while I like the range the damage is crazy bad and you reasoning for it isn't sound. IRL the shot may be the size of a 10mm but its moving much slower than a 10mm round fired on its own. Its going about half the speed fired like you describe so the damage should be around 70 my math 9/18 10mm round 8/19 do to lighter grain projectiles 10mm bullet is heavier than a pellet on average. so out of a potential damage of 18 you end up with out 8 in a rw equivalent 8*9= 72 this is what I tweeked it to, 72 runs like a champ. I do really like the rest of the work though.
Reduced spread and increased range are a blessing indeed, now shotguns are useful at least at a pistol range, not point blank only. BUT... The damage per pellet buff is just TOO MUCH.
I have a custom non-legendary combat shotgun with a top-tier receiver, which gives about 94 points of damage per shot. With this mod, the damage goes up to about 190, and I have ZERO points invested into the rifleman perk! This means that with maximised rifleman I would get something like ~400 points of damage per shot. A mini nuke explosion inflicts 450 damage. In combination with the above-mentioned spread and distance changes, shotguns become way too imbalanced to say the least. By the way, enemies with shotguns receive the buffs too, a couple of low-level raiders in long johns is no joke anymore, because they can have double barrelled shotguns.
It would be really nice to have a special version of this mod that would keep distance, damage drop-off and spread buffs but with a vanilla per pellet damage. Maybe 7 instead of vanilla 6. But 13 and 10 points per pellet are way too much.
Love the mod so far, although obviously there's some inconsistencies between your rework of the vanilla shotguns and the behavior of mod-added shotguns. Would you mind describing in plain detail the design philosophy behind your rework so I can replicate the changes for mod shotguns?
The biggest change is the range dropoff modifier. Most mods just copy the stats from the vanilla shotguns and leave this intact and this has the effect that vanilla has of shotgun pellets disappearing into the aether after a few yards. Increasing the amount of pellets to match real world shells is also important. Additionally, 00 buckshot (the ammo that appears to be used here) hits a LOT harder than the base game has it working. The damage is balanced around having each pellet do a little bit less than a 10mm shot does, which is very close to how these operate in real life against an unarmored target.
Great mod for the vanilla shotguns, finally having fun with a shotgun build. I prefer the Deltrexx 10 version, especially as a low Endurance character, haha.
I definitely like the way this works. The Double-Barrel Shotgun loads satisfyingly fast. The Combat Shotgun as an automatic weapon feels like a proper CAWS, especially if it has the Rapid legendary on it.
I'm not certain about the damage though. As an example, with Rifleman 5 (2x damage) that is slightly tweaked (to give 2x range to rifles and shotguns):
Overseer's Guardian, tricked out to the max (.308 caliber): 207 damage (includes Twinshot legendary), 407 range (347 range w/suppressor).
Double-barrel shotgun, tricked out to the max (no muzzle): 542 damage (no legendary), 359 range.
The problem is that the FO4 damage system is RPG style, or better said, a total mess. It's difficult to balance with the perks and the insane receiver mods and the weird health scaling and so on. I use a system (from mods and own changes) with fixed NPCs and player health and weapon high base damage with very low perk and receiver mod effects, to get NPCs and player in line. Weapon balance based on "realism" makes more sense then.
The balance in FO4 is fairly well done as-is, everything considered. It's silly to complain about the realism of some weapons while conveniently ignoring the existence of others, such as the plasma rifle. From a theoretical standpoint, a plasma rifle would kill any enemy, regardless of armor or cover, arguably from a range of miles and with near perfect accuracy. A 12-gauge shotgun or .308 rifle had might as well be squirt guns compared to what a plasma rifle (or even a gauss rifle) would do.
Can you please make an optional version where the shots only do 10 damage per pellet rather than 17? A single shotgun pellet shouldn't really be stronger than a .38 round. If I remember correctly a single shotgun pellet is more in line with a .32 pistol round. Apart from that little complaint I really like this mod.
So when I was deciding on how much damage each pellet should do I looked at the base damage of the 10MM and the Pipe Pistol (which is actually underpowered. Base damage should be 16 or 17). Unfortunately Bethesda seems to have made up the numbers from who knows where, and not actually balanced based on testing against steel plates, ballistics gel dummies, ballistic gel blocks, concrete, etc.
I spent about a full day of research looking at various footage of what 00 buckshot does vs 10mm, 9mm, 308, 22, .50, and slugs and what I came up with was that one pellet against an unarmored target does almost as much damage as a 9mm with the 9mm having slightly better penetration against certain materials. I wasn't able to find direct comparisons with 10mm and buckshot, so I had to compare 9mm vs 10mm to see if there was a large difference.
When I looked into it, it seems to be that while the 9mm and 10mm will have better penetration against any given target than a 00 buckshot pellet. The actual damage is about the same over all per pellet.
So seeing this, I calculated each pellet to do 15 damage. 9 pellets at 135 total 135/9 = 15. So each pellet does a little bit less than a 10mm.
The pipe guns in this game just need to be buffed.
Edit: Let me know what you think. If anything I think that a realistic pipe weapon mod is more in order, because pipe weapons exist and do a lot more than the weak little things Bethesda balanced around being replaced as you level up.
IF you look at it from a real world standpoint you are basicaliy right, but from an in game perspective I think it would be more balanced to have it at 10 dmg per pellet.
