How are weapons balanced?

[samoja]

Basically some weapons from FO3 were significantly changed in FO NV, and the changes are not even consistent, like 10MM that was made over twice as powerful, or Laser Pistol that has remained exactly the same (despite almost all other weapons being boosted, thereby making it severely underpowered in comparison) there is also the issue of Plasma pistol and plasma defender, two completely different weapons bearing the same name. And last but not least Varmint rifle basically takes place of hunting rifle, which is made over twice more powerful and chambers different ammo. Now i would assume that if all weapons were left alone and just replaced with FO NV counterparts that would seriously unbalance the FO3 portion of the game, since some early weapons would be way to powerful early on, what with every supermutant carrying hunting rifle and all that, where some of the most powerful weapons in FO3 may be left in the dust because FO NV tends to do 2x on all weapons carried over. How was this conflict resolved so it does not seem like Capital Wasteland weapons were just scrap as soon as you hit Mojave, and on the other hand the few weapons that do carry over would not allow you to curbstomprape the whole capital wasteland with their increased damage, also how has the role of energy weapons been resolved, in FO3 they were at least decent and on par with or better then slugthrowers (lore friendly way, since those were supposed to be high tech things) where in NV, apart from few honorable exceptions, only reason to use energy weapons would be for novelty, since they are way underpowered compared to slughthrowers, and every raider can get his hands on one.

[RoyBatty]

In 3.0 all the Fallout 3 weapons have been completely rebalanced, with exception of the Energy Weapons, which may be done as they are still weak and Obsidian had unsuccessfully rebalanced them a couple of times in patches. So far we have avoided it because people get upset if we touch NV mechanics at all. The only exceptions are the energy weapons which are unique to Fallout 3, they have been rebalanced in accordance with the other buffs for DT the rest of the weapons were given.

[samoja]

Thanks, so one question, would a purely NV mod work for TTW, as in, if i found a mod on nexus that boosts energy weapons would it work for TTW.

[Damianwolff]

I would say yes.

NV mods will affect mechanics, but if they add something to the game, without editing those new objects will be added to Mojave only.