Range is a weapon statistic that determines how far the equipped weapon can be thrown, shot or used.
Fallout and Fallout 2
Range reference. Characters are spaced out at 10 hex intervals from the Vault Dweller in the lower left corner.
Range in the first two games is expressed in hexes. No matter how skilled with that weapon, one can never fire it beyond that distance without the help of an appropriate perk or other special ability.
- Unarmed and melee weapons have a range of 1 hex.
- Spears, sharpened poles and sledgehammers have a range of 2 hexes. Some critters like spore plants have a special flag that allows attacking from two hexes away.
- Thrown weapons have a range determined by the thrown weapon, varying from 8 hexes to 20 hexes.
- Firearms have a range determined by the weapon, varying from 5 hexes to 50 hexes.
- The flamer and improved flamer have the shortest range at 5 hexes.
- Weapons can have different ranges even if they use the same ammunition. For example, the pipe rifle can deliver a 10mm round at a range of 20 hexes, while a 10mm pistol can put it in a target at 25 hexes. Shotguns vary greatly, from the sawed-off shotgun with just 7 hexes of range to the Pancor Jackhammer with 35.
- The greatest range of 50 hexes belongs to dedicated marksman weapons, like the sniper rifle, PPK12 Gauss pistol and the M72 Gauss rifle. This max range is represented by the female Vault dweller on the image to the right. Unless the games are patched with high resolution patches, it's impossible to scroll far enough to use sniper rifles and the like at max range, due to the camera being constrained to a limited range around the player character.
See Ranged combat for details on how range affects combat.
Fallout 4
Range refers to two weapon statistics which have three different uses:
- Every gun has a minimum range, out to which it will deal full damage. This is not displayed in-game. Its true value may be 12y + 11 for some y which is not observable to the player.[verification needed]
- Every gun has a maximum range, at or past which it will deal half damage. This is the stat that is displayed in-game in the Pip-Boy as a weapon's range; its true value is 12x + 11 for some x which is not observable to the player.
- Damage scales linearly from full to half as distance to target increases from minimum to maximum range. Scaling generally ends at the halfway distance, but not always; the game does allow effects to modify a gun's damage at max range, which is simply 0.5x by default. An example of this very rare effect is the plasma gun's flamer barrel, which scales to a higher number than 0.5x; the only other applicable examples in terms of weapon mods are the laser gun's two beam splitters, which scale their damage below 0.5x. This statistic is also not displayed in-game.
- The maximum range correlates with V.A.T.S. accuracy and has a significantly greater impact per unit than the weapon's listed Accuracy. This correlation is not well-understood, and it may be the case that minimum range correlates instead or in addition, due to the difficulties involved in backsolving from the numbers the game does provide, since in general things that modify a gun's minimum or maximum range modify both.
- A weapon modification that modifies the weapon's range modifies both the minimum and maximum ranges by adding a fixed value for the mod to the weapon's minimum range and another value to x, but it is not possible to directly gauge the weapon's minimum range. In fact, all guns have minimum and maximum range modifiers of 0 (granting all guns a baseline maximum range of 11) and at least one of their parts (typically the barrel) will have every possible mod adding some value to both the minimum and maximum range values. The ranges displayed on a weapon's page are typically normalized to the range given by its baseline set of mods. Examples are below.
- The 10mm pistol's range is 83 with its default modifications; this is actually the result of its default short barrel mod, which applies 3 to minimum range and 6 to maximum range, and (6 × 12) + 11 = 83. If minimum range works like maximum range, it will have a minimum range of 47. Every other barrel applies 5 and 9 rather than 3 and 6.
- The Gauss rifle's range is 191 with its default mods; the standard barrel mod, which applies 8 to minimum range and 15 to maximum range, and (15 × 12) + 11 = 191. If minimum range works like maximum range, it will have a minimum range of 131. The rifle's shielded barrel applies 10 and 17, which will replace the 8 and 15 (the result of the swap from 15 to 17 can be seen by inspecting the rifle), while the compensator applies -.5 and -1 and the suppressor applies -1.25 and -2.5.
- A weapon modification that modifies the weapon's range modifies both the minimum and maximum ranges by adding a fixed value for the mod to the weapon's minimum range and another value to x, but it is not possible to directly gauge the weapon's minimum range. In fact, all guns have minimum and maximum range modifiers of 0 (granting all guns a baseline maximum range of 11) and at least one of their parts (typically the barrel) will have every possible mod adding some value to both the minimum and maximum range values. The ranges displayed on a weapon's page are typically normalized to the range given by its baseline set of mods. Examples are below.
How weapon behavior interacts with range to a target outside of V.A.T.S. will heavily depend on other factors that cannot be determined at a glance. A hitscan weapon (broadly speaking, bullets and lasers) works by doing math on the player's distance to a target and then calculating both whether or not they hit and if so, the amount of damage, which results in a distance that cannot be observed. A weapon that fires projectiles that truly travel to the target (plasma, explosives, and ballistic weapons with unique ammo, like the railway rifle, junk jet and harpoon gun) will always hit something and some of them, like a missile launcher, functionally have truly infinite range where the only concern is damage fall-off.
Rifles tend to have the longest range modifiers for both kinds of range, although shotguns tend to have very low values. One of the easiest ways to test a weapon's range is by building a turret in a settlement, as it will not move and the player can use V.A.T.S. while standing a variety of distances away to roughly measure both accuracy and estimated damage.
Fallout 76
| Range Template | Max Value | Added Range |
|---|---|---|
| Point blank | 1 | +12 |
| Very short | 6 | +36 |
| Short | 9 | +108 |
| Long | 16 | +192 |
| Very long | 18 | +216 |
| Suppressor | -1.5 | -18 |
The game retains the effective range mechanics of its predecessors. Past effective range, damage will suffer significant fall-off.
Range is calculated by the following formula:
- 12(Base + Mod1 + Mod2 + Mod3 ....) = Range
The Base value is always 1 and the Mod# values are granted by the max range curve tables attached the weapon mods. For readability purposes, the base range stat on weapon infoboxes will always be the sum of the base and the default barrel modification. In this case, the Standard short barrel (Mod1) uses the short range template, making the Mod1 value 9.
12(1+9) = 120
So our new weapon range is 120 units.
References
The following links should serve as examples:
- Handmade rifle: Short Barrel
- Template: Short Range Barrel
- Handmade rifle: Long Barrel
- Template: Long Range Barrel
Out of range multiplier
If a weapon hits a target that is further than its max range value, it will deal reduced damage based on a multiplier.
Standard refers to every single weapon that is not otherwise listed here.
| Weapon Template | Multiplier | %Dmg |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 0.5 | -50% |
| Flamer | 0.7 | -30% |