Hey.
I love NPCs, and I always used to play F2 with 5 followers (more with mods that removed maximum party members cap). In like 99% battles, those guys can simply kill everything on their own without any need for your help;
I was pretty furious that engine bug prevented 4 npcs from reaching max level (Sulik, Dogmeat, Vic and Goris). This is probably well known right now but perhaps there are still people who aren't even aware of it - so, in order to see those levels, you need to replace level 5 protos with level 6 ones. It's an unfixable bug afaik - Timeslip tried to fix it and even managed to get the final sixth level up on those party members, but the game refused to read the data correctly and loaded 999HP for each char. Yeah, great.
Well, anyway: NPCs. Where should I start... well, technically there are crappy NPCs, but defintively not as much as people think: Even Per's guide suggests to take only Vic, Cassidy and Sulik, cause they are the only ones worth. Is it true? Well, to some extent it is, because those NPCs have max possible ehp (effective hp) when wearing hi-end armors, despite their miserable HP. But hey, if you do the math... well, see it for yourself.
The worst things that can happen to NPCs are plasma rifles (common in navarro) and gauss weaponry (common at enclave). The rest is laughable: I have never really lost an NPC against non-enclave encounters. Thus, I took the average damage of those weapons and calculated EHP of each party member. Even though most people think NPCs like Marcus or Goris are unarmored, they have natural DR/DT that makes them tougher - surprise - then Power Armored Sulik. Yeah, see for yourself. (ehp = shots needed to kill the guy times base damage of the weapon)
Turbo plasma rifle
The calculations assume each NPC's level is maximum. So Sulik has 146 HP and Goris has 187 HP, as much as they would have on their sixth bugged level.
Sulik (Power Armor - PA) - 355 ehp
Sulik (Hardened Power Armor - HPA) - 573 ehp
Sulik (Advanced Power Armor - APA) - 1248 ehp
Cassidy (PA) - 311 ehp
Cassidy (HPA) - 503 ehp
Cassidy (APA) - 1094 ehp
Goris - 461 ehp
Marcus - 483 ehp
Skynet - 495 ehp
K9 - 1117 ehp (!)
Pretty interesting that Skynet is nearly as tough as Sulik in Hardened Power Armor, eh? K9 got a pretty awesome score due to his 50/20 plasma DR/DT. Always liked him.
Gauss Rifle
Sulik (PA) - 248 ehp
Sulik (HPA) - 309 ehp
Sulik (APA) - 377 ehp
Cassidy (PA) - 217 ehp
Cassidy (HPA) - 271 ehp
Cassidy (APA) - 331 ehp
Goris - 269 ehp
marcus - 288 ehp
Skynet - 295 ehp
K9 - 189 ehp
This time the poor mutt looks pretty pale in comparison. Still, look how closely matched the ehp values of skynet and APA cassidy are - there is pretty much a one shot difference between them. Judging by the amount of bashing the unarmored characters get, it should be like three times difference between APA cassidy and skynet. But there's not. Cassidy in APA (which pretty much doesn't happen at all considering you want to keep it for yourself, excluding Enclave which is pretty much game over anyway) is merely 12% more durable then Skynet (which has self repair after combat).
Of course, I need to mention the method of calculation. Well I hope it's correct: <avg_dam>*(100%-DR)-DT. If not my entire calculation is worthless.
Well, anyway: Since there are only 2 PA suits in the game, you can have only two "human" followers with decent ehp until the end of enclave. In other words, instead of taking Cassidy, Sulik and Vic, it seems best to dump one of them (Vic most likely, but we'll get to that point later) and get Skynet instead, which offers a bit more, well, ignoring the obscure science check, of course.
Now, the NPCs. Quick analysis on the more interesting:
Sulik - Black Isle should be really ashamed that 99% of Fallout players never saw Sulik's sixth level due to that stupid bug. he's so much better, reaching the critical chance of 43% (!) and 13 APs. He kicks sooo much ass. Set him to charge, give him a SMG and he'll run up to the enemy and empty his clip at his sorry face. Against most enemies, this is instant kill - against humans in non-PAs, centaurs and other usual creatures, he'll do around 200-400 critical damage per burst with H&K p90c. Talk about power! This guy is a must have. I really encourage you to "fix" the protos and have fun with him on sixth and final stage.
