Game News Massive Fallout: New Vegas Info Package

[flushfire]

Someone said that Big Guns were the more powerful build in FO2 that I found a bit odd as in Small Arms side we have the Gauss weapons and on the Energy we have the Pulse weapons.

Bozar

Rocket Launcher is a liability in close quarters combats were you are as likely to blow yourself up as the enemy.

and FO3 is a game where close quarters combat happens 99% of the time, right?

That leave us with the Minigun that EATS ammo (240 rounds in 12 seconds) and for what? a DPS of 100 (I have to use DPS because its damage per attack is just 5 damage, its the rate of fire that really makes it a viable weapon in the first place) with no critical?

so putting it in small guns makes it more worthwhile? you'll still probably ditch it for something else that eats less ammo.

 

[Drakron]

Bozar

Not really that good, it does 25-35 damage and it have burst (to be exact, it only have burst) and 35 range.

The problem with burst is you lose targeting, sure it hits something but that can be a liability as well but I rather so targeted shoots at vitals (especially with Deathclaws were slowing them down by shooting their legs is pretty much required).

I also suspect a lot of why its good is because you can find one in the Toxic Caves.

and FO3 is a game where close quarters combat happens 99% of the time, right?

A lot of Fallout 3 combat is on interiors and even outside you end up doing duck-and-cover as rarely you get the drop on someone or something and they usually have friends nearby.

One section of the Main Quest will have you fight Supermutants in a Vault, are you going to say that the Missile Launcher is a viable option there?

so putting it in small guns makes it more worthwhile? you'll still probably ditch it for something else that eats less ammo.

The minigun is a suppressor, its good when you are fighting groups and you use the burst mode, other weapons are better or worst depending on when and were.

Besides you also have the ultimate sniper rifle that is the Anti-materiel rifle that have a strength requirement of 8, if you are going Sniper you end going to find a way to get a very high strength, what is more "worthwhile" is going to come up with high requirements, besides people do use base guns until they get their worthwhile weapons ... the minigun is a option if you have strenght and ammo for it, in FO3 that was not much of a option as it also had a skill you were unlikely to have invested in.

 

[crazy_dave]

Bozar

Yeah I don't understand what's so great about it... Heard it somewhere else that bozar is great... Seems people love it... Never seemed that great a weapon to me...

 

[flushfire]

Not really that good, it does 25-35 damage and it have burst (to be exact, it only have burst) and 35 range.

The problem with burst is you lose targeting, sure it hits something but that can be a liability as well but I rather so targeted shoots at vitals (especially with Deathclaws were slowing them down by shooting their legs is pretty much required).

I also suspect a lot of why its good is because you can find one in the Toxic Caves.

Because I'm too lazy to do it myself, Here. Losing targeting is what you take Fast Shot for. You don't really need to target vitals with it. 1 crit with a bozar will kill anything in the game.

A lot of Fallout 3 combat is on interiors and even outside you end up doing duck-and-cover as rarely you get the drop on someone or something and they usually have friends nearby.

One section of the Main Quest will have you fight Supermutants in a Vault, are you going to say that the Missile Launcher is a viable option there?

Because the explosion radius is so big? Seriously, you're imagining things. I never had problems with it. Anywhere.

The minigun is a suppressor, its good when you are fighting groups and you use the burst mode, other weapons are better or worst depending on when and were.

So? If its good it has to be put in a category that already enjoys much use? I don't get it.

 

[Melcar]

They could have just done away with all the other useless skills and bunch them together into a single "Skill".

 

[ZbojLamignat]

Not really that good, it does 25-35 damage and it have burst (to be exact, it only have burst) and 35 range.

The problem with burst is you lose targeting, sure it hits something but that can be a liability as well but I rather so targeted shoots at vitals (especially with Deathclaws were slowing them down by shooting their legs is pretty much required).

I also suspect a lot of why its good is because you can find one in the Toxic Caves.

Bozar

Yeah I don't understand what's so great about it... Heard it somewhere else that bozar is great... Seems people love it... Never seemed that great a weapon to me...

Yes, Bozar is great because you can find one in Toxic Caves

Bozar/Vinidicator (actually any big guns of machine gun variety will do, but Bozar and Vinidicator are obviously the best) + tagged Big Guns + Fast Shot + Bonus Rate of Fire + Better Criticals + Sniper. For 3 perks you get a character that can shoot two bursts and reload every turn and most of these bursts are criticals ranging from few hundred to even few thousand hp. Yes, you actually have a decent chance of one-shoting Horrigan. I know it's over the top and not necessary and I don't really like that character, but that's a fact - it's much more powerful than anything that Small or Energy skills can give you.

