FO: NV

[GreasyDogMeat]

Why the heck would "Chinese Assault Rifles" fire the 5.56 NATO round?

They were all imported, rechambered, and sporterized.

 

 

Oh. I thought they were left over from an invasion or something.

 

 

WOuldn't there by more m14s and M1's around then imported Chinese weapons?

 

Remember that Fallout is alternate history. Its possible that after WWII the Chinese developed this AK47 look alike variant and decided on that round.

 

Also, the Assault Rifle you find all throughout Fallout 3 appears to be the standard U.S. weapon.

 

The only WWII era weapon appears to be the Chinese Pistol, based on a WWII Mauser pistol.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Oh. I thought they were left over from an invasion or something.

 

WOuldn't there by more m14s and M1's around then imported Chinese weapons?

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but I was joking.

[Slowtrain]

Oh. I thought they were left over from an invasion or something.

 

WOuldn't there by more m14s and M1's around then imported Chinese weapons?

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but I was joking.

 

 

No problem. Your posts are often so deadpan it's hard to tell a jocular Josh from a serious Josh.

 

 

Anyway, wouldn't the 7.62 be a more fitting military cartridge for Fallout's neo-1950's mythos than the 5.56? Battle rifles of the 50s like the FN-FAL and the M14 used those heavy rounds. The 5.56 wasn't developed as a military round until when, the late 60's early 70's or thereabouts.

 

Also, wouldn't it be more interesting for Warsaw Pact weapons to fire Warsaw Pact rounds?

 

 

edit: speaking of which: are we going to get some (or all) new weapons in NV

Edited May 21, 2009 by CrashGirl

[J.E. Sawyer]

7.62 what, though? 7.62x39mm is used in later Soviet weapons like the AK-47. NATO developed the 7.62x51mm from .308 Winchester for the M14 and M60. It seems like .30-06 Springfield was, in many ways, a superior round, but 7.62x51mm was adopted for NATO purposes.

 

5.56x45mm NATO was derived from .223 Remington in the late 50s and early 60s.

[Slowtrain]

7.62 what, though? 7.62x39mm is used in later Soviet weapons like the AK-47. NATO developed the 7.62x51mm from .308 Winchester for the M14 and M60. It seems like .30-06 Springfield was, in many ways, a superior round, but 7.62x51mm was adopted for NATO purposes.

 

5.56x45mm NATO was derived from .223 Remington in the late 50s and early 60s.

 

 

I was thinking the standard NATO 7.62 * 51mm. If you want to use an AK variant in the game then it should fire the 7.62 *39 or the 5.45 *39 for the submachine gun variants.

 

I would just think IF there is an AK variant in the game it should use AK rounds. Maybe make them rare and somewhat special or something. Otoh, If it's too much pointless work to introduce a different cartridge type, just stick with only US/NATO rifles instead and a single cartridge for all of them.

 

 

IIRC, the 5.56 is based on the .223 Remington but is somewhat different having been respecced by the military to be suitable in its role. Additonally, I believe the official NATO 5.56 round is somewhat different from the original US 5.56

 

Based on the anti-commie propaganda present in FO3 (Hello, Mr. Gutsy!), I'm not even sure the presence of so many Chinese rifles in the gameworld even makes sense.

 

edit: Which is why I had thought there had been some kind of invasion, at least in the DC area. I was trying to find a rationale for all the Chinese gear.

Edited May 21, 2009 by CrashGirl

[TwinkieGorilla]

[i hate gun talk]awww, c'MON! didn't anyone play that aqua pura quest that i was skronkin' about earlier today? this was the first moment since i got FO3 that where i actually got really excited! i'm wondering if anybody knows of any other moments where dialog or gameplay is actually effected by actions like i wrote about in the spoiler. i mean, it's REALLY something i'd like to see in FO:NV and hope to see more of in FO4. it's just the sort of little things like this which when added up always impressed me about the original games.[/i hate gun talk]

[Slowtrain]

[i hate gun talk]awww, c'MON! didn't anyone play that aqua pura quest that i was skronkin' about earlier today? this was the first moment since i got FO3 that where i actually got really excited! i'm wondering if anybody knows of any other moments where dialog or gameplay is actually effected by actions like i wrote about in the spoiler. i mean, it's REALLY something i'd like to see in FO:NV and hope to see more of in FO4. it's just the sort of little things like this which when added up always impressed me about the original games.[/i hate gun talk]

 

 

I read your post and though ti was cool. It is always ncie when a developer antic[ates the player and you do something like you did, and Boom, the game has an answer.

 

That is classic crog dev work righ there.

 

 

ANd, yeah, sorry for the gun talk. I don't usually go on like that, but the inconsistency of the "Chinese Assault Rifle" being present in such numbers and that it fires a NATO round, is just one of those odd little things that sits in my head when I play FO3 and bugs me.