Vic - interestingly, Vic's final stage has Energy weapons as main skill. This is a bit wasted since his animations did not originally include big energy rifles - which limited him to alien blaster and pulse pistol. Fortunately b-team mod fixed that. Well, he has the lowest critical chance of all "hot" npcs at level six, "mere" 22%, although he does have 12 AP, which means he can get three shots with a pistol weapon (alien blaster or gauss pistol, take your pick). Going by maths, though, Gauss rifle still does 10% damage more with 2 shots than gauss pistol with three. His ehp is slightly better than Cassidy's with 132 HP. In conclusion, with Sulik and Cassidy being better and more valuable, vic is the guy to dump. Despite 12 AC, he won't get an extra shot with gauss rifle over cassidy (which is superior with his much better critical chance) and there are only 2 Power Armors in game for NPCs until enclave, meaning you'd have to face navarro and enclave with him in brotherhood armor at best, which would make him the weakest link. Seriously, dump the guy. I'm amazed that so many people prefer him over other NPCs - the math proves (unless I'm mistaken ofc) that in fact he is - even at his bugged level 6 - the worst of the "best" NPCs in game - and more fragile too, unless you give him HPA instead of giving it to cassidy and sulik. Seeing his poor performance, though, I don't know why would you. The alien blaster would redeem him, but with the abysmal range, he'll miss often and sometimes won't even attack (depending on the mode). Would be better if he could charge, but nah. He can't.
Oh, one redeeming factor: he's cool. Much cooler than that junk on tracks, I mean - at least he calls you boss.
Cassidy - Well, this guy is good. YOu have to wait for him to be good though - and wait a damn long time. He reaches 10 AP, allowing him to shoot twice per turn - at his final level, making him very useless throughout the game. While Marcus melts people with plasma rifle, Cassidy does like 20 damage per turn, not very impressive. But hey, he's really cool and once he hits his final level, he rocks with 2 shots, gauss rifle and as much as 36% critical chance (highest for non-level 6 NPC excluding K9! He loses the title to Sulik once you "fix" the protos, though). In other words, okay pick, not overwhelming at start but damn good later.
Marcus - Well, this guy is a bomb - Everyone knows how good he is with big energy weapons. If you're not carrying Pulse rifle, give it to him and he'll make his enemies' lives miserable. The most annoying thing about him is obviously the speed, though: while it doesn't matter at random encounters or times when you can prepare for combat (like the Reno family fights), but it annoys the crap out of you when you have a big location full of hostile guys and you have to wait for his slow ass. Other than that, he is a pretty solid pick, a bit weaker than your HPA wielding humans in terms of ehp, but not by much. His critical chance at his fifth and final level is 24%. Oh, and he might be even better in Restoration project since there is a custom armor for him there: I don't know the values though, so I ignored it in this analysis.
Goris - well, to be honest, I can see why Goris gets a lot of bashing. He's cool as a deathclaw, yeah - but even at his 6th level, he still has pretty lame ehps (both marcus and skynet outperform him) Contrary to what people think, he is not much better than other characters in critical hitting - at his sixth level he gets 29%, meaning he's still worse than Cassidy. Lame for a deathclaw, eh? To make things worse, his attacks aren't that great. Sure, he does hit for 40-50 damage - sometimes - but he does a lot of weak 5-10 damage attacks too - even against unarmored or weakly armored opponents. He's still stronger than Cassidy and Vic when you get him, but once they get their hands on gauss weaponry, he pales in comparison, and Sulik simply outperforms him all the time. A disappointment, sadly. Still better than brotherhood armor Vic - better critical chance, lots of attacks and more ehp. Redeeming factors? sure - he gets like 5 or 6 attacks per turn at level 6 and - like all animals - two turns in the beginning of each combat rather then one, meaning he WILL get to the enemies and beat the shit out of them in the first turn rather than wasting it to get next to them. If you want a 5 person party, I'd take him rather then Vic, in fact, for a good reason: Doesn't need ammo, is tougher than Vic and pretty effective through all the game, while Vic is effective pretty much only with hi-end weaponry and at his 5th and 6th levels.
