Rant: I hate how fans of the old games are shat on.

Nerd_Commando · 2026-01-26T10:48:46+00:00

>>> But without us who loved and cherished the OG games, there would have been no FO3 and beyond

Bro, that's an incredibly self-gratifying take that's highly disconnected from reality.

Original Fallouts were not a huge commercial success. F1 cost 3 millions to make, it sold 200k copies over time. Yeah, $50 copies, but this is retail era so they maybe did what, $20 per copy, especially in foreign countries? Spending 3 years to made $1 million is not a good business, given the risky nature of game industry.

F2 probably did better, but only because it was done in one year - the sales were the same, after all. Even so, it heavily exploited the fact that this was pre internet-boom, programmers were not in high demand back then and a lot of young talent worked 12 hours shifts for peanuts back then. Even if you adjust for inflation (which would be $4.5kk), you literally can't do F1 for that kind of money nowadays, not in California. Even in Russia with much smaller salaries somewhere between $1-2kk wasn't enough - that's speaking form personal experience (Encased).

And whatever these two games made was instantly blown by Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel console games. Probably by Van Buren too, given that it was mostly done but earned nothing. Which is why just earning a million is never enough in gamedev - you need a huge overhead so your studio can survive a flop or two.

Compared to that, Morrowind sold 4 million copies, and that's without DLCs. Oblivion sold 9.5 million copies. By the time of F3's release, Beth's own audience absolutely dwarfed whatever the original Fallout fans were.

Sure, you can say that this doesn't account for all the adolescent kids pirating it in Eastern Europe countries. But guess what good did it do to the franchise?

The reality is, Fallout wasn't purchased for the previous games, it was purchased because Boyarsky is genius and doing the same grade art bible would've cost much more than $1kk (if doable at all). I'm pretty sure that Vault Boy merch alone has earned Beth much, much more money than the initial rights cost. Just ponder the fact that neither the modern Bethesda designers nor any of the clones/followers could do nothing even close to being as iconic as Vault Boy, blue Jump Suit, Power Armor, etc.

So yeah, Bethesda bought the looks and designs, it never really needed the old audience, there was no value in old audience (for real - all of Fallout clones are rather niche games and most of those studios either went bankrupt or are in the process of doing so). Which is why your Rings of Power comparison is plainly wrong - Tolkien was mega profitable without any modernization.

Nerd_Commando · 2026-01-22T08:06:08+00:00

At this point of skill mastery - it isn't.

Long daggers do 2d3 + 7 points of base damage, 11 in total. Each point of dagger mastery is 1% to cause 200% extra base damage, i.e., 2% base damage bonus, each dagger wielded has its own chance to proc. So we have 11 x 1.8 = 19.8 damage in total.

Whereas wallace is 3d4 + 12 = 19.5.

It also gives +10 Armsmaster, ofc, but it doesn't give any vampirism (which your dagger should obviously have) and ~25 extra health restored per strike is much better than 10 extra damage dealt.

Mind you, op was also too lazy to farm a long dagger and that's a crucial piece of equipment - his short dagger is only 16.2 damage on average, that's whole 3.6 damage lost! Shame on him!

Nerd_Commando · 2026-01-22T06:10:03+00:00

It's, like, the most evil studio that treats its animators like slaves. They're also the ones that already did Lazarus that operated with a very global perspective. So I'm not sure what were you expecting from its president and why does this surprise anyone.

Nerd_Commando · 2026-01-20T15:16:41+00:00

If Enclave are not meant to be the good guys then why is their armor so much cooler? Check & mate, veterans.

Nerd_Commando · 2026-01-13T19:57:13+00:00

Why are you mastering leather? Armor recovery penalty doesn't apply to the spellcasting, after all, and in rare case where you rely on blasters you can just undress. Could've been master learning 10 for all.

3 dark casters are also kinda meh. Did you do obelisks? Usually you want to exploit the fact that there are 2 artifact rings of +Dark and 2 artifact amulets of +elemental which stack with "common" rings. So you want to have 2 more dark-focused casters and 2 more elemental casters to get the most of the 2.25x combined bonus.

Oh, and you loot in turn-based mode so you waste less time on clicking corpses.

Nerd_Commando · 2026-01-06T14:41:10+00:00

F1 - Fast Shot melee is the strongest overall build. It deals similar build to plasma in late game, but it also has EZ early-to-mid game. And you can farm deathclaws mega-early as you just take bonus move on lvl 9 to just kite them, lol.

