What is a typical hit point distribution for the toughest enemies encountered in Fallout 1? The Fallout wiki mentions a few of them. Deathclaws are listed at 225-250 HP and deathclaw mother at 320 HP. Early exploration of the desert near the military base reveals super mutants and a few creatures around 60 HP.
As far as I can tell, all melee enemies, including deathclaws, are easily kited by ranged characters with 10+ action points, so I'm mainly interested in HP of the toughest ranged opponents.
Why do I care? I'm evaluating Fast Shot vs. Aimed Shot. Math and damage testing confirm higher damage per turn with targeted shots to the eyes for my test case. However, with 10 AP and Alien Blaster, I can fire 5 shots per turn with Fast Shot vs. 2 targeted shots without Fast Shots. My tests are done against the aforementioned super mutants with 60 HP, so the average damage per shot with Aimed Shot, which is around 57, lines up nicely with enemy HP, so a pack of 4 gets killed with an average of 7 shots to kill, or 1.4 turns.
With targeted shots for the same test case, average damage per shot is 192. Even with only two shots per turn, average damage per turn exceeds that of Fast Shot. However, since enemies have only 60 HP, I usually end up with massive overkill. On average, it takes 2 full turns (4 shots) to wipe out 4 enemies, so effective kill rate is actually higher with Fast Shot despite lower DPS.
If the game has many high-HP enemies that I don't know about, Aimed Shot has a chance to shine, but if most enemies have less than 100 HP, it appears that much of the damage from targeted shots is wasted.
As far as I can tell, all melee enemies, including deathclaws, are easily kited by ranged characters with 10+ action points, so I'm mainly interested in HP of the toughest ranged opponents.
Why do I care? I'm evaluating Fast Shot vs. Aimed Shot. Math and damage testing confirm higher damage per turn with targeted shots to the eyes for my test case. However, with 10 AP and Alien Blaster, I can fire 5 shots per turn with Fast Shot vs. 2 targeted shots without Fast Shots. My tests are done against the aforementioned super mutants with 60 HP, so the average damage per shot with Aimed Shot, which is around 57, lines up nicely with enemy HP, so a pack of 4 gets killed with an average of 7 shots to kill, or 1.4 turns.
With targeted shots for the same test case, average damage per shot is 192. Even with only two shots per turn, average damage per turn exceeds that of Fast Shot. However, since enemies have only 60 HP, I usually end up with massive overkill. On average, it takes 2 full turns (4 shots) to wipe out 4 enemies, so effective kill rate is actually higher with Fast Shot despite lower DPS.
If the game has many high-HP enemies that I don't know about, Aimed Shot has a chance to shine, but if most enemies have less than 100 HP, it appears that much of the damage from targeted shots is wasted.
