Armor Piercing

Armor Piercing, or AP, bullets are specifically designed with a single purpose: to penetrate armor. AP bullets usually have a sharp point, and have cores filled with tungsten carbide or hardened steel. In Fallout, AP bullets have the effect of lowering the target's damage resistance, while decreasing the overall damage that weapon does. Due to a mistake in their design, AP bullets are actually vastly inferior to JHP or FMJ variants. Even against targets with high damage resistance, the reduced damage does not make up for the reduced resistance. In addition, AP bullets do nothing to reduce the damage threshold of the target's armor, making the armor piercing aspect less powerful than intended.


 * Fallout3 Doesn't have AP bullets. The only armor penetrating weapon in the game is the player created unarmed melee weapon, the Deathclaw Gauntlet not the strongest "unarmed" weapon in the game, but it has the unique property of ignoring target armor, which would make it as effective against an adversary in power armor as it would be against an unarmored raider.