More Melee Weapons

Makeshift melee weapons in fallout 3 are going to need to have a junky design, and junky appearance.

Creating real, or "authentic", weapons from metals requires very specialized skills and equipment - which frankly, are lost and forgotten in fallout 3 by all but the most capable of communities (BoS). And encase you're wondering about salvaging techniques from metalurgy factories, forget it. Factories are one of the highest priority bombing targets in wars.

So, I'd be happy to support more melee weapons - but they must follow canon authenticity and mostly consist of junky-design. A few exceptions are the military combat axe which was mass produced years ago, and still works well, the standardized fire axe, ice picks, and a variety of gardening tools.
 
I agree completely and thats what I've focused on so far gardening tools etc.

However I still can see BOS using proper swords / axes etc as theres no reason why that if they can make power armour they haven't figured out blacksmithing I mean we've done it for thousands of years and they've had 200 years to rediscover it.

The only reason junk weapons would be so prevalent with raiders etc is that theres so many random bits of metal lying around theres simply no real need to make a high quality weapon from scratch if your just going to hit some poor unarmed bugger over the head.

Saying this I can see someone clever sod in Megaton (Moira) or Rivet City giving blacksmithing ago as theres plenty of raw materials availible and proper weapons of any sort are in very high demand in the wasteland.
 
The notion that people forgot all of basic technology is a little silly. Blacksmiths would inevitably show up, if only to start building the farm equipment for all those farms NMA keeps complaining is missing from the game!

The schematics idea is build stuff quickly from things laying about, so those things I would expect to be junk-looking. But to say someone hasn't opened up their own shop selling new swords is just unnecessarilly restricting your creativity.
 
Yoshee said:
The notion that people forgot all of basic technology is a little silly.
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Although missing in Fallout 3, most wasteland people are actually tribals.

Yoshee said:
Blacksmiths would inevitably show up, if only to start building the farm equipment for all those farms NMA keeps complaining is missing from the game!
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Yes and no. Granted that those tools already exist or can be fashioned out of torn or broken off pieces of other things, the practice of actually making new tools from melting rocks in the ground is a bit of a stretch.

Yoshee said:
The schematics idea is build stuff quickly from things laying about, so those things I would expect to be junk-looking. But to say someone hasn't opened up their own shop selling new swords is just unnecessarily restricting your creativity.
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First of all, the Gun > the Sword. Secondly, basic metallurgy technology is... very simple, and implies basic usage of simple materials like copper and iron - both of which are comparatively soft against modern alloys (which would be what junk would be made of). Steel on the other hand, is very complex and requires very specialized equipment to produce usable steel. There are literally thousands of types of steel.
 
FO1/FO2 seemed to indicate there are significant populations beyond tribal status. There were also many examples of technological progress outside of big BOS and Enclave. For instance, hardened power armor, whatever the gunrunners were doing, making bullets, creating chems, repairing various sorts of equipment, and so on.

To get technology you go grab junky tools made from pulling scrap out of the waste, you use that to build simple machines, you use those to help create better tools, and you use those to build better machines. I'm not saying its something joe schmoe can do, but I'm doubting all the engineers could keep idle forever... they get bored if they aren't making something!

Creating a forge is not an impossible task, and I'm sure they can get medieval quality steel swords with some work. As for their utility, given that guns are arguably more complicated to manufacture than swords, you would think they would slowly start to get rarer and rarer in this tech-free world your describing. They also require ammo. Would I expect to see a horde of sword wielding barbarians charging the BOS? No, but I could easily see it as a secondary weapon for survivalist types with limited supplies, or raiders in close combat.

If anything swords are more effective than ancient times because no one is wearing plate armor so if you do get up close they'd be dead.
 
I would much rather see axes and spears, as they fit the setting better than swords. It is very hard to make a good, usable sword, not so with a spear or an axe. Axes serve multiple functions too. You can chop wood, etc. As well as chop people. Spears are incredibly simple to make, and have advantages that swords don't have (range).
 
