User Guide

GENERAL
At some point during your adventure, diplomacy or stealth
will fail. The last resort will be combat. Combat is defined when
you have an attacker attempting to do damage to a defender. It
requires two or more people to have a combat situation.
Combat in Fallout is turn-based. Generally, you will get a
chance to act. After your action or actions, the next character
involved in combat gets to go. When all of your opponents or allies
involved in this combat have taken their actions, then you get
another chance to act. This is called a new turn. This continues
until all the combatants are dead, unconscious or fleeing.
Since the rest of the game is real-time (one minute of real
world time equals one minute of game time, unless you perform an
action that takes an extended amount of time, or use the PIPBoy
alarm clock to rest), when combat starts you change modes to turn-
based. You will know when this happens when the combat buttons
in the lower right-hand corner of the interface bar are revealed.
When it is your turn the lights around the combat button will
glow bright green. During your opponents turn, the lights are red.
The action points above the active item button on the interface bar
will also glow a bright green when it is your turn, red when it is
your opponents turn, and dull green when you are not in combat.
Each combat turn is roughly 5 seconds of game time. It may
take longer in real time to finish, as you think about and then per-
form your actions for that turn.
Combat will often refer to hexes (short for hexagon, or a six-
sided polygon). A hex is a way of dividing the area of the battle-
field into small, manageable chunks. Each hex in Fallout is one
meter from side to side. Someone two hexes away would be con-
sidered two meters away.
VDSG – RESTRICTED – VTB-OO1-13
RESTRICTED 5—1
Figure 5-1: The Combat Button.
BEFORE
Not in
combat.
AFTER
In the
middle of
a combat
turn, your
move.
5