I Have Questions About Fallout Gameplay (1 and 2)

I had a total of eight builds planned for both games, each specializing in a specific weapon skill with different weapons.

Small Guns - Pistol
Small Guns - Rifle
Small Guns - Burst Fire
Energy Weapons - Pistol
Energy Weapons - Rifle
Energy Weapons - Burst Fire
Big Guns - Pyromaniac
Big Guns - Minigunner

The Burst Fire Builds use weapons using Burst Fire mode and taking both ranks of bonus ranged damage to increase damage.

Recently, I went through both games using the small guns pistol character. I found that small guns can help take out enemies throughout much of the game, but by end game, I had to use a lot of aimed shots to the eyes to take out the super mutants at the military base and the cathedral. I repeatedly killed the deathclaws at the warehouse in Adytum until I got to level 21, however I did have to use the Alien Blaster (which at very low skill levels in energy weapons can still have excellent chance to hit at close range). In Fallout 2, the Gauss Pistol was used for longer range and against weaker foes, against stronger armored foes, I used the Needler Pistol loaded with AP cartridges. And even though I found that the Needler Pistol deals more damage to the eyes against Frank Horrigan than any other small gun, it still wasn't very impressive.

Maybe I'll need to switch to energy weapons later in the game end game. Small guns can still be used against weaker foes or to conserve ammo. So my new builds will be:

Small Guns/Energy Weapons Pistol
Small Guns/Energy Weapons Rifle
Small Guns/Energy Weapons Burst Fire
Small Guns/Big Guns Minigunner
Small Guns/Big Guns Pyromaniac

I've also been using unarmed and melee weapons against very weak foes to conserve ammo or if weaker enemies get too close. In Fallout 1, the low level count makes it difficult to choose perks to specialize in both ranged and melee if you want to get the best perks, such as action boy, bonus rate of fire, better criticals, and sniper. Also, making a melee only character would be too difficult due to the enemies having ranged weapons and inflicting too much damage on you before you can get close enough to attack.

Now if I intend to play on the Tough combat difficulty, I'm wondering if the above builds are viable and can take me through the game without too much difficulty on the hardest level. Who here plays on Tough mode? What tips can you give for making viable builds for that difficulty level?
 
Apparently, I've decided that for me there are only two viable kinds of builds: burst fire sharpshooter and sniper. Pyromaniacs have poor range with their flamer, pistols don't do enough damage, and the gatling laser's damage isn't as high when used against heavily armored foes even with critical hits, such as when going up against Frank Horrigan as I've seen in the past.

Therefore the Small Guns/Energy Weapon Sniper and the Small Guns/Big Guns Minigunner are the only viable builds that could easily take me through both games easily.

Fallout 1 Sniper
-Sniper Rifle (long range sniping)
-Turbo Plasma Rifle (high damage)
-.223 Pistol (for use against weaker enemies or weakened enemies to conserve ammo)

Fallout 2 Sniper
-Gauss Rifle (long range sniping)
-Pulse Rifle (high damage against armored foes)
-.223 Pistol (same as above)

Fallout 1 Burst Fire Sharpshooter
-.223 Pistol (same as above)
-Minigun (weapon of choice for taking down stronger enemies)

Fallout 2 Burst Fire Sharpshooter
-Gauss Pistol (low AP cost. Same reason as for using .223 Pistol)
-Bozar or Vindicator Minigun (weapon of choice for dealing with stronger foes)
 
I just beat Fallout 1 with a burst fire character. I raised his big guns skill, then later I put points into energy weapons, not just to help effectively kill Deathclaws at the warehouse from a distance with the alien blaster (which is probably the best weapon to use against them). While fighting my way through the military base and the cathedral, I picked up a Gatling Laser to test it against the Minigun on certain enemies. Sure enough, the minigun dealt superior damage against robots and armored mutants. In fact, most of the time, the damage with the Gatling Laser against robots didn't even pass 100! Whereas with the minigun, the damage was more than several hundred!
 
DwayneGAnd said:
I just beat Fallout 1 with a burst fire character. I raised his big guns skill, then later I put points into energy weapons, not just to help effectively kill Deathclaws at the warehouse from a distance with the alien blaster (which is probably the best weapon to use against them). While fighting my way through the military base and the cathedral, I picked up a Gatling Laser to test it against the Minigun on certain enemies. Sure enough, the minigun dealt superior damage against robots and armored mutants. In fact, most of the time, the damage with the Gatling Laser against robots didn't even pass 100! Whereas with the minigun, the damage was more than several hundred!
Click to expand...

I think this may be because robots have a generally high resistance to laser fire, which means that percentage of damage is lost after the calculations are done.
This wiki lists the Eye-Bot at 4/50% and Mister Handy at 6/50% resistances for F1:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Floating_eye_bot
  • Laser - 4/50%
  • Normal - 8/30%
  • Electrical - 0/0%
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mister_Handy_(Fallout)
  • Laser - 6/50%
  • Normal - 12/30%
  • Electrical - 0/0%
You'll note, however, that they have no electrical resistance, so the Alien Blaster (which is all electrical damage) should do even more damage than anything else.

Edit: Frank Horrigan has really high resistances to laser and fire for that matter, but still low for electrical:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_Horrigan
  • Normal: 20/70%
  • Laser: 20/80%
  • Fire: 20/70%
  • Plasma: 20/70%
  • Explosion: 20/70%
  • Electricity: 15/20%
 
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yes I knew all that already. I was just comparing the two weapons to see which was more superior and dealt better damage. What I've learned however is that criticals apparently do not ignore resistances.
 
DwayneGAnd said:
yes I knew all that already. I was just comparing the two weapons to see which was more superior and dealt better damage. What I've learned however is that criticals apparently do not ignore resistances.
Click to expand...

