Impact009.com

Last Updated at 5:23 A.M. on Friday, September 3, 2009

If you notice any inconsistencies or errors, then please notify me.

Things that need data:
Damage/Shot and Range Calculations in V.A.T.S. for weapons with spread greater than 0.
Frame Data for weapons in V.A.T.S., specifically recovery time.  It may be possible to better manipulate invincibility frames with that knowledge.

This build is based on min/maxing a near-perfect (non-addon) character for combat.  There’s a lot of room for variation, and the same end-result can be achieved in multiple ways.  Its emphasis is based on high-AP, infinite AP recovery, ranged V.A.T.S. combat.  Thus, burst is maximized while damage received is kept to a minimum.  Of all of the 0-SPRD weapons Lincoln’s Repeater is my recommendation at 50 DMG and 25 AP per shot.  The Alien Blaster deals 100 DMG at 20 AP per shot, but ammunition for it is extremely rare.  I’m too lazy to compare and analyze the rest of the weapons (ie. the usefulness of certain non-0-spread weapons at certain distances), so this will be updated sometime in the future.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Cap:  70
Damage Resistance Cap:  85%

Skill Points Needed For Max = 1300 (13 Skills x 100 Points for max)

Base Skill Points = 13 Skills x 15 Points = 195

Tag! (Non-Perk) = 3 Skills x 15 Points = 45

Total Bobblehead Points = 13 Skills x 10 Bobblehead Points = 130

Minimum Total Book Points = 9 Skills x 50 Book Points + 46 (Barter) + 44 (Speech) + 48 (Small Guns) + 48 (Energy Weapons or Science) = 636 (Note:  Comprehension Perk Needed)

Maximum Total Book Points = 9 x 50 + 48 (Barter; evil Tenpenny Tower completion) + 48 (Speech; evil Tenpenny Tower completion, Contract Killer Perk required) + 50 (Small Guns; Lawbringer Perk required) + 48 (Energy Weapons or Science) = 644 (Comprehension obviously needed)

Quoted from FarirKalb:  “There are only 23 Barter and Speech books, but if you finish Tenpenny Towers quest the evil way, the alternate tower has a duplicate of each, bringing the total to 24. Also, one of the Speech books goes by a different name, Paradise Lost, but works exactly the same.

There is a Speech book inside the building for the Contract Killer perk, inaccessible otherwise. The Lawbringer perk has the same thing, but a small guns book.

One of the Lockpick books is situated underneath an object where you cannot reach it without lots of explosives and some luck; if you can get to it, there are 25 in total.

Each of the houses has the science theme, but the Tenpenny house gives a Science book while the Megaton house gives an Energy Weapons book; you cannot get both.

Also, Melee and Barter have two books that spawn on a highway near Temple of the Union, but they only spawn after you do Head of State. They exist, however.”

Total, Minimum Number to Maximum Skill Points Before Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:  1006 to 1014 Skill Points (with Comprehension Perk)

1300 – 1006 – 10 (Cyborg) = 284 Maximum Skill Points Needed From Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

1300 – 1014 – 10 (Cyborg) = 276 Minimum Skill Points Needed From Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Thus, this concludes that a minimum of 3 base Int is required to max out all skills (4 is needed for Comprehension, and the last point of Int can be gained from a bobblehead).

Items:

Lincoln’s Repeater:  50 DMG/Shot, 25 AP

Tribal Power Armor:  +35 DR, +15 AP, +5 Melee Weapons, +1 Str, +1 LUck
-1 AGI

Ledoux’s Hockey Mask:  +25 AP

Lucky 8 Ball:  +1 Luck (Note:  Make sure this is not in your inventory when you pick up the Luck bobblehead.  Luck 8 Ball is very glitchy, especially when used in conjunction with Ranger Battle Armor or the Almost Perfect perk from the Broken Steel add-on.)

Quest Perks:

Survivor Guru:  +6 Critical Hit
Ant Might:  1 Strength, 25% Fire Resistance (Ant Sight if starting Perception is 8.)
Barkskin:  +5% DR

Originally, Barkskin (even according to the official strategy guide) gives +5% DR and +1 END.  It was fixed to give only +5% DR in the final version of Fallout 3.

Starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:

Str:  1
Per:  9
End:  9
Cha:  1
Int:  3
AGI:  10
Lck:  7

Levelling Perks:

2:  Black Widow/Lady Killer
3:  Intense Training (Str)
4:  Comprehension
5:  Intense Training (Str)
6:  Toughness
7:  Gunslinger
8:  Commando
9:  Strong Back
10:  Bloody Mess
11:  Finesse
12:  Life Giver
13:  Sniper
14:  Mysterious Stranger
15:  Cyborg
16:  Action Boy/Girl
17:  Better Criticals
18:  Intense Training (Str)
19:  Concentrated Fire
20:  Grim Reaper’s Sprint

Only Comprehension is required for maxed skills, so keep that in mind if you want to deviate from this build.  Since Strong Back only requires 5 STR and 5 END, you can remove one Intense Training.

