Help me understand the weapons in FO4

Einhanderc7

Einhanderc7

Vat dipped, grown and still oozing with perfection
I'm a bit of a gun nut and every time I looked at the firearms in Fallout 4 I had to scratch my head.

-First off the zip guns or "pipe guns" in the game lack any viable sense to me other than to blow your hands off. (and look like hot garbage)

-Modding firearms doesn't make sense as modding a receiver magically makes a barrel shoot some new caliber

-The game seems more interested in modifying guns with things that make it literally go father back in time (water cooled barrel for the assault rifle)

-Musket laser rifle, ugh I can't even right now.

-Plasma cartridges, wut?

-The incorporation of gimmick weapons such as a ye olde ships cannon (while interesting at first are only usable for a single laugh then immediately thrown out due to lack of damage and ammo)

-The severely limited options of actual weapons, but everyone seem to think its a bottomless pit of weapons because of the mods they have?

-Weapons have the ability to shoot magic now?

-Players cannot define their weapons ammunition which really limits them (oh gawd why didn't they incorporate FNV ammo system?!)

-Come to think of it there are no firearms in this game directly designed after any of the original Fallout games, and don't say the 10mm because it looks nothing like the original. (art style)

-The ammo that powers your laser mini gun also powers your armor (and I'm not about to get started on power armor)

If anyone has noticed other weapon related stupidity fee free to post it here as well, I'm sure my short list here is incomplete.
 
Super Sledge, now I have to ask, who designed this thing? It looks terrible and makes no sense.

One Powerfist and a Deathclaw Gauntlet, both cannot be used by power armour.

Minigun is worthless and falls of so hard.

Legendary Plasma Infused Minigun and other weapons like this. Lazy and poorly balanced addtion that breaks the lore. (TWO SHOOT FATMAN, the hell?)
 
Einhanderc7 said:
I'm a bit of a gun nut and every time I looked at the firearms in Fallout 4 I had to scratch my head.

-First off the zip guns or "pipe guns" in the game lack any viable sense to me other than to blow your hands off. (and look like hot garbage)

-Modding firearms doesn't make sense as modding a receiver magically makes a barrel shoot some new caliber

-The game seems more interested in modifying guns with things that make it literally go father back in time (water cooled barrel for the assault rifle)

-Musket laser rifle, ugh I can't even right now.

-Plasma cartridges, wut?

-The incorporation of gimmick weapons such as a ye olde ships cannon (while interesting at first are only usable for a single laugh then immediately thrown out due to lack of damage and ammo)

-The severely limited options of actual weapons, but everyone seem to think its a bottomless pit of weapons because of the mods they have?

-Weapons have the ability to shoot magic now?

-Players cannot define their weapons ammunition which really limits them (oh gawd why didn't they incorporate FNV ammo system?!)

-Come to think of it there are no firearms in this game directly designed after any of the original Fallout games, and don't say the 10mm because it looks nothing like the original. (art style)

-The ammo that powers your laser mini gun also powers your armor (and I'm not about to get started on power armor)

If anyone has noticed other weapon related stupidity fee free to post it here as well, I'm sure my short list here is incomplete.
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I feel like I'm gonna catch a lot of shit for this but whatever. I've got problems with the Fallout 4 arsenal too but generally I like many of the changes made at least over Fallout 3 so Ill try to address each of your points.

-The junk guns probably would blow your hand off, but they really don't look much different then what you would find in a weapon raid or a gun buy back program in Mexico. They generally made sense to me too. I think its a natural idea, most pre war guns would die long before their ammo would and people are resourceful as you see them make custom shit firearms today. I've seen resistance to the junk guns a lot here, thought it was weird since the pipe rifle is one of the first guns avaliable to you in Fallout2.

-The receiver thing drives me crazy too, no only do they magically change calibers but also damage values as well. Lucky there is a mod floating around that makes caliber its own category, with some custom modeling and some options removed this system could make a lot more sense. (.308 rifle being rechambered for .50BMG...give me a fucking break)

-The combat rifle fits with the Fallout retro-50s design aesthetic seeing how its rather Browning BAR-ish but I agree about the Assault Rifle. I like the design visually as the idea of a rifle style maxim gun is hilarious but it really doesn't fit the setting. Not to mention its rather underpowered by the time you get it and all the guns nut ranks to max it out.

-I think the laser musket is awesome, even if it makes little sense. It fits within the minutemen concept of an old world idea repurposed for the wasteland. It looks like a laser rifle barrel with an unshielded alternator attached to the end. I don't think it would work in universe but its a need "junk" weapon idea. I don't like its use of fusion cells ingame and feels more like a balancing decision rather then one that makes sense for what they were going for.

