Gauss Weapons - "They are not energy weapons"

D

Dienan

It Wandered In From the Wastes
Been playing Fallout 1 and 2 in the past years. Pretty fun with high resolution mod. Played Fallout 3 over 750 houres with all DLC. That game sucked me in and made me sit on glue. So this is my 3rd New Vegas playthrough (balanced) and thought I shoud say something about how I felt about something that I liked very much in the game but in the end I hated so much. Gauss weapons. YCS/186 the unique gauss rifle (many people on steam think of it as a beam weapon as V.A.T.S cinematic doesn't show the slug/bullet hitting the target) uses 4 MC. Animation shows you loading ONE MC in to the power core chamber. How the discharged MC is ejected is not shown. On the right side of the weapon you can see the actual 'slug' magazine of the weapon. It seems the slug is quite big. I wondered but then realized, having to load slug mags after 5 shots and then load a MC separately as the power source would be messy. I strongly believe that the gauss rifle should have 'slug' ammo rather than a built-in slug factory. It would make sense to load the weapon with slugs rather than loading 4 MC in a sec and firing all in a sec while making the spect MC vanish into thin air. When hitting a Deathclaw (ten out of seven times) the creature won't die from a sneak attack crit. If not the creature won't take any damage at all. Insted an emply HP bard will be shown with an angry beast charging at you.

I'd like to know what you guys think.

By the way, this is my first post here. :)
 
Yeah, the new style Gauss rifles were a bit weird.
The design is obviously based on the finnish Lahti L39 anti-tank rifle with he magazine moved to the side so it obstructs the charging crank...
L39.jpg

Bethesda didn't think this one through, I guess.
I have no idea why they turned it into an energy weapon that somehow generates slugs out of thin air, maybe they didn't want another kind of ammo.
As to loading one MCC and getting four shots out of it... Well, the plasma rifles are also loaded with a single cell and fire more than once. I wouldn't pay too much attention to it, it's a matter of representation. Obsidian had to nerf Fallout 3's Gauss Rifle, so they upped the ammo consumption. Apparently they didn't have enough time, money or motivation to make new animations for that.
They should have just kept the old 2mm EC ammo, yes. A bunch of slugs with a built-in powercell.

And yes, it's quite buggy. Never had much problems with it, though.
The problem with the Gauss Rifle in VATS is that it doesn't account for sneak or any other type of critical. You get ~95% damage every time. Apparently that's because of the 'explosion' effect. Try free aiming, it should work better.

Welcome to the board!
 
Thanks for the quick return Hass. You've answerd my V.A.T.S problem. Yep I had the same notion but couldn't figure out how V.A.T.S damage calculation based of YCS/186. After watching so many videos of test firing of prototype gauss weapons, I'd say they did a pretty bad job with the amazing concept behing the gauss rifle. YCS/186 would've been better than AMR if they took the time and brains to do it correctly. Not saying it's bad but could've been better. Just hope 'if' they 'ever' make a 4th game (which my guess is they won't), they'd add 'slug' and 'MC' loading separately and make the gun work as it would, a gun propelling slugs at insane velocity with no recoil, powered by an MC cell (coils). Hated it when the white leg tribals kept ignoring Match, AP rounds to the head with an AMR having put on a 7DT armor. Pretty unrealistic. Playing hard mode, the Courier should be 'insta killed' if he took a 3rd shot to the head :D
 
Well, if you play on PC you can try a few mods. There's a Classic Fallout Weapons Mod that adds every weapon from Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics including dozens of ammo types. The classic M72 with 2mm EC is in there, too.
http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/37002/?

The lack of bugfixes is quite annoying, yeah. I mean, those problems go back to Fallout 3. I guess it's part of the engine, that shitty thing.
Btw., if you need specific informations about any part of any game I can recommend you The Vault, the Fallout Wiki.
http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Fallout_Wiki
 
Hassknecht said:
The lack of bugfixes is quite annoying, yeah. I mean, those problems go back to Fallout 3. I guess it's part of the engine, that shitty thing.
Btw., if you need specific informations about any part of any game I can recommend you The Vault, the Fallout Wiki.
http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Fallout_Wiki
Click to expand...

Actually that goes back to Fallout 1. If it wassn't for the awesome work of the community every single Fallout game would be a buggy mess.
 
Makta said:
Hassknecht said:
The lack of bugfixes is quite annoying, yeah. I mean, those problems go back to Fallout 3. I guess it's part of the engine, that shitty thing.
Btw., if you need specific informations about any part of any game I can recommend you The Vault, the Fallout Wiki.
http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Fallout_Wiki
Click to expand...

Actually that goes back to Fallout 1. If it wassn't for the awesome work of the community every single Fallout game would be a buggy mess.
Click to expand...
I meant the problems of the Gauss Rifle specifically. Of course, every game had their fair share of bugs. I guess Fallout 1 was the one with the most polish and least bugs, and even that one had quite a few. Poor Children of the Apocalypse, noone can save you...
 
