Big Guns

Skill
Big Guns
Fallout 3
Fallout
Modifies	Accuracy with Big Guns
Affected by	Agility
Base value	10% + (1% x Agility)
Related traits	Fast Shot
Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics icon
Fallout 2 / Fallout Tactics
Modifies	Accuracy with Big Guns
Affected by	Agility
Base value	2% x Agility
Related traits	Fast Shot
Fallout 3
Modifies	Damage and accuracy with Big Guns
Affected by	Endurance
Base value	2 + (2 x Endurance) + ceil(Luck / 2)
Related perks	Size Matters

 

“The operation and maintenance of really big guns - miniguns, rocket launchers, flamethrowers and such.”— In-game description

Big Guns is a skill in Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, and Fallout Tactics. In Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Big Guns is not a skill but there are big guns in the game. It was going to appear as a weapon skill in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2, the equivalent of skills in other Fallout games. Big Guns determines combat effectiveness with any weapon categorized as a "Big Gun," such as flamers, miniguns, missile launchers, Fat Man, etc.

In Fallout: New Vegas, it was merged with Small Guns into a more general Guns skill, similar to the canceled Van Buren, which would have merged the skills into the Firearms skill.

Fallout

${\text{Initial level}}\ \%=10+{\text{Agility}}$

Example: A starting Agility of 5.

$10+5=15\%$

The Strength requirements of most big guns, combined with the weight of the guns themselves and the large amounts of ammunition they require make investing into Strength points at character creation a prudent choice for players planning to use these weapons as their mainstays. Most, if not all, big guns in Fallout are burst weapons exclusively, meaning that players cannot make targeted attacks with them. This makes taking the Fast Shot trait a much more viable option for big gun enthusiasts, as they enjoy the benefits of the trait without the drawback.

Affected weapons

  Flamer (Fallout)

  Minigun (Fallout)

  Rocket launcher (Fallout)

Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics

${\text{Initial level}}\%=2\times {\text{Agility}}$

Example: A starting Agility of 5.

$2\times 5=10\%$

As with Fallout, Big Guns operates in much the same way in Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics.

Affected weapons

Fallout 2

• Avenger minigun
• Bozar
• Flamer
• Improved flamer
• Light support weapon
• M60
• Minigun
• Rocket launcher
• Vindicator minigun

Fallout Tactics

  Avenger minigun (Fallout Tactics)

  Bren gun

  Browning M2

  Chauchat

  Flamer (Fallout Tactics)

  Heckler

  Lewis MKII

  M249 SAW

  M60 (Fallout Tactics)

  MEC Gauss minigun

  Rocket launcher (Fallout Tactics)

  Tank gun

  Vindicator minigun (Fallout Tactics)

Fallout 3

"The best way to win an argument is to be the loudest."

${\text{Initial level}}=2+({\text{Endurance}}\times 2)+\left\lceil {\frac {\text{Luck}}{2}}\right\rceil$

Example: A starting Endurance of 5 and Luck of 5.

$2+(5\times 2)+\left\lceil {\frac {5}{2}}\right\rceil =15$

As this skill increases, so does the accuracy and damage with all of these weapons, both in and out of V.A.T.S. mode.

Ways to increase Big Guns skill

Permanent

• Leveling up (10+INT (+3 with Educated perk))
• Bobblehead - Big Guns (+10)
• Bobblehead - Endurance (+2)
• U.S. Army: 30 Handy Flamethrower Recipes (+1 or +2 with Comprehension)
• Size Matters (+15 with each rank, max 3 ranks)
• Tag! (+15)

Temporary

• Buffout (+2-6 depending on Endurance, a perfect Endurance of 10 will see no benefit.)
• Linden's Outcast power armor (+5)
• Torcher's mask (+5)
• Raider blastmaster helmet (+5)
• Bombshell armor (+10) (The Pitt)
• Lag-Bolt's combat armor (+10) (Broken Steel)

Affected weapons

  Burnmaster (Fallout 3)

  Drone cannon

  Drone cannon Ex-B

  Eugene (weapon)

  Experimental MIRV

  Fat Man (Fallout 3)

  Fawkes' Gatling laser

  Flamer (Fallout 3)

  Gatling laser (Fallout 3)

  Heavy incinerator (Broken Steel)

  Minigun (Fallout 3)

  Miss Launcher (Fallout 3)

  Missile launcher (Fallout 3)

  Precision Gatling laser

  Rapid-torch flamer

  Rock-It Launcher

  Slo-burn flamer

  Tesla cannon (Beta)

  Vengeance (Fallout 3)

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

While the game does not have the ability to increase the effectiveness of big guns, there are some weapons that are listed as such.

