Feedback: Talon Company gear levels to quickly. Weapon mods become available too slowly

[Ogremindes]

At the point in the game I'm at, Lvl 12, HC mode, my best guns that I have a ready supply of ammo for are a modded .357 Magnum and a Cowboy Repeater. These Talon guys are rocking up with Mk.2 Reinforced armour that I can barely scratch. Their guns are good enough to rip straight through my light armour. Gear is, of course, entirely adequate for everything else I've run across. Seems to me that the Talon Company's new gear levels up too quick, way ahead of the overall curve of the game. Anyway, I'm going to play something else now since my quicksave is in an unwinnable position with 2 of those guys with the super-armour, just posting my feedback since it's alpha.

My only other feedback is that mods for low-level weapons such as the 9mm pistol don't seem to be available in DC while they're relevant.

Now that I think about it, Talons bringing in gear ahead of the curve may be making those weapons irrelevant faster than they would be otherwise.

[AnvilOfWar]

You are level 12, and are using a .357 Magnum pistol and a Cowbow Repeater? The Pistol is a 0 skill gun, the rifle is a 25 skill gun, both of which are very early game weapons. It's not so much their armor is too strong, it's you need better weapons or ammo. At level 12 and if using guns, you should be rocking a hunting rifle at the minimum, or very likely a sniper rifle. Talon company, and Super Mutants have very high DT, right weapon/ammo for the job is either AP rounds, or much higher powered weapons if your not able to headshot.

[Ogremindes]

Every other enemy, super mutants included, have been fine. The Brutes and Masters are signifcantly tougher, but still reasonable. It's just the Talons with much higher armour and damage than everything else at my level, which suggests to me that their equipment is too much and should be tuned differently.

Obviously, as it stands I need to carry a bigger gun just for them. I don't yet have the ammo to have something more powerful as part of my main loadout while wandering the dc wasteland. .308 and .45-70 don't exactly fall from the sky, y'know.

[Zetman]

If you can't win then run away, or sneak away if you have a stealth boy, or do a mixture of the two.  Do that until you have something strong enough to take them down.  That is a strategy I've used in the past. 

[AnvilOfWar]

So you use .357 vs Super Mutants and have to empty what, half a clip or more into them?

That statement still doesn't counter my suggestion of: "Use the right Weapon or Ammo for the job."

I guess it also depends on if you are using the DC super mutant rebalance optional or not, I don't so SM's are as tough as they are in Vegas, and masters/overlords are even tougher. I'll agree about 45-70 not "falling from the sky" but .308?!? Just collecting what i come across from enemies usually get's me plenty to break down and remake into .308 JSP, buying up small amounts from vendors if/when they have them too.



Without knowing what other mods you use I really can't say more since that will alter the preceived balance for the game, myself I use Project Nevada, so headshots are an effective stopping point for Talon Company and their squishy human heads. 5.56 Varmit Rifle with mods is more then enough to kill them from stealth.

[dariorthan1964]

a tip for getting 308 ammunition faster: level your repair skill a bit and then disassemble the other ammunition you get like .45-70 Gov't and use the resources you get to build 308 ammunition you can get the shells for free and can steal them from anyone without penalty

[Decker]

I was recently playing the most excellent TTW version 2.9.4 on Hard difficulty with Hardcore mode, my character was around level 10 or so, wore Armored Vault 101 Suit and was able to defeat my first 3 Talon Mercs encountered near Super Duper Mart with Spiked Knuckles (upgraded with some TTW WMX mods) - My character got hurt pretty bad (barely survived), but thats what you get for bringing knuckle dusters into a gunfight. Basically, I closed in as fast as I could in order to avoid getting frag grenaded and I used several VATS attacks and these knocked their guns to the ground, after which it was possible to simply whittle them down with lots of punches, stopping every now and then to activate a new stimpack which heal over time in hardcore mode (used up something like half a dozen in the fight).

