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Even though the previous fallout games have been a sequential based action system in combat, it might actually be preferable to give it a more of a first person display setup. Reason being here is that real-time setups more fluidly integrate with a first person or dedicated limited view third person perspective.(like Original Jedi Knight's saber view or current Jedi Knight's perspective) Nextly first person, or dedicated limited view third person, allows for a more direct control of what a character can see. -or in the case of third person what the squad can see- I mean realistically does it seem likely that the character with poor perception can notice the movements of even a non-sneaking opponent through cover. In fallout view is basically unrestricted, which makes getting a surprise shot hard to do at best or in the best case limited to half a round, as in fallout tactics. (Noting that mobs return fire immediatly as can characters on the defensive against opponents that considering cover and distance situations should not have been seen) True a person may argue that sound of a shot allows for an accurate means of locating a person, which would allow for recognition by sight, but that is an eventuality not something that one does instantaneously. You dont get shot and instantly recognize the snipers position to return fire. Furthermore poor perception controls hearing as well, which means a character with poor perception should not be able to as accurately gauge a person's location by sound. A deathclaw or a dogs sense of smell would also be an important early warning indicator against a sneaking opponent which is not accurately portrayed by the perception trait. A death claw with a 14 perception and death sense night vision accurately detects 200 sneak at night across the whole map, and a dog with minimum perception is incapable of detecting sneaking opponents when they are at basically point blank, assuming opponent is approaching from the rear. The action point cost of weapons attempts to convey the costs of heavy weaponry, muzzle jump, recoil, and weapon size which in its current state is not all that bad but as a measure of time constraint is ineffectual. The use of medical assisstance takes time flat out -with stat the ap for first aid is down to 6- which is to say that normal ap cost for minigun burst is (five?), so why is it when it takes five aps (mini gun description in game details 90,000 rounds per minute/second cant remember which so will assume minute) so in one second 1500 rounds are shot off. In game (BOS) the minigun spurts off 25 rounds per burst. Thereforce we can assume that five action points translates to 1/60 of a second and further that one action point is 1/300 of a second. Along those lines the first aid must therefore take 1/50 of a second, which to say even the greatest combat medics in the world need several seconds to minutes to adaquetely dress wounds and the doctoring of wounds minutes to hours, if at all. So maybe if action points are changed to represent the cost of purely "actions" as they are nomered and game time represents how long a character spends doing something that can be addressed. For instance pulling a trigger takes one action point, but how long the trigger is pulled for is game time. ROF per round would then no longer be determined to such a great extent by the perks of the user and more on the ROF of the weapon itself. This however brings up new and interesting problems because 90,000 rounds per minute real time is INSANE. Bullets penetrating cover, armor getting shredded (armor shouldnt last forever, atleast requiring maintenance), and inability to react/dodge such an onslaught real time would give a very new meaning to suppressing fire. Just hold the trigger down for one second in the general direction of the foe and *poof* one dead opponent. This instance is less of a real time issue and more of the insanity of the ROF of the weapon but problem does still exist (atleast to a very much lesser degree for more base assault weapons like m16 and ak47) Well the solution is one part perception and two parts action. In FP/DLVTP the ability to gauge distance becomes crucial to accurately striking an opponent; this was addressed by perception modifier and percentage to hit in normal fallout but the player did not actually have to make the calculation his/herself, which in real time takes both time and effort to do and can be hindered by the characters perception because the view is now controlled. Nextly what is not shown in the current fallout display setup is the fact that characters in all places and all times are moving, jumping, ducking, and dodging even when they look like they are standing still. So what can be done is implement those actions into the game. Duck 1AP, Jump 2AP, Fall to Prone 2AP, Jump to Prone 3AP and all of these are definite factors when it comes to hitting an opponent. Nextly to address the concept of the burst/automatic fire. Just because someone has enough strength to use a weapon does not mean they can use it well. A character with a 4 strength bracing and weapon handling (BOS) could theoretically use a browning m2 .50 caliber while standing, which in and of itself makes no sense. In reality that weapon would be mounted which means it would make it easier to use while prone, in fact all weapons which could conceivably be used prone should be easier to use while prone. (this was indicated by the increased chance to hit in BOS but should also affect strength necessary to fire effectively) Because in reality the character with lifting capacity 100 pounds would one fall over from the recoil and would have the gun fly backward from the muzzle jump. (NO amount of bracing allows for a weak person to use a high powered weapon) More strength will allow for better control of a weapon up to a point, but that point for large weapons, especially weapons which would normally be mounted, would be hard to reach. Manual dexterity for purposes of firing large weapons has very little affect on how steady the weapon is held more directly relying on how strong the wielder is. Thus heavy weapons