Chatting with Vault Dwellers from PAX

Roffler said:
Scientifically speaking a miniaturized nuke is much more likely to exist compared to a completely engineered creature.
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Scientifically speaking, nuclear physics dictate that the minimum mass of radioactive material required for a supercritical reaction + shielding + conventional explosives required to compress the radioactive material and start such a reaction = far, FAR too much mass in a single projectile for it to EVER be viable in a hand-held weapon, ESPECIALLY one employing gas/spring piston action as a launch mechanism.

It also established the minimum TNT-equivalent of a smallest nuclear explosion possible, and that would be deadly at significant LOS distances.

If you don't believe me do your research.

Non-scientifically speaking, nukes are bad, m'kay?
 
PaladinHeart said:
It goes along with the original idea of power armor. If you killed someone who was wearing it then it was pretty much destroyed. If I'm not mistaken, in Fallout Tactics you couldn't loot ANY armor and it worked very well.

I mean.. seriously, after you put a few holes through someone's equipment I don't think you're going to want it for anything other than salvage parts and materials to sell.

Bloody Mess or not, I think a headshot should be just that, a headshot. Course then you have to decide whether you want to destroy the outfit or the headgear. I doubt many people in an actual fight would even bother considering being careful where they hit the enemy to avoid damaging the salvage goodies. :P

Then again, this is Fallout and everything is scarce.
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It's also a question of PC wealth which determines the value of everything in the game. If the PC can loot the clothing or armor that NPCs wear then the PC is going to be gathering a lot of heavy equipment and a lot of wealth a lot earlier. This means that balanced gameplay for such players is going to be based on a much higher wealth value than players who don't scavenge armor. Then the questions are "Is it fun to force a player to loot everything dry and run back to town constantly?" or "Is there an assumption that players will need to loot enemies dry that will make it less fun even if it's not forced?" and most importantly "What value does it add?" That said, I'm with Paladin on this, if you have a system where enemies drop everything they're wearing then why not apply damage and destruction to their equipment? No, durability is not the same thing as it's significantly simplified for an object like armor. Now you have a system which more accurately reflects the world (as intended by allowing players to strip enemies down to their knickers) but it's become increasingly more complex and requires more micro-management.

I fear I'm begining to ramble so I'll stop here.
 
Heh. I love micro management, up till the point where you have 1000 guns and don't know which ones to keep and which ones to throw away. There are always solutions to this though, such as allowing the player to break down older equipment for resources. The simplest method being to sell stuff to a merchant, but it becomes unrealistic when a simple merchant can afford to purchase your entire stockpile.

I always like the idea of breaking things down into useful resources better, because this way you can take an outfit you don't need and turn it into cloth which can then be used for any number of things, such as bandages and molotovs (when combined with a bottle of alcohol).

In Fallout, I'd keep all the ammo and one gun that was the most powerful that used that ammo type. It's too bad there wasn't more 9mm ball ammo for the mauser in the original Fallout, as I always thought that was a really cool gun. It would have been nice if you could break it down for parts after you're out of ammo though...
 
I don't see the point of breaking things down unless you have a pretty ridiculous crafting system (which, if it needs this, will generally have many problems), especially not in Fallout. Selling and bartering always worked extremely well and the only Fallout game that I had enough junk to cause a problem was Tactics, which doesn't count.

The player should never have a problem with having completely unmanageable amounts of junk, if they do then there's a design problem (if you kept your allies alive in Fallout you never had a problem, even if you were a nasty thief).
 
It would be interesting though, if you had enough mechanical skill, if you could modify one gun to use another gun's trigger mechanism, handle, etc.. Basically making it more effective.

It would also be rather handy to either have a system where you could break down your ammunition and make whatever type you wanted with it, or be able to trade it to someone and have them change it to a different type for you, for a cost of course.

Of course, I'd also find it fun to be able to use the gunpowder from your bullets in making explosive devices, so don't mind me. My ideas/expectations are too complicated I think.
 
