The Terrible Shotgun OP?

[dsflare]

I was running about the wasteland collecting FO3's uniques when I went to go get The Terrible Shotgun. I had to double take when I got shells to put in it, as at 100 guns skill, it does a whopping 148 damage with slugs, the only other guns weapon that comes close to this is a fully modded Anti-Material Rifle with match grade ammo (145 damage on my char). I feel like this weapon needs to be scaled back slightly as it -is- a 20 gauge weapon that actually does more damage than all the 12g weapons. Even with the PPA mod (Powered Power Armor) and a mod that brings the DT of power armor much higher, on normal I can one shot T-45d wearers with chest shots with this thing non-sneak attacking (who have about 35 DT average).

Might I suggest scaling it back to be slightly under the riot shotgun in terms of performance (being a tooled up unique with supposedly much higher spread to compensate)

[plumjuice]

"The Terrible Shotgun is a unique variant of the combat shotgun and has the second highest damage of all weapons in the Small Guns category. The weapon has a far larger spread than normal shotguns, and full damage is only done if all pellets hit, making it most effective in close-quarters."

I don't understand your issue.

[JaxFirehart]

It's possible that when I toned back the combat shotgun I forgot to touch up the terrible shotgun as well.

Also, if you can one shot someone in power armor with a non-critical then you are using a balance mod which kind of changes the force behind your opinion, obviously TTW isn't required to cater to balance mods.

[dsflare]

I forgot I actually had some damage related mods running, and am in no way expecting you to cater to other mods, as to plumjuice, the Terrible Shotgun I feel is properly balanced with standard shot shells, slugs is where its damage output becomes a bit nuts. Upon further testing with a bare bones load order.

With Slugs (lord death perk has inflated damage slightly)

Terrible Shotgun (20g): 79 damage

Dinner Bell (12g): 78 damage

AMR with standard ammo: 126 damage

These numbers seem much more reasonable, though I still feel The Terrible Shotgun, and possibly its non unique variants outclass most other shotguns (even uniques), likely due to its 9 pellets (Which was standard in FO3, compared to 7 on just about every Vegas shotgun, both 20g and 12g). Either way, the intent of the post was to have it at least checked for potential imbalance. Also, upon further testing on targets, I feel Shotgun Surgeon does not function with The Terrible Shotgun for overcoming DT.

EDIT: Also found the mod responsible for raising the terrible shotgun to AMR damage levels: WMX-TTW-Unified.esp by Retupmocsoft/bobvonholle. I'll poke him to let him know of the potential bug in his mod.

[plumjuice]

Well, checking SS should be easy enough, and also easily fixed if it is missing. Mind you, SS is stupidly overpowered due to how it applies the -DT effect, so maybe that isn't so bad :D

As for the other stuff, the point I was trying to make was that in vanilla FO3, it's the second highest base damage weapon (smlguns) but you have to be able to punch them before it works properly. Using slugs is obviously going to make it absolutely ball-breaking.

The thing is, toning down the damage is going to make using anything except slugs an exercise in futility, and I don't think the weapon should be balanced for a single ammo type.

I'm a little unsure how TTW is supposed to deal with this. It (and other issues that have/will arise) is one of the balance issues that rear their ugly head due to mixing the two games' systems. I would imagine that if FO3 had slugs, the Terrible Shotgun wouldn't have been as strong. But it didn't, so it is.

I'm not trying to be negative, but it is a tough, far-reaching, issue, and "game balance" is already rather subjective.....ugh.

I just don't really know how to approach this one, sorry.

[JaxFirehart]

Well first off the Terrible Shotgun was only supposed to have 7 projectiles, so I just fixed that, but the projectile count has literally no effect on the slugs...

Also, I never balanced the uniques, I used math to approximate them. I am convinced that the Combat Shotgun is where it should be and the Terrible Shotgun is half again stronger than the combat shotgun, just like it was in FO3.

So I agree, almost all the uniques need to be looked at and the terrible shotgun needs to be toned down some. For 2.3a (soon) I further increased it's spread. It's now 6, which is 3x the Combat Shotgun.

[plumjuice]

When you say "supposed" do you mean in vanilla FO3 or to keep it in line with NV guns? Coz the wiki says 9.

[JaxFirehart]

To keep it in line with NV. The Combat Shotgun already HAD 7, I just forget to change it for Terrible Shotgun.

[dsflare]

The spread changes should more or less balance out the slug damage, only allowing them to be used at no more than super short ranges reliably. If I find any other super crazy disparities in uniques (I'm going around collecting them all at the moment), I'll nix my mods and make some comparisons and post about it if needed.

[JaxFirehart]

Sounds good.