-Despite being unsupported by previous lore, plasma cartridges make more sense then powering the guns by MFC alone. The closest real life analog we have are plasma torches and they don't work by heating air, there is a working gas involved thats turned into plasma to do the cutting. Having a cartridge with perhaps both the gas and powered element makes more sense.

-Fallout has always had gimmick weapons and the broadsider is just another addition to that sacred pantheon. I don't see this as uniquely terrible vs any other game in the series.

-I agree it sucks that weapon selection is so limited in favor of the modding system. It wouldn't be that difficult to include both and they had plenty of opportunity. I have no idea why chinese weapons weren't incorporated into the base game after being so prominent in Fallout 3. Hell they have an entire Chinese submarine quest/dungeon, why the pistol and rifle weren't added with their own extensive mod list I don't know.

-I don't know what you mean by this specifically but everything I can think of that it might apply to pisses me off. The shoehorning in of a fire/ice element to legendary effects is fucking stupid and feels like an Elder Scrolls idea someone though would be cute. The cryolator ice balls are dumb and shouldn't of been ingame. I don't know what you mean by magic but there is probably more stuff I'm forgetting now.

-I agree. The inability to change ammo types is another fuck up, that was a real strength to weapon diversity and removing it for this game makes no sense.

-The 10mm pistol does look very similar to the earlier variants with the long barrel attachment. However I'ed argue that it looks more like an actually gun now rather then a purely dumb video game design. The lack of returning guns though does suck and is definitely a break from the old designs both from interplay and bethesda themselves. Its probably seen as an attempt to bring something new to the game rather then just rehash the old designs, hurts world building but is more interesting from a design perspective.

-The ammo pool sharing between power armor and the laser minigun is interesting for a design perspective, however once you get access to a laser minigun your usually swimming in fusion cores as well at that point so I never saw it as a problem. If the laser minigun was more powerful and fusion cores a rarer occurrence it would of been an interesting choice in what you would of rather used, however again its not a problem by the time you get and are using both all the time.
 
Help me understand this please:

Laser weapons have a recoil? Why? What sense does this make?

Shooting mechanic my ass...
 
0wing said:
Help me understand this please:

Laser weapons have a recoil? Why? What sense does this make?

Shooting mechanic my ass...
Click to expand...

Them electromagnetic waves hit really hard in the collarbone. :D
A recoilless laser Rifle should have been a legendary item, that would be hilarious and meme-worthy.

But on serious side, the weapon handling perks would have made no sense then.
When i try to suck a logical explanation for laser Rifle out my fingers, i'd say the recoil happens because of hot gain medium gas ejection in front.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if a recoil free laser rifle ends up being a DLC.

While I can understand change based on balancing I cannot justify large alterations to the design. While the Fallout design is not set in stone, it is however set to a specific time period with wiggle room for more modern weaponry.

If we take a look back to the originals everyone will notice the old mixed in with the new. (I'm sure everyone remembers stealing the desert from the librarian in the Hub)

The design logic behind Fallout was that things got stuck in a specific routine from a specific period of time, but technology kept advancing the best it could without integrated circuits. (Which is why I strongly feel the introduction of anything synth is a slap in the face)

I do understand that "pre-war" firearms would eventually fall apart from disrepair and corrosion, but if we look back to the originals they managed to circumvent this issue by introducing the "Gun Runners" which in my opinion literally saved Fallout from this debate all together.

In FO4 you can for all intents and purposes make a gun, what I don't understand is why you are forced to use "their" guns, and propagate their horrid logic behind it. Yes FO2 had a pipe rifle in it, but that firearm was not intended to be used long. The purpose of the pipe rifle was to be a gap filler for when the player can get a better or actually useful means of defense.

Zip guns make sense, but not in the obscene quantities presented in FO4, they should be restricted as a last ditch effort rather than one of the primary firearm choices in the game.

The art direction the weapons took also fails to make sense to me, I never compromised with their art direction for the energy weapons they introduced with FO3 nor any others. To me they never felt in place and introduced a sort of cartoony vibe to the game. The original energy weapons looked rugged and built with a specific purpose in mind, while the new ones give you the choice between a brick and a glowing dildo. I honestly can't fathom a reason why BGS took such a large leap from the original weapons. Hell the orginals had the Pancor Jackhammer and that never saw military production.
 