No I agree that you could do some really awesome things with crafting, I'm just saying that you really need to if you're going to break down stuff into components. If you don't then you end up simply adding needless and unfun tedium to the game. Quite frankly I've yet to find a crafting system (haven't played Arcanum) that was enjoyable, let alone good.
 
Ah, of course. I wouldn't want useless resources. That would destroy the whole point of breaking down the items in the first place.
 
PaladinHeart said:
Ah, of course. I wouldn't want useless resources. That would destroy the whole point of breaking down the items in the first place.
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The question is less useless resources as it is fun crafting system. Also, if you have to carry around 50lbs of ingrediants so that you can craft it becomes a pain in the ass.
 
The ingredients should either be weightless (which is unrealistic but very handy) or the game should provide a nice container to keep your goodies in. The car trunk in Fallout 2 worked pretty well, and in Fallout 1 I believe I used those shelves at the Den, in the store with the guy who'd sell you the really good weapons. Tons of useful storage space there.

Oblivion destroyed the concept of picking any place and making a home out of it by implementing containers that respawn their contents.

For a fun crafting system, I consider it to be fun if you can simply modify and upgrade each weapon several times.

Rogue Galaxy had an interesting system, where you could combine two items to get a new one, but it's also a hassle to have to use each item a certain amount of time before you could do so.

A nice level of interactivity with the items would be if you could right click the item, then click "combine with" or "use on" and then click the item you want to combine it with. The game should then tell you whether or not the the combination worked, or if it's not even possible. Like..
"That's not possible."
"You've successfully created a new item."
Or "You don't have the skills required to make that item."

Heh. I haven't played a game yet where there's been a crafting system that wasn't fun, unless it would be an MMO, and most of those don't even feel like an actual game.
 
PaladinHeart said:
...Rogue Galaxy had an interesting system, where you could combine two items to get a new one, but it's also a hassle to have to use each item a certain amount of time before you could do so.
/quote]

You also needed a talking frog to do the combining.

Man, that game was crazy.
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PaladinHeart said:
Rogue Galaxy had an interesting system, where you could combine two items to get a new one, but it's also a hassle to have to use each item a certain amount of time before you could do so.
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It has an alright crafting system (better than most) but I wouldn't call it fun. One of it's problems was it's limited inventory space, it was completely pointless for everything except limiting the consumables. My other problem was the amount of junk that you were constantly buying so that you could make more stuff, yeah it's a fair way to control the player's money but why add in all of that extra tedium? The question comes down to this, did the crafting system add to the game?

I'm playing through the game right now and I'm a bit OCD about games, especially when there's a system to be exploited. That means I'm trying to make everything in the Frog Log (no, not all at once). Now I admit that I like seeing the new weapons made but I'm pretty sure that I'd be equally happy finding or buying them instead, or at least not much less happy. Any gain from that is lost on the tedium of constantly switching weapons (which results in far too much time being spent on the menu screen instead of playing the game) and using crappy weapons two-thirds of the time.

It's certainly one of the best crafting systems for a JRPG I've used but I'm not ready to call it good or fun. Actually I do know of one system which I found kind of fun (or at the very least, addicting), the one in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, which is kind of odd considering how much of a fairly pointless time drain it is.
 
DexterMorgan said:
Roffler said:
Scientifically speaking a miniaturized nuke is much more likely to exist compared to a completely engineered creature.
Click to expand...

Scientifically speaking, nuclear physics dictate that the minimum mass of radioactive material required for a supercritical reaction + shielding + conventional explosives required to compress the radioactive material and start such a reaction = far, FAR too much mass in a single projectile for it to EVER be viable in a hand-held weapon, ESPECIALLY one employing gas/spring piston action as a launch mechanism.

It also established the minimum TNT-equivalent of a smallest nuclear explosion possible, and that would be deadly at significant LOS distances.

If you don't believe me do your research.

Non-scientifically speaking, nukes are bad, m'kay?
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I'm not a nuclear physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was lead to believe that the actual amount of fissionable material was actually quite low for low yield nukes. The most complex part of the fission process in early designs was controlling explosives which surrounded the fissionables to cause implosion. With sufficiently resistant outer casing and sufficiently powerful explosives, it would be possible to create a fission weapon that fits in the palm of your hand. Although the explosion of itself would be significantly more substantial than what is shown.