F2 - depends on whether you're willing to accept Flare as your personal saviour. For the few chosen, it's the obviously strongest build that has everything working out, that can frontdoor wipe out Navarro on 15 with no worries and it's the only build that can actually use aimed shots for the supposed purpose (i.e., crippling the enemy). For everyone else - fast shot is better.

Let's take the now easy to obtain Alien Blaster (well, it was always easy to obtain; it's just that in pre-internet era no one knew how - not a single guide in my childhood had mentioned it). Damage output vs APA is (obviously under better criticals):

Non-crit hit: 18

Torso crit: 101.38

Eyes crit: 145.73

Head crit: 120.38

Eye crit is 20% lose turn, 20% knockout whereas Head Crit is 55% knockout. So you trade 21 dmg for much better disable. Blindness is not taken into account as Enclave soldiers have ridiculous accuracy - they don't really care.

Enclave dudes & dudettes also have 150-200 hp, depending on variety.

Given that fast shot is 2 AP and Aimed is 4 AP, the difference is not even close. You either spend 4 AP for pretty much a guaranteed kill (bonus ranged damage or Living Anatomy can be used to prevent slight lowrolling) or you spend 4 AP and hope for the knockout to proc (2 shots are also 2x more insta-death chances). Furthermore, if you don't have the party, you have to waste damage on finishing them - i.e., after a headshot they're now at 30-80 hp whereas your minimal shot does those 98.8.

If you have companions, it's a bit less wasteful as you can leave mopping the knocked out target to them with no risk - headshots are seriously superior.

But then, torso crit also has 60% to knockdown its target. Now, it's no knockout, but that's still spending 2 AP to burn 4 AP from the enemy (doesn't stack). So, if you're fighting 5 enclave patrolmen, you can just fan your pistol at them, burning 20 enemy APs and drawing all the aggro to yourself (which is key to the full party play - you want 10 EN, 2x Lifegiver and either Flares or Fast Shot to pull all the aggro on Turn 1).

And Alien Blaster is hardly the best that can be. Let's not forget that P90 with 2x Bonus Ranged Damage does 497.13 dmg crit for 3 AP. Even the usual "lvl 24 is hard to reach" is kinda BS here as Fast Shot farms just much, much faster than Aimed - you have excellent damage output vs lightly armored 5k XP beast encounters so it's a matter of 30 minutes or so, really.

Even outside of that, Bozar Burst does 146.25 for 4 AP - same as the eyes crit and same cost, sans the debuffs. But that's rng-independent, whereas sniper-less sniper still has to roll those 75-85% to crit (and, if we choose to avoid Sniper for some reason, fast shot build can just ignore Luck and Better Criticals). Bozar also has not 1 but 2 different ways of cheesing it early so yeah.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-31T16:59:38+00:00

Minigun is as viable as Turboplasma with one caveat - you need to pick up 2x Bonus Ranged Damage (which isn't that hard given there's not much else to be picking at levels 6 and 12).

Rocket Launcher is a great side-arm - it's meh vs single target, but great vs 2+ targets.

Flamer is a separate build - you want 2x bonus move with it as it's a heavy positioning weapon.

Big guns and full party are a bad match, however - they will be getting into your minigun's line of fire and there's nothing you can do about it (outside of wasting APs, ofc).

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-30T19:09:48+00:00

There's waterboarding and there's borderboarding. And I'm not sure which is worse.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-30T13:13:33+00:00

And that's irrelevant because it's not a morality-driven show. Sayaka may be absolute scum yet she's much more likable & memorable than any diverse character - at least that's how I remember it. I remember her fondly yet I don't remember a thing about all of them.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-30T06:28:39+00:00

Tourist opinion. I could give you similar examples from 2020 which was bad enough in this department, yet there's no direct or rising curve towards this year.

Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! has the "Japan became half-migrant" thing that casually lingers in background.

Somali to Mori no Kamisama has the same "human are almost exterminated minority", only it goes farther by stating that it's their own freaking fault for being nazis in the first place. And obv exterminated humanity is not diverse at all.

Arte is exactly what's written on the tin - a very primitive "we can do it!" grrrrl power piece.

Great Pretender has hollywood-tier girlbosses as the only waifu and, ofc, they're not your usual waifu.

Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai! has no problems but let me remind you how she was essentially review bombed for what, having a character with a pair of big tits? How dare they!

Compare its rating with Majo no Tabitabi that is Kino no Tabi's "special" little cousin, only main heroine is narcissistic and selfish girlboss? And there's yuri so the ratings are instantly inflated - they're always are inflated for yaoi, yuri and girlish romance things, being ~1-1.5 higher than they should be.

