Fav weapon...why?

[FalloutTroll]

Gauss rifle is the shit.
I also like the plasma caster

 

[lujo]

I could honestly never tell what's up with the fascination with the end game weapons/big guns/gauss rifles. By the time you get them it's not very likely that you've actually had a challenging fight in a long while, so all you have to go by to judge them is the slightly higher numbers on critials and a death animation or two. What makes an end game weapon somebodies favourite weapon, exactly? Past a certain point they're all either "click once and a bunch of stuff drops dead from any range" or "click several times on several targets and they all drop dead at any range" or "click twice and everything dies at any range". I'm talking fallout 2 here. That game has no endgame, even the devs said that they sort of cobbled the oil rig and the enclave togather at the last minute to provide the game with something akin to the final fight. It's also why you can play it with 3 perks per level (every level), because once you have the overpowered ones everyone always takes, all the others just add flavour...

So I never ever got the endless fascination with the bunch of miniguns (how many are there, I've only ever used the one Marcus comes equiped with), or the laser guns, or the gauss rifle, or ESPECIALLY the bozar. When does Fallout 2 ever actually make you feel like you needed that gun, or give you a prolonged period of using it as to grow familiar with it enough for it to become your favourite? Or the Gauss Gun, for that matter, if you don't know the exact person to steal if from in the last place you visit on the map, you'll never even find one before you've finished the game...

My favourite gun is the scoped hunting rifle, followed by the frag grenade, and after that goes the grease gun. Why? Becuase the SHR is a sniping gun at the time in the game when guns actually have different range and you don't have overpowered perks, and you actually need another gun on you for close combat and something which takes less AP to use if you're just spraying. The frag grenade is available enough to be bought when dumping excess junk at any vendor and is next to only form of crowd control (and thus interesting) in an othewise rather samey arsenal. The grease gun because it's incredibly broken but you get it before the perks and huge acummulated health break the game for you, so it's sort of the last weapon you're actually glad you find instead of meh.

Also, all three are sort of at the peak of balance in the game, once you've gone beyond those you're either just wanking or the game made you upgrade by giving enemies DR which necessitates using different ammo that you can only shoot from stronger guns.

I do like how the H&KPC? SMG lets me use all the 10mm ammo so late in the game, though, but that thing has enough range and low enough AP that the endless ammo (main point) feels like a gimmick. Yeah, you can burst and reload twice and kill absolutely everything with Sniper, awesome -.- Gauss rifle is the shit? Yea, 'course it is, it's 2-5 Power Word kill spells per combat round, what do you mean it's not amazing? So what if the game has 2 combat moves - attempt power word kill or attempt AoE power word kill (burst), the damned thing looks good and is the best at it! -.- (I can't stop railing at the silly gun Is anyone aware just how broken conceptually the -2 AP cost build on a 12 AP small guns character is? You can recreate the effect of a burst gun (making having one on you for actual burst meaningless) by firing a million precise shots at max range (making having an actual sniping gun on you meaningless) with ammo that goes through anything well enough (making having an AP gun meaningless). Oh, and they're all guaranteed crits, cuz, you know, Sniper (making actual big damage guns meaningless). Why not just play a speech based character and not have fights at all? Or you just want the XP from the fights but not have the actual fights, what? Or you want to reach the end game and instead of having a climactic fight or dungeon or two, you just want to go god mode and make combat utterly meaningless?)


EDIT: I'm also endlessly fascinated by how much the questions about "vindicator minigan should be more powerful" or "should bozar be a burst gun or a really powerful sniper rifle" or "gatling laser isn't as powerful as I immagined, so I made a mod to make it appropriately more powerful" figure into modding fallout 2 historicaly. Those are JOKE items. If you've got the sniper rifle or, god forbid, a gauss rifle, or even the simple basic minigun, you've won the game so hard that there's hardly any point playing anymore in terms of shooting stuff, what in the world could make you believe there's a need for even stronger stuff to be "competitive"?

You can kill the end boss and all the turrets with frag grenades. Which don't get the AP reduction from perks applied to them. And he's more powerful, and the turrets are more deadly than anything you'll meet in the game, by far. How come everybody's so fascinated with stuff that probably represents the most comparative overkill that I've ever seen in 20 years of gaming, short of the BFG from Doom?

(Tip to modders - if you really want to make those guns "useable" you really ought to code up an actuall endgame to use them IN.)

EDIT2: I think the Bozar and the rest of the end game junk are only really there to give the enemies something preposterously dangerous to shoot at YOU. Literally, I'm convinced nobody was ever seriously ment to use them, ever, at least that's what over a decade of replaying F2 tells me. The nearly sensible weapon progression stops about where I've said, if you can loot something stronger than that off a corpse it means you're not supposed to fight the character using it untill you're equipped to handle anything (most enemies who even have such stuff are generally guards, like in NCR or around shops - stuff that was always ment to be too dangerous to fight).