Skynet - yeah, he doesn't get much love. But he's great. Much better than Vic, as you can see - 25% critical chance (3% more), 10 AP from the very start, great ehp - almost as good as HPA wearing humans - with the great bonus of self repair. He has been damaged? Who cares, if he's not dead he's as good as new right after combat. Cons? Slow as hell, takes ridiculous science check to get (126%, yeah, right). Without "cheating" (reading books on psycho withdrawal on lowered highest difficulty to get more points of science, then trying the check on lowest difficulty) he's too bothersome to get. But if you try, you'll like the results. Trust me.
K9 - special mention. He joins above the party limit, so you can take him as extra for every team. has 43% of critical chance and armor piercing attack, so - while he doesn't do that much damage - expect him to hit a lot, knock down people constantly and be annoying as hell to your enemies. Can't compete with "heavy" NPCs like Sulik or Cassidy, but is fun nonetheless.
I should mention some others here - Dogmeat, Lenny, etc - but I'm tired already after writing all that stuff, so all can say is that the rest isn't worth a spot. Lenny is a horrible shooter, Myron just plain sucks and runs away in the middle of combat due to horrible presets available, Dogmeat lacks armor piercing so despite the 43% critical chance he will most likely do zero to little damage to enemies with decent DR/DT.
Finally, the ranking. Well, Sulik is top tier, amazing at every part of the game, from beginning to end. Cassidy sucks most of the game, but gets awesome later on. Skynet is a bitch to assemble, but outperforms Cassidy at lower levels and his auto repair is just lovely. Finally, Marcus is awesome at lower levels and with Restoration Project, he might be as tough as HPA or even APA humans (assuming the armor gives him a decent bonus). Those are the top dogs. Fifth spot is a tie between Goris and Vic: If Goris was a little more reliable with his damage, he would be great, but he just does those shitty 5-10 dam hits way to often. Vic on the other hand is just fine, but worse than the two other "heavy" human NPCs, thus not worth a Power Armor, thus weak in ehp and rather mediocre at critical chance even at his best (and useless as shit on early levels). So I'd rate Goris slightly better, but he's still most likely not worth it. K9 is a nice addition since he joins over the party limit, but he's obviously below Goris and Vic if he's meant to be treated like a normal party members. Others are just plain shit.
Comments welcome! Especially if I made some errors in calculations and/or missed something.
I love NPCs, and I always used to play F2 with 5 followers (more with mods that removed maximum party members cap). In like 99% battles, those guys can simply kill everything on their own without any need for your help;
I was pretty furious that engine bug prevented 4 npcs from reaching max level (Sulik, Dogmeat, Vic and Goris). This is probably well known right now but perhaps there are still people who aren't even aware of it - so, in order to see those levels, you need to replace level 5 protos with level 6 ones. It's an unfixable bug afaik - Timeslip tried to fix it and even managed to get the final sixth level up on those party members, but the game refused to read the data correctly and loaded 999HP for each char. Yeah, great.
Well, anyway: NPCs. Where should I start... well, technically there are crappy NPCs, but defintively not as much as people think: Even Per's guide suggests to take only Vic, Cassidy and Sulik, cause they are the only ones worth. Is it true? Well, to some extent it is, because those NPCs have max possible ehp (effective hp) when wearing hi-end armors, despite their miserable HP. But hey, if you do the math... well, see it for yourself.
The worst things that can happen to NPCs are plasma rifles (common in navarro) and gauss weaponry (common at enclave). The rest is laughable: I have never really lost an NPC against non-enclave encounters. Thus, I took the average damage of those weapons and calculated EHP of each party member. Even though most people think NPCs like Marcus or Goris are unarmored, they have natural DR/DT that makes them tougher - surprise - then Power Armored Sulik. Yeah, see for yourself. (ehp = shots needed to kill the guy times base damage of the weapon)
Turbo plasma rifle
The calculations assume each NPC's level is maximum. So Sulik has 146 HP and Goris has 187 HP, as much as they would have on their sixth bugged level.
Sulik (Power Armor - PA) - 355 ehp
Sulik (Hardened Power Armor - HPA) - 573 ehp
Sulik (Advanced Power Armor - APA) - 1248 ehp
Cassidy (PA) - 311 ehp
Cassidy (HPA) - 503 ehp
Cassidy (APA) - 1094 ehp
Goris - 461 ehp
Marcus - 483 ehp
Skynet - 495 ehp
K9 - 1117 ehp (!)
