Firing at point blank range in V.A.T.S. causes near 100% miss rate

I'm currently running through OWB and noticed something rather annoying. When I'm using V.A.T.S. at point blank range, I seem to almost always miss. When the camera zooms out to run the animation and the mob is chewing on my neck, my gun is actually firing past the hit box of the mob. It almost seems like the game takes this into account and registers my bullets actually firing past the mob and not at it. This is especially clear when fighting fast mobs like nightstalkers since they some times get the jump on me. I've never gotten this from cazadors and I think it's because they fly and "get in the way" of my gun, whereas a ground based mob like a nightstalker gets out of gunpoint because it's below my line of sight, and the animation shows me firing straight forward.

I've only encountered this in V.A.T.S. and only when my own and the mob's hitboxes are nearly merged together. Anyone else experienced this?

Solution 1:

Yes, lots of people have experienced this. It's a bug, and a weird one too. Sometimes switching to a short-barrelled gun helps; sometimes switching armour helps, of all things. It seems to be some weird interaction between V.A.T.S.' logic, and the animations and collision meshes of you, your gun, the creatures, or the shot – or all of them at once.