TTW Weapon & Armor Rationalization

[charwo]

I think we need a mod that finally rationalizes the weaponry and armor of the Fallout universe. There needs to be a clear picture armor and especially weapons. As much as I loved FWE, it only added to the confusion. With all the DLCs coming together I think somethings need to be said:

There are too many guns types, too many ammos, especially for non-specialized units.

There are way WAY too many energy weapons. Its not that energy weapons shouldn't be available to buy, or find in abandoned places they should be broken, and a player perusing them needs to see it as a labor of love in fixing them, self training and such. Unless the completion is organized and state level, Enclave, BoS, possibly Jacobstown mutants and NCR, anyone with an energy weapons should be seen as an oldball and a half.

Except possibly with Plasma Casters. And Flame throwers. The Flame thrower as we know it needs to go. America was running out of oil but had cheap energy. A fuel cell powered Flamer would beyond taking the tank off the back (big, BIG target for snipers) but justify capacity and weight on someone not wearing power armor. The blowback mechanism would work just the same.

I as a player have never had any reason to use Plasma in the last two games. It's so slow its extra punch isn't worth it. I'd recommend least taking the Alien animations, which are faster, and using them, but really, I'd be happy to see the end of Plasma weaponry except for the Winstercester Plasma rifle (AA-23's type of heavy Plasma) and Plasma Casters as plasma weaponry even in lore is basically siege weaponry.

The .32 Hunting rifle should not take .32 pistols rounds. The .32 pistol and ammo should be done away with and the .32 merged and upgraded to the .38 Police Pistol With .357 ammo. A 32 is a weak round here, with radscorpions and such, its beyond useless. Just upgrade it to .308 and merge and be done with it. Or have it work on .556 ammo as it's an intermediate cartridge and makes some sense.

A decision needs to be made as to whether the NCR Service Rifle is in fact a wood made version of M19 Backtalker. I think its pretty clear it is, and if so, then Anchorage simulation needs to have pre-war Service Rifles as the Assault rifle of the Anchorage simulation, and not the RU-91, which was a National Guard service weapon. But why even stop there? The RU-91 is a G-3 with shortened barrel and wood stock, so why not have pre-war Service Rifles, colored and fully automatic, be the assault rifle of choice in  Fallout 3 areas?

But then again, with powered armor, even power armor move assists, which it looks like Riot Gear might have, why not go back to the 'Battle Rifle?' A fully automatic .308. In fact, given the need for more modern armor penetration, it would make sense to have the RU-91 as a .556 and the Service Rifle family and the AK-family (AS-47, 117 Chinese Assault Rifle), take .308? Its a move the real world is headed to for reasons that would apply in Fallout as well.

The BAR needs to be everywhere, as does the stupidly easy to maintain M1 Gerand (Battle Rifle)

Unless post war manufacturing dictates otherwise, shouldn't any foreign made Assault Rifle be a rarity? I can understand the number of swords and foreign pistols, but customs letting in Chinese assault rifles? Most heavy weapnry would either be post war zip guns or salvaged American military equipment.

Why does the 10mm pistol exist with plenty of 9mm? The 10 in real life was meant as a replacement for the 9, and found wanting. If we go by Fallout lore, 9mm weapons and ammo are strikingly rare with no demand as in Fallout 1&2, or lore needs to be broken and the 10mm done away with. Given the pistol design, I don't think that's a bad idea.

While Lincoln's Repeater should have an insane crit damage, ultimately, the Swampfolk should be deadly, not because of programing itself, but should be justified by their lever rifles...let's get rid of the levered rifles other than Lilcoln's altogether and have them have brush guns and Trail Carbines.

There is no reason at all, for the caravan shotgun to exist, nor the single shotgun. In fact, the whole low level Vegas layout of 9s, varmint rifles, machetes, razor blades, just make for much, MUCH easier kills. the 20 gauge guns are clutter: get rid of them! Double Barreled Shotguns, sawed off ones too work just fine, the combat shotgun makes no sense with the barrel that unnecessarily short, replace it with the Hunting Shotgun, then Riot Shotgun at higher levels (Charon gets the Riot Version).

