Equilibrium- What?

[frobisher]

Finally got the Equilibrium mod and now I'm wondering why. I'm on the third mission and so far all this mod has done is remove most of the ammunition. Lots of guns, no ammo. I take the whole team out just to carry stuff but only two of them can fight. It's bound to get better but I don't know how I'll get through this next mission. Hopefully the raiders have guns and ammo instead of clubs.

[konzacelt]

Early on you don't want to be using burst mode on your machine guns very much, accuracy with that is lousy until you get above ~100% on Small Guns. Pistols and rifles are much more effective and cost-efficient for the Alpha Bunker missions at least. The shotgun is an exception to this, it is your best friend early on. If you are worried about too much collateral damage from the shotgun, give most of your squad pistols...their accuracy is as good as rifles, just shorter range.

The early missions are also geared a bit more towards melee and stealth. All of the Alpha Bunker missions, plus Macomb and Quincy at Beta, can be done with just melee and stealth.

Equilibrium is also sort of based on the assumption that ammo would be a relative scarcity in the wasteland, while small arms would be rather plentiful since most people died in the apocalypse. It makes sense since very few places are actually producing ammo, and guns can sit around for years without damage. Equilibrium also codes each enemy to have very little spare ammo on them after they die, regardless of how much or little they actually used their guns.

But if you are still running short on ammo, try visiting some of the early traders around bunkers Alpha and Beta. They tend to have a decent amount of random ammo, along with plenty of other goodies. Use all those guns you pick up to trade for it. Use the encounter map that came with the Equilibrium and Redux mod files to find them.

Keep in mind that all traders, including the BoS merchs, have diminishing returns on value for the same items. So for instance, say you get 500 cash (pure guess here) for the first Winchester at the BoS merchant. The next one he may only give you 480 or so. the next 450. Then 400 etc. So if you have like 10 Winchesters you want to sell, it's better to divide them up between different traders.

Random encounter traders also will give you different prices for your goods. One may give you 400, and another 200. You'll just have to learn that on your own.

Finally, I will say that if you are stingy with your ammo at the beginning, it will pay off soon. Right now I have a game at Bunker Gamma with a squad of 5. And I have like 1,000 rounds of most of the regular ammo, shotgun shells obviously less but you don't use those nearly as quick. All types of grenades seem to be pricy everywhere btw.

I should also note, however, that some types of ammo will always be scarce no matter how you slice it. Incendiary ammo, AP rounds, 50cal ammo, 2mm EC, Rockets, and especially Electron Charge Packs are always hard to find a lot of. With good reason though, because they tend to do the most damage.

Hope that helps!

[frobisher]

Originally posted by konzacelt:

Early on you don't want to be using burst mode on your machine guns very much, accuracy with that is lousy until you get above ~100% on Small Guns. Pistols and rifles are much more effective and cost-efficient for the Alpha Bunker missions at least. The shotgun is an exception to this, it is your best friend early on. If you are worried about too much collateral damage from the shotgun, give most of your squad pistols...their accuracy is as good as rifles, just shorter range.

The early missions are also geared a bit more towards melee and stealth. All of the Alpha Bunker missions, plus Macomb and Quincy at Beta, can be done with just melee and stealth.

Equilibrium is also sort of based on the assumption that ammo would be a relative scarcity in the wasteland, while small arms would be rather plentiful since most people died in the apocalypse. It makes sense since very few places are actually producing ammo, and guns can sit around for years without damage. Equilibrium also codes each enemy to have very little spare ammo on them after they die, regardless of how much or little they actually used their guns.

But if you are still running short on ammo, try visiting some of the early traders around bunkers Alpha and Beta. They tend to have a decent amount of random ammo, along with plenty of other goodies. Use all those guns you pick up to trade for it. Use the encounter map that came with the Equilibrium and Redux mod files to find them.

Keep in mind that all traders, including the BoS merchs, have diminishing returns on value for the same items. So for instance, say you get 500 cash (pure guess here) for the first Winchester at the BoS merchant. The next one he may only give you 480 or so. the next 450. Then 400 etc. So if you have like 10 Winchesters you want to sell, it's better to divide them up between different traders.

Random encounter traders also will give you different prices for your goods. One may give you 400, and another 200. You'll just have to learn that on your own.

Finally, I will say that if you are stingy with your ammo at the beginning, it will pay off soon. Right now I have a game at Bunker Gamma with a squad of 5. And I have like 1,000 rounds of most of the regular ammo, shotgun shells obviously less but you don't use those nearly as quick. All types of grenades seem to be pricy everywhere btw.

I should also note, however, that some types of ammo will always be scarce no matter how you slice it. Incendiary ammo, AP rounds, 50cal ammo, 2mm EC, Rockets, and especially Electron Charge Packs are always hard to find a lot of. With good reason though, because they tend to do the most damage.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for all that good advice. I just managed to get through the Peoria mission (barely) by heading straight for the fusion batteries which I already knew the location. I avoided all fights not necessary to get to the objective. I have done this on all the missions and I must admit that it is not as much fun that way. Fortunately I was given several rounds of incendiary shotgun shells to kill the Roacher with, otherwise I don't think I would have won. Single shot smgs' do not do much damage and so the whole mission was a boring grind to get through.
Next is Quincy. How in He** am I gonna kill 6 or 8 deathclaws with my short range smgs'? Close up to a deathclaw is suicide and I've only got 30 rounds of 44 ammo and some 5.56 and a little 7,62. 9mm in a Mac-10 will hardly kill a little bug.
Btw- this all belongs on the Equilibrium forums but they don't seem to have anything. No posts or discussion just random nonsense about other games.
Thanks for your help. Tomorrow night I'll go get killed by the deathclaws. Lol

[konzacelt]

No problemo.

Preoria in particular is scarce of ammo in general. Great Bend is another like that, but that's a ways away still.

There's a ghoul trader in Quincy itself that has some decent ammo for sale. If you want to be 'extremely' cheesy with that merchant, you can try and let the deathclaws kill him during their assault on the ghouls and take all his items. Keep in mind that means you won't be getting any ghoul recruit options for awhile if you do that though.

With Quincy in general, try to use an many bottlenecks you can when dealing with deathclaws. If all of your squad is firing in real time mode, the constant barrage should easily be enough for a single deathclaw. Also, use sneak a lot for Quincy, it helps tons.

Good luck!