In Fallout 2 I think an even bigger problem than the overabundance of ammunition (well, basically everything was overabundant, it was rediculous the total value of stuff just laying around to be taken) was the huge wealth that was to be had from picking up all the guns lying around after mopping up some baddies.
A pet peeve of mine was that you would kill all these people who were obviously wearing armour, yet there was never any armour to loot from their dead bodies (I guess they saw that this would be over the top afa breaking the economy goes).
A couple of solutions that would help fix the economy as well as make skills like repair and science more useful is to have weapon/armour degradation (seems like gun maintenance/cleaning kits would be scarce) and tie that in with skills/combinations of skills.
For example your armour would degrade over time (even faster if you take damage) and would need to be repaired with materials from salvaged armour (perhaps some animal skins as well). And if you salvage enough armour you can make a complete suit of it (like if you only have leather, but kill a few guys with metal armour you could make a full suit of metal armour out of the salvaged pieces). How much armour you salvage and how much salvaged material is needed to repair your suit/make a new suit would depend upon your repair skill, or a combination of repair/science in the case of more advanced armour types, and could require certain tools as well.
With weapons you would use your repair skill (possibly in conjunction with your science or weapon skill depending upon the weapon) as a modifier to the chance of any given salvaged weapon being useable (so if I wipe out 6 guys with shotguns I may get 6 shotguns, or I may get no shotguns but alot of parts that I may or may not be able to make a complete working shotgun from, depending upon my repair skill), as well as a modifier to the rate at which your weapons degrade (and if you happen to come across a gun cleaning kit that would help too). High tech weapons would need science as well as repair, and more advanced weapons could have a modifier to your repair skill (so that a CAWS has a big -modifier to your repair skill while a regular shotgun wouldn't)
I know much of this is kind of arbitrary or doesn't make much sense (why would the shotguns people were shooting you with suddenly not work when their owners die?) but I think something of this sort is needed to keep the economy from getting broken. Amunition can be made valuable by scarcity because it gets "used up", but no amount of scarcity of weapons/armour will prevent rampant inflation unless there is some mechanism by which these resources can also be "used up" (well, unless there can only ever be 1 combat shotgun in the whole game, but that would kinda suk).
I think this should also apply to HtH weapons of better than minimum calibre (e.g. spears, daggers, and brass knuckles would not require repair, but sharpened spears, spiked knuckles and combat knives would, as well as all the high tech stuff like rippers and power fists).
A pet peeve of mine was that you would kill all these people who were obviously wearing armour, yet there was never any armour to loot from their dead bodies (I guess they saw that this would be over the top afa breaking the economy goes).
A couple of solutions that would help fix the economy as well as make skills like repair and science more useful is to have weapon/armour degradation (seems like gun maintenance/cleaning kits would be scarce) and tie that in with skills/combinations of skills.
For example your armour would degrade over time (even faster if you take damage) and would need to be repaired with materials from salvaged armour (perhaps some animal skins as well). And if you salvage enough armour you can make a complete suit of it (like if you only have leather, but kill a few guys with metal armour you could make a full suit of metal armour out of the salvaged pieces). How much armour you salvage and how much salvaged material is needed to repair your suit/make a new suit would depend upon your repair skill, or a combination of repair/science in the case of more advanced armour types, and could require certain tools as well.
With weapons you would use your repair skill (possibly in conjunction with your science or weapon skill depending upon the weapon) as a modifier to the chance of any given salvaged weapon being useable (so if I wipe out 6 guys with shotguns I may get 6 shotguns, or I may get no shotguns but alot of parts that I may or may not be able to make a complete working shotgun from, depending upon my repair skill), as well as a modifier to the rate at which your weapons degrade (and if you happen to come across a gun cleaning kit that would help too). High tech weapons would need science as well as repair, and more advanced weapons could have a modifier to your repair skill (so that a CAWS has a big -modifier to your repair skill while a regular shotgun wouldn't)
I know much of this is kind of arbitrary or doesn't make much sense (why would the shotguns people were shooting you with suddenly not work when their owners die?) but I think something of this sort is needed to keep the economy from getting broken. Amunition can be made valuable by scarcity because it gets "used up", but no amount of scarcity of weapons/armour will prevent rampant inflation unless there is some mechanism by which these resources can also be "used up" (well, unless there can only ever be 1 combat shotgun in the whole game, but that would kinda suk).
I think this should also apply to HtH weapons of better than minimum calibre (e.g. spears, daggers, and brass knuckles would not require repair, but sharpened spears, spiked knuckles and combat knives would, as well as all the high tech stuff like rippers and power fists).