That's just part of the weapons. But we can rationalize all of it.

[charwo]

Some thoughts about the 9mm v 10mm:

I think the 10 is the right choice, if not going straight to .45 caliber for most things. Given the state of militarization of all levels of American society, and presumably others, as well as the ubiquity of advanced combat armor, presumably through back channels, much like now, the 10mm makes sense as law enforcement round. It would also be easier to upgrade international 9s to 10mm as opposed to 44 or 45. And Given the beginning of Honest Hearts, we can't have "11mm" rounds. It's just that 9mm weapons should be rare.

And I think it needs to be said Vance's Submachine Gun should be a .45 Thompson with a built in drum, as that was the submachine gun of the American Gangster of the 1930s. Unless, the point was how much of a nincompoop he was. But truth be told, I think .45 ammo would have been cheaper and more available in the Heartland of the 30s than 9mm, so I still think the .45 drum is appropriate. I don't see the need for the 9mm SMG nor anything having to do with the .22 rounds, maybe upgrading the Silenced Pistol to a 9mm.

And to add fuel to the flame, with all the super duper alloys and engineering, why not do away with the 12.7 round and convert the weapons to .50MG. Its the exact same width, and more or less as long. I'll be honest the 12.7 SMG is a waste. Better to reintroduce a 10mm version of the PC90c

[charwo]

And on the energy weapons....maybe its time to get rid of the ammo. In a turn based platform you need ammo. They should be hyperbreeders of various clip sizes and recharge rates, and probably knocked down a bit in power. The reason is simple: military logistics. Even with a heavy weapon, the lack of ordinance frees up room for food and other equipment, allowing for longer deployments. Even a standard hyperbreeder rifle with a scope, would be an ideal antipersonnel sniper platform. That's why energy weapons would be viable, despite costs and retraining: the savings in operational and logistics would be immeasurable.

Plus, if you take Anchorage as being anywhere near accurate (and I have very solid reasons to think it was tactically accurate) then it very clear that combat in the 21st century was the re-emergence of the infantry as the means of advance. Lower Profile, harder to track, harder hitting, deeper infiltration, and more relentless than vehicle fighting. So the equipment used in the Third World War is going to be stuff that emphasizes small until infiltration, long range and long field terms. So equipment should be durable, well made, and have high skill requirement because the relatively small armies involved means that most troops have been trained and conditioned closer to spec ops forces now than a WWII, Korea conscript army. That's how the US could avoid draft riots until the last two years of the war.



The weapons systems that were available in 2077 have to make sense in the context of the Resource Wars. That's why I think moving energy weapons to hyperbreeders make sense within the lore.

[TJ]

Wow.. my only imput is the swampfolk are tarded. Always hated how hillbillies in the swamp that ran around in overalls were somehow better protected than I.

[charwo]

Well, I think you have a point, as long as you'd be willing to make them an AI capable of doing sharpshooting guerilla tactics with pungy sticks and the like. The Swampfolk are meant to be so tough because its their turf. They know it better and use it to their advantage. They've been hunting a long time in those woods, so they know every single rock and ford and tree.

But Fallout doesn't have an AI that can work the environment that well. In that way, its a fair trade-off, though what I hate about the Swampfolk is that they're all male, and use creature meshes, are considered supermutants by the game, and are terribly deformed. They shouldn't be. Maryland backcountry stopped having fresh blood in it LONG before 2077, like 200 years. They should be listed as their own faction, or at least raiders, use human meshes though the Bubba ones should have unplayable 'bubba outfit' that makes them fat. Also the bubba mechanic shirt makes no sense: the clothes should fit and not have a name tag that would only have made sense 200 years previously. Besides....a male character could rock the midweght overalls but good, and either sex could take the scrawny guy's boots and khaki short shorts and no top and it would make sense in the context of doing post apocalyptic killin.

Then again, I HATE raider armor. It just screams: Shoot me! You don't have to get close, I'm obviously evil so you ahead and snipe me. With these clothes, you'll never accidently kill an innocent! Ever!

[charwo]

No one else interested in a rationalization project? At all?