Pretty interesting that Skynet is nearly as tough as Sulik in Hardened Power Armor, eh? K9 got a pretty awesome score due to his 50/20 plasma DR/DT. Always liked him.
Gauss Rifle
Sulik (PA) - 248 ehp
Sulik (HPA) - 309 ehp
Sulik (APA) - 377 ehp
Cassidy (PA) - 217 ehp
Cassidy (HPA) - 271 ehp
Cassidy (APA) - 331 ehp
Goris - 269 ehp
marcus - 288 ehp
Skynet - 295 ehp
K9 - 189 ehp
This time the poor mutt looks pretty pale in comparison. Still, look how closely matched the ehp values of skynet and APA cassidy are - there is pretty much a one shot difference between them. Judging by the amount of bashing the unarmored characters get, it should be like three times difference between APA cassidy and skynet. But there's not. Cassidy in APA (which pretty much doesn't happen at all considering you want to keep it for yourself, excluding Enclave which is pretty much game over anyway) is merely 12% more durable then Skynet (which has self repair after combat).
Of course, I need to mention the method of calculation. Well I hope it's correct: <avg_dam>*(100%-DR)-DT. If not my entire calculation is worthless.
Well, anyway: Since there are only 2 PA suits in the game, you can have only two "human" followers with decent ehp until the end of enclave. In other words, instead of taking Cassidy, Sulik and Vic, it seems best to dump one of them (Vic most likely, but we'll get to that point later) and get Skynet instead, which offers a bit more, well, ignoring the obscure science check, of course.
Now, the NPCs. Quick analysis on the more interesting:
Sulik - Black Isle should be really ashamed that 99% of Fallout players never saw Sulik's sixth level due to that stupid bug. he's so much better, reaching the critical chance of 43% (!) and 13 APs. He kicks sooo much ass. Set him to charge, give him a SMG and he'll run up to the enemy and empty his clip at his sorry face. Against most enemies, this is instant kill - against humans in non-PAs, centaurs and other usual creatures, he'll do around 200-400 critical damage per burst with H&K p90c. Talk about power! This guy is a must have. I really encourage you to "fix" the protos and have fun with him on sixth and final stage.
Vic - interestingly, Vic's final stage has Energy weapons as main skill. This is a bit wasted since his animations did not originally include big energy rifles - which limited him to alien blaster and pulse pistol. Fortunately b-team mod fixed that. Well, he has the lowest critical chance of all "hot" npcs at level six, "mere" 22%, although he does have 12 AP, which means he can get three shots with a pistol weapon (alien blaster or gauss pistol, take your pick). Going by maths, though, Gauss rifle still does 10% damage more with 2 shots than gauss pistol with three. His ehp is slightly better than Cassidy's with 132 HP. In conclusion, with Sulik and Cassidy being better and more valuable, vic is the guy to dump. Despite 12 AC, he won't get an extra shot with gauss rifle over cassidy (which is superior with his much better critical chance) and there are only 2 Power Armors in game for NPCs until enclave, meaning you'd have to face navarro and enclave with him in brotherhood armor at best, which would make him the weakest link. Seriously, dump the guy. I'm amazed that so many people prefer him over other NPCs - the math proves (unless I'm mistaken ofc) that in fact he is - even at his bugged level 6 - the worst of the "best" NPCs in game - and more fragile too, unless you give him HPA instead of giving it to cassidy and sulik. Seeing his poor performance, though, I don't know why would you. The alien blaster would redeem him, but with the abysmal range, he'll miss often and sometimes won't even attack (depending on the mode). Would be better if he could charge, but nah. He can't.
Oh, one redeeming factor: he's cool. Much cooler than that junk on tracks, I mean - at least he calls you boss.
Cassidy - Well, this guy is good. YOu have to wait for him to be good though - and wait a damn long time. He reaches 10 AP, allowing him to shoot twice per turn - at his final level, making him very useless throughout the game. While Marcus melts people with plasma rifle, Cassidy does like 20 damage per turn, not very impressive. But hey, he's really cool and once he hits his final level, he rocks with 2 shots, gauss rifle and as much as 36% critical chance (highest for non-level 6 NPC excluding K9! He loses the title to Sulik once you "fix" the protos, though). In other words, okay pick, not overwhelming at start but damn good later.
