CROSS-CONTENT DISCUSSION: Remove .32 Ammo

[Copper Hamster]

ok, how bout this (brainstorming):

22 rifle, call it a 'Small Game rifle' or 'plinking rifle'. It replaces the hunting rifle from FO3 and the name has a more 'yankee-east' feel than 'varmit' rifle. I would expect a wood stocked bolt action with basic open sights, dovetailed for adding a scope mod later. It would not be silenced except as a mod.

22 revolver replaces the 32 revolver. It would not be silenced, except as a mod. (gun nut mode: There are a lot of '32' calibers in rifles, but none of the 32 revolver rounds really 'made it' in rifles, they are all rifle specific rounds; also 32 pistols are much less popular in the US except as holdout/small concealed guns).

In regards to the shotgun, if you wanted to keep it on unique ammo there's always 16 gauge, which was generally more popular in the east than the west anyway.

(Ironically, the over/under shotgun is also more of a eastern gun than western one, but oh well...)

[darthbdaman]

What people seem to forget is that they are going to make two versions. The merged version could easily include things like NV weapons in Fallout 3, and possibly removing .32, and for people who want a very vanilla Fallout 3 experience, the base version could keep .32 and have two hunting rifles.

[alphaidiot]

I say NOT. I use it extendedly with altered name and weapons. I am afraid the removal will cause errors which may same to others. To say, there are abundant resources in Nexus and modgames for replacement. These are the pistol replacement and semi automatic rifle I'm using, deal less damage than .308 but offset by decent firerate and small AP bonus. 

[gnubee]

Seems to me that the easiest solution is to keep .32 and just have two hunting rifles.  In order to simplify things a bit for the player, tweak the texture on one of them.  

[LT Albrecht]

The Hunting rifle was always a problem in FO3, primarily because it made most other weapons useless. Compared to it the assault rifles are costly to maintain, costly to use in combat, hard to obtain and generally awful. It has quite a few definite edges over the sniper rifle (more durable, more available, cheaper and more abundant ammo) but few drawbacks (marginally less accurate, lower per-hit damage). In general the weapons in Fallout 3 were poorly balanced, and the Hunting rifle was symptomatic of this, it was essentially the go-to weapon for almost every situation for guns users with only a moderate weakness (outside of vats) at close range due to its mediocre rate of fire.

.32 Pistols made this problem worse by being an awful weapon you would never actually use the rounds in, but coming with the ammo when looted from enemies, allowing low level raiders to be 'harvested' for the ammo. Now although this is possible for most weapons if you're careful with shot placement and ammo management, the hunting rifle (by virtue of being a mini-sniper) was especially bad for it, considering the bulk of hunting rifle armed enemies in the game and the AI's vulnerability to exactly the tactics the hunting rifle favours (sniping/sneak crits). The Sniper rifle allows players to do this as does (to some degree) the scoped .44 but those are moderated by the high operating costs (ammo/repairs) and lack of enemies supplying the relevant ammo and weapons for maintenance.

TL;DR Hunting rifle is poorly balanced like almost all of the FO3 weapons, they need a re-think.

[darthbdaman]

I am actually for removing .32, and changing the Varmint Rifle to .22lr, replacing the Hunting Rifle with the Varmint. In terms of low level balancing, this change is a massive improvement to both games. Try out the .22lr Varmint Rifle restoration to see what I mean. After the .22lr was de-nerfed in a patch, the change made sense, and made the ammo progression more natural.

[JaxFirehart]

One hard and fast rule that Chuck and I have agreed on is that we will not change anything in FNV. So as much as I agree that the Varmint Rifle should be .22LR (and I use the mod when I'm not testing TTW) it won't be changed by TTW. Basically, if you run TTW and nothing else, the only difference you will notice is some FO3 weapons popping up in the Mojave.

[Copper Hamster]

I still think that changing the name of the CWHunting Rifle is the way to go here. Frankly, given the way ammo and damage is handled, a more realistic mod for a few fo3 weapons would be:

Hunting Rifle -> Small game (or something) Rifle, .22lr. Maybe tweak the damage down a bit to make it less 'go to' (Am replaying FO3 right now and I carry basically 3 guns: Hunting Rifle for day to day work, the Blackhawk for big uglies, and the Xuanlong for 'make a mess'. Well... I also have the Firelance which fell on me my first trip out of Megaton !.! but I've only shot it twice.)

32 revolver -> .22 Revolver

Silly tiny damage Chinese Pistol -> .22lr

 

[Computerrock1]

I believe that .32 should be kept, however it shouldn't be as common as it is out in the capital wasteland. The .32 caliber weapons are the perfect starter weapons and is a staple in FO3.

Least that's my opinion

[subtledoctor]

"I used the hunting rifle nearly the whole time i played fallout 3 and would hate to see its removal, why not instead make it the capital wastelands version of the cowboy repeater?

.357 ammo would be a good ammo type to use for the gun as it would mean that players that come from NV and don't want to part with the repeater would be able to find ammo"

This.  The cowboy repeater in NV plays a very similar role to the hunting rifle in FO3: slow to shoot but decent power for sniping in the early game (earlyish anyway, levels 3-10 or so).  I think you could drop the cowboy repeater (maybe with a name change to eliminate "cowboy") in place of the CW hunting rifle, and change nothign else, and the game would play almost perfectly.  Then, change the .32 pistol to use .357 rounds as well - call it a ".38 Special" and make it similar to the .357 revolver - and that gun would finally be useful.  IMHO this would be relatively simply to implement, and make for a great improvement.