Considering that the original fat man was in itself an implosion nuclear fission device, its quite likely that this weapon would be a similar type of fission bomb.

I always assumed that the bombs themselves were part of a nuclear cluster bomb, modified to be used in a handheld launcher. I'm going to consider it a personal mortar launcher that has a cool mushroom cloud effect.
 
I didn't say the system used in Rogue Galaxy is perfect, but it is interesting and a good idea that was, unfortunately, overdone a bit too much. At least it's not necessary to complete the frog lot to get complete the game 100%.

Here, you might find these guides useful: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/game/929240.html

Not so much the walkthroughs (never used them, since they're basically spoilers), but rather the guides that tell you where you can purchase certain items. I always had a hard time finding a certain shoe, sword, etc..

I haven't finished the game yet myself. I did get all the playable characters though.

A crafting system like this is really bad when you want to get 100%, and find out that a certain item type is out of stock and won't be returning. I ran out of silver axes and there are still more recipes requiring them.

Square's Parasite Eve game has probably my favorite weapons upgrade system, although it is a bit imbalanced due to the fact you can upgrade damage indefinitely. I love the ability to transfer special abilities from one weapon to another though.

I like the idea of repairing guns in Fallout 3 through the descruction of another gun. I just would like a nice upgrade system to compliment it though. Heh, I even like Zelda's method, although 5 sword upgrades would be better.. in my opinion anyway. I love the idea of going on a long optional quest just to get a permanent weapon upgrade.

Disclaimer: No I'm not saying I want a sword in Fallout 3.. When Oblivion modders get hold it if though, then all bets are off. :P Expect to see swords, magical fireballs, and maybe a dragon or two.
 
I was under the impression that Fallout 3 had a flaming sword. I thing it was awhile back that i read about it though, maybe they ditched that idea (hopefully).
It was some sort of oil rigged blade that catched fire, urgh :x , maybe just a rumor back then, so bad that it got stucked in my mind.

Edit: okay a quick google and there it is: Shish-ke-bob (flaming sword), oh the humanity.

Yeah Ausir has a better description, it seens we need the MacGyver Perk to construct this abomination. :crazy:
 
Moester said:
I always assumed that the bombs themselves were part of a nuclear cluster bomb, modified to be used in a handheld launcher. I'm going to consider it a personal mortar launcher that has a cool mushroom cloud effect.
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A nuclear cluster bomb? Modified to be launched with a springloaded catapult? What part of that makes sense?

PaladinHeart said:
I didn't say the system used in Rogue Galaxy is perfect, but it is interesting and a good idea that was, unfortunately, overdone a bit too much. At least it's not necessary to complete the frog lot to get complete the game 100%.
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We're going off topic here but I know that you don't need to fill the log to get 100% completion, that doesn't change the fact the type of gameplay encouraged by the system. For the silver axe I'd suggest looking and seeing if there is a non-frog log recipe to make one.
 
Geography.

And no, they need a better sense of how long the nuclear war lasted ('bout an hour or two, as I recall), and need to realize that it doesn't make any sense for the Chinese to be in DC at that point in time.

Though in Bethsoft's newly ret-conned Fallout universe, why, it makes perfect sense! And so do single-person phone-booth sized shelters, flaming swords, mini-nuclear-bomb launchers, Chinese-language manuals in the booths being readable by someone who's spent their whole life in an English-language only (or at least primarily) Vault, and mutated crab...things. Ok, that last one actually makes sense in Fallout's world, so I retract it, but my other points stand.
 
Yeah I know geology Geography, It was joke about a debate I had that people confuse them.

And it sounds funny too.

anyway.

War was two hours long.

Amercia was fighting China in Alaska and Main Land China.

I think the one man Shelter is supposed to be a joke anyway.

"HEY LOOK I SURVIVED ARMAGEDDON!!! HUZZAH! NOW I Can starve to death in a little tube....."
 
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