Marcus - Well, this guy is a bomb - Everyone knows how good he is with big energy weapons. If you're not carrying Pulse rifle, give it to him and he'll make his enemies' lives miserable. The most annoying thing about him is obviously the speed, though: while it doesn't matter at random encounters or times when you can prepare for combat (like the Reno family fights), but it annoys the crap out of you when you have a big location full of hostile guys and you have to wait for his slow ass. Other than that, he is a pretty solid pick, a bit weaker than your HPA wielding humans in terms of ehp, but not by much. His critical chance at his fifth and final level is 24%. Oh, and he might be even better in Restoration project since there is a custom armor for him there: I don't know the values though, so I ignored it in this analysis.
Goris - well, to be honest, I can see why Goris gets a lot of bashing. He's cool as a deathclaw, yeah - but even at his 6th level, he still has pretty lame ehps (both marcus and skynet outperform him) Contrary to what people think, he is not much better than other characters in critical hitting - at his sixth level he gets 29%, meaning he's still worse than Cassidy. Lame for a deathclaw, eh? To make things worse, his attacks aren't that great. Sure, he does hit for 40-50 damage - sometimes - but he does a lot of weak 5-10 damage attacks too - even against unarmored or weakly armored opponents. He's still stronger than Cassidy and Vic when you get him, but once they get their hands on gauss weaponry, he pales in comparison, and Sulik simply outperforms him all the time. A disappointment, sadly. Still better than brotherhood armor Vic - better critical chance, lots of attacks and more ehp. Redeeming factors? sure - he gets like 5 or 6 attacks per turn at level 6 and - like all animals - two turns in the beginning of each combat rather then one, meaning he WILL get to the enemies and beat the shit out of them in the first turn rather than wasting it to get next to them. If you want a 5 person party, I'd take him rather then Vic, in fact, for a good reason: Doesn't need ammo, is tougher than Vic and pretty effective through all the game, while Vic is effective pretty much only with hi-end weaponry and at his 5th and 6th levels.
Skynet - yeah, he doesn't get much love. But he's great. Much better than Vic, as you can see - 25% critical chance (3% more), 10 AP from the very start, great ehp - almost as good as HPA wearing humans - with the great bonus of self repair. He has been damaged? Who cares, if he's not dead he's as good as new right after combat. Cons? Slow as hell, takes ridiculous science check to get (126%, yeah, right). Without "cheating" (reading books on psycho withdrawal on lowered highest difficulty to get more points of science, then trying the check on lowest difficulty) he's too bothersome to get. But if you try, you'll like the results. Trust me.
K9 - special mention. He joins above the party limit, so you can take him as extra for every team. has 43% of critical chance and armor piercing attack, so - while he doesn't do that much damage - expect him to hit a lot, knock down people constantly and be annoying as hell to your enemies. Can't compete with "heavy" NPCs like Sulik or Cassidy, but is fun nonetheless.
I should mention some others here - Dogmeat, Lenny, etc - but I'm tired already after writing all that stuff, so all can say is that the rest isn't worth a spot. Lenny is a horrible shooter, Myron just plain sucks and runs away in the middle of combat due to horrible presets available, Dogmeat lacks armor piercing so despite the 43% critical chance he will most likely do zero to little damage to enemies with decent DR/DT.
Finally, the ranking. Well, Sulik is top tier, amazing at every part of the game, from beginning to end. Cassidy sucks most of the game, but gets awesome later on. Skynet is a bitch to assemble, but outperforms Cassidy at lower levels and his auto repair is just lovely. Finally, Marcus is awesome at lower levels and with Restoration Project, he might be as tough as HPA or even APA humans (assuming the armor gives him a decent bonus). Those are the top dogs. Fifth spot is a tie between Goris and Vic: If Goris was a little more reliable with his damage, he would be great, but he just does those shitty 5-10 dam hits way to often. Vic on the other hand is just fine, but worse than the two other "heavy" human NPCs, thus not worth a Power Armor, thus weak in ehp and rather mediocre at critical chance even at his best (and useless as shit on early levels). So I'd rate Goris slightly better, but he's still most likely not worth it. K9 is a nice addition since he joins over the party limit, but he's obviously below Goris and Vic if he's meant to be treated like a normal party members. Others are just plain shit.
Comments welcome! Especially if I made some errors in calculations and/or missed something.