Now, this first batch of Talon Mercs was by far the toughest challenge I faced around level 10 in this playthrough; After that first Talon encounter, I simply wore their superior armor and used their own weapons against them. My second Talon Merc encounter (My character was level or a few higher than the first) was outside the Northwest Seneca Metro Station, I ran away from them and dropped a couple of Satchel Charges to soften them up a bit, then I took cover behind corner of a building and finished them off from close range with a Sniper Rifle my character was not even strong enough to properly use (Strength 3 vs Sniper rifle req 6).

Talon Mercs being tough opponents is not any kind of design flaw or a bug in my opinion, it's a feature - I like the extra challenge, the very real threat they pose to any beginning wasteland hero wannabe. (I also never nerf the super mutants either, I leave the TTW supermutant rebalance option off.)

However, I have to admit, that game balance-wise the Reinforced (and Mk2) Talon Combat Armors they wear in TTW are relatively much tougher armors than what Talon Mercs wore in vanilla F3. OTOH it is also worth considering that IIRC Reilly's Rangers Battle Armor is supposed to be the very best Combat Armor in the Capital Wasteland region lore-wise, but it offers obviously inferior protection (DT:17) when compared to Talon Combat Armor Reinforced Mk2 (DT:20). Perhaps bumping up the Reilly's Rangers Battle Armor DT to 20 or so might be a good idea, I dunno?

In TTW, the Talon Combat Armor is only DT:13 when compared to regular Combat Armor DT:15. Perhaps it would be even better idea to reduce Talon Reinforced and Mk2 by similar amount (DT -2) from their regular combat armor equivalents  (Talon Reinf would become DT:15 and Talon Reinf Mk2 would be DT:18)?

 

[subtledoctor]

I must say I agree with the OP. In my current playthrough I'm using a mod for 2x slower leveling... I was approached and attacked by 3 Talon Company thugs at level 4 (!). One had Talon Combat Armor at 13 DT and Two had Reinforced  armor at, what, about 17 DT?

I had 40 skill in Guns and my highest-damage rounds did about 23 damage and fired quite slowly. Level 4 is way too early to have found any AP rounds, or to get the Hand Loader perk, or to find/make any shotgun slugs. With 55 in Sneak, I popped a Stealth Boy and tried to get away, but they still detected me (!) and murdered me. 

Saying "just sneak away" does not address the issue. Saying "just use AP rounds" does not address the issue. Saying "I use a mod that makes their heads have lower effective DT" clearly does not address the issue. 

The issue is simple: high-level Talon Company armors are appearing way too early (I never saw reinforced until level 10-15 in vanilla FO3) and have too-high DT values. The gameplay experience is very very different from FO3, which is something TTW is supposed to avoid. 

[LT Albrecht]

[quote=subtledoctor]

The issue is simple: high-level Talon Company armors are appearing way too early (I never saw reinforced until level 10-15 in vanilla FO3) and have too-high DT values. The gameplay experience is very very different from FO3, which is something TTW is supposed to avoid. 

[/quote]

You wouldn't ever have seen it at all in Fallout 3, both Reinforced and Reinforced Mk2 Combat armour were introduced in Fallout:New Vegas.

[subtledoctor]

[quote=LT Albrecht]You wouldn't ever have seen it at all in Fallout 3, both Reinforced and Reinforced Mk2 Combat armour were introduced in Fallout:New Vegas.[/quote]

Well, there you go. Wait - are Black Talon mercenaries even in New Vegas? I don't remember them. So where did the reinforced and mk II Black Talon armors even come from??

But at the end of the day it doesn't matter. I'll reiterate: if the BT thugs in FO3 didn't have reinforced armor, then they shouldn't have it in TTW either. Leave it for a mod to change them. 

Alternatively, if you want to take the attitude of, "this is in the NV engine and NV levels up various gear more than FO3" then at least remember that NV goes up to level 50 and the leveling gear should be spread across that range. Reinforced combat armor showing up at level 4-5 is crazy. I'd say make the reinforced appear around level 10-15, and make the mk II armor appear around level 20-30.