Dealing less and less damage to NPCs with each level

[TwoTonTuna]

Currently level 82, with 4/4 ballistics perks, 4/4 rifle perks, 4/4 armor-pen perks, and 4/4 isolation perks. Noticed that my rifles (AA-99, Beowulf, Hard Target) keep doing less and less damage with each level I go up in.

For example, my Marksman's AA-99 rifle has a listed damage of 199. I bought it at level 82, so I would assume it is the 'advanced' variant of the rifle. With all the above perks, I deal a mere 115 damage to civilian NPCs in New Atlantis and 99 damage to UC Security.

*edit: difficulty is set to Normal.

I might believe that the armor of a UC Security guard could mitigate almost half the damage of my rifle. But a regular unarmored civilian reducing damage by 57.79%? Is there something funky here that I'm missing?

[EzRyder]

on the OP
im wondering ...
as the loot gets stronger because of our level, does the armor and guns the enemy use (and drop) get stronger?
i know i get higher tiers and such looting corpses so im wondering if that is tied to what they actually 'use' on paper so to speak - just a wild guess :P

[Symfreddy]

I'm only lvl 50, but as I can guess, when you have looted a weapon with the maximum quality (so maximum damage), with maximum mods and maximum perks, naturally you do less and less %damage as the ennemy level increase. Once you reach the maximum of power you will be less and less powerfull. I think it's by design, your power is not infinite (and I guess the ennemy too as they use the same stuff), but only more PV.
So It can be boring as you are lvl 80+.

[TwoTonTuna]

EzRyder a écrit :

on the OP
im wondering ...
as the loot gets stronger because of our level, does the armor and guns the enemy use (and drop) get stronger?
i know i get higher tiers and such looting corpses so im wondering if that is tied to what they actually 'use' on paper so to speak - just a wild guess :P

that would be the case when fighting enemies in protective gear. unarmored civilians in new atlantis, though, have this weird defensive bonus where they reduce my damage by almost half. what should be around 200 damage displayed on the gun's stats becomes 115 to 120 damage on normal difficulty. this damage remains the same even when i remove the armor penetration perk via console commands, so something else is reducing damage.

[Humble]

Schlumpsha a écrit :

Ironically the Cutter with maxed out Laser and Heavy Weapon ranks does probably the most damage in the game. Even terrormorphs melt like butter due to the burn damage getting applied X times over. A bug no doubt. But an entertaining bug.

I had no issues, I don't think bug, it's correct, and should keep up level, to be fair you can't upgrade Cutter in crafting at all, it's short range, and while ammo is sort of unlimited but limited time, and had to wait refill before you do it again.
It's should be entertaining, but not bugs. They shouldn't nerfed cutter, but they should might be buff armors and other weapon non cutter. thoughts.

[Doombringer]

Test on something other than civilians in the city I guess.
I spawn in an ecliptic and give him millions of hp when I need a crash test dummy.

Schlumpsha a écrit :

Even terrormorphs melt like butter due to the burn damage getting applied X times over.

Identical damage over time doesn't stack, duration gets refreshed by re-application though.
Weapon damage over time effect do a % of max hp, so they seem really good if your guns damage is trash and the enemy is tough.
Whitehot rounds are 100% chance of 13.3% or 13.25% of max hp over full duration.
Incendiary epic ability (on weapons, the armor version is trash) is like 41.8% max hp, but very low proc chance (like 5% or something).
I haven't tested Cutter specifically yet though...

[Doombringer]

EzRyder a écrit :

there are 5 tiers of each weapon
ive checked this with command line edits
base
calibrated
refined
advanced
superior or advanced+ ?? [no name change but stats are better]

This is wrong, 28f445 = random of calibrated/refined/advanced, it is *NOT* superior.
That is why you can't remove it with rmod 28f445, but you have to remove it with either 28f442 or 28f443 or 28f444 depending on which it picked.
Fun fact, you can amod advanced (28f444) (or calibrated or refined or 28f445) on to a weapon hundreds of times and damage keeps going up, and you have to rmod it just as many times to get back to base weapon stats.

[Dahak]

I wonder if having a shattering weapon mitigates the DR creep issue? I am only at 62, but I have no issues killing lvl 98s with my shattering hard target.

[Doombringer]

Shattering is -30% armor and 1.15x damage.
Multiple armor penetrating effects multiply each other (not added together), so say -25% from AP ammo mod, -30% from shattering, and -50% from ArmorPen perks:
Armor * (1 - 0.25) * (1 - 0.30) * (1 - 0.50) = 26.25% of initial armor remains.
Armor is 0.1% damage reduction per point, capped at 85%.

DR doesn't increase so much as creatures get more hp at higher level (and take 50% damage on very hard).

[Schlumpsha]

Doombringer a écrit :

Test on something other than civilians in the city I guess.
I spawn in an ecliptic and give him millions of hp when I need a crash test dummy.

Schlumpsha a écrit :

Even terrormorphs melt like butter due to the burn damage getting applied X times over.

Identical damage over time doesn't stack, duration gets refreshed by re-application though.
Weapon damage over time effect do a % of max hp, so they seem really good if your guns damage is trash and the enemy is tough.
Whitehot rounds are 100% chance of 13.3% or 13.25% of max hp over full duration.
Incendiary epic ability (on weapons, the armor version is trash) is like 41.8% max hp, but very low proc chance (like 5% or something).
I haven't tested Cutter specifically yet though...

Yeah, something wonky happens with the Cutter applying burn damage over time. My guess is that each of the three beams does continuous fire damage once the 5% from Laser rank 4. come into play. But since the Cutter never runs out of ammo and recharges within seconds, litting things on fire is child's play.

[StormhawkV]

You can't just 'assume' a weapon is a higher quality because you bought/found it at a level where it should be available. At level 82 you have access to the best variants of all three guns you mentioned. Replace them if neccessary and upgrade them with armor-piercing rounds.