 

[J_Fred]

EDIT: I'm also endlessly fascinated by how much the questions about "vindicator minigan should be more powerful" or "should bozar be a burst gun or a really powerful sniper rifle" or "gatling laser isn't as powerful as I immagined, so I made a mod to make it appropriately more powerful" figure into modding fallout 2 historicaly. Those are JOKE items. If you've got the sniper rifle or, god forbid, a gauss rifle, or even the simple basic minigun, you've won the game so hard that there's hardly any point playing anymore in terms of shooting stuff, what in the world could make you believe there's a need for even stronger stuff to be "competitive"?

You do know your enemies use these guns as well? I think it evens out the offensive capabilities of your adversaries. Also, anything should die when it's hit with a Gatling Laser a few times.

Also, I don't think the Hunting Rifle would fare well with most enclave soldiers who are using Plasma Rifles and the like. That's why there is a need for such weaponry.

Good points though.

 

[Atomic Postman]

Lujo.

I don't think you understand the point of leveling or progress.

Or how RPG progression works generally.

 

[Keira]

A lot of my favorites are just ones that might not be the best but I loved anyways.

.223 pistol is probably my number one. I agree with the sawed-off shotgun being one as well despite it being a horrible weapon. Perhaps just channeling our inner Mad Max?

I also enjoyed the Gauss firearms as well.

 

[Gaspard]

My favorite get-up is Combat Leather Jacket for armor, spiked knuckles in one hand and the .223 pistol in the other

 

[Django52]

Hunting Rifle.

Just has a classic wasteland feel I can't really describe....

 

[Wumbology]

The desert eagle. It's just smooth and sleek and deadly... I was kind of dissappointed during Fallout 2 when the magnum turned out to be totally superior weapon. (and then the grease gun turned out to be better than that)

It fit really well into Fallout 1, I think. It's just a damn good gun that you can use well into the game. And in combination with brass knuckles... oh man, too player for the wasteland.

 

[Todd Howard's no.1 Fan]

Nothing beats the raw firepower and sheer coolness of the Legendary Fat Man

 

[t0tal Hakk3r]

The Super Sledge or the Holy Hand Grenade. "Once thou shalt count to thrice, and not four, which is after three... counteth thee to three and not one more..." Monty Python rocks!

 

[SnapSlav]

I could honestly never tell what's up with the fascination with the end game weapons/big guns/gauss rifles. By the time you get them it's not very likely that you've actually had a challenging fight in a long while, so all you have to go by to judge them is the slightly higher numbers on critials and a death animation or two. What makes an end game weapon somebodies favourite weapon, exactly? Past a certain point they're all either "click once and a bunch of stuff drops dead from any range" or "click several times on several targets and they all drop dead at any range" or "click twice and everything dies at any range". I'm talking fallout 2 here. That game has no endgame, even the devs said that they sort of cobbled the oil rig and the enclave togather at the last minute to provide the game with something akin to the final fight. It's also why you can play it with 3 perks per level (every level), because once you have the overpowered ones everyone always takes, all the others just add flavour...

So I never ever got the endless fascination with the bunch of miniguns (how many are there, I've only ever used the one Marcus comes equiped with), or the laser guns, or the gauss rifle, or ESPECIALLY the bozar. When does Fallout 2 ever actually make you feel like you needed that gun, or give you a prolonged period of using it as to grow familiar with it enough for it to become your favourite? Or the Gauss Gun, for that matter, if you don't know the exact person to steal if from in the last place you visit on the map, you'll never even find one before you've finished the game...

It was said very well right here:

Lujo.

I don't think you understand the point of leveling or progress.

Or how RPG progression works generally.

But beyond that, what IS the "fascination" with end-game weaponry? For starters, a well-balanced arsenal is a mishmash of choices, some clearly better than others, and many (leading up to those better choices) offering a strength at the cost of a weakness. For example, the Sniper Rifle costing a whopping 1 AP more than other standard 2-handed firearms, but granting some of the best range in the game. Then there's the .223 Pistol (its FO1 variant) which is extremely rare (unique, in fact) and has a very small ammo clip, but is one of the most powerful weapons in the game- obviously the most powerful pistol. That trade-off of pros and cons remains even with the end-game weapons, where utilizing a Gauss Pistol or Gauss Rifle presents you with the boon of an INCREDIBLY powerful weapon, but costs you an extremely rare, highly expensive ammunition. You can fire way more shots with the Pistol because it takes 1 fewer AP to fire, but the Rifle has great range.

While somewhere in the "middle" of the game, FO2's weapon selection becomes a little manic and confused, there's a visible progression that takes place early on, and that progression is returned in the later portion of the game when your older weapons just don't cut it anymore against the tougher foes. Sure, there's not much difference between how you take down the Slavers in the Den versus how you take down the Mordinos in New Reno, besides much larger numbers (so use those corners!), but the game doesn't just ramp up the numbers it throws at you to increase the difficulty. It presents far deadlier, and far more resilient enemies. So why need we be "fascinated" by better weaponry? We're incentivized to GET that better weaponry, of course! Whether it's a weapon that has a startlingly low AP cost that lets you fire off a remarkable number of shots (Turbo Plasma Rifle) or a super-rare weapon that's more powerful than any other (Alien Blaster) or a weapon that chews through armor (Gauss Rifle), the games allow you to become a walking force of destruction through many different, equally viable means. They never just hand them to you on a silver platter, either, you've gotta work for it. Whether you choose to abuse a nasty combo of Perks and take down tough foes with precise and lethal criticals, or overwhelm them with a deadly arsenal at your fingertips, the world is your oyster, and that's as it should be.