 

I mean, yeah its a game so who cares. But I would argue, why do something inconsistent in a gameworld if you don't have to?

[Tigranes]

Man, I must have completely missed that quest, where do you get it? Sounds fun.

[Hurlshort]

I went back and read about that toupee quest. Awesome! I never encountered it myself. There were a lot of moments in Fallout 3 where I felt like I was stumbling upon some story that had already happened, and I was retracing the steps. Sometimes it was rewarding, sometimes I just scratched my head, but it was usually engaging.

[Kjarista]

[i hate gun talk]awww, c'MON! didn't anyone play that aqua pura quest that i was skronkin' about earlier today? this was the first moment since i got FO3 that where i actually got really excited! i'm wondering if anybody knows of any other moments where dialog or gameplay is actually effected by actions like i wrote about in the spoiler. i mean, it's REALLY something i'd like to see in FO:NV and hope to see more of in FO4. it's just the sort of little things like this which when added up always impressed me about the original games.[/i hate gun talk]

 

 

I read your post and though ti was cool. It is always ncie when a developer antic[ates the player and you do something like you did, and Boom, the game has an answer.

 

That is classic crog dev work righ there.

 

 

ANd, yeah, sorry for the gun talk. I don't usually go on like that, but the inconsistency of the "Chinese Assault Rifle" being present in such numbers and that it fires a NATO round, is just one of those odd little things that sits in my head when I play FO3 and bugs me.

 

I mean, yeah its a game so who cares. But I would argue, why do something inconsistent in a gameworld if you don't have to?

 

Well, there aren't that many Chinese assault rifles around, and there are still Chinese (ghouls) all over Mama Doche's and little stashes of bodies all over the Wasteland. Regardless, a weapon is only good if there is ammo for it, and it may ahve been possible that the CARs were rechambered, either by wAstelanders, using AR parts, or by the Chinese themselves, with the idea of using captured American ammo. (US ARmy had conversion kits in stock in Korea designed to rechamber N. Korean AKs to 7.62 NATO).

 

All conjecture, of course. Frankly, the ammo type really doesn't bother me that much. I figure if ammo is being manufactured somewhere, the caliber selection would bound to be very limited.

[Hurlshort]

This ain't Jagged Alliance, Crashgirl

 

Which is a shame, really.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Man, I must have completely missed that quest, where do you get it? Sounds fun.

 

well if Mr. Public Relations didn't take the ENTIRE beginning of my post down, you'd have seen that it's part of the Broken Steel DLC. area to get said quest--->

you have to go back to the Jefferson Memorial.

 

Edited May 21, 2009 by TwinkieGorilla

[Slowtrain]

This ain't Jagged Alliance, Crashgirl

 

 

 

 

 

edit: I keep looking for the Tons of Guns options in the FO3 menu and I JUST CAN'T FIND IT!

Edited May 21, 2009 by CrashGirl

[GreasyDogMeat]

I'm begging you Obsidian, bring back throwable melee weapons!

 

Simply make the throwing of them tie in with the melee skill, just as the ability to throw grenades is tied in with the explosives skill. You could use the standard attack key to jab with a spear/rock/throwing knife and the block/aim key would instead hurl the weapon. Entering vats mode in close quarters could equal a melee attack while entering at long range would be a thrown attack with a flashing warning at the top that you will throw your weapon at the current range you entered vats.

[Aram]

The .223 commercial round and 5.56mm military round, I think, were both made available in '64. It had been around much sooner than that, however, as an experimental load developed specifically for the AR-15--I think in the mid-late 50s. The round itself was developed out of a stretched .222 round, and prototypes for it had been around for even longer. I don't think there's anything wrong with the .223 existing in the Fallout universe since it was a concept well underway in the 50s timeframe, and the low-caliber assault rifle concept had been around since WW2, and made extremely common in the AK47.

 

I agree though that it makes no sense for a bunch of Chinese rifles to be in the same caliber. Canonically, did any Chinese troops even actually land on American soil, besides Alaska? It really doesn't make sense that there would be so many Chinese weapons around. Maybe a few in odd places like that secret Communist guy's apartment where you get the hat might make sense.

 

Of course, the Fallout series has a long tradition of introducing arsenals which make absolutely no sense. It's one of the flaws of the setting, I think. Even if you have a hatred of real life weapons and want the most ridiculous, oversized, Lefieldian comic book generic weapons, the original Fallout itself doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

 

Take, for example, the handguns available in Fallout. There's a 10mm pistol, a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum, a 14mm pistol, and a .223 pistol.