As for real world damage: While the penetration of a single 00 buckshot pellet is just a little less than a 9 mm round (and a lot less than a fmj 10 mm round) it is just a ball that doesn't deform much and pretty much just creates a wound channel the same size as it actually is, while any other pistol round will create a larger wound channel. In practice this means that a single 00 buckshot pellet has about as much destructive power as a .32 acp round, which isn't bad, but significantly less than a 9 mm round or a .38 special round would have.
Yes, you are right. The balance in FO4 is all over the place, but from within that world I would really love a version of your mod with 10 dmg per pellet not because it would be more realistic (all weapons need more damage to be realistic, but I think getting to Arma 3 levels of realism is sadly not an option), but because I think it would be a bit more fun (at least for me, and maybe some other ppl).
If it takes a lot of work don't do it, but if it is a quick change I would really appreciate it if you would add a 10 dmg version.
Oy Mate, Thanks for doing this. I noticed your mod in december 3rd and was a little disappointed by the fact that your mod wasnt an .ESL file. Now you did this an .esl flagged file, and Im pretty sure im not the only one happy with it.
This mod looks great! I'd also like to request that the Sjogren Inertia(s) get the same treatment, as I'd love to have it consistent with your work. That'd be legendary. I just hope it doesn't break the Bullet Count Reload System, but I would bet it wouldn't.
I took a look at it. It's mostly okay, just has damage really low, spread too high, and range isn't realistic. If asXas wants to use my stats on his mod, I have no problem with it.
From the looks of it, it doesn't seem like they would respond, so I took it upon myself to edit the entries myself, using the groundwork you laid before me as well as your input to help me customize them, and for that I thank you.
Thank you for your work and everything. It helped me to understand FO4edit better.
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you end up with out 8 in a rw equivalent 8*9= 72 this is what I tweeked it to, 72 runs like a champ. I do really like the rest of the work though.
The damage per pellet buff is just TOO MUCH.
I have a custom non-legendary combat shotgun with a top-tier receiver, which gives about 94 points of damage per shot. With this mod, the damage goes up to about 190, and I have ZERO points invested into the rifleman perk! This means that with maximised rifleman I would get something like ~400 points of damage per shot. A mini nuke explosion inflicts 450 damage. In combination with the above-mentioned spread and distance changes, shotguns become way too imbalanced to say the least. By the way, enemies with shotguns receive the buffs too, a couple of low-level raiders in long johns is no joke anymore, because they can have double barrelled shotguns.
It would be really nice to have a special version of this mod that would keep distance, damage drop-off and spread buffs but with a vanilla per pellet damage. Maybe 7 instead of vanilla 6. But 13 and 10 points per pellet are way too much.
I'm not certain about the damage though. As an example, with Rifleman 5 (2x damage) that is slightly tweaked (to give 2x range to rifles and shotguns):
Overseer's Guardian, tricked out to the max (.308 caliber): 207 damage (includes Twinshot legendary), 407 range (347 range w/suppressor).
Double-barrel shotgun, tricked out to the max (no muzzle): 542 damage (no legendary), 359 range.
Double-barrel shotgun, as above + Twinshot legendary: 853 damage (includes Twinshot legendary), 359 range.
Wow... O_O
This does balance out somewhat. Enemies do quite a bit more damage with their shotguns.
Hopefully something to think about. Cheers!
Apart from that little complaint I really like this mod.
I spent about a full day of research looking at various footage of what 00 buckshot does vs 10mm, 9mm, 308, 22, .50, and slugs and what I came up with was that one pellet against an unarmored target does almost as much damage as a 9mm with the 9mm having slightly better penetration against certain materials. I wasn't able to find direct comparisons with 10mm and buckshot, so I had to compare 9mm vs 10mm to see if there was a large difference.
When I looked into it, it seems to be that while the 9mm and 10mm will have better penetration against any given target than a 00 buckshot pellet. The actual damage is about the same over all per pellet.
So seeing this, I calculated each pellet to do 15 damage. 9 pellets at 135 total 135/9 = 15. So each pellet does a little bit less than a 10mm.
The pipe guns in this game just need to be buffed.
Edit: Let me know what you think. If anything I think that a realistic pipe weapon mod is more in order, because pipe weapons exist and do a lot more than the weak little things Bethesda balanced around being replaced as you level up.
As for real world damage: While the penetration of a single 00 buckshot pellet is just a little less than a 9 mm round (and a lot less than a fmj 10 mm round) it is just a ball that doesn't deform much and pretty much just creates a wound channel the same size as it actually is, while any other pistol round will create a larger wound channel. In practice this means that a single 00 buckshot pellet has about as much destructive power as a .32 acp round, which isn't bad, but significantly less than a 9 mm round or a .38 special round would have.
Yes, you are right. The balance in FO4 is all over the place, but from within that world I would really love a version of your mod with 10 dmg per pellet not because it would be more realistic (all weapons need more damage to be realistic, but I think getting to Arma 3 levels of realism is sadly not an option), but because I think it would be a bit more fun (at least for me, and maybe some other ppl).
If it takes a lot of work don't do it, but if it is a quick change I would really appreciate it if you would add a 10 dmg version.
I also chopped it down slightly because of the scaling at high levels. I didn't have to take it down much and now it's just right.
:)
I noticed your mod in december 3rd and was a little disappointed by the fact that your mod wasnt an .ESL file.
Now you did this an .esl flagged file, and Im pretty sure im not the only one happy with it.
Thanks again for doing God´s work Mate.
I just hope it doesn't break the Bullet Count Reload System, but I would bet it wouldn't.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41109
Please, thank you, and have an awesome day!
Thank you for your work and everything. It helped me to understand FO4edit better.