[charwo]

Weapon Rationalization Proposal

Fallout 3

Replace .32 pistol and Wild Bill's Sidearm with.38 Revolver equivalents

Replace Hunting Rifle (.32 variant) with Hunting Rifle (.308), including Ol'Painless

Ol'Painless at least should be fresh looking

Abolish .32 ammo

Replace Combat Shotgun with Hunting Shotgun, except Charon's and Terrible shotgun, which should be upgraded to Riot Shotgun type

Introduce Nail Gun to Capital Wasteland

Replace Levered Rifle in Point Lookout with Cowboy Repeater, renamed .44 Lever Action

Boatloads of 10mm Shoulder Mounted Machine Guns

Ubiquitous BARs, and pre-war Service Rifles and M1 'Battle rifles' and .45 Colt

Change alien weapon discharge to blue instantaneous beam.

Possibly equip Crow and PL tribals with Medicine stick?

 

Fallout New Vegas

Replace Single Shotguns with Double barreled Shotguns from Point Lookout

Abolish 20 gauge rounds and weapons

Abolish 12.7 rounds and convert to .50 MG

Abolish 12.7 SMG both variants

Abolish .22 rounds

Upgrade Silenced pistol to 9mm

Make 9mm rounds and weapons rare and cheap due to low demand.

Upgrade Vance's gun to .45 Auto with Drum

Upgrade Service Rifle Family to .308 caliber

Scientist Glove Family needs a matching left hand for all of them. PLEASE

Recommend nearly instantaneous discharge of double barrel shotgun and sawed off, thus allowing in practice the ability to fire both barrels at once or just one.

Abolish the current Hyperbreeder dirivatives (maybe)

 

Both

Abolish non-GRA and replace with GRA platform

Replace Laser pistol mesh with Plasma Defender

Abolish Plasma Pistol

Replace Laser Rifle mesh with Winchester Laser Rifle mesh form few, except for AER-14 Prototype and Mater Blaster.

Let us replace in all instances of the Plasma Rifle, with the Plasma Caster, rename it the Plasma Rifle, and pretend the abomination that was the Bethesda Urban Warfare model never existed

Take out low level melee non-uniques other than nail boards and knives for spawned enemies: no pool cues, brass knuckles, razor blades. Enemies should mostly start with higher level equipment.

Energy weapons should be converted to hyperbreeders with various recharge times and capacities

Do away with all Flame and Energy backpacks

Convert Flamethrowers by renaming flamer fuel energy cells and giving them Microfusion Mesh and the reloading animation, but keep the sound file.

Adjust Mad bomber recipes to suit.

All current cells can be converted to Fission Batteries for profit at workbench.

[LT Albrecht]

[quote=charwo]

And on the energy weapons....maybe its time to get rid of the ammo. In a turn based platform you need ammo. They should be hyperbreeders of various clip sizes and recharge rates, and probably knocked down a bit in power. The reason is simple: military logistics. Even with a heavy weapon, the lack of ordinance frees up room for food and other equipment, allowing for longer deployments. Even a standard hyperbreeder rifle with a scope, would be an ideal antipersonnel sniper platform. That's why energy weapons would be viable, despite costs and retraining: the savings in operational and logistics would be immeasurable.

Plus, if you take Anchorage as being anywhere near accurate (and I have very solid reasons to think it was tactically accurate) then it very clear that combat in the 21st century was the re-emergence of the infantry as the means of advance. Lower Profile, harder to track, harder hitting, deeper infiltration, and more relentless than vehicle fighting. So the equipment used in the Third World War is going to be stuff that emphasizes small until infiltration, long range and long field terms. So equipment should be durable, well made, and have high skill requirement because the relatively small armies involved means that most troops have been trained and conditioned closer to spec ops forces now than a WWII, Korea conscript army. That's how the US could avoid draft riots until the last two years of the war.

The weapons systems that were available in 2077 have to make sense in the context of the Resource Wars. That's why I think moving energy weapons to hyperbreeders make sense within the lore.