are not fired accurately but towards an area, which is their purpose, area based weapons fire and covering fire. Nextly on the burst topic muzzle jump and recoil do indeed allow for full auto fire to miss completely (which is implemented in game by the 5% miss chance that is always present) that if also implemented real time with strength limiting the amount of control over muzzle jump and recoil would indeed limit the accuracy of such powerful weapons. The 5% failure rate leads to another question of possibilities. Why at close range assuming the character points the end of the barrel at his opponent would a shotgun EVER miss completely. When a shotgun fires, the spread pattern is such that at even 200 yards shot still lands on the target directly in front of the barrel, at that distance the muzzle energy, assuming small shot, amounts to a neglible amount of damage, but at ten feet it is statistically impossible -assuming the shot does not quantumly tunnel its way through the target- to miss COMPLETELY. In the previous case muzzle jump and recoil nor lack of perception can account for missing completely. The argument then is up close a shotgun is too powerful for the game, well in real life up close a shotgun is a MONSTER of a weapon, but armor fairly readily stops shot. So its not to much trouble because unless it hits in an area without armor the shotgun is not too much trouble. This leads us to the concept of weapon penetration, in BOS penetration directly translated into Damage Resistance Reduction, but in real life they are related but different concepts. The way armor works against physical forms of damage, what the game calls normal and explosive forms, is that the armor absorbs shock and physically prevents projectiles and shrapnel from hitting whatever the armor is protecting. The difference is that if a projectile penetrates the armor the damage resistance is completely bypassed. Example: A 5.56mm round is fired out of an M16A1 at a marine wearing the standard marine core flack jacket and underneath a reinforced kevlar vest. That round, assuming it hits and in a protected area, is going to NOT pierce the armor and the armor will absorb almost all the shock, in game terms the shot did not pierce the Damage Threshhold of the armor. However in a different scenario with the same marine versus a .50 caliber round fired out of Sniper rifle the round will go right through the armor and in this case the armor did not absorb any damage it went right into the marine, thus the armor was penetrated not protecting its wearer. In a third case we have the same marine and a a round is fired from a 10 gauge combat shotgun at about 20 feet. The round delivers a massive impact to the marine but does not penetrate the armor, and further the armor does not absorb all of the shock damaging the marine. This is the case where the damage resistance of the armor applies lowering the damage done to the marine dependent on how shock absorbent the armor is. Thus the game usage of DT DR applies perfectly in situations 1 and 3, but not very well in 2. Thus armor should have a limit as to how much damage it can protect against without being penetrated or PT. Muzzle energy and energy density have direct correlations into damage and penetrating potential. The third situation with the marine also carries with it the concept of armor durability that shotgun is going to tear up the armor, so that only so many shots can be taken before a whole appears in a given area. Along the lines of the concepts of durability and penetrating power comes the concept of piercing. Different kinds of armor protects better against different kinds of attacks; this was attempted to be reflected in the change in DT DR versus different damage types, but it goes even further. A knife shreds kevlar fairly readily,but not only that, it also goes right though it. In this case the knife for certain could not have done as much damage as the .50 caliber bullet in situation 2 with the marine but the knife still went through kevlar. Kevlar is a shock absorbent plastic and cuts fairly easily. A flechette round which is designed to pierce tank armor goes right through kevlar like butter. An arrow will go through kevlar for the very reason that it pierces its target not relying on force to kill. A person decked out in a suit of metal armor would laugh at an arrow or a knife because quite simply it would bounce off a couple inches of steel doing almost no damage to the armor and absolutely no damage to the inhabitant of said armor. A laser, barring the physics preventing the existance of mainstay energy weapons, has a monstrous amound of energy density associated with it. The laser focuses its energy at an exact spot cutting right through it. This would act very much like a very very sharp knife, or a very sharp flechette round. The laser, depending on whether it is continuous or pulse, however when met with an angled reflective surface that is moving, much like a polished suit of power armor is not going to be able to deposit much of its energy on a single spot if it is continuous. A pulse from a laser weapon will quite simply melt whatever armor barring mirroring that it encounters. Plasma bolt based weaponry however would spread its massive amount of energy over a greater area, and thus even though the plasma and the laser are of relatively the same temperature the plasma will not do as much damage because the armor will be able to dissipate more of the energy over a larger portion of the armor. In either case however a lack of heat conductivity is going to get an armor penetrated rapidly. Kevlar is going to get melted into slag by the plasma attack, and the laser is going to leave a nice little hole in it on both sides of the man. Heat conductivity is a different prospect when dealing with flame or plasma acting as flame. In the case of the metal armor individual, who was happy versus the knife and his polished metal armor did ok versus the laser and the plasma bolt, he will get boiled alive in his suit of armor by a flame attack. The gelatinized flame fuel from the napalm flame thrower is not only going to heat up the armor and its occupant to the point