Oh, Fallout pipe weapons

[The Inept European]

I mean I love pipe weapons. But apart from being easier to build better mods, higher availability of better mods from loot and from merchants, plentiful/cheap ammo, decent ammo DMG::weight ratio.... with all these advantages, and few disadvantages (receiver upgrades not the best but still good), why oh why oh why, game designers of Bethesda, would you make them basically half the weight of the equivalent pre-war weapons??

Like, why? Does scrap metal from rubble heaps have the strength and density of carbon fibre?

You would think the one most obvious disadvantage of hand built junk weapons would be that they would be bulky and cumbersome.

You would also expect them to be inaccurate and unreliable, short ranged (due to poor barrel/receiver pressure sealing and poor barrels) and requiring lots of maintenance.

As reliability and maintenance were removed from FO4 (present in previous FOs), the obvious compensating nerfs to give to pipe weapons would have been weight, range and accuracy.

Nope. Similar range and accuracy and far, far better weight. Basically pipe weapons are OP and unbalanced. (And that's even before you get into glitching them, Douglas Grave.)

What is so frustrating and unimmersive in Survival, where weight is critical, is that I find some supposedly rare pre-war factory (ballistic) weapon, and every time I dump it, because the stats are not much better and the weight is about double.

(Presumably this weight advantage also translates into the pipe weapons being better in VATS? Or not?)

End of rant (for now).

[The Inept European]

I mean I can carry two pipe sniper weapons, with complementary specs (suppressed/not, .50/.308, night scope / day scope, etc), for the same weight as one pre-war factory sniper rifle.

Ridiculous.

[ghpstage]

Mistakes indeed, were made.
Amongst others, mr copypasta has a lot to answer for.

Originally posted by The Inept European:

(Presumably this weight advantage also translates into the pipe weapons being better in VATS? Or not?)

A weapons AP costs depends on two things, the weapons base cost and the parts cost modifiers.
That a lot of lighter parts have lower cost modifiers has created the myth that weight matters, but counter examples (QE mags, advanced receivers, reflex sights etc) exist. Weight itself does nothing to AP costs.

I don't know how the base values of pipe weapons hold up, but in practice pipes tend to compare poorly to rifle stock guns, at least partly due to a lack of a short stock.
Compared with a single shot .38 type pipe rifle, you can get a lower AP cost per attack from a hunting rifle, and worse, equal or better from an automatic combat rifle...

On the other hand weird things happen. In my opinion the bolt action pipe is simply better than a .44 pistol.

[The Inept European]

Yeah, sigh. I mean it would be too much to ask for the game to actually display the AP cost of the modified weapon, right? Let alone actually display what AP change the mod is going to make.

But no, so I have to spend all day pretending to fire at my own turrets in VATS, and periodically getting killed by them when I accidentally hit the wrong key and execute the VATS attack. :-)

I see the Wiki has the % change in AP costs for each mod. Do you know, are these additive or multiplicative? +25% and +25% = +50% or +62.5%?

[The Inept European]

Actually the gamepedia wiki has the AP values but the fandom wiki does not, or only has the base AP values.

[danconnors]

At a certain point in the game I get tired of the long, frequent, slow reload of the pipe sniper rifle, and switch over to the 10 shot, 50 cal--1.252 centimeter for the metric addicted--hunting rifle. It fires faster, reloads faster, and does more damage (but ridiculously lower than what it should be doing). I think around level 30, if I get my character to last that long.

I ditch the pipe .38 much sooner, since it is basically useless. My first laser weapon--or more often my first combat rifle--is the end of my .38 pipe gun. The pipe sniper rifle really begins to show its lack of ability while I'm trying to rescue Nick in the tunnels. And, of course, when I get the 5.56 mm assault rifle with the 80 shot clip, it replaces everything.

[ghpstage]

I am not 100% certain, but playing around with it strongly suggests parts modifiers are additive. It makes sense with the need for the game to deal with both positive and negative effects.
That other types of modifiers of the same kind tend to stack by adding up i.e. sneak attacks or VATS enhanced supports that. Parts modifiers do stack with VATS enhanced effects by multiplying though.

It is nice that gamepedia has values, but at least a few of them are wrong.

The game ought to show crit and bash damage too. The game numbers are too weird to get away with being so opaque.

[The Inept European]

Agreed!

Yes many of the gamepedia values (for AP% of mods) are missing, and some are clearly wrong.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by danconnors:

At a certain point in the game I get tired of the long, frequent, slow reload of the pipe sniper rifle, and switch over to the 10 shot, 50 cal--1.252 centimeter for the metric addicted--hunting rifle. It fires faster, reloads faster, and does more damage (but ridiculously lower than what it should be doing). I think around level 30, if I get my character to last that long.

yeah but, my point is - it's twice as heavy as the pipe bolt sniper.

I ditch the pipe .38 much sooner, since it is basically useless. My first laser weapon--or more often my first combat rifle--is the end of my .38 pipe gun. The pipe sniper rifle really begins to show its lack of ability while I'm trying to rescue Nick in the tunnels. And, of course, when I get the 5.56 mm assault rifle with the 80 shot clip, it replaces everything.

yeah but. a fully tricked out .38 pipe auto is a wonder to behold on lower levels. you can get ALL the mods. you can have a suppressed .38 auto sniper, or a suppressed .45 sniper with almost the same rate of fire. or a suppressed .45 pistol that is deadly in free (non VATS) fire.

At L24 Survival in Far Harbor I just equipped most of my settlers with .45 pipe, compensated, quick eject drum. they kick butt.

Just a few settlers have lasers so I know in which direction I need to run away and hide. Don't trust those lasers.

I had been avoiding going to the .50 bolt pipe sniper even though I can suppress it, because of the heinous ammo weight. But I think I'm going to move over to it now.

[danconnors]

Have you noticed you can use the exact same suppressor for the .308 and the .50 sniper rifles? This should be a no no, seeing as how the .50 bullet should NEVER fit through the .308 suppressor. Ditto the same barrels work for both cartridges.

[The Inept European]

.50 cal is 12.7mm by the way. (Just ask NATO.)

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by danconnors:

Have you noticed you can use the exact same suppressor for the .308 and the .50 sniper rifles? This should be a no no, seeing as how the .50 bullet should NEVER fit through the .308 suppressor. Ditto the same barrels work for both cartridges.

Yeah that's really dumb.
But you can't take a scope off a hunting rifle and move it to a combat rifle or a pipe rifle or a pipe bolt action. Oh no! That would be ridiculous! XD

[The Inept European]

And I just saw that if you switch the .308 hunting rifle to a .38 receiver it gets heavier, not lighter. And exactly as much heavier as if you rechambered it in .50 cal!!!

Ridiculous.

[Grendalcat]

Well Fallout 4 does deviate a little from reality. Even an apocalyptic reality.

[ghpstage]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

Yeah that's really dumb.
But you can't take a scope off a hunting rifle and move it to a combat rifles or a pipe rifle or a pipe bolt action. Oh no! That would be ridiculous! XD

True, but so many 'same name' parts appear on different weapons with identical effects that they may as well be interchangeable.

[danconnors]

Oh no! It is 1.27 centimeter. Brain meltdown.