Ah level scaling ...
Recently completed the Mothership Zeta mission (it's one of the Fallout 3 DLC that are included in the goty version)
And it was absolutely horrible from start to end.
Oh not the mission itself , the concept and the events happening within this rather long mission are really fun and good, but it was absolutely horrible because of level scaling.
Not being aware in advance of what level scaling was doing to that specific mission, i had delayed going after all the DLC mission for after i had completed the game main campaign and its side missions.
By the time i started Zeta, i was level 26
I had noticed already some of the DLC mission were much less fun they could have been due to level scaling that made combat longer than they should be with enemies being too resistant for everything that wasn't the endgame weapons, but still it was nothing in comparison to what the level scaling did for Mothership Zeta.
without spoiler, in Zeta you'll fight an insane amount of enemies , i think more than in any other Fallout 3 mission as it felt more like a FPS than RPG at some point.
But half of those enemies are coming with some kind of energy shield that surround them.
This shield does not have any weakness against any type of damage and provide a direct % of damage reduction to the enemy, meaning said enemies become bullet sponges (high level scaling health + high damage reduction to everything), additionally it seems localised damage does not do much against them so forget headshots killing things faster.
In any other places and dlc, in Fallout 3 due to level scaling the enemies with more health take more hits befory dying even with the best weapons available.
But in Zeta the level scaling affect not only the enemies, but it will affect those special shield damage reduction percentage, and if you're high level those makes fights against those particular type of enemies taking a ridiculous amount of time (and there are a very lot of them).
So before going Zeta make sure you're not high level when you'll start that mission, if you're at level 20 their shield lower 50% of the coming damage, at level 25 it's 80% of incoming damage resist , and that shield can level scale even further !
If you're high level, make sure to take a lot of healing items before starting Zeta (because the ones you'll find in zeta never heal you fully) but still it's just not fun at all.
There exist a mod that can tone down that ridiculous shield level scaling , i just wish i had knew that before