[/quote]

Not really. Energy weapons ammo already simplifies the logistics train by simply having all ammo as MF Cells, though let's not forget that the army also fielded Gauss weapons (2mmEC mags) and (were in the process of phasing out) Assault rifles of various kinds (5mm) as well as miniguns(5mm/4.7mm). MF Hyperbreeders were infant tech and not suited to the widespread deployment you suggested, also they make energy weapons boring by offering no variation of ammo types & effects.

The switch to infantry is a logistics one, vehicles require a massive support structure to keep combat ready, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, maintenance crews, all of it has to be carried with them and kept flowing, along with the usual supplies any group of people needs. Anchorage isn't exactly ideal vehicle turf either, one only has to look as far as russian winters to see the hell that much cold plays with AFVs. The sergeant guy you get info from in Chases's tent says something about the chimera tanks being 'bigger than anything we've got out here', which implies to me they're not just straight up bigger than anything in the US arsenal. Judging by the number of fusion-powered trucks we see in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it seems that they do have an oil-independent logistics chain (at least in part) and I'd be surprised if they hadn't at least tried to build nuclear-powered tanks at some point, the 50s were full of designs for wacky things like that. 

The US avoided draft riots because #1 they had an incredibly patriotic, jingoistic population who were incredibly afraid of the 'red menace', US society was one that hadn't moved on from McCarthyism in the 50's. That, and they had success to show. They retook Alaska, they annexed Canada, they landed in mainland china. ....then they got bogged down fighting a bitter war of attrition and it all came apart. The US army wasn't one giant spec-ops group, the soldiers you see in Anchorage are regular frontline infantry. Well equipped, reasonably well trained and decently motivated Infantry, but frontline soldiers nonetheless. Up until the widespread emergence of Power Armour wars seem to have been fought in the old (world war) style of fixed frontlines each side tried to push back, coupled with espionage and sabotage attacks (at least on the chinese side) by specialist infiltrators. Even power armour appears to fill the role of regular armour (exploiting breakthroughs or providing heavy, mobile fire support) rather than revolutionising warfare. 

In previous games, Energy weapons were immensely powerful. The US army was transitioning wholly to them when the bombs fell and the reason was obvious: like General Van Fleet in the Korean war, they'd worked out that the Chinese's primary asset was manpower and theirs was firepower, so they needed to maximise their primary asset and best use it to nullify their opponents, distributing the 'Van Fleet Load' to infantry directed energy weapons instead of artillery gunners. Every nation on earth was trying to develop energy weapons, and the US had an ace in the hole with micro-fusion technology, unlike everyone else they actually had a feasible means of powering their weaponry. 

 

[quote=charwo]

No one else interested in a rationalization project? At all?

[/quote]

Yeah, the problem really is that the game 'tells' you a lot in notes but doesn't show you what it was talking about. ON citadel terminals it claims any idiot can restore a N99 pistol to working order in a bout 5 minutes if they know how and that knowledge isn't hard to acquire. It also claims that the R91 is pretty similar. Back in FO1 the description of the 10mm Pistol basically says "sturdy, reliable, can be made by any dumbass with a worbench, a set of tools and an example to copy from.", FO1 at least had the Gun Runners and their manufacturing setup, but later games (FO2 included) are a bit guilty of not showing us these people supposedly manufacturing arms.

To be honest, all the settlements in the game need some tweaking, from novac's need for a few more brahmin and maybe a small amount of crops behind one or two of the houses to megaton's need to have its existence explained. It seems to me that the real problem is the world we walk around and the world we're told about in fluff text don't match.

[TJ]

[quote=LT Albrecht]

To be honest, all the settlements in the game need some tweaking, from novac's need for a few more brahmin and maybe a small amount of crops behind one or two of the houses to megaton's need to have its existence explained. It seems to me that the real problem is the world we walk around and the world we're told about in fluff text don't match.

[/quote]

As far as people/ settlements, most of the dumbasses in the mojave need proper packages built for them. In NV what did the Gun Runners really do? They stood around and looked at gun parts while the player baught guns from a coke machine instead.

[charwo]

Actually, the developers might answer up and down it was super patriotism but when the Word of God runs up against Real Life, it's real life that wins. The developers say there'd been no major conflict since World War II, this is bullshit. There was a Vietnam I can guarantee it, as the US clearly learned every lesson that war taught about stateside management.

