I was hoping to get some feedback from anyone who has made a character that predominantly uses Heavy Weapons such as the minigun, flamer etc.

I had two questions on this subject:

1) Given the scarcity of the ammo for these weapons and the fact you will only find any quite a ways into the game, is it a good choice for a primary weapon type?

2) Does the Gatling Laser/Minigun benefit from the Commando perk? (% increase for automatic weapons)

Thanks.

Not a good choice early on. You will not be able to find enough ammo, even if you use *all* the heavy weapon options. However, once the brotherhood shows up, *and* you have have a tier 3/4 weapon shop.. it might be possible.

Minigun use a lot of ammo to kill, and it is expensive to buy them.

you can try Gatling Gun, it have a mod that make it shoot slower but each shot is as strong as a laser gun. the down side is it always use full fusion core instead of using the partial used one. your ammo list may end up full of lot of fusion cores

there is another problem with Big Gun is that each big gun is very heavy. if you want to keep multiple copy of big gun, you will very likely have no weight and space for it. you will likely have to use power armor.

and if you don't keep multiple big gun then you will need to invest into multiple weapon perks,

Hmm alright. I guess I will look at the Heavy Guns perk as more of a 'cherry on top' perk to get towards the end rather than making an entire character build around it.

i have a character that use rifle for normal encounter and big gun for tough fight. sometime when i feel like fun i will bring my Boardsider, Minigun, Galting Gun, Missle Launcher (have to use power armor to bring them all)

btw all of below are base on level 50 in survival mode, and 5/5 perks in big gun

Boardsider - Very good against big creatures like deathclaw, radscopion. good shortrange, with upgrade you can shoot 3 canon balls. my general weapons for shortrange deathclaw encounter

Minigun - Very good against swarm of weak enemy. There is a building that got like 20+ feral ghoul and will just swarm you, i just bring my minigun and spray them. they are either dead or all of their limbs are detached for you to execute them. not good against tough enemy even super mutant. they just eat too much bullets

Gatling Gun - Good strong general usage weapon with the damage upgrade, you shoot slower but stronger attack also got good range and accuracy. It is like automatic laser rifle but stronger. my weapon of choice if going against lot of super mutant, gunner...etc

Missle Launcher - Upgrade with quad barrel with targeting system. shoot and forget. got a deathclaw matriarch lurking far away? mark and shoot. got a mirkluke queen spitting acid to your face? mark and shoot. got a scary behemoth coming to you? mark and shoot. none of them can eat more than 2 missles and with your reliable auto target system you can gurantee hit

Fat Man - just for fun. totally not practicle. but while you at it, mod it for MIRV for shooting cluster of mini nukes. because why not?

Which weapons actually class as heavy guns?

For example is the gatling laser not an energy weapon?

Also there is some inconsistency between websites with some suggesting missle launcher is a heavy gun and other saying it is explosive damage category?

The Gatling Laser with the charging barrels is probably the most efficient gun in the game.

It does healthy damage per hit, decent accuracy and ROF and a massive magazine capacity.

If your prices with vendors is decent, it becomes cheaper to buy ammo for it than .38.

It's probably the last weapon you'll encounter, but once you get it it'll be all you need.

A single core will see you through entire enemy camps.

Any weapon thats big enough to either be something your character rest on there shoulder (like the missile launcher or fat man) or being held in a chainsaw grip (like the flamer, junk jet or minigun) fall under big guns.

And actually the missle launcher is a rare exception, as it is actually affected by both perks, most other weapon is only ever affected by one weapon related perk.

Would the gatling laser and flamer also benefit from the energy damage perk then?

i guess Gatling yes, but not sure about flamer. probably no one know until creation kit come out

Mini-gun is useless, does so little damage compared to the resources (ammo and weight) it takes to use. Not sure about the other Heavy weapons, but even the missile launcher does not seem to be all that powerful.

I was trying to do a Heavy Gun build second run through but it's just not viable as an exclusive weapon type. So I'm using Rifeman and Heavy Gunner perks. First play through I used Gunslinger and Commando. Commando had no noticeable affect on the minigun. Heavy Gunner does though.

Edit: Although at the moment I've only got a minigun, rocket launcher and Fatman.

then i guess you haven't invest into the big gun perks. try fully perked on big gun and go against something like mirelurk queen. it only take me 2 missles to take one down. and i have fully perked into rifle man. i need to empty whole sniper clips of plasma sniper rifle (12 bullets) to take one down