Affected weapons

• Flamethrower
• Heavy machine gun
• Home-made rocket launcher
• Incendiary mortar
• Meat cannon
• Minigun
• Rocket launcher
• Shredder

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2

Big Guns was going to appear as a weapon skill. It increases the base damage inflicted by big guns. Assuming Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 would have used a points based system like its predecessor, it is able to be increased.

Big Guns is available to all but one player character, Lilith is incapable of using big guns thus has no use for this weapon skill.

Notes

According to the Fallout 2 manual, they used a big gun to destroy the vats of FEV and kill the Master in the original Fallout. In their own words, "None could stand in my way. I had a mission. I had a goal. I had a really large gun."

Behind the scenes

“[...] At a certain point in F:NV's development, I was trying to create Big Guns to span the early game, mid game, and late game. It was an enormous pain in the ass, because trying to think up early game Big Guns that felt balanced with, say, a 9mm Pistol, strained the imagination. In documents, there were weapons that filled those slots, but they seemed forced and odd -- especially since so many of the "canonical" Big Guns were generally high-end weapons. Players liked using the Big Guns, and in a manner similar to EWs, many people wanted those Big Guns to be powerful. The way to make Big Guns feel appropriately powerful and not have a gaping low end was to abolish the Big Guns skill and migrate the weapons to other skills. You still used your Miniguns and Gatling Lasers, but you didn't have to tag a skill and then wander the wasteland for 6 hours before you found a weapon that utilized it.

It seemed to work pretty well for F:NV, though a remaining contention and expectation is that EWs should be more powerful than conventional firearms. If that expectation is widespread enough, maybe it makes sense to re-organize the skills again for future games. My first focus is always to ensure that when a player starts the game and decides what kind of character he or she wants to play, the options we give to the player are valid from the beginning of the game to the end. Each style of play should have its own rewards and challenges, but character types should not be intentionally neglected, they should not be secretly designed to be inherently superior to each other, and they shouldn't assume that the player has knowledge that they won't reasonably have.

Really, I think you could organize weapon skills in a bunch of different ways. For me, the bottom line is that if a player focuses on a skill, they should get pretty consistent gameplay out of it throughout the game. This includes access to items that make use of it, places where it can and can't be used to provide appropriate challenges/triumphs, and a rough semblance of overall balance between it and other skills.”— Joshua Sawyer on removing Big Guns general weapon balance in Fallout: New Vegas

References

Skills Fallout / Fallout 2 Small Guns · Big Guns · Energy Weapons · Unarmed · Melee Weapons · Throwing · First Aid · Doctor · Sneak · Lockpick · Steal · Traps · Science · Repair · Speech · Barter · Gambling · Outdoorsman Fallout 3 Small Guns · Big Guns · Energy Weapons · Unarmed · Melee Weapons · Throwing · Explosives · Medicine · Sneak · Lockpick · Science · Repair · Speech · Barter Fallout: New Vegas Guns · Energy Weapons · Unarmed · Melee Weapons · Explosives · Medicine · Sneak · Lockpick · Science · Repair · Speech · Barter · Survival Fallout 2d20 Small Guns · Big Guns · Energy Weapons · Unarmed · Melee Weapons · Throwing · Explosives · Athletics · Medicine · Sneak · Lockpick · Pilot · Science · Repair · Speech · Barter · Survival Fallout Tactics Small Guns · Big Guns · Energy Weapons · Unarmed · Melee Weapons · Throwing · First Aid · Doctor · Sneak · Lockpick · Steal · Traps · Science · Repair · Pilot · Barter · Gambling · Outdoorsman · Speech