Simple Weapon Rebalance
A simple rebalance of FO4 weaponry. The goal was just to fix gameplay and immersion issues of some weapons and their mods, without changing their original roles in the game.
I did it mainly for myself and after playing and fiddling with it for a week, decided to publish here.
Changelog
v 0.6:
Nerfed Combat Shotgun ammo capacity, buffed rate of fire.
Notes
Examples of balance considerations between various weapons:
The Double-Barrel Shotgun is more powerful but lacks the ammo capacity and rate of fire of the Combat Shotgun.
Molotov gives burning damage, but has less radius and power than grenades.
Combat Rifle has larger base damage (more ammo-efficient), but Submachine gun has larger magazine and rate of fire.
Immersion issues which I tried to fix:
Low Minigun damage. This weapon eats lots of ammo very fast. This is especially noticeable with Loot Reduction mods. So you basically can only use this weapon for “Show off” moments, after that you need some time to gather enough ammo again. And when this moment happens – I want to actually feel like I’m firing from a Minigun. Each bullet shouldn’t be weaker than the weakest pistol.
Low Rocket Launcher damage. Rockets are relatively rare and expensive, but the damage was very low. One rocket explosion was roughly equal to one duplet from Double-Barrel.
.50 Receivers not satisfying. As there is no native .50 caliber weapon in the game, those modifications should turn your rifle into a different weapon class.
Submachine Gun is useless. Despite its good looks and large magazine, it was worse than Combat Rifle in every aspect.
Flamer. I tried using it once and it felt like It’s firing water and not fire 🙂
Fat Man. That’s a miniature nuclear bomb. You should not be able to use it in close quarters without killing yourself. Also visual explosion effects were much larger than actual blast radius, which feels odd.
Combat Shotgun is just too slow. Automatic receivers feel completely unrealistic with pauses between shots.
Details
Hunting Rifle:
Base damage increased 20%.
.50 receiver damage boost increased 100% (which moves it roughly to the same league as Gauss Rifle w/o mods) at the cost of rate of fire and reload speed.
Pipe Bolt-action Rifle:
.50 receiver – the same treatment as for Hunting Rifle.
Combat Rifle:
Magazine size reduced 25%. This is a versatile weapon, but you can’t use it as a light machine gun now.
Assault Rifle:
All Automatic receivers boosted: 10-15% more damage, and Rapid receiver is more rapid.
Submachine Gun:
Base damage increased 15%.
Powerful Receiver is 10% more powerful.
Rapid Receiver is 10% more rapid.
Double-Barrel Shotgun:
Base damage increased 30%. Now you can stick to this shotgun a little longer after you find Combat Shotgun.
Combat Shotgun:
Base damage reduced 10%.
Base rate of fire increased 20%, and all Automatic Receivers got 35-50% additional rate of fire bonus. Now it more or less matches real world shotguns in full auto.
Magazine sizes were reduced to 5 – 8 – 20 (was 8 – 12 – 32). This matches real world 12 gauge magazines of similar types.
Minigun:
Base damage increased 75%.
Accelerated barrel: reduced damage 30%, increased rate of fire 10%. It is more logical, since shorter barrel usually means less kinetic energy. But you get really fast firing rate.
Tri Barrel: damage increased 20%.
Flamer:
Base damage increased 45%.
Missile Launcher:
Damage increased 50%. Should be usable against legendaries now, with multi-missile mods.
Plasma Gun:
Base damage increased 15%.
Gatling Laser:
Base damage increased 30%.
Fat Man:
Damage increased 50%.
Blast Radius increased 150%. You have to be really careful not to kill yourself during intense combat. But killing from a distance is not easy due to the Mini Nuke trajectory and lack of precise aiming capabilities.
Molotov Cocktail:
Added burning effect for critters in the blast radius.
Reduced blast radius 60%.
Frag Mine:
Damage increased 30%. Still weaker than Frag Grenade (due to the amount of free Frag Mines you can find).
Recommended Mods
I played with Immersive Loot Reduction which makes ammo really scarce, so you have to really consider ammo drain of various weapons.
I recommend either playing on Normal difficulty or Survival with Create Your Own Difficulty mod with 1.0 PC damage multiplier. The weapons were balanced to feel more realistic with this particular damage multiplier.
Realistic Headshots – Less Damage will make shooting even more realistic. It is still difficult to kill a legendary with one head shot though.