I'm not personally interested in swords existing or not. I just like to encourage a modder to use their creativity, and disapprove of statements such as:

So, I'd be happy to support more melee weapons - but they must follow canon authenticity and mostly consist of junky-design.
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According to some of the talk I've seen on boards, half of Fallout 1 is inconsistent with Fallout canon. And if you listen to the realists on top of that, the only part of Fallout 1 that holds up is the line 'war never changes'.
 
I really don't see the problem with swords as a backup weapon. At the very least a good size machette. It makes sense to me. Gardening tools and picks don't make much sense though.
 
TheRatKing said:
I would much rather see axes and spears, as they fit the setting better than swords. It is very hard to make a good, usable sword, not so with a spear or an axe. Axes serve multiple functions too. You can chop wood, etc. As well as chop people. Spears are incredibly simple to make, and have advantages that swords don't have (range).
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It's very easy to make a good, usable sword when you have abundant materials. Half the work in making a sword is getting the steel in shape, and if there is one resource abundant in the capitol wasteland it's cheap steel. Beyond that all you need is something to shape and sharpen the blade with and something to make a handle out of. You can make a usable sword in about a day with a couple of heavy duty files and an old leaf spring from a car.

Swords have a number of advantages over axes and spears. Axes have next to no defensive ability, and you have some limits on how you can attack with them. Spears are unwieldy in close spaces. With a sword you can parry attacks more readily than with an axe and you don't have the space issues of a spear.

If you're having trouble with the word 'sword' try substituting 'Machete' or 'Bowie Knife'. Swords are very useful weapons when firearms are difficult to come by, and making a simple, ugly, functional sword is fairly easy when you come down to it. It's just a sharp piece of metal.

As far as axes go, the simplest way to make an ax that I could think of in the wasteland would be to take a railway spike, hammer the flat end into a wedge, pierce a hole through the center, sharpen both ends, and affix it to a shaft. Boom, battle ax! Complete with can opener for robots and those jokers wearing metal armor.
 
I wouldn't call that a sword, a machete yes though. Making a "Sword" in the correct sense requires a great deal of skill & knowledge and is almost a dead art today (as is blacksmithing for that matter).

However like blacksmithing if you have the knowledge it is relatively simple and does not require any specialized tools/machines so I have no problem a one or two dedicated Swordsmiths starting up shop in the wasteland.

Knowledge is only the limiting factor but really after 200 years I'd be very suprised if melee weapons didn't make a come back partcularly with the advent of mutants, weapons that have no tatical use today in the real world against human enemies may have a use against a shambling monster with no intelligence.
 
TorontRayne said:
Swords make sense, but I don't really think shields go well. Just me.
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I agree that running around with a shield all the time is a bit too oblivion. At the same time, I'd laugh my ass off if I saw a supermutant with a hubcap or a stop sign as a shield, and I think it would fit.

I don't know about you guys, but I see the supermutants as more the medieval type. I haven't completed the game yet, but so far, I'm left wondering where they're getting a constant supply of working miniguns from. If any group should look like the tribals in this game, it's them.
 
Yoshee said:
Creating a forge is not an impossible task, and I'm sure they can get medieval quality steel swords with some work. As for their utility, given that guns are arguably more complicated to manufacture than swords, you would think they would slowly start to get rarer and rarer in this tech-free world your describing. They also require ammo. Would I expect to see a horde of sword wielding barbarians charging the BOS? No, but I could easily see it as a secondary weapon for survivalist types with limited supplies, or raiders in close combat.
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Agreed. Now can somebody put together a few in game forges, to keep it all consistent?

Why is everybody arguing about swords anyway? Those are already in. We don't really need to establish if blacksmiths can make swords, because they have a backstory with Chinese officers or some such.
 
Dubby said:
Makeshift melee weapons in fallout 3 are going to need to have a junky design, and junky appearance.

Creating real, or "authentic", weapons from metals requires very specialized skills and equipment - which frankly, are lost and forgotten in fallout 3 by all but the most capable of communities (BoS). And encase you're wondering about salvaging techniques from metalurgy factories, forget it. Factories are one of the highest priority bombing targets in wars.

So, I'd be happy to support more melee weapons - but they must follow canon authenticity and mostly consist of junky-design. A few exceptions are the military combat axe which was mass produced years ago, and still works well, the standardized fire axe, ice picks, and a variety of gardening tools.
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I call shenanigans on this one.