As for me, I've rekindled a love for experimentation in FO1, but lately I've leaned more towards the .223 Pistol, I work my ass off to assemble a highly leveled crew of Gauss Rifle toting badasses in FO2, and I adore watching destruction come at the press of a button with the Gauss Minigun in FOT (although in that case, it really is very briefly enjoyed, due to the linear progression of the game's missions). Until I get where I want to be, I don't settle on any one weapon, I'm always advancing. In FO1 I get that SMG as soon as possible, then nab that Hunting Rifle off of Kenji once I get the chance, then....... you get the picture.

 

[Wumbology]

Well, there's also the part where style points come in. RPGs are not just statistics (well, they are and aren't)- I gladly abandoned all my weapons for late-game unarmed in Fallout 2. Honestly, a power fist does not beat a "Piercing Kick" to the eyes for the same damage, despite the (massively) heightened AP cost.

 

[TheChosen1]

I like a combination of a power fist and a Speedload Magnum because that combination has been quite effective in fights that I couldn't avoid with my trader character.

 

[Yamu]

In FO1 I get that SMG as soon as possible, then nab that Hunting Rifle off of Kenji once I get the chance, then....... you get the picture.

There's actually one in V15, too, on the floor in the corner of the bathroom in the leftmost apartment in the living quarters. Not that it makes that much of a difference, but it can help in playthroughs where you skip Junktown for some reason or if you decide you want to take out the raiders or the radscorpions (or Shady Sands...) early on. Plus, it's an extra thousand bucks at a time in the game when that still makes any sort of difference.

 

[tuch]

I'd have to say Bozar.

 

[Hyddan92]

I usually use rifles, I love rifles.

Fo3: I can't really say i had a fav weapon, i remember enjoying the Hunting Rifle and of course Lincoln's Repeater, those were nice guns, but I wasn't as "locked" with my prefferable weapon choices as I was in FnV.

FnV: I have used several guns a lot. For example the medicine stick (or just trail and brush gun) these guns are amazing. The all-american was really nice, I have a thing for shotguns, especially enjoyed the hunting and caravan shotguns.

In close combat i preferr a nice sword, the broad machete you get with one of the starting packs is a mazing, i loved it, after a while though i felt forced to replace it with a more powerful alternative.

My all-in-all favourite weapon is the hunting rifle, I love this piece of gun. The ruffness, the feels, the everything. To simply walk around with this wonderful weapon in the wastes, crouching, taking aim with the awesome iron sights, BAM, headshot, it just can't be a more fullfilling feel in a game. Prefferable other stuff to use with the H-Rifle: the desert ranger armor found in Zion canyon, with both the helmet as well as a roving trader hat (combat-noncombat choices of headwear) some nice authoritarian glasses or whatever those badass shades were called, a nice 10 mm pistol and the broad machete...

And then... wandering the wastes with your trustworthy flying robot companion... PERFECTION.

*Doing this with that unique rifle found in Zion Canyon as well... what was it called again? That rifle as well.

EDIT: It was of course the Survivalist's Rifle i was thinking of. or was it called only Survivalist Rifle? Anyway thnak you Yamu.

 

[Yamu]

Survivalist's Rifle is what you're thinking of. I don't often use Guns in the Gamebryo Fallouts, but when I do, I use the Survivalist's Rifle. It lacks the punch of the Brush Gun, but with hand load ammo your opponents are going to die quickly enough that they won't have time to say anything about it.

 

[BigBoss]

In FO1 I get that SMG as soon as possible, then nab that Hunting Rifle off of Kenji once I get the chance, then....... you get the picture.

There's actually one in V15, too, on the floor in the corner of the bathroom in the leftmost apartment in the living quarters. Not that it makes that much of a difference, but it can help in playthroughs where you skip Junktown for some reason or if you decide you want to take out the raiders or the radscorpions (or Shady Sands...) early on. Plus, it's an extra thousand bucks at a time in the game when that still makes any sort of difference.

Remember the Elder in Shady Sands that used to give you the hunting rifle, a leather jacker, and some ammunition in Shady Sands (which Sduibek removed. Damn you Sduibek!).

 

[Feigenbaum]

Fallout: I really love the Super Sledge for its ability to knock things all the way across the map.
Fallout 2: YK42B Pulse Rifle because the melting animation is just too fun not to see.
Fallout 3: Chinese Assault Rifle because I love the reload animation so much I end up miming it in real life, and pulling that charging back feels soooooo good.
New Vegas: Lucky: kills whatever I aim it at through the power of 10 Luck.

 

[TheChosen1]

Fallout:Turbo Plasma Rifle. The very best there is.When you absolutely, positively got to melt every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.

I never really understood, why is it called the TURBO Plasma rifle, there are no turbines, or is it a secret jet-pack that you unlock?