Well...I guess you could argue that it has "unlimited" ammo (due to the small size of the projectiles), but it consumes so much energy that it drains microfusion cells at an astonishing rate.

Now as to the disappearing spent MFC...Beth done goofed. Blender is a pretty shitty graphics program, it would seem.
 
So I just got this call and they told me they've decided to hire me. Means I'll have to abandon my beast 7950 DC2 and live with a midcore notebook graphics chip.
Anyway, since AMR is using .50BMG my point is (while you CAN see the slug magazing on the right side of the gun which never gets empty) to diliver a massive punch like the stats show (DAM) and to penetrate heavy armor you need a slug that's bigger and better than a .50BMG bullet. Also you shouldn't be able to craft gauss rifle slugs out of scraps using a WB. I wonder what that cycle paddle like thing does..
 
No, actually, you don't.
Gauss Weapons don't work like conventional weapons. They can propel something at such velocity, that the projectile can be the width of a piece of straw, and still tear you apart.

Well, in fiction anyway. Not sure about the real gauss weapons they are making. I did do a bit of research, and it doesn't really tell you the size of the projectile :/
 
Talking about reality here. Thanks for the reminder though. I've studied the basics of gauss weapons and the limits of our tech not allowing to make a man-portable version and I know they are totally different from conventional fire arms firing projectiles using gun powder. The whole point of using a gauss weapon is that to make a devastation long range weapon with no muzzle flash or big noise with the added advantage of insane muzzle velocity and impact power to punch through a steel plate and hit a target behind it. Where you can't use a conventional sniper rifle to do the same.
 
CthuluIsSpy said:
Blender is a pretty shitty graphics program, it would seem.
Click to expand...

What did I miss, how the hell did Blender get into the discussion here? And no, Blender is a pretty powerful graphics program. I've worked in Blender and 3DS Max and in several ways I prefer Blender.
 
Then how come all of the animations it churns out looks odd? Like the fact there's no MFC removal animation, or the terrible character models?

Or is that just Bethesda?
 
CthuluIsSpy said:
Then how come all of the animations it churns out looks odd? Like the fact there's no MFC removal animation, or the terrible character models?

Or is that just Bethesda?
Click to expand...

Are you seriously trying to blame the 3D software for a left-out animation? No sorry, it's just Bethesda having lousy modellers and animators.
 
Yeah, my mistake then. Bethesda is the only game company that I know of that uses Blender, and I think my judgement may have been clouded a bit by their incompetence.
 
Yep it's not the fault of the programme they used but the people who used it. Being bored and uninspired like a typical NCR trooper, they never wanted every single IMPORTANT detail to be added to the game correctly. Figured that out when they said even after they realized that they should've put the buttons and switches on the right side of the pip boy instead of left, covering the screen while using it. No special features like self notes. Ex- "uncracked safe in Bison Steve. Should return when I know enough to crack it". Pure laziness doomed a game that was bound to be the mother of all cRPG games. Gauss rifle making an aura of blue energy on impact? Was the slug charged with electricity? Oh please, it seems the gauss rifle is melting MC in and sending MC slugs lol. I'm laughing as the Courier would mumble "I lied" while looking at the gauss rifle in his last breath, jokingly refering to how he told 'us' that it required 4 MC to fire but actually used one MC instead. LOL he used the every 2nd,3rd and 4th MC to get money for gambling.. Haha!
 
CthuluIsSpy said:
Yeah, my mistake then. Bethesda is the only game company that I know of that uses Blender, and I think my judgement may have been clouded a bit by their incompetence.
Click to expand...

No worries, hope I didn't come across as too much of a smart-ass :P

But to be honest, I actually had no idea that Bethesda uses Blender so it's funny that you brought it up. As far as I know, Blender is mostly populat with smaller studios and indie developers that use it in conjunction with Unity. Other than that, it has a strong following of animators and modellers that work with indie films and such things. Since it's open source it has been able to grow very rapidly, and it DID suck pretty hard in the beginning. But the community keeps growing and it quickly adapts to what's needed. I've heard big studios say they would like to use Blender, but it's easier to use Maya or 3DS Max since they get support and those are the programs people are educated in using.

The fact that Bethesda uses Blender, however, only makes me think even more that they're cheap bastards. I doubt they use it to help it grow and for the benefit of the open source community.
 
The Gauss Rifle in NV is basically a shot gun with sniper bullet effect. The slug should have a great amount of kinetic energy to effectively 'kill' an organic target. As at now a slug travelling over 3000 km per hour is an overkill. Simply penetrating an armor is not enough. A Deathclaw would still be charging at you even after you've made a hole in it.
 
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