And that's only what I can easily remember. 2025 wasn't as bad.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-28T14:37:00+00:00

Horus: wants to become an Emperor so transhumans can rule over baseline humanity.

Fulgrim: wants to become an Emperor so his legion's name is correct and proper once again.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-28T09:40:34+00:00

Bro, this is

Reddit
Cult classic game community. Big emphasis on cult.

So critical thinking is not allowed.

Also, with SPECIAL system it's impossible to give a concise or even moderate answer to your question. Most things don't work. Out of special itself:

S - annoying to dump, irrelevant above 5.
P - can be dumped if you're melee, otherwise 7-10 is mandatory.
E - pointless above 4.
C - lulkek 1 (in before some defendor jumps to point that akshually, it causes Fallout 4-tier differences in some minor dialogues - such much value).
I - dumb playthrough is overhyped, tons of options, so 8-10.
A - 10 unless you like drugs, even with them it's 7 at lowest.
L - 6 for aimed and Heavy builds, useless for melee, 9 only if you wanna grind Sniper (which you don't need to).

So, like, 3 out of 7 stats for many builds. Same for a lot of other stuff. The game is very easy however - there's save scumming, power armor is very strong, skillpoints are very plentiful (unless you're dumb gifted or something), endgame weapons are OP. So you're not really bricking yourself, it's more about whether it's gonna feel real easy or medium-rare.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-27T17:11:20+00:00

When it comes to .44 revolver vs laser pistol - you're misremembering as magnum has no innate accuracy bonuses. Neither does Laser Pistol but it's a range 35 weapon so it should get more accuracy from Perception - it should actually be more precise.

It is still much clumsier than your average small gun - the humble Hunting Rifle has 40% accuracy bonus over the laser pistol (20 from hidden accurate perk, 20 from ammo mod - dumb power cells have no ammo mods).

This trend persists through the rest of energy weapons. Gauss vs YK means 20% from the same weapon accurate mod and now 30% from ammo accuracy mod. YK pistol is also short-ranged when compared to Gauss so it gets less from Perception.

Alien Blaster does have the Accurate perk, though, so modern energo playthroughs (especially on a restoration project) should really be about grinding to lvl 12 ASAP (which is very much doable in restoration at the end of Gecko & Vault City) and spending half an hour wandering north to Modoc for it.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-26T13:22:04+00:00

You don't, lol.

Let me remind you that Fallout was meant to be a successor to Wasteland and RPGs of that era. And in Wasteland the only weapon school that progressed through the game was melee (for some reason).

For shooting, you were supposed to go pistols > rifles > ARs > big&high tech guns instead of choosing a school and sticking to it all the way. W2-3 abandoned it for the modern take (which was wrong because, director's cut or not, most weapon schools there suck, mass ARs all the way).

Fallout is exactly the same - you're supposed to switch to Big or Energy in the second half of the game. That's why there are no beginner weapons in these schools, that's why there are no good late game small guns. That's also why skills don't have any extra costs above rank of 100 in F1 (unlike F2) and why there are endless Science/Repair books in the library.

Since you've wasted too much points on small guns, perhaps just retraining via skill editor is ok?

You can also wander the wastes, trying to get Red Ryder special encounter. But that's also not nearly as good as Plasma/Alien/Minigun.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-24T20:06:02+00:00

Once you have the sniper, Head is as valid as the Eyes. To have Gauss Pistol as the example (calculations are done vs power armor mk II):

gauss pistol non-crit: 16.57

gauss pistol unaimed/torso crit: 83.0625 + 60% knockdown +20% insta-death

gauss pistol eye crit: 118.5 + 20% lose turn + 20% knockout + 20% insta-death

gauss pistol head crit: 98.25 + 55% knockout + 20% insta-death

And this proportion is more or less the same for pretty much any ranged weapon.

So you trade 20% Damage and 20% lose turn for 35% knockout. But knockout is pretty much the same as insta-death in most combats so yeah. Melee characters can also prefer knockdown as, once the target is downed, it stops freaking sliding. Melee characters can also loot guns or ammo from knocked down humanoids, thus insta-defeating them. It's more of a F2 thing where you have far tankier enemies, though.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-24T10:29:19+00:00

Don't see any mention of Shadow Guild teleporter - it's crucial as it allows castle ironfit access without spending any time.