Even more, stat-wise the only requirements for this build are 10 agility and 6 luck (to get better criticals early and with hubologist scan in NCR it will rise to 8 which is more than enough for sniper to work most of the time, you don't need high perception as you can drug yourself to get the Sniper perk), which means that with Gifted you can easily make this character an intelligent diplomat as well. You can also add things like Bonus Ranged Damage, Living Anatomy, Action Boy etc. into the equation. I once completed the game with a character that had over 300 hp, awesome resistances, abovementioned firepower and maximum intelligence/high speech for all the dialogue goodness, the only con was average perception - all legally and without random encounter grinding. Yes, it gets boring quickly, but still fun for a single playthrough.

Yeah, the more powerful weapons were pretty rare in FO1, but FO2 pretty much showers you with an overpowered arsenal within minutes of leaving Arroyo.

Yeah, right

Unless you're talking about gamey tricks by someone who knows the game (which fucks up the balance of pretty much every game in existence, especially so with open ended ones like Fallout) it's obviously not true. Going with the natural flow of F2 you start getting decent small guns in VC and decent big/energy guns in NR/NCR and some of the best ones are available only when nearing the end. Unless you count things like super stimpacking cops in NCR to get a Gauss as "showering the player with overpowered arsenal within minutes of leaving Arroyo".

 

[bert]

The thing that bugs me the most about F2 is that the game scales encounters to your level, so you start getting robbers with H&K CAWS in around early midgame, and then combat shotguns and flamers and .223 pistols. How do robbers and thieves get these weapons, and why are they so abundant in the wasteland? No one really knows.

 

[TanChild]

JA/JA2 only had a marksmanship skill with other conditions like weaponry traits (sniper, auto weapons, heavy weapons) or attribute factors. Best tactical game ever.

Yeah, a generalised 'gunmanship'

Gun ships? um. No if you knew anything about New Vegas you would know that vehicles were ruled out immediately.

 

[bert]

JA/JA2 only had a marksmanship skill with other conditions like weaponry traits (sniper, auto weapons, heavy weapons) or attribute factors. Best tactical game ever.

Yeah, a generalised 'gunmanship'

Gun ships? um. No if you knew anything about New Vegas you would know that vehicles were ruled out immediately.

He meant marksmanship I'm guessing.

 

[TanChild]

So a guy named mark on a ship?

 

[bert]

So a guy named mark on a ship?

Mark's man ship?

 

[TanChild]

So a guy named mark on a ship?

Mark's man ship?

Is that some sort of Gentlemen's club meets Yacht?

 

[ZbojLamignat]

The thing that bugs me the most about F2 is that the game scales encounters to your level, so you start getting robbers with H&K CAWS in around early midgame, and then combat shotguns and flamers and .223 pistols. How do robbers and thieves get these weapons, and why are they so abundant in the wasteland? No one really knows.

No it doesn't. The encounters are based on area of the map, not player's level. Different areas have different monsters/groups with different sets of weapons.

But random encounters are a broken part of the game as they present a very easy way to overlevel your characters (especially early encounters with caves filled with rats or weak deathclaws that can easily be cleaned with a basic SMG and often grant even 5000-8000 xp) and gain stupid amounts of money/barter trash.

 

[crazy_dave]

Not really that good, it does 25-35 damage and it have burst (to be exact, it only have burst) and 35 range.

The problem with burst is you lose targeting, sure it hits something but that can be a liability as well but I rather so targeted shoots at vitals (especially with Deathclaws were slowing them down by shooting their legs is pretty much required).

I also suspect a lot of why its good is because you can find one in the Toxic Caves.

Bozar

Yeah I don't understand what's so great about it... Heard it somewhere else that bozar is great... Seems people love it... Never seemed that great a weapon to me...

Yes, Bozar is great because you can find one in Toxic Caves

Bozar/Vinidicator (actually any big guns of machine gun variety will do, but Bozar and Vinidicator are obviously the best) + tagged Big Guns + Fast Shot + Bonus Rate of Fire + Better Criticals + Sniper. For 3 perks you get a character that can shoot two bursts and reload every turn and most of these bursts are criticals ranging from few hundred to even few thousand hp. Yes, you actually have a decent chance of one-shoting Horrigan. I know it's over the top and not necessary and I don't really like that character, but that's a fact - it's much more powerful than anything that Small or Energy skills can give you.

Even more, stat-wise the only requirements for this build are 10 agility and 6 luck (to get better criticals early and with hubologist scan in NCR it will rise to 8 which is more than enough for sniper to work most of the time, you don't need high perception as you can drug yourself to get the Sniper perk), which means that with Gifted you can easily make this character an intelligent diplomat as well. You can also add things like Bonus Ranged Damage, Living Anatomy, Action Boy etc. into the equation. I once completed the game with a character that had over 300 hp, awesome resistances, abovementioned firepower and maximum intelligence/high speech for all the dialogue goodness, the only con was average perception - all legally and without random encounter grinding. Yes, it gets boring quickly, but still fun for a single playthrough.