Oh criticals!, good point.

Sorry, I didn't understand what you were going for, and yeah that certainly appears to be the case.

Anybody know where we can get the game formula's for critical damage calculations?
 
i made sure not to spend too many points in energy weapons with my burst fire build. The fact that I made my character to be able to reliably use both the minigun and the gatling laser saves me a lot of time so I won't have to make a separate build for specializing in energy weapons and taking the fast shot perk.
 
Hmm...Quick question, when you say "armored mutants" do you mean Horrigan or random super mutants wearing armor?

It occurs to me that the robot's resistance may not be attached to their armor (which makes sense if their armor is their skin), and it's possible Horrigan is kind of a unique character, meaning his armor class may be calculated as a single number instead of 2 numbers added together (like deathclaws I think):

ie (AC and resistances from Agility) + (AC and resistances from Armor)
where one can be bypassed but the other can't.
 
Oh wait, nevermind, this is Fallout 1 we're talking about. Ok better question:

What's the damage difference like when attacking armored Brotherhood of Steel characters? They should have 2 different AC numbers (in theory).
 
I just beat Fallout 2 with my burst fire character. He specialized in Big guns endgame, taking both ranks of action boy and bonus ranged damage together with other important perks. Using the Gauss Pistol, the Bozar, and the Vindicator Minigun, I took out the entire oil rig, sometimes dealing more than 1500 points of damage to enemies in advanced power armor. To make the battle with Frank Horrigan easier, I took out the turrets first, then emptied one clip of the vindicator and the bozar into him to take him down. I had a lot of fun wasting the enclave with this guy.

Next I'm going to go through Fallout 1 and 2 with the sniper build using small guns at the beginning and energy weapons endgame.
 
That's pretty cool. I'm currently doing an evil playthrough of Fallout 2 with the Restoration Project. I was planning on a similar build, considering using the Tag! perk to boost my energy weapons over 200%

I might pull out my old savegame in Fallout 1 and take a look at the burst fire differences myself here shortly :)
 
I just beat Fallout 2 with my sniper build. In Fallout 1, I started out with small guns, then moved on to energy weapons later on. My endgame weapons were the Sniper Rifle for extreme long range, Turbo Plasma Rifle for general all purpose, Alien Blaster for when tougher foes got closer, and the .223 Pistol for use against weaker or weakened enemies to conserve ammo.

My end game weapons in Fallout 2 were the Gauss Rifle, Pulse Rifle, and Alien Blaster. As I did with my Burst Fire build, I made a couple of backup saves before I took out the entire oil rig. It wasn't as easy as with my burst fire build, but it was still a lot of fun shooting my enemies in the eyes. Even the battle with Horrigan was a cinch. I disabled his plasma gun by crippling his arm, then shot him repeatedly in the eyes with my pulse rife. He never saw that coming! (rimshot)

Now that I've mastered the first two games in the series, I think I'll tackle Fallout 3 or New Vegas next. (Tactics needs far more practice first because I'm still a newbie at it).
 
Cool. I used to like sniper builds for F1 and 2, but I've found large guns to be really fun in F1, and the Bozar to be particularly fun in F2 late game.
 
I've taken all four of my builds through the first Fallout game, making both a good and evil version of my Sniper, Burst Fire, Melee, and Dimwit builds. Yes, I actually played through the game as an evil character, four times. It was a new experience.

I made backup saves for each character before they tackle the two final major objectives of the game: destroying the Master and the Vats. I did so because it's so much fun killing all those super mutants and seeing how powerful my character is, enjoying the fruits of my work. To reach the maximum level, I grinded at the Deathclaw Warehouse in Adytum.

The evil characters also are saved while the Brotherhood is still alive.

I've been testing different weapons with my sniper and burst fire evil characters against the Brotherhood as they have the best armor equipped, and thus would resist damage better than other enemies. With my Burst Fire character, I used a minigun mostly, but would pick up and use Gatling Lasers (I had invested into Energy Weapons so I could easily kill the Adytum deathclaws with the Alien Blaster as it's the best and fastest way to kill them in this game), Assault Rifles, and bringing a Combat Shotgun, all to test how high damage would go and see which weapons work best. As I stated in an above post on this thread, critical damage is reduced by the resistances of enemies. Critical damage with the Assault Rifle never passed 400 against the paladins, 800 with the Gatling Laser, or 200 with the Combat Shotgun, all done at close range which is how you get the best damage when more bullets hit. But the Minigun surpassed them all with damage reaching into more than 1000 at close range.

The Sniper brought the Sniper Rifle, .223 Pistol, Turbo Plasma Rifle, and Alien Blaster against the Brotherhood. The Turbot Plasma Rifle and Alien Blaster dealt much more damage than the Sniper Rifle or .223 Pistol, both of which rarely went over a hundred.

I was also able to take out the Brotherhood with my Melee character, together with the Cathedral and Military Base. Obviously, damage with the Power Fist isn't as high as a sniper or burst fire build, especially when you target the eyes, hardly getting up to 100. My strategy was staying in a room with one door, taking cover in there, and then luring my enemies into the room where I could dispatch them more easily.

My tests have proven my theories in this thread and my other thread "Tips for Noobies from a Former Noobie". Big Guns are best for Burst Fire, Energy Weapons for Snipers, and Unarmed for Melee. Use those for the best damage and effectiveness. So there is really no point in making snipers that specialize only in Small Guns or Burst Fire characters using energy weapons or small guns only.
 
One last thing though. Being evil makes the game more difficult, so I recommend that you hold off one doing quests that have a solution that gives evil karma until much later, such as after you get the G.E.C.K, which you should get as soon as possible in Fallout 2, and get much more powerful armor and weapons. If you want, you can go get power armor immediately after getting the car and San Francisco on your map.
 
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