This is the first time I played an RPG that looks like an FPS and I the combat is kinda confusing. Mostly I can tell what iron sights mode is supposed to do, aside form binoculars.

Can someone explain it to me?

Two unrelated things:

Iron Sights:

Kind of self explanatory if you play both FO3 and NV.

In both games if you have a scope on the weapon, when you use the aim button, you look through the scope.

In FO3, if you use the Aim button without a scoped weapon, the gun is kind of held to the side, and and the screen zooms. FO3 does NOT have Iron Sights.

In FONV, it you use the Iron Sights option, then when you aim, you look down the barrel of the gun, and use it's actual "Iron Sights".

Most people seem to prefer having the "Iron Sights" option, as it presents more realism in aiming.


VATS

This is kind of throwback to FO1/FO2. These were Turn based, not action RPG games. Devs decided to a add a turn like combat mode. Activate VATS and you can rely on your statistics for combat, instead of your reflexes. So you can play this in more relaxed RPG stat mode. Combat gives you so many actions/turn, where you can in just pick your targets and have your stats determine hits.

FPS shooter fans tend to dislike VATS and deride it. I'm not much of FPS shooter player, so VATS was a big draw to let me play these RPGs.

FO3 VATS is considered to be more overpowered than FONV VATS.

Especially since there is a perk in FO3, that restores all your action points, when you kill an enemy in VATS, which means that later in the game you never run out of action points as long there are enemies nearby and can kill all of them in VATS.


In NV that perk only gives you a certain percentage of action points back.

I am not much of an FPS player so I tend to use VATS. Also, there were a couple times when I used Iron-sights where I should have hit the target but did not.

The ghoul runs up to me, whacks me in the face, I take one step back, point the plasma rifle at his gut, pull the trigger and nothing happened. His HP counter did not move so he took no damage at all. I thought maybe iron-sights mode is meant to make it play more like an FPS but how do you miss someone that close?

Still, VATS has its own share. There were times I had 98% to hit the target but my shot hit rock or something. Once I literally blew myself up with a grenade because I threw it and it hit part of a ruin building that was well over my head, but just a foot in front of me.

These are role playing games so your levels and such affect your chances to hit. It works so so in Fallout 3 and much better in other games.

Rifles miss more at very close range, both manually and with VATS.