 

J.E. confirmed that the 10mm in the game is supposed to be the 10mm Auto, a fad cartridge of the 80s and 90s that has become a connoisseur's cartridge today if anything--almost forgotten in a professional capacity in favor of the .40 S&W or otherwise just forgotten. It is a real world cartridge with absolutely no basis in the 1950s and, in fact, no basis today either--if we look forward into the future from where we stand now, there's no reason to think the 10mm will be anything but further forgotten. That makes that part of Fallout a product of the time when the original game was made, not the time it claims to emulate, and even less today. The graphic itself for the pistol is actually a reference to an 80s hyperviolent Frank Miller comic, which might have fit as a homage to one of Fallout's influences, but is so obscure a reference today that it seems like a bad decision.

 

The Desert Eagle is a real world weapon--though it's one so often overused in film and fiction that one could almost think it's not. The Desert Eagle has nothing to do with the 50s and everything to do with the 80s and 90s trashy action film. Watching movies like Robocop, Predator 2, Commando, Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man, one would think that it was the most common handgun in the world. The awful movie adaptation of one of my favorite novels, Miami Blues, turned a .32 pistol and a .38 snub into a .44 Magnum Ruger and a .50 Desert Eagle, just because producers thought moviegoers in the 90s wanted them. It's a small complaint, but its presence detracts from the setting rather than clarifies it as it should. It also creates the problem those same movies had. It stretches the imagination that someone could be hit multiple times with one and not be reduced to a greasespot.

 

The 14mm pistol, believe it or not, is probably the most sensible of all of them. It more or less fits the setting, if that's what the setting wants to be. If it wants to be wacky looking big guns in outrageous calibers, that's unfortunate but certainly allowed. If its picture is a reference to something, I can't find it. The description calls it a Sig Sauer which is a bit hard to believe, but that's about all you can really disagree with if anything.

 

The .223 pistol makes no sense logically. It does more damage than the .223 rifle, even though a shorter barrel should mean significantly less damage. Firing a .223 through a pistol length barrel notoriously slows it down to a speed in which it loses its fragmentation effect, which is where the round gets most of its damage potential. Logically, it should do less damage even than the 10mm pistol. It also is drawn as an exact replica of Harrison Ford's pistol in Blade Runner. Another culture reference, at least a little more timeless than one to a Frank Miller comic, yet still an 80s reference rather than a 50s one. If it was drawn to look like something from Buck Rogers would be one thing. Blade Runner just doesn't fit.

 

 

Fallout 2 further confused the issue by adding a plethora of real life, high tech, and decidedly 90s weapons that, like the 10mm round, fit neither in a retro 50s setting nor a game made ten years later. The G11, Pancor Jackhammer, CAWS, and others that they added to the game never left the prototype stage. They're pieces of 90s curio at best. The addition of the FN-FAL and Grease gun make a little more sense, especially as the descriptions offer explanations for their presence. Fallout Tactics suffered from a bit of everygun-itis which resulted in a party which could simultanously possess an M16a1, a gauss rifle, and a WW1 era Chauchat. Frankly, before someone can come up with the perfect arsenal for Fallout, someone needs to define just what a Fallout game arsenal wants to be.

[Gromnir]

...

 

have been using firearms since before Gromnir were kindergarten aged. am having a nice karabiner 98k, so am guessing that some might call us a gun nut o' sorts. that being said, in fo we were concerned with damage, range and ap costs. historical accuracy o' included weapons never gained our notice.

 

is like arguing spears v. spear & shield with krazy. ultimately it not mean squat.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 22, 2009 by Gromnir

[Aram]

Historical accuracy is one thing. Culture references and real life firearms curio that completely contradict the setting the Fallout series claims to strive for is another.

[Gromnir]

Historical accuracy is one thing. Culture references and real life firearms curio that completely contradict the setting the Fallout series claims to strive for is another.

 

the setting is camp. is dark-humor camp, but is still camp. is a bit like complaining that the chainsaw wielded by ash williams is actually a discontinued husquvarna model that would not be available for sale in your average late 80'/early 90's megamart.

 

*shrug*

 

nevertheless, it does seem that such stuff is important to folks. am personally not understanding it, but that ultra-nerd thing is no doubt a quality shared by more than a few o' the developers, so you probable got a good shot at finding a sympathetic obstinate or two.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Aram]

It's more like complaining if the Highwayman from Fallout 2 had been a 1998 Audi S4, or the Batmobile, instead of something that made sense for the setting.

[Gromnir]

It's more like complaining if the Highwayman from Fallout 2 had been a 1998 Audi S4, or the Batmobile, instead of something that made sense for the setting.

 

if you say so. to Gromnir it looks like you is arguing flinstones setting... mammoths and brontosaurus in flinstones.

 

btw, the audi wouldn't o' bothered us... though we thinks a delorean woulda been more amusing.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[bhlaab]

Arg NO!

