In Fallout 2, I remember the first time I encountered the Enclave and Super Mutants without Power Armor. I was obliterated in about 1 turn. In Fallout 3, a Hunting Rifle to the head easily dispatches any Mutant and Enclave soldier. I was even able to kill a swarm of about 6 Super Mutants on Very Hard mode. The Damage Resistance for Power Armor and Super Mutants should be increased, and there might be variables in the code that make enemies less accurate or purposely miss player when their health is low. They should laugh at you when you try to rush them with anything less than Combat or Power Armor.
There should be more powerful Enclave, and Super Mutants
- Thread starter CrazyLegs
- Start date
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i think the biggest problem is weaponry.
in fo2 the weakest u generally saw was like a minigun.
here its hunting rifles all around.
when i run into a sm with a minigun i become worried.
i think maybe replaces all sm hunting rifle with miniguns or maybe laser rifles or something.
which is another interesting thing, they dont ever as far as ive seen use laer or plasma weaponry but as i recall they did in fo2 (could be wrong been a while)
in fo2 the weakest u generally saw was like a minigun.
here its hunting rifles all around.
when i run into a sm with a minigun i become worried.
i think maybe replaces all sm hunting rifle with miniguns or maybe laser rifles or something.
which is another interesting thing, they dont ever as far as ive seen use laer or plasma weaponry but as i recall they did in fo2 (could be wrong been a while)
The biggest cause of the seeming discrepancy is not weaponry, it is the fact that in Fallout 3, there is no damage resistance for armor, there is only a percentile damage reduction. So if I fire a handgun doing ten damage at an Enclave soldier with a 60% damage reduction, I still do 4 points of damage. In the original Fallout games, such a soldier would be wearing power armor with something like a 19 damage resistance, such that if I hit him with that same shot I would do 10 minus 19 damage, meaning nothing would get through (can't do negative damage). The bullet would bounce.Necro- said:
It is even more telling when using more powerful weapons. In the original Fallout games, firing say a shotgun at such a power armor equipped soldier for 25 damage, 19 is removed for the damage resistance, then the 60% damage reduction is applied to whatever was left, so the soldier would take like 2 damage points. To have a reasonable chance of taking down such a soldier in the original Fallout games, one had to possess heavy weapons, of the sort that one would normally have only later in a game, likely when one was wearing power armor one's self, so as to have the strength to actually carry and use that heavy weaponry.
In Fallout 3, because there is no similar such damage resistance, the most heavily armored opponent will still take damage from light weaponry. If one combines that fact with automatic criticals from stealth, multiplied by head shot criticals, it is easy to see why even Enclave troops can fall to a hunting rifle.
Edit to add:
Fallout 3 is frankly, in my opinion, Fallout in name only. Bethesda took most of the artistic 'chrome' of the original Fallout games (post apocalyptic wasteland, mutants, power armor, etc.) but used essentially NONE of the game mechanics. Half the reason Fallout one and two were such good games was because they got the game mechanics right. It was most emphatically NOT 100% due to the fact that Fallout built a post apocalyptic game with mutants and power armor.
So along comes Bethesda and goes, "Hey! We've got the Fallout franchise, meaning we get to build a post apocalyptic game we can call Fallout that will have mutants and power armor!" And for game mechanics, that SPECIAL system, well, Bethesda will use the same words for the characteristics, so it can say it is using the SPECIAL system. And I am sorely tempted to all caps the following sentence:
But the game mechanics of Fallout 3 have absolutely NOTHING in common with the SPECIAL system, nothing at all. This is NOT Fallout. This is rather a very lame, poor start, that modders are going to have to fix before this game starts to actually resemble the original games. Likely once the GECK is released, modders will be able to restore the functionality and game mechanics of the original Fallout, including such things as damage resistance. THEN, this game will start to shine.
Hopefully we can bring back the Damage threshold with the CS comes out. Regarding Super mutants they are encounted far to early in the game I'd like to swap the low level super mutants for regular mutated humans with crab claw arms etc and only encouter real SMs once you enter the city ruins.