of killing the occupant, but the fuel sticks to the armor constantly damaging it. The armor at this point acts as a temporary baking oven as it melts all over its occupant. If a plasma weapon were to act as a flame thrower the result would be much the same as the NFT versus even high melting point alloys and polymers. Versus flame, however because of the fact that the kevlar melts almost immediately, it does not stick around long enough to pressure cook or melt onto its occupant which will decrease the amount of damage done. So first and foremost a tank will laugh at a napalm flame thrower, for the most part, barring engine explosion or weapons misfire, but plasma will eat it up much like the metal armored individual. The NFT versus kevlar man assuming he dodges more, more because metal armor man has restricted mobility due to weight, will take much less damage even if his armor is gone because the kevlar did not stick around to boil on him. This brings us to mobility, a good thing that I noticed was implemented in BOS was the concept of encumburance, if a person is weighed down with stuff he moves slower than someone with less weight. (In BOS it was only implemented with those people who were encumbered, but this very readily translates into movement in general) Weight should translate directly into a penalty increasing the AP cost of moving a certain distance. Speed should decrease the AP cost of moving a certain distance. Performing actions while moving such as aiming etc. should increase the AP cost of moving. Changing of actions should increase the AP cost of everything due to the focus required to shift actions. But this you say means a character not burdened down by weight or armor who was really fast could just run up on someone with a knife and strike to the head killing them before they could do anything because changing actions costs APs. Well yes and no, the tactic obviously works in real life, sneaky sumnabitch runs up behind the guy who is sweeping for mines and slits his throat, but this leads us to the legacy of sequencing of events. Perception will affect as previously stated how soon a person could conceivably react to a situation, and then a persons reflexes, since the perception is now a controlled aspect of the game, could conceivably dictate how long a person has, to choose to perform an action. To better illustrate the principle I have just elaborated, picture a real time situation. Now picture what it looks like with a fly's reflexes, the fly sees things ten times slower than we do, SO what could happen is the game could purposefully slow game actions down depending on a given character's reflexes. Reflex based dodging combined with speed based movement will also help eliminate certain situations which are conceivably impossible, LIKE big for instance, in BOS it is possible to hit a person's hex directly with a rocket and still miss them completely. If an explosive goes off three inches from your feet no amount of moving unless you have godlike speed and reflexes is going to get you out of there. Explosions, particularly grenades, kill with shrapnel and whatever other fragments they pick up; (barring plasma or emp affects) thus a persons body is literally peppered with projectiles becoming impossible for dodge bonuses like HtH evade to apply. (I dont care if you can catch flies with chopsticks, try catching all the flies at once with a single set of chopsticks and then Ill consider letting you dodge a grenade by blocking it with your hands) The question now is can you implement all this in one system. It would be complicated in that a person would have to be almost constantly putting in movement commands: duck, dodge, roll, jump, fall, bob, weave, and run; all the while performing combat actions like aiming and pulling the trigger.(area based damage becomes extremely important because then only certain portions of the body are hit while performing defensive movement actions.) This would be extremely difficult if at all possible for a human user to accomplish. Thus, with reference and reverence to Wasteland, I suggest something like combat shooting from Wasteland. Combat shooting was a skill which was governed your characters combat awareness, the ability to shoot in combat while maintaining a grasp of the situation. Thus you could autocontrol defensive combat actions giving characters a rating which determines how good their characters are at performing defensive actions, but still allow for player interface assuming the player wishes to make an emergency decision. The AutoControl looks and sounds disturbingly like AC and performs almost exactly the same function. On the topic of AC armor does indeed prevent a person from being hit, but it does so in two different ways. Solid armors, much more so than soft armors, are capable of deflecting attacks. (this sounds like the case of mirroring armor and it is, but is also the case with a bullet ricotches off the metal armor) Soft armor just takes the attack and thus does not actually give any armor value. So realistically speaking leather and kevlar should not have given AC, but with a real-time setup true armor properties can be implemented. The Soft armors may not deflect attacks but do not detract as harshly from mobility in the way hard armors do. The hard armors trade off mobility for deflective properties. The level of protection versus mobility calculation is then left up to the player. Nextly is to have an action point determining factor, toss up on what it should be exactly, but it is a combination of speed, agility, and ability to analyze a situation quickly(i.e. you characters intelligence) Lastly have action points constantly regenerating probably along the same lines CTB in BOS. So after all of that my SUGGESTION is that if you players want extreme realism in a Fallout game it is NOT with the current Fallout setup, but with something vastly different a blending of the two "cultures" real-time and sequential user interface. And as far as any game designers are concerned thats my two cents worth as to what the best setup would be; any questions or critiques should be posted because Im interested in getting feedback.