 

Thats one change to the skill system from F1's 200 & F2's 300 I love. 100 is a nice round number and raising it to some arbitrary number is just pointless. "How would you rank your firearms ability from 1-100 sir? Well I'd say, 241.6!"

 

100% should be 100%! Keep it simple... 1-10, 1-100, max level of 20-30. Just reduce how many skill points you earn per level or how many skill books you find.

 

Why is 200 arbitrary and 100 isn't?

 

With a max level of 20-30 you're just asking for people to hit that wall, especially in "New Fallout" free-roaming sandbox style. Hitting the level cap is supposed to be for overachievers and grinders!

 

And if you really think raising the value of the skill point tender is going to fix the balance-economy you've got another thing coming.

[GreasyDogMeat]

Arg NO!

 

Thats one change to the skill system from F1's 200 & F2's 300 I love. 100 is a nice round number and raising it to some arbitrary number is just pointless. "How would you rank your firearms ability from 1-100 sir? Well I'd say, 241.6!"

 

100% should be 100%! Keep it simple... 1-10, 1-100, max level of 20-30. Just reduce how many skill points you earn per level or how many skill books you find.

 

Why is 200 arbitrary and 100 isn't?

 

With a max level of 20-30 you're just asking for people to hit that wall, especially in "New Fallout" free-roaming sandbox style. Hitting the level cap is supposed to be for overachievers and grinders!

 

And if you really think raising the value of the skill point tender is going to fix the balance-economy you've got another thing coming.

 

Raise the skill max to 200 and you are going to do one of two things.

 

1: Double the ability you had previously. Don't want to see this... a skill of 100 is already powerful enough.

2: Halve the effect of the skills. Again... whats the point? If you want to slow the rate of reaching skill max simply lower the points you earn per level up etc.

 

Raising the skill level to 200 is pointless.

 

You can simply prevent hitting the 20-30 cap too soon by lowering xp awards. Just look at NwN 1 vs. NwN 2. Both OCs had max levels of 20. NwN 1 was quite a bit longer but going above level 15 was very difficult. NwN 2 was shorter and you could reach 20 quite a ways before the end. It is all about how much xp you give out.

[bhlaab]

Arg NO!

 

Thats one change to the skill system from F1's 200 & F2's 300 I love. 100 is a nice round number and raising it to some arbitrary number is just pointless. "How would you rank your firearms ability from 1-100 sir? Well I'd say, 241.6!"

 

100% should be 100%! Keep it simple... 1-10, 1-100, max level of 20-30. Just reduce how many skill points you earn per level or how many skill books you find.

 

Why is 200 arbitrary and 100 isn't?

 

With a max level of 20-30 you're just asking for people to hit that wall, especially in "New Fallout" free-roaming sandbox style. Hitting the level cap is supposed to be for overachievers and grinders!

 

And if you really think raising the value of the skill point tender is going to fix the balance-economy you've got another thing coming.

 

Raise the skill max to 200 and you are going to do one of two things.

 

1: Double the ability you had previously. Don't want to see this... a skill of 100 is already powerful enough.

2: Halve the effect of the skills. Again... whats the point? If you want to slow the rate of reaching skill max simply lower the points you earn per level up etc.

 

Raising the skill level to 200 is pointless.

 

You can simply prevent hitting the 20-30 cap too soon by lowering xp awards. Just look at NwN 1 vs. NwN 2. Both OCs had max levels of 20. NwN 1 was quite a bit longer but going above level 15 was very difficult. NwN 2 was shorter and you could reach 20 quite a ways before the end. It is all about how much xp you give out.

 

It's not about slowing the rate of reaching skill max, it's about the level of variation possible and how you balance specialist players against jack of all trades/masters of none.

 

I'm not saying turn 100 into the new 50, that would be silly and change nothing. Clearly, if they raised the skill ceiling they'd have to rebalance the whole system.

Lowering the amount of skill points at each level is also no fix because that would completely alter how the player approaches levelling. If you only have 5 points to work with, and it's the beginning of the game, are you even going to consider putting that into anything but your "main" skills (probably combat)? It puts too much pressure on the jack of all trade players who would prefer to dabble in the more 'useless' skills and potentially narrows the focus of the game altogether.

Meanwhile, a wider breadth would allow the specialists to get a healthier taste of the huge benefits and deficiencies of their build.

[Aristes]

At level 20 on one of my builds, I had eight 100s, one 92, one 50, a 39, a 38, and a 37. They have no room for higher level builds. Players will be completely maxed out by 50 without putting much effort into a skills based build. They have to do something, and it simply seems short-sighted that they created a system that didn't allow for significantly higher levels since that's virtually always one of the first things fans want to have.

[Meshugger]

So, what do we actually know about NV's gameplay?