Creating weapons from metals does NOT require very specialized skills and equipment. It requires a forge, a anvil (a chink of I beam could do in a pinch), and a few basic tools that could be rigged up by anyone with half a brain. BLACKSMITHING is not an overly complicated art that can be learned from books or experimentation and refined through experience. You might not end up with damascus steel, but after a few generations of wasteland blacksmiths working their trade, the end product would probably be rather skillfully made.

As for metalurgy, look out a window and you'll see the metalurgy. They're living in the boneyards of a major city with several megatons of refined metal just rusting there, waiting for someone to walk out there, melt it down, and pound it into something useful.

Just look at tribal spears. Obviously of new manufacture but if you look at the blade, they seem to be reasonably well made and not just shoddy pieced of slapped together shit.
 
madcaddie said:
I agree I'd like to add more sopositicated melee weapons like swords, battle axes, etc but I want to be careful to not make it to medievil.
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Oh dear. And so it begins .....
 
Psyckosama said:
Creating weapons from metals does NOT require very specialized skills and equipment. It requires a forge, a anvil (a chink of I beam could do in a pinch), and a few basic tools that could be rigged up by anyone with half a brain. BLACKSMITHING is not an overly complicated art that can be learned from books or experimentation and refined through experience. You might not end up with damascus steel, but after a few generations of wasteland blacksmiths working their trade, the end product would probably be rather skillfully made.

As for metalurgy, look out a window and you'll see the metalurgy. They're living in the boneyards of a major city with several megatons of refined metal just rusting there, waiting for someone to walk out there, melt it down, and pound it into something useful.
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Out of curiosity, just how much blacksmithing do you do?
 
I'd like to see some switchblades, some of them should survive the years (if a wooden fence could).
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Out of curiosity, just how much blacksmithing do you do?
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I do a decent bit of metal working.

There are a couple of ways to make a long, straight, edged weapon, which for convenience we're going to call a sword.

The one most people are familiar with is buy blacksmithy or forge work. In this method a blacksmith heats a piece of steel until it is at workable temperature then uses a hammer, anvil, and various other tools to shape it into a shape that you would recognize as a 'sword'. The weapon is then finished by having a handle and guard affixed. The surface of the weapon is polished with various stones and files, and the edge is sharpened.

The second method of making a sword is by a process called Stock Removal. In stock removal the bladesmith begins with a piece of iron or steel that is roughly the right size. A common source of high quality steel is the leaf springs used in vehicles. A single car may have as many as a dozen leaf springs, each of which is a bar of very, very high quality steel.

The bladesmith shapes the blade without heating it at all using a variety of hand files. Power tools may be used if they are available. And, in desperate situations, it is possible to grind a blade using a piece of concrete or rock. I have personally witnessed someone grind a razor edge into an old garden tool with a piece of concrete and proceed to shave hairs with it.

Having shaped the blade, the bladesmith is now ready to finish the blade. Since the steel used was manufactured to the very highest standards it is already of very high quality and requires no further finishing. The bladesmith can affix a handle and sharpen the edge, and the sword is complete and ready to use. A skilled bladesmith can produce beautiful and well balanced swords by this method. At the same time, simple, brutal, effective swords can be produced in a matter of hours with appropriate tools.

Notably, stock removal can be used for any kind of blade one wishes to make, within reason. This includes longswords, knives, daggers, axes, spears, pole arm blades, arrow heads, javelin heads, and eating or working knives. It is open to debate whether a blade made by stock removal can match the properties of a forged blade, but for day to day military or defense use a stock removal blade is a perfectly good alternative to a forged blade.

So, there is your entirely too long, probably unwanted explanation of stock removal.

In the wasteland there is an abundance of steel to be had. Also there are widely available small, portable power sources. Small Energy Cells and micro-fusion cells are not rare. Moreover, if those are not available then more mundane technologies like solar, nuclear, steam, or coal power are available. Any of these technologies could be used to power a complete machine shop. Moreover, with plenty of pre-war tech and gear to scavenge you wouldn't even have to fabricate things from scratch!
 
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