What's the logic behind AP usage?

Stanislao Moulinsky

Stanislao Moulinsky

Vault Fossil
This is a minor thing that really affects only few weapons (FO3 was a bit worse in this) but what's the logic used to assign AP usage to weapons? One would think it would be tied to Damage or DPS (for semi-automatic/automatic weapons) but then, in what is probably the most extreme case, there is the Hunting Rifle. Compare it with the most powerful rifle in the game, the Brush Gun:

Brush gun
-Damage 75
-DPS 138
-AP 23

Hunting rifle
-Damage 45
-DPS 35
-AP 60

What the hell? :? I understand that you can equip it with a scope and use it as a sniper rifle but...

Sniper rifle
-Damage 42
-DPS 67
-AP 38

Gh.

This is the most extreme case but there are other "inferior" weapons that for some reason use more APs (sometime a lot more) than stronger weapons. My question is, there some kind of math behind or they were just throwing around the numbers they felt were right?
 
It's possible that the decreased AP is just another thing that makes the gun better, although I agree that it's a big difference. But I seem to recall some pretty good guns in FO2 (maybe Gauss Pistol) were faster to fire than the 10mm pistol you get at the beginning.
 
I think Little Robot has a point, back on FO 1 and 2 it depended most on the firing rate of the weapon, if it used 3 AP to shoot normally, it would use 4 for a aimed shot.

Sure on FO3 and NV we don't need AP to shoot normally, but there might be some kind of logic in it. Like pistols and a few lever-action weapons, those require less AP, might as well be less AP because they shoot faster.
 
Could have something to do with critical hit chance, spread and range of the gun in FNV. Or the AP amount from the hunting rifle is a left-over from Fallout 3.
 
My guess is that is based roughly of ease of handling the weapon. Pistols are generally lowest, big unwieldy weapons or weapons that need to extra carefully aimed tend to cost more. Rare weapons tend to have their costs reduced. Some of the values do seem a little arbitrary though.
 
I think it may have to do with the DPS: DAM ratio. For example, a gun that fires 'fast' will have a high DPS:DAM ratio and cost fewer action points than a 'slow' gun with a low ratio.

Take the sniper rifle vs hunting rifle example. The idea is that the Hunting Rifle fires 'slowly'. So it has low DPS:DAM ratio, and as such costs many AP's.

The Sniper fires faster, as seen by the higher ratio, and costs less AP.
 
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