Polynoid said:
Them electromagnetic waves hit really hard in the collarbone. :D
A recoilless laser Rifle should have been a legendary item, that would be hilarious and meme-worthy.

But on serious side, the weapon handling perks would have made no sense then.
When i try to suck a logical explanation for laser Rifle out my fingers, i'd say the recoil happens because of hot gain medium gas ejection in front.
Click to expand...
Eh, wouldn't want to bring physics into this. The lasers in Fallout are usually red, and there are no real high power lasers in that wavelength. Especially not gas lasers (only Krypton and He-Ne lasers are red gas lasers). HeNe lasers are notoriously ineffecient, it's impossible to make them high powered. The only high power gas lasers are CO and CO2 lasers, and those emit at ~2.6µm and 10.6µm respectively, way in the infrared spectrum.
And even then it's mostly pointless to eject the gain medium after every shot, it can be cooled and recycled unless you want to carry a bottle of purified laser gas next to your heavy batteries :D
Weaponised red lasers would either be diode lasers or the hilariously inefficient ruby laser (which is probably what they were going for, the classic "lasers are red!" trope, which is actually quite untrue. I work with lasers and design laser systems, and of the dozens of laser systems that we have in our company I don't think we have a single red laser except laser pointers and maybe an HeNe laser for calibration or something).
If anything, the recoil could come from the rapidly heated and ionised air directly in front of the "muzzle", expanding and pushing back against the gun. But it wouldn't a lot of recoil.
 
Sounds like we are running around the wasteland with class B or C laser systems. Better watch out or you'll make someone go blind.

I spent a good deal of time in the Navy working with laser systems myself and I always afforded a bit of leeway when it came to "lasers"simply because sci fi and video game, but the recoil is indeed silly to the point of stupidity.

It would be nice if the game wasn't full of bullet sponges or if the different ammo sizes actually had a difference in damage and punch. (like FNV)
 
Einhanderc7 said:
Sounds like we are running around the wasteland with class B or C laser systems. Better watch out or you'll make someone go blind.

I spent a good deal of time in the Navy working with laser systems myself and I always afforded a bit of leeway when it came to "lasers"simply because sci fi and video game, but the recoil is indeed silly to the point of stupidity.

It would be nice if the game wasn't full of bullet sponges or if the different ammo sizes actually had a difference in damage and punch. (like FNV)
Click to expand...
B or C class? Never heard of it, standard system is the Class 1-4 system, with Class 4 being the most dangerous.
 
Hassknecht said:
B or C class? Never heard of it, standard system is the Class 1-4 system, with Class 4 being the most dangerous.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I'm used to military terminology, depending on the use the mil version would have a letter then a number associated with it. Which would define the use and how dangerous it is.

A class B and C lasers would be one of those fairly expensive $300+ laser pointers. Which would typically be used for target painting or some other stuff.
 
Einhanderc7 said:
Sorry, I'm used to military terminology, depending on the use the mil version would have a letter then a number associated with it. Which would define the use and how dangerous it is.

A class B and C lasers would be one of those fairly expensive $300+ laser pointers. Which would typically be used for target painting or some other stuff.
Click to expand...
Ah, ok. These would be Class 3B and Class 4 lasers in civilian terminology. It's weird that Class 4 contains those fancy 2W+ blue laser pointers as well as our big 4 and 6kW disc lasers.
 
Polynoid said:
Them electromagnetic waves hit really hard in the collarbone. :D
A recoilless laser Rifle should have been a legendary item, that would be hilarious and meme-worthy.

But on serious side, the weapon handling perks would have made no sense then.
When i try to suck a logical explanation for laser Rifle out my fingers, i'd say the recoil happens because of hot gain medium gas ejection in front.
Click to expand...


You mean the RECOILESS FLAMING FREEZING PLASMA INFUSED LASER INFUSED BLEEDING NUCLEAR LASER RIFLE OF DOOM?
 
Knight In Leather Armor said:
You mean the RECOILESS FLAMING FREEZING PLASMA INFUSED LASER INFUSED BLEEDING NUCLEAR LASER RIFLE OF DOOM?
Click to expand...

Yes, that.

Hassknecht said:
Ah, ok. These would be Class 3B and Class 4 lasers in civilian terminology. It's weird that Class 4 contains those fancy 2W+ blue laser pointers as well as our big 4 and 6kW disc lasers.
Click to expand...

Yeah the military classifies a lot of things kinda of weird. But it also depends on range and a bunch of other factors. I'm not super well versed in all their applications.

Getting back on topic, do you think anyone will make a mod to reincorporate the different kinds of ammo like we had in NV?
 
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