Total S.P.E.C.I.A.L. at level 20:  52 (out of 70)

Str:  1 + 1 (Bobblehead) + 1 (Intense Training) + 1 (Intense Training) + 1 (Intense Training) + 1 (Ant Might) + 1 (Armor) = 7
Per:  9 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10
End:  9 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10
Cha:  1 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 2
Int:  3 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 4
AGI:  10 – 1 (Armor) + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10
LCK:  7 + 1 (Armor) + 1 (Lucky 8 Ball) + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10

Action Points:  65 (Base) + 20 (10 Agility) + 25 (Action Boy/Girl Perk) + 25 (Ledoux’s Hocky Mask) + 15 (Tribal Power Armor) = 150 (Maximum Possible)

Damage Resistance:  35% (Armor) + 4% (Helmet) + 10% (Toughness) + 10% (Cyborg) + 5% (Barkskin) = 64%

DR is capped at 85%, and can be permanently increased to 84%.  If you decide on getting Nerd Rage! as a perk, then keep in mind that the benefit you’ll get from it under 20% HP will only be 21%.  That means you’re only using 42% of the perk.

Fire Resistance:  25%

Build-Exclusive Calculations:

Coefficient = # of skills affected x 2 (Since 1 S.P.E.C.I.A.L. = 2 Skill Points in each skill that it affects)
Luck Coefficient = .5 (13)
x = S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Value

Str:  2x (Melee Weapons)
Per:  6x (Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpick)
End:  4x (Big Guns, Unarmed)
Cha:  4x (Barter, Speech)
Int:  6x (Medicine, Repair, Science)
AGI:  4x (Small Guns, Sneak)
LCK:  6.5x (All Skills)

We will use the “Total, Minimum Number of Skill Points Before Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.” value:  1006

1006 + 14 (Str) + 60 (Per) + 40 (End) + 8 (Cha) + 24 (Int) + 40 (AGI) + 65 (LCK) = 1020 + 247 = 1006 + 251 = 1257

1300 – 1257 = 43 Skill Points From Levelling Needed

Let x = # of level-ups that yield 14 skill points, and y = # of level-ups that yield 13 skill points.

14x + 13 > (or equal to) 43
14x > 30
x > 2 1/15 (or 2 Remainder 2) = 3 (Rounded up)

Level-ups Needed = x+y
Level-ups Needed = 3 + 1
Level-ups Needed = 4

Theoretically the Lone Wanderer only needs to be level 5 in order to max out all stats with this build.  Here’s a visual example:

Level 2:  13 Skill Points
Level 3:  27 Skill Points
Level 4:  41 Skill Points
Level 5:  55 Skill Points

In actuality, at this point we have not yet received the Cyborg Perk from level 15 or the Intense Training perk from level 18.  Thus, our Lone Wanderer would need a perfect grand total of 43 – (-2) (Final Intense Training not yet obtained) = 45 skill points from levelling.  Cyborg was not taken into account in the previous math anyway, so it can be excluded here.  It is therefore still possible to maximize all skills at level 5.

For nearly the past two decades, many people have been noticing that video games have gotten easier with each console generation, to the point where they’re becoming ridiculously easy. Sure, much of the difficulty of older games can be attributed to the lack of immediate check points, save points, and/or continue points.

Take a look at the Guitar Hero series. GH3 was what really made the series famous, along with the artists that it featured. Most people of our generation are well aware that songs like “Through The Fire and Flames” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” were some of the most grueling in any rhythm game back in the day. Here’s an honorary mention for “The Legend of Max” before you DDR players murder me. Moving on, Neversoft decided to make the following GH games much more casual-friendly (with the exception of Guitar Hero: Metallica). Of course, there’s no problem with making games more accessible, but the problem lies with the route they went with: nerfing Expert note charts. Since when were casuals experts?

A long time ago, a Score Hero thread raised the issue of the steep difficulty of GH3, specifically tiers 7 and 8 on hard and expert. Many of those songs were charted by former Score Hero members, so the difficulty wasn’t surprising. A Neversoft developer did state that he wanted his daughter to at least be able to complete these songs on hard; fair enough.

Guitar Hero: World Tour came along, and it was an absolute joke. Many songs were sightread full-comboed on expert by veteran players (I’ve sightread FCed a few so far), and the more difficult songs such as “Hot for Teacher” and “Satch Boogie” were easily sightread. To give you an idea of my skill level, I’m only ranked 2,358 as of June 30, 2009, so I still have a long way to go.

