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Unarmed Damage Calculations[]
I've noticed inconsistencies with some of the unarmed weapon stats in-game vs. their wiki pages. Thinking maybe I was missing something, I looked at this Damage page for answers, but it still wasn't adding up. Let me give some examples, for which I have no melee or unarmed damage bonuses, and a total Strength of 1 thanks to some penalties from mutations (even unequipped all perks and equipment just to be sure). This gets a bit wordy because I have to preface with all relevant information to show the whole picture, but I'll put a summary at the end for the gist of it.
Tone Death in-game damage is 51 in inventory. Assuming the minimum character STR of 1 still applies a 10% bonus, and that the in-game display rounds to the nearest whole number, this would mean the base weapon damage should be 46. 46 * 1.1 = 50.6, which would round up in the display to 51. 45 damage would be increased to 49.5, which would round up to 50, and 47 damage would be increased to 51.7, rounded up to 52. This weapon isn't a great example because the wiki page erroneously showed its damage as 149, which had to either be a typo or someone's total damage, but it's what got me started on exploring all of this in the first place as I wanted to give an accurate base damage to the page. I've since edited it to show 45 damage because that's what Death tambo's page says for the same level. However, as shown above, since 45 would display too low as 50, and 47 too high as 52, 46 is the only one that would fit the game telling me it's 51 damage with 1 STR (and no, the +1 from the Legendary effect wasn't boosting me to 2 STR because I have a -8 penalty from mutations applied to my normal STR of 4).
Looking in the crafting window, Death tambo also says it's 51 damage at the same level (45), so it seemed a good place to start looking in more detail. Let's look at the damage for all levels, shown as 34/40/45/51 damage for levels 15/25/35/45 respectively. The wiki says they are 30/35/40/45 damage, so we multiply by 1.1 for the bonus from STR to see how it compares. 30 becomes 33, 35 becomes 38.5 or 39 with rounding, 40 becomes 44, and 45 becomes 49.5 rounded up to 50. As you can see, the numbers on the wiki increased by 1 STR are slightly different than what the game is telling me: 33/39/44/50 vs. 34/40/45/51.
Let's look at another weapon, albeit with less for me to go on. I found a level 50 Bear Arm with 56 damage. I don't have the plan to make the weapon, so I can't view the damage for all levels, but pressing V at the workbench lets me view the damage for the minimum level, which is 40 damage at level 20. The wiki page says its damage is 35 at lvl 20 and 50 at 50. Multiplying the wiki stats again, we have 35 -> 38.5 (39) and 50 -> 55. So now we've got wiki damage boosted to 39/55 compared to in-game's 40/56.
You might be noticing a pattern with the differences, but I'll get to that later. For now I want to take a quick look at a 1-handed melee weapon and a 2-handed melee weapon, just to make sure those weapon types are getting representation.
Security Baton in-game says it's 16/26/31/37/42 damage at levels 5/15/25/35/45. For those same levels, the wiki states 15/25/30/35/40 damage. Doing the math, this time with a multiplier of 1.05 because non-unarmed melee weapons get a 5% bonus rather than 10%, we end up with: 15 -> 15.75 (16), 25 -> 26.25 (26), 30 -> 31.5 (32), 35 -> 36.75 (37), 40 -> 42. The (rounded) wiki damage actually matches what the game says this time, other than 32 vs. 31, but it's possible that the game's display rounds .5 down instead of up, which would then make 31.5 show as 31, so everything would check out if true.
Super Sledge is 68/79/89 damage at levels 30/40/50. The wiki page says 65/75/85 damage for the same levels. Boosting the numbers with the STR bonus, we end up with 65 -> 68.25 (68), 75 -> 78.75 (79), 85 -> 89.25 (89). Like with the baton, the numbers actually match up correctly. This implies that 1H and 2H melee weapons are fine, that the strange differences are exclusive to unarmed weapons.
Going back to our previous examples of unarmed weapons, the calculations are all off by 1 damage. This seems too exact to simply be a matter of inputting the wrong numbers on the weapon pages for the wiki, which leaves me to wonder if it's the damage calculation we use that's wrong. Either that, or the game displays 1 more damage to the stats than it actually is for whatever reason, but that sounds too crazy to be a display error. So then, what if we look at the damage calculation a little differently? The Damage page says that it is OutgoingDamage = Base x (1 + DamageBonus), but what if it got changed in an update at some point and is now OutgoingDamage = 1 + Base x (1 + DamageBonus)? Adding a flat 1 after all multipliers would suddenly clear up why the game would be consistently telling me those unarmed weapons are 1 more damage than they should be. I acknowledge I've used a relatively small sample size with the above weapons, but so far this is the only thing that makes sense. Am I nuts? Is there some other explanation I'm missing? Or does this make sense to anyone else? Whether I'm right or wrong, I'd love to know more if someone can clear all of this up. Thank you.
TL;DR: While the outgoing damage formula works fine for 1-handed and 2-handed melee weapons, for unarmed weapons it appears slightly off. By slightly I mean exactly 1 damage in all examples observed. Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, or maybe the math itself is wrong and needs to be updated. Either way, please let me know if you have an answer.
--Sir Duckyweather (talk) 05:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
- Well, so much for that idea. I did some more testing with Tone Death today by using a Rad-X to disable mutations in order to get more than 1 Strength. Here are the results of increasing my STR (still no other damage bonuses applied). I had: 64 damage with 4 STR, 69 damage with 5 STR, 74 damage with 6 STR, 78 damage with 7 STR, and 83 damage with 8 STR. Assuming Tone Death is 45 base damage, even if we try the theory of adding a flat 1 damage after multipliers, it still doesn't match my previous thoughts. 45 x 1.4 = 63, 45 x 1.5 = 67.5 (68), 45 x 1.6 = 72, 45 x 1.7 = 76.5 (77), 45 x 1.8 = 81. It mostly matches with STR values of 4, 5 and 7, but it's off by an additional 1 when we look at STR 6 (74 vs. 72+1) and 8 (83 vs. 81+1). This means simply adding a flat 1 isn't enough, so I'm back to square one with no idea why my in-game damage doesn't match the wiki's damage formula.
Additionally, after looking at my previous ramblings, I forgot I assumed fractions of 0.5 to be rounded up for display purposes with the unarmed weapons, but guessed it was rounded down with the 1-handed weapon. Obviously that's a contradiction, which means it's quite likely that there's a problem with the 1H and 2H melee weapon formula as well, but perhaps not as pronounced. In any case, I guess I'm done testing and theorizing for now, because I can't make heads or tails of how the game actually calculates melee damage. All I know is the primary accepted formula doesn't match my findings within the game itself, but the how and why eludes me. Good luck to anyone else who tries to unravel this mystery!
--Sir Duckyweather (talk) 20:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)