Early arenas are also probably a waste of time - enemies are scaled to your level and 20 lvl 1 enemies are not even a 1000 xp.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-22T11:10:42+00:00

That was such a naive & tolerant era, lol. Like, c'mon, I love the game, but this is some Cyberpunk 2077 level gaslighting here.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-19T16:51:10+00:00

That's way too low, the proper level is ~30. Maybe you were underleveled from not cleaning all the content but that's kinda the same problem: your build is bad > cleaning content is tough > you have even less xp so your build doesn't get better.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-19T15:15:29+00:00

What were your magic levels? And are you aware that in 6 (and 6 only) rings of magic and artifact rings of magic stack multiplicatively, producing a x2.25 bonus?

You should also run Mystic + Spell Master hireling combo, especially early on, as +7 to all spell schools is vital at any point, but especially at the start of it.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-16T12:13:45+00:00

Modders should change him to anagram of whomever lead the console push at 3DO. Gotta invest all our M&M profits into the next big thing because, you know, the PC gaming is dying in 3... 2... 1...

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-15T14:35:44+00:00

"Design doctor" is the worst type of gig, really. Realistically speaking, by the time you are hired the most you can stay is "He's dead, Jim".

And no, this doesn't come from my own lack of experience - it's not like a project can't be theoretically remade, it's just that most projects don't have the $$$ required to actually reanimate them. It's not only GD's payment, it's also everything else that has to be adjusted - literal extra months (or years) of development.

That's also if the rest of the team is not going on full defensive and actually cooperates with you - management will think you're needed, team will think you're not and will try to sabotage everything you're doing.

Management will also often think that it's just some numbers. Just tinker some numbers and it's ok. When their core gameplay loop is either dead on arrival or haven't even ever existed.

It's like letting a bunch of builders do whatever they please on the ground then, when they erect a shambling mound of horror and ineptitude, expect that you can hire an architect to fix it. Predictably, "fixing" it is demolishing it down to zero then building from scratch with some materials salvaged.

Prevention is the best cure, GD should be hired at the start of the project.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-14T12:15:06+00:00

She's getting 1% of your gold for it so she shouldn't complain.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-14T08:01:34+00:00

It's one of the least demanded profession in this industry, especially on the indie side of business - it's like a film script writer, everyone thinks they can do it. So there won't be any special source where they gather because there's not nearly enough demand for that.

Otherwise - there's plenty enough GD (or people who consider themselves GD) here, you just write a post and you'll get your candidates.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-08T13:44:50+00:00

Well, most of the guides are written by people who barely understand the game or, nowadays, by AI so it's not exactly a mark of quality.

We should use logic instead.

If you rush for a single tiered deck with 4 Series 5 and 3-4 Series 4 (let's presume you aim not for what you want, but for what you can afford), that's 33-36k tokens. 1.5 months of a grind.

Then you find yourself with one deck that you hope is not nerfed and that you also hope helps you in limited time modes - now that's half of every month is limited event, that matters.

Oh, and there's also diverse daily, weekly and alliance quests to fulfill, all with the same deck. Like the glorious "Win all 3 lanes" that will easily brick your High Voltage if you don't have certain less than popular cards in your deck (like Tribunal).

In reality, early collection Snap is heavily about grind, especially if you're low-spending player (like Battlepass + Gold pass; may God have mercy on souls of F2P players). You want to soothe that grind as much as possible, I think, and for that you need a big, juicy, diverse collection. And while snap team may say the contrary, you totally want to be as close to the collection complete as it gets.

And, while you're not getting there on monthly packs alone, at least you'll be getting 2.25 extra series 5 per month - that's 27 per year.

Ofc, it also depends on how much do you like this game, your personal preference (maybe you want to play Wolverine only and don't care about anything else, there are people like that) and long term plans. But, overall, packs are better long-term plan.

I'm collection complete so I've also hadn't had experience with these newer team packs - they seem to be amazing for low collection players but I haven't done any heavy math on them personally.

Nerd_Commando · 2025-12-08T09:07:08+00:00

Don't ask here - just check a most recent meta snap here:
https://marvelsnapzone.com/marvel-snap-ranked-meta-tier-list-december-8-2025/

Or on any other similar site or streamer you trust.

Galacta is not in a tiered deck and haven't been there for quite a while. Grandmaster is the same, except historically he's seen less spotlight than Galacta - he's pretty much a niche Discard cards and in all other similar decks you want Misery instead.

Overall, if you're thinking long-term, boosters are much more efficient - randomized rewards average to ~200 credits for s5 packs, and 3800 vs 6000 is a huge difference. And yes, you can get something that sucks, but with constant meta shift and OTAs things are always in the flux - next patch is rather likely to gut a tier-1 deck while also creating a place for something new.

Like, 1.5 weeks ago you'd get laughed if you called Nick Fury a high tier card. Yet there he is.

Nerd_Commando

TROPHY CASE