Let’s take a look at Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. Bark at the Moon’s solo was slightly nerfed. Bridge 1 and and the “red snake” on Through the Fire and Flames were heavily nerfed. Was there a need for this? These songs were meant to be completed by only the very best players on expert. Try anchoring green and flailing your fingers through the intro now. You’ll probably get past it.

Super Smash Brother Brawl went this route too. Sakurai did not want a competitive environment, even in Super Smash Brothers Melee. Though Melee’s meta-game was a complete accident from his point of view, Sakurai succeeded in his goals with Brawl. For all of you nay-sayers that keep saying, “Give it a chance; new advance techniques will be discovered!” please note that it’s been over a year. Brawl is still slower with no recent discovery of major adv. techs, and Meta Knight is the god with no true counter.

If you’re an avid gamer, then you already know that there are very few games out there that are even remotely difficult on even the very hardest difficulties. Some exceptions recently are Devil May Cry 4, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and Resident Evil 5: Hell and Hell mode, Master Ninja, and Professional respectively. However, even such games will lose their challenge upon mastery (speedruns are a great exhibition of skill mastery and luck manipulation). That’s when gimping ourselves as players comes in.

Ever played Halo 2 or Halo 3 with skulls on Legendary? How about straight-character challenges or low-level runs in RPGs? Am I the only one who finds it ridiculous that we gamers have to gimp ourselves because our games are inherently too easy? Everybody and his mother seems to have the Complete Campaign: Legendary achievement. Games shouldn’t be losing their replay value after a few days or a week.

The last thing I want to mention about this subject is World of WarCraft. There is nothing challenging about it except for PvP (player versus player), though the bigger problem there is composition and class balance. As for PvE (player versus environment), all a competent player needs to do his put in time to learn fights and gear up. The fights are always the same, and unlike many other games, the encounters are the same every single time. Let’s face it, many players aren’t competent enough to learn the encounters, or they don’t have enough time to earn their gear. 10-man raids for these types of people are fine and all, but leave them out of hard modes, and don’t make current gear ridiculously easy to obtain with every following patch. I believe the true difficulty here lies with being able to find competent players and not a fail group, being lucky enough for an upgrade to drop, and having further luck with winning aforementioned upgrade.

On an equally random note, happy belated birthday Paige; my apologies.

I was doing a speedrun of The Ark on Halo 3, and I did what I call the “Scarab Jump” to destroy the Scarab.  The Scarab exploded, and the framerate dropped tremendously as expected.  In the aftermath, there were seven or eight Type-25 Rapid Assault Vehicles (Brute Choppers) waiting for me.  There were a few Kig-yar (Jackals) and Jiralhanae (Brutes) waiting for me on the slope to the next area, along with Unggoy (Grunts) and more Brutes directly in front of me using Type-33 Light Anti-Armor Weapons (Fuel Rod Guns).

So what does all of this Halo nonsense mean?  Frame rate lag, and a lot of it.  I’m estimating that the game was running at about 20 FPS.  Ever played anything at 20 FPS?  It sucks, though it would’ve been fine if it didn’t stay like that for a few minutes, which is unacceptable for a speedrun.  This made me realize why enemy numbers never scaled with difficulty, but rather only accuracy, damage, and defense.  It doesn’t make sense that a battles for control over the most over the most important relic in the universe are fielded with a handful of units.  At the end of the day, casualties on each side are probably about 100. I can’t help but feel that the XBox 360 would be able to handle more if the the graphic filters were toned down a little.

Games with would-be large-scale battles will have at least one of the two following qualities:
1)Terrible framerate
2)Mobs that do nothing

Anybody who has ever played Kingdom Hearts 2 or the Dynasty Warriors series will know what I’m talking about. The 1000-Heartless Battle is what I’m referring to in KH2. 90% of them do absolutely nothing until you run up to them. In Dynasty Warriors 2 to 6, you can surround yourself with ten enemies on Chaos Mode, and only one or two will try to attack you at the same time.

Dynasty Warriors has always had this problem, though with varying solutions. Nobody really notices the limit on the number of player-mounted animals that are saved during a battle, but MOB pop-up and terrain rendering is VERY noticeable. What then, has undoubtedly changed with every iteration of Dynasty Warriors that chokes the system’s resources? The graphics. I like my games to look nice, but not at the expense of gameplay. I’m fine with future DW games looking like DW3 if it means that I can actually experience the atmosphere of a battlefield in the Three Kingdoms era.

So the next time you see a game with amazing graphics, think about what the system’s resources are being used for and the factors as to why your game may lag every now and then, and why consequentially the A.I. is maybe terrible or erratic. Of course it’s not always the graphics, but personally, how something looks doesn’t affect how I play beyond 2D and 3D.

This reminds me of how with more powerful hardware comes newer revisions of software that whore the same proportion of a computer’s resources, but that’s an entirely different subject.