Super Sledge vs Swatters

[Deranged Duck]

So I know this discussions pretty old by now, but here goes.

First some Background.

Feeling impressed by Fallout 76's announcement I decide to reinstall Fallout 4 and try a new melee oriented character,

And because I had a season pass, I got access to a lot of DLC that I didn't get the chance to play with before cause I got the game when it was first released, So DLC like Nuka World and Far Harbor were still in the works at the time.

So imagine my surprise when I come back and Baseball Bat's and regular Sledgehammers are far stronger then Super Sledges, I mean c'mon really?!!! the most powerful melee weapon in most Fallout games is now a chump weapon?

A modded Swatter is stronger in every single way, even in reach, weight and AP thanks to crafting and the Supersledge only gets it's two base horribly vanilla upgrades?

(And yes I know that there is a very potent Legendary "Atoms Judgement" Super Sledge out there.)

[Deranged Duck]

It just seems like such a kick in the guts for such a legendary melee weapon to end up looking so weak compared to a chunk of wood.

[Kameraden]

Welcome to Bethesda. Weapons never make sense. You're talking about a company that made Hunting Rifles use .32cal ammunition for the weakest Revolver in Fallout 3. A company that made the Combat Rifle use .45cal ammunition for hand guns, but yet despite having .45cal ammo in the game never put a Colt 1911 for some dumb reason despite they could of easily done so.

A Company that makes a Combat Rifle with .308 Upgrade more powerful per shot than a Fully Upgraded .308 Hunting Rifle, despite having a much higher rate of fire and almost identical accuracy. (ie .308 combat rifle superior to hunting rifle in literally every way if you intend ot use .308 ammo). As well as the Bolt Pipe Rifle with .50cal ammo being better for sneak attacks than the .50cal Hunting Rifle, despite the Pipe Rifle is a bottom tier weapon.

Goes on and on and on honestly.

Also how a Baton is more powerful than a Combat Knife as a melee weapon. o.O;

[Deranged Duck]

Originally posted by Kameraden:

Welcome to Bethesda. Weapons never make sense. You're talking about a company that made Hunting Rifles use .32cal ammunition for the weakest Revolver in Fallout 3. A company that made the Combat Rifle use .45cal ammunition for hand guns, but yet despite having .45cal ammo in the game never put a Colt 1911 for some dumb reason despite they could of easily done so.

A Company that makes a Combat Rifle with .308 Upgrade more powerful per shot than a Fully Upgraded .308 Hunting Rifle, despite having a much higher rate of fire and almost identical accuracy. (ie .308 combat rifle superior to hunting rifle in literally every way if you intend ot use .308 ammo). As well as the Bolt Pipe Rifle with .50cal ammo being better for sneak attacks than the .50cal Hunting Rifle, despite the Pipe Rifle is a bottom tier weapon.

Goes on and on and on honestly.

Also how a Baton is more powerful than a Combat Knife as a melee weapon. o.O;

Nah I bet Bethesda took one look at everybody getting like 20 strength thanks to chems, power armor, bobbleheads and beer, and deciding that the Supersledge didn't really need a buffing mod, which is a shame because the Super Sledge could do with more unique modifications.

[red255]

In Fallout 4 one of my major disappointments is while in power armor your melee weapon attack speed is horribly nerfed, I generally consider using a Brutal/instigating Machete or a Furious/wounding Ripper.

The furious ripper because its attack speed is not horribly nerfed so it works fine in power armor.

and the Brutal/Instigating machete because I can take Kremhs tooth weapon mod and move it over to the machete for a weapon that does signifcant damage.

Glancing, yes the melee weapon mods added in the DLC add significant melee damage I suppose. but only for certain weapon types and adding significant weight, so you wouldn't carry one unless you were primarily melee. I pick up a melee weapon a Legendary Machete is 2 weight. So I can usually use my guns but if I am going to melee, I have it and its not taking up significant inventory space.

[Deranged Duck]

Eh, a completly modded Bat still comes out lighter and stronger then a Super Sledge by at least 10 weight.

[ghpstage]

Its a Beth game, nonsense, oversights and balance problems are a given.
I do hope however that FO4 isn't a sign of things to come, as its decidedly worse in all of these areas than its predecessors.

I mean, a .38 pipe gun can actually out DPS a gattling laser (both without legendaries) under the right conditions. When has it ever been that blatant before?

[Von Faustien]

Originally posted by ghpstage:

Its a Beth game, nonsense, oversights and balance problems are a given.
I do hope however that FO4 isn't a sign of things to come, as its decidedly worse in all of these areas than its predecessors.

I mean, a .38 pipe gun can actually out DPS a gattling laser (both without legendaries) under the right conditions. When has it ever been that blatant before?

A basic double barrelled shotgun outperformed laser weapon in the early fallouts. By the time you kit the third city laser was worthless due to metal armour being widely used and that's well before you even find a laser weapon.

You could also one shot a enclave trooper in advance power armor with a broken gun under the right conditions stuff like this has been a thing since interplay games. Not that the people who ♥♥♥♥♥ about 4 would know anything about the OG fallout beyond a few mostly wrong by the way violations of there lore bethesda committed.

[Kameraden]

Originally posted by ghpstage:

Its a Beth game, nonsense, oversights and balance problems are a given.
I do hope however that FO4 isn't a sign of things to come, as its decidedly worse in all of these areas than its predecessors.

I mean, a .38 pipe gun can actually out DPS a gattling laser (both without legendaries) under the right conditions. When has it ever been that blatant before?

