Guns and ammo

[Odin]

Here's the real treat in JE's talk on the IPLY forums last night, about guns and ammo in Fallout 3:<blockquote>I've decided to contribute to this thread by not contributing and instead clarifying something. I think guns should still be the most powerful weapons in the Fallout world, but they should carry with them enough problems that they are situationally superior, not inherently superior.

Ammunition, penalties to hit when used against adjacent foes, and the increased chance of problematic critical failures all contribute to this.</blockquote>more:<blockquote>Melee is a skill that can use many different weapons. The Bozar is one weapon with one type of ammo. I think certain types of ammo should be relatively common and other types of ammo should be extremely rare. Firearms can still be very viable without one or two weapons being the answer to every violent conflict.</blockquote>The discussion went on and on in this thread, basicly is boils down to this:<blockquote>Do you think ammo scarcity should be used as one method of limiting the power of high-end firearms in a potential future Fallout game?</blockquote>

Well, I say yes! But, there's always a but. I'd like the chance to have a steady flow of ammo if I'm associated with a faction that can supply that specific ammo (but they wouldn't have it in abundance). Remeber to post your comments and vote on the new poll!

 

[Frog]

Well, basic ammo could be home-made ( something like in Arcanum). Hi-Tech ammo to kick-ass ultra-modern guns should be unique on the other hand.


Hmm, in post-apoc world people would propably return to bows and crossbows as well. Now, arrows and bolts shouldn't be a problem ........ IF ....... there will be such kind of waepons of course. (I only wonder into what category it could be put, guns ? melee ? throwing ?)

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Frog: Not the bows and arrows thing again? ROSH!! ROSH!! COME BACK HERE BOY! WE NEED YOU!!

The problem with rarity is how it works in a computer game. Ultimately, you don't want to run out of ammo too easily. Hell, even the 2EC ammo that was 'rare' in Fallout 2 had 50 rounds per 'container' and popped up everytime you visited a store in Chinatown. It was just a matter of sleeping, buying, sleeping, buying. As long as you bought some whenever you were there, you never ran out.

I think the issue is how much ammo do you need for a gun to be useful? 100 rounds for a DEagle is enough for that single shot weapon, but you need in the order of the thousands if you really want to rely on a minigun. As for the rocker launcher, well, I could never carry enough for me to rely on it as more than "a fun thing to use" every now and then.

Now take the Plasma Rifle and Gauss Rifle. Uber high-end weapons here. How rare was the ammo? Well, those Bounty Hunters always had some Gauss ammo to spare. Ammo Cells for the Plasma Rifle AND 2mm EC ammo for the Gauss were sold in packs of 50. A pack of 50 for a single shot weapon is A LOT, especially for the Plasma or Gauss Rifle and a skilled player (That's potentially a 1 hit kill for 50 bad guys).

So how do you make it limiting? The player only encounters 1 pack of 50 once a week? Hell, even that's enough to keep someone using the weapon quite well, (unless we have absolute hoardes of enemies). Even then, I usually conserved high-end ammo as it was in Fallout 2 and used things like the shotty or Sniper Rifle on low-end critters like merchants, rats, radscorpions etc... Deathclaws, muties and Bounty Hunters got riddled with the good stuff.

Now there's the "there's only ONE firearms skill" issue. Potentially, a player can use both the Plasma Rifle AND the Gauss Rifle with ONE SKILL. So, 50 rounds of ammo for each would keep me happy. Throw in the fact that every other firearm in the game uses the same skill and ammo just isn't an issue. Sure, you have to manage it, but you'll always have ammo for at least one or two of the "good" weapons (Plasma Rifle, Gauss Rifle, Rocket Launcher etc...). As for miniguns, make the ammo for them rare and it's not worth it.

The problem is, you make an ammo so rare that you actually run out of the stuff, and players may not use the weapon at all. "Sure, I could carry that thumping great big rocket launcher around, but the ammo's too hard to find so I won't worry about it". If the Gauss Rifle ammo was so rare that you only ever get 1 pack of 50, player's may question it's use. You can't have a situation where the player NEEDS that weapon and its ammo, otherwise you've nerfed the game (oops, I spent all my ammo on those rats, darn it). Instead, players will "make-do" with other weapons.

In fact, limit the ammo too much and you're essentially creating an "end-game" weapon that players will only use for the Frank Horrigan at the end and so will carry it uselessly around for the entire game just for that purpose. Of course, then there's the problem of running out of ammo as you're fighting Big Frankie Boy himself (Oops! YOU DEAD! YOU DEAD!).

As it was in Fallout 2, I used various types of weapons and ammunition. When you talk about making something rare, you're basically wanting the player to run out of it. The problem with Fallout is you can't have the end game relying on any one weapon. So because there's an array of powerful weapons all used by the one skill, if you run out of ammo for one weapon (B0Z/\R!1!), you'll use another. Ultimately, it makes the game more interesting as players will HAVE to carry a range of weapons to conserve ammo (something I did in FO2 as it was anyway).

Throw in critical errors for some weapons (MY B0Z/\r J/\MM3d!!1!) and it makes the game more interesting. Basically, this is a long way of me saying I essentially agree with JE, but am not too sure how 'rare' he's going to go. Especially when you consider that the Bozar ammo was also used by the Sniper Rifle, the very common hunting rifle and another gun or two (I think). But, go too far and the combination of critical errors, ammo issues and what-not mean people probably won't use the bozar at all.

 

[megatron]

All of 'JEs' combat ideas seem to suck, he's changing everything. I hope van buren isn't fo3 else it sounds pretty shit.

I don't mind not having much ammo and no high-tech weapons, I enjoyed all the combat in north fo2 because of the low-tech weapons. But what's the point in having barely any ammo for a weak gun and barely any ammo for a strong gun? This would be un-balanced. Hmm, what could we do to balance it out? Add more ammo for the weak weapon! But now the uber-weapons seem pretty crap when the player can just use a smg and happily spray ammo.

I dunno, I don't see why there should be plasma rifles and stuff anymore if ammo is going to be so rare and guns so useless. And I don't see why ammo would become depleted if after about 100 years ammo has been produced and used, espeacially with an American invasion seemingly close for arms dealers. Therefore there should be a lot of poor-quality ammo and normal looking bullets being pretty rare, otherwise why bother with guns if the most powerful weapon in the wastes is a big hammer?