How does Range affect damage in Fallout 4?
This question acts as a followup to How is incoming damage calculated in Fallout 4?
I have the formula for how damage is calculated normally, but I am under the impression that at least ballistic weapons have a range modifier to damage, e.g. they do less damage at greater range.
What is the formula for this damage modification?
Solution 1:
A weapon's range value is the maximum range within which a weapon does maximum damage. Exceeding it, the damage output will increasingly decrease until at twice the range and after, the damage output will be halved.
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A weapon's 'Range' (which is likely in in-game meters or (more appropriately) feet) is the distance after which a projectile's speed (or damage) deteriorates, or, in the words of the Fandom page:
the furthest distance that a particular weapon will deal its maximum damage outside of V.A.T.S. and additionally affect the chance to hit a target when using V.A.T.S.
It can thus be interpreted as "maximum optimal range".
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According to the Damage Resistance page on Fandom, weapon damage beyond this maximum range will decrease the damage up to 50% when the range is doubled:
PaperDamage
=WeaponBaseDamage
xRangeMulti
( x Perk 1 × Perk 2 × ⋯)where
RangeMulti
is 1.0 at 100% WeaponRange or closer, 0.5 at 200% ofWeaponRange
or farther, and scales from 1.0 to 0.5 as range increases from 100% to 200% ofWeaponRange
.This applies to projectile, close-combat, and energy weapons.
From some point onward, the damage will drop to 0, but this is beyond the vanilla maximum NPC draw distance.EDIT: each weapon has an
Out-of-Range Multiplier
value. It is true that for most weapons this value is0.5
, but some weapons deviate from this (like the Assaultron Laser, which only decreases to0.8
).