flushfire said:
you can do exactly that (or at least get everything at a decent high enough level w/o careful planning) in FO3
That was a question of New Vegas, I well know that you can easily max out every skill in FO3 and was one of the people looking at doing so when the manual was released on Steam before the game was released.
flushfire said:
unarmed costs 0 in-game currency, that alone gives it merit to be on its own. sure, in FO3 where unarmed and melee are truly crap they can be merged no problem, since nobody would notice anyway. but where do you draw the line? what is so different between all the ranged weaponry? should all ranged weapons be merged into one skill now?
It was proposed but at least ranged weapons have different damage types (and to a lesser degree, Strength requirements). If you don't want one firearms skill then merging weapons with other skills (as they did with Explosives) is a decent idea (though that was the most logical combination they could do...). Again, I'd rather see more use for more skills in general (in a way that makes sense) but it works. Small Guns is completely Normal, Big Guns is Normal, Fire, and Explosive, and Energy Weapons is Laser, Plasma, and Electricity. Big Guns also had a minimum Strength requirement of 6 on every weapon while Small Guns and Energy Weapons had no more than 6. Unarmed/Melee is also more usable in Fallout 2 as the damage output can be on par with Small Guns but it's limited range is a major handicap (both because of the movement required and putting yourself to the barrel of Big Guns later). There also isn't as broad a range of damage (it's more bunched) within the Melee and Unarmed weapons
flushfire said:
i dont remember that being much of a problem, frankly. it's not like you can't move around in combat.
It matters a lot when you're fighting in town and it matters a lot when you're firing in the same general direction as an ally. Explosives are only usable at long range before any of your allies has approached an enemy. Burst with Big Guns and the Flamer is only usable when no NPC that you care about is on the other side of your target (not as big of a deal in any of the dungeons). I think that it was a conscious decision not to make any non-AoE Big Guns and while it doesn't effect every situation, it requires you to equip a Small Gun or Energy Weapon in a few spots. The only drawback of using Small Guns is that it means that your allies will have worse weapons. Looking at it more, you might be right that it's trashed more than it deserves which is probably due to how bad it was in Fallout 1 (where it really is a garbage skill). You'd really have to look at an enemy armor chart to figure it out.
flushfire said:
gauss gets absorbed too. anyway that's why i reacted to the comparison between the bozar and gauss rifle and not anything else. the bozar really balances things the way the gauss rifle allows small guns to be viable all the way to the end (it's even easier to acquire). seriously, try it. if you're too lazy you can just read Blackened's post on page 4.
I was talking about the Minigun being completely/mostly absorbed which is more important in Fallout 1 than Fallout 2. Fallout 2 is a different beast which Blackened covered sufficiently and did a better job balancing the weapons, though there are still problems.
I'll add that my memory was right about being able to get the Turbo Plasma Rifle down to a 2AP cost in Fallout 1, allowing you to shoot it 5 times a round (making fast shot useful with it). They got rid of that in Fallout 2.