Not true, Skyrim is perhaps Bethesda's least Balanced game. It's possible to make a Wooden Sword so powerful you can 1 hit most enemies. Let alone pretty easy to hit the DR cap with almost any suit of armor because of a combination of alchemy, enchanting and smithing. I had my self nearly 100% immune to magic attacks with a Bretan for example, while having almost 350 DR making me pretty much immune to most melee attacks as well. Regardless of difficulty I was insanely OP.

You have to mod the heck out of Fallout 4 to achieve this personally, with Legendary Modifications, and Armorsmith extended.

[Von Faustien]

Originally posted by Kameraden:

Originally posted by ghpstage:

Its a Beth game, nonsense, oversights and balance problems are a given.
I do hope however that FO4 isn't a sign of things to come, as its decidedly worse in all of these areas than its predecessors.

I mean, a .38 pipe gun can actually out DPS a gattling laser (both without legendaries) under the right conditions. When has it ever been that blatant before?

Not true, Skyrim is perhaps Bethesda's least Balanced game. It's possible to make a Wooden Sword so powerful you can 1 hit most enemies. Let alone pretty easy to hit the DR cap with almost any suit of armor because of a combination of alchemy, enchanting and smithing. I had my self nearly 100% immune to magic attacks with a Bretan for example, while having almost 350 DR making me pretty much immune to most melee attacks as well. Regardless of difficulty I was insanely OP.

You have to mod the heck out of Fallout 4 to achieve this personally, with Legendary Modifications, and Armorsmith extended.

Eh morrowind had a positive feedback loop in alchemy as well and it's just as broken as skyrims oblivion had the ability to gain 100% chameleon and make it so nothing knew you there eccentric when you were wailing on them not to mention other broken enchanting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I already mention fallout 1 and 2 letting you use a dam be gun to one shot enclave troops. New vegas had Boone who programming bugged out letting him snipe ♥♥♥♥ well out of visual range fallout since the early days and Bethesda's games are always unbalanced.

[ghpstage]

Originally posted by Mr. Nobody:

Originally posted by Kameraden:

Not true, Skyrim is perhaps Bethesda's least Balanced game. It's possible to make a Wooden Sword so powerful you can 1 hit most enemies. Let alone pretty easy to hit the DR cap with almost any suit of armor because of a combination of alchemy, enchanting and smithing. I had my self nearly 100% immune to magic attacks with a Bretan for example, while having almost 350 DR making me pretty much immune to most melee attacks as well. Regardless of difficulty I was insanely OP.

You have to mod the heck out of Fallout 4 to achieve this personally, with Legendary Modifications, and Armorsmith extended.

Eh morrowind had a positive feedback loop in alchemy as well and it's just as broken as skyrims oblivion had the ability to gain 100% chameleon and make it so nothing knew you there eccentric when you were wailing on them not to mention other broken enchanting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I already mention fallout 1 and 2 letting you use a dam be gun to one shot enclave troops. New vegas had Boone who programming bugged out letting him snipe ♥♥♥♥ well out of visual range fallout since the early days and Bethesda's games are always unbalanced.

Exploits that require intent. As such feedback loops or things resulting from Oblivions spellcrafting or even FO4s settlement spamcrafting, weapon part switching and the vendor exploit that got patched out, I don't see any of these as a real issue.
Sure, you can break things with them, but its entirely up to the player to do so, and it won't impact the wider game. For a lot of players things like this only add to the game.

Skyrims armour on the other hand does cause a problem. As mentioned the 80% DR cap is hit far too easily.... if you want to use armour perks and/or smithing you really can't avoid it.
Its a shame as a few edited numbers would have solved this.

FO4 however has similar issues.
VATS sequences reduce damage by 90%, DR can easily be built up to high levels and there are a bunch of other non DR damage reducers avaialble.
Its not much different from Skyrim really.

As for your broken weapon vs enclave thing, I don't know the details of it but if it wasn't a blatant bug it couldn't work at the games start right?
In FO4 the Chemist perk, a few ingredients and a sawnoff calibrated shotgun are all you need to make short work of Swan, clear the museum of withcraft or kill any other fixed high level spawn you can find. The only reason that doing so at level 2 is 'hard' is having to avoid levelling as you travel.
The FO2 equivelant would be heading straight to San Fransisco without reloading, and while blasting your way through every encounter.....

FO4 also has the same issues as Skyrim in bottom tier weapons being able to massacre everything, its just manifested differently, without an explicit exploit. Lasers (and energy as a whole) are similarly nerfed, just by dubious math this time, while suppressors hand the reigns of firearm supremecy to rifles and automatics (lets not even talk about Blitz melee).

My problem with Fallout 4s balance isn't that these kinds of things exist, it'd be asking far too much to find a game where they didn't. The problem is the shear number of them, the size of many of them and more than anything how difficult they are to avoid.
They are ingrained across pretty much all of the games mechanics, and readily arise from a player merely being pragmatic.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by red255:

In Fallout 4 one of my major disappointments is while in power armor your melee weapon attack speed is horribly nerfed, I generally consider using a Brutal/instigating Machete or a Furious/wounding Ripper.

The furious ripper because its attack speed is not horribly nerfed so it works fine in power armor.

and the Brutal/Instigating machete because I can take Kremhs tooth weapon mod and move it over to the machete for a weapon that does signifcant damage.

Glancing, yes the melee weapon mods added in the DLC add significant melee damage I suppose. but only for certain weapon types and adding significant weight, so you wouldn't carry one unless you were primarily melee. I pick up a melee weapon a Legendary Machete is 2 weight. So I can usually use my guns but if I am going to melee, I have it and its not taking up significant inventory space.

Power SPEEDS UP Slow melee weapons, and slows down fast attacks.

So it gives incentive to use Heavy melee weapons with Power armor, pretty clever tbh.

The most powerful Melee weapon is not the Swatter, but the Super Sledge II, which is a Sledgehammer equipped with the Rocket mod.