I have no doubts this was a conscript army de jure, but they act like professional ones. Even a minor skirmish like the Falklands shows a professional army cuts through a conscript army like butter. Even without major conflicts this would have been seen time and time again with the IDFs engagements, which does exist. If you reject the ridiculous hand wave that Fallout works on 50s B-movie Science, and I explicitly do, then when reality ensues you have to look for real world analogies and accept that sometimes people screw up when they tell their own story. This is nowhere more clear than Obsidian's work with NCR, as NCR threatens the 'postapocalytic feel' of the game. Fallout is art by happenstance, its makers have always wanted to sell comic books. Still, it can be salvaged.

This means the transistor was developed at nearly the same moment. Modern computing doesn't happen otherwise. That means no Mr. Handy's. Plus if they really, REALLY developed atomic power that well, they;da had nuclear cars well before Peak Oil hit them in 2050, exactly when its projected to hit us if we don't get off the oil teat. This means the Fallout timeline is only aesthetically different from ours. The only tech difference is whether the internet is public as we know it, or still a military and research system like it was in the 1980s. It also means that both China and the USSR liberalized economically long ago to remain competitive with their western counterparts, as they did here. Cheng is a neo-Moaist, an Enclave analog for China, only much, much worse.

That's an important thing to understand with me: Realism is the mark of art, realism is what I crave, and if it cannot be extrapolated from realism, I want no part of it. The fact is a logistics simplification beyond the platoon level would be a universal .308 battle rifle bulpupped to hell and using caseless ammo to reduce space and thus shipping. That as the widespread adoption of the AA-12 or its (probably faux)wooden counterpart, the Riot Shotgun. Energy weapons need not apply, especially with horrifically high development costs seen in the real world.

There has to be something more than quartemaster's delight. There needs to be a move to small unit tactics, and what would cause that is the miniaturization of weapon systems that were normally crew served. Think the Missile Units and Snipers working independently. This is not gameplay story segregation, it has Land Warrior 2077 written all over it. Reasonable expectations are lighter ordinance, better inbuilt communications, HUDs and inbuilt land warrior pack and feet exoskeleton works.

Biggest issue of the decline of infantry as the main fighting piece of the battlefield were small ordinance, small ammo capacity, need for provisions and sleep.  Land warrior system can lock a soldier upright and administer sleep meds or anti sleep meds (both exist now), and with lighter, smaller ordinance and lighter, more protective armor the biggest issue for infantry need for provisions. Even form scouts and snipers the balance has been equipment, ammo and provisions. ammo is still very heavy and bulky. Even light weight energy cells, (no promise they'll be lightweight) would still be bulky and thus reduce escape for equipment and provisions. If you take the Army still using MREs, and there being a logical limit how much equipment is atually being carried around, it means the best approach is to eliminate ordinance all together.

This is where personal energy weapons could be justified in terms of development costs: with a hyperbreeder where the logistic constraint of ammo is taken out, at least for tactical engagements, which are measured in days, you have a phenomenal weight and bulk saving. Look at the notes of the Recharger rifle:

• 
  Despite its low damage the gun can be fired very rapidly outside of V.A.T.S.


• 
  Each unit of ammunition only takes 1 second to recharge, meaning a fully discharged rifle takes 7 seconds to recharge.


• 
  While much heavier and noticeably weaker per shot than the laser rifle, it doesn't require any ammunition to be carried. Because of this, it can be one option for consideration in hardcore mode.

And Hardcore doesn't take into account space as a factor either. A modern M-16 is eight pounds unloaded, a recharger rifle is 15 pounds. A Marine in Iraq will carry 180 rounds in 6 30 round clips at a minimum. Many times they will carry as much ammo as then can carry. If you have a recharger rifle and pistol, you have replenishing, recoilless ammo and weapons for a grand total of 22 pounds. 



Look, I played a moddified game where all I did was extended the recharger rifle's clip to 20 instead of 7. My character with not a point in energy weapons but from stats was sharpshooting deathclaws to death at level five. On hard. That sold me on the concept.