Yeah, the more powerful weapons were pretty rare in FO1, but FO2 pretty much showers you with an overpowered arsenal within minutes of leaving Arroyo.

Yeah, right

Unless you're talking about gamey tricks by someone who knows the game (which fucks up the balance of pretty much every game in existence, especially so with open ended ones like Fallout) it's obviously not true. Going with the natural flow of F2 you start getting decent small guns in VC and decent big/energy guns in NR/NCR and some of the best ones are available only when nearing the end. Unless you count things like super stimpacking cops in NCR to get a Gauss as "showering the player with overpowered arsenal within minutes of leaving Arroyo".

I found it boring without aiming in fallout 2 because if you don't exploit the game you cannot get a decent burst weapon eary, and no aiming limits your combat options, even unarmed and melee... So I guess that's why I never liked bozar much...

One thing fallout 2 has done well is that big guns are no longer so shitty compared to fallout 1 where they are nearly useless...

So do you guys think bozar will return in new vegas or at least in some of the dlc's? Because they seem to return some weapons from the originals...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The basic SMG is a pretty decent burst weapon early game and you can get it almost immediately (buying at the Den or random encounter around the Den), only you have to be really close to the enemy. Common, cheap ammo, too

Yeah, the more powerful weapons were pretty rare in FO1, but FO2 pretty much showers you with an overpowered arsenal within minutes of leaving Arroyo.

Not really, unless you mean going south the moment you leave Arroyo even though nothing in the game compels you to and the fact that you're probably savescumming your way through the enclave patrols and other high level encounters, unless you have a godly Outdoorsman skill, or going east while ignoring every town until you reach the NCR area.

 

[ZbojLamignat]

When doing a big guns build you're pretty fucked in the beginning, but if you have high agility and Fast Shot (which you obviously should) you can get 10mm SMG in the Den and be just fine. You later get an Assault Rifle and/or Combat Shotgun in VC and that is enough until you get your hands on your weapon of choice.

There are some very strong indications that Bozar was supposed to be a small gun, an ultimate sniper rifle - as its description says. Its inventory icon obviously looks as a high tech precision rifle. Devs probably changed Bozar into a powerful big gun to balance the different weapon types a bit, or to put it bluntly make big guns less shit.

 

[bert]

No it doesn't. The encounters are based on area of the map, not player's level. Different areas have different monsters/groups with different sets of weapons.

Oh? My apologies then. There's still the fact that you can wander around the worldmap next to NCR, VC, SF or NR getting into random encounters with two groups, letting them duke it out and then looting the corpses for decent to best weapons in the game (G11, .223 pistol, sniper rifle, etc.)

This could be fixed by having the surviving group shoot you (if they don't already after they finished the other group off) if you tried to loot the corpses, since it's by rights their loot.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

iirc, the surviving group will attack you regardless of you staying neutral or even helping them. Of course, they will already be kinda battered up so it won't be hella hard. I never did it because grinding this way is boring.

 

[Drakron]

So do you guys think bozar will return in new vegas or at least in some of the dlc's? Because they seem to return some weapons from the originals...

We have the weapon list, we have a LMG and the Anti-Materiel Rifle as new "heavy" weapons.

The Anti-Material Rifle looks closer to the McMillan Tac-50 that of the Barrett M82 (the weapon the Bozar looked like) as for the LMG it looks to be based on the M249, that is a US manufacturing version of the FN Minimi.

So if you want the Bozar as it supposed to be, you have the Anti.Materiel Rifle as if you are looking for a LMG (that was what the LMG ended up being) you have the LMG.

 

[Mastermind]

One thing fallout 2 has done well is that big guns are no longer so shitty compared to fallout 1 where they are nearly useless...

Err, I made a big guns character in FO1 and he was ripping through everything just as easily as a plasma gun user. better, at times, because the rocket launcher could hit multiple targets in one shot.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Jesus christ we have people here who apparently know jack shit about F1 and/or F2.

truly is here!

iirc, the surviving group will attack you regardless of you staying neutral or even helping them.

Not all groups do that, only permanently hostile ones. So you could catch merchants vs bandits or farmers vs slavers or NCR patrol vs supermutants and happily loot the "evil" side afterwards.

 

[crazy_dave]

Jesus christ we have people here who apparently know jack shit about F1 and/or F2.

truly is here!

iirc, the surviving group will attack you regardless of you staying neutral or even helping them.

Not all groups do that, only permanently hostile ones. So you could catch merchants vs bandits or farmers vs slavers or NCR patrol vs supermutants and happily loot the "evil" side afterwards.

Say what you will motherfucker, but compared to turbo plasma rifle, big guns always felt and were shitty to me... Also 3 big guns weapons to choose from?? Woohooo....