough junk around to build the rock-it launcher provided chet sells the schematic for it (so you can repair it) and is given the items to create it just like Moira which is a trivial thing to do.

I'll say this one more time, please suggest solutions to make it work in a fair and balanced way instead of arguing against it. We're past the point where it was decided it's not going to be integrated, but optional. Lets move on to implementation now.

Additionally as with all optionals, if you don't like it, don't use it.

[Blazefan]

[quote=RoyBatty]

 

Yes that is correct, I don't see how this changes anything about the early game. There's enough junk around to build the rock-it launcher provided chet sells the schematic for it (so you can repair it) and is given the items to create it just like Moira which is a trivial thing to do.

I'll say this one more time, please suggest solutions to make it work in a fair and balanced way instead of arguing against it. We're past the point where it was decided it's not going to be integrated, but optional. Lets move on to implementation now.

Additionally as with all optionals, if you don't like it, don't use it.

[/quote]

I think the problems herein lies that a lot of people don't know HOW to suggest implementing it in a fair and balanced way. Me being one of them. Given how F:NV has different functions and mechanics, I don't know exactly how it should be treated. I felt it was too limited in FO3 and stole too much from explosives, but New Vegas has a wider variety of weapons to mitigate that to an extent. My biggest thing would be making it a viable choice at most portions of the game. I've never been a fan of making a skill useful only at a certain portions of the game. If a skill is only useful later on, you're already too invested in other skills to bother. If it only has uses early game, then it feels like wasting points. That's probably why I never liked Big Guns in FO3, not enough options at all portions of the game. 

Perhaps strength requirement could be a factor? Like say, anything that requires 8+ strength to wield accurately?

[RoyBatty]

I also only have a partial idea how to implement it in such a way, that is why I was asking for community feedback on it. I was hoping that the community would have some more positive and constructive suggestions rather than the knee jerk negative reaction that seems common place these days.

I'm still going to try and push for those positive suggestions however, I know they are out there, just got to dig a bit more for them. So if you can ask yourselves if you were in the position, what would you do?

The strength requirement is something to look at, even though from a mechanics stand point the weight of weapons doesn't really have much bearing on that. However I think it should to a degree, the things I suggested for inclusion were more based on the weapons grip style. That relates more towards it's handling rather than how bulky or heavy the particular weapon is.

I also try to stray away from pure numbers for deciding things, as it's a narrow view and leaves out too many other considerations like progression (relation to other weapons at that level), feel (fire rate, effectiveness), where it fits in the damage pool (usefulness at a given skill level), how it relates to perks and crossover between them. Then there is the fun factor and the min/max thing that other players choose.

So that kind of lays things out to consider, I still think my original outline fits fairly well and needs some tweaking along with deciding when and where things should be made available in Vegas. Yes that includes tweaking things to compensate in other areas, but should be fairly minimal really.

[Risewild]

I could come up with suggestions. But I would need to have a "working prototype" of the Big Guns skill already implemented so I could test it and come up with balance, accessibility, progression, etc suggestions, and that is already past the point for suggestions for how to implement it in the first place .

[RoyBatty]

I'll get something together soon then. Need to think about who gets schematics in NV. I guess Chet, and Gun Runners makes sense... where else?