It's my bane of playing a Guns-using character: the game simply gives you so many weapons, many of them useful, that I can never decide which to use. Right now I'm level 24 and stomping around the wastes with Lucky (I want a .45 Auto Pistol, but PSN store's still down, sigh...), but I play a soldier who carries a main weapon along with her sidearm. So far I've narrowed it down to:

The 9mm SMG w/ Light Bolt: While not the most powerful, it has a high rate of fire and, loaded with Overpressure rounds, is likely to tear a hole in anything it's pointed at.

The Assault Carbine: Since the patch reduced the spread and added an innate AP value to the 5mm HV rounds, I've been watching this gun more closely. While it has less general DPS value than the 9mm SMG, it is more versatile, and can take on any armoured enemy in short order.

The Hunting Shotgun w/ Choke and Long Tube: Slow but powerful, this gun also has a versatility to it that the auto weapons can't easily match, and with the perk Shotgun Surgeon (which I have), armour is of little concern. The only downside is the slow reload time if anything survives the initial fight.

What do you guys think?

PS: What's the point of 12 Gauge Coin Shot? Legion coins are semi-hard to come by unless you're regularly killing Legion troops, so it seems to me it has more value as a 'I'm killing Legion with their own money, tee-hee!' thing.

Coin Shot is there to conserve lead for making other ammo.
My favorite instrument of annihilation before Honest Hearts was This Machine.

Yeah, though I haven't gotten to playing with Contrertas yet. But This Machine is definitely awesome, even after the patch to the .308 JSP rounds. I thought about using the Hunting Rifle, but I can never bring myself to use it. Using it pretty much exclusively in Fallout 3 until I got Lincoln's Repeater killed it for me, I guess. I like the Service Rifle, but it's past the point in the game where it's a good standby weapon.

With the new patch, both weapon mods, and surplus or hollowpoint ammo, the service rifle is actually a good gun all the way to the end. I use it for Cazador hunting.

Yeah, having a cowboy repeater and fully modded varmint rifle/ratslayer pretty much renders the service rifle extinct, IMO.

Believe it or not, the only 'cowboy' weapons I really like are the Lever-Action Shotgun and the .357 Revolver/Lucky. The others just aren't really my bag, though I admit I've done some epic shots with the Cowboy Repeater loaded with JFP before. The only 'problem' I have with the Service Rifle is I have trouble getting the proper sight picture, so I can't really use it for long-range shooting.

You're not supposed to. It's got .55 degrees of spread. Mid-range engagement only.

Ah, that would explain the misses, even with Trigger Discipline. I thought it was just lousy sight picture on my part. Then again, I've made some epic shots with the scoped 9mm, but that might've been luck, too.

I personally have 3 main weapons of choice (5 i can use/have in my inventory)

Long Ranged - Gobi Sniper Rifle (Carbon Fibre, -5 Weight)
Medium/Burst - Light Machine Gun (Ammo Drum +110 Ammo - 200 Overall)
Close Range/Messy - Riot Shogun (No Mods Available)

I have Joshua's Gun and a Minigun.. I have never used, but have them as i have alot of ammo and i may switch/sell if and when needs be..

If i have to use just 1 of the above, it would be the Light Machine Gun, Its pretty big, high DPS, and just looks pretty cool, esp with wearing Power Armour (T-51b), Daniels Hat and Shades (Just need a cigar in the mouth, front view when killing/spraying bullets everywhere.

I don't really favour heavy weapons, though when I do it's usually something explosive. Sometimes I'll have my character haul the Grenade Rifle around to explode a few people. Especially post-patch, where the grenades feel deadly.

Grenade Launcher is a bit better than GR, so I go partying with that when I feel the urge. It is sooo nice to get the drop on a big clump of nightstalkers or whathaveyou, and drop a round in the middle of them. Makes you wish VATS had a replay button... lol!

In case you haven't tried them, try some 40mm incendiary ammo with it, when you find clusters of enemies begging to be nuked... my word... I didn't use the incendiary stuff for a long time, because its damage/dps stats looked so much inferior to regular 40mm grenades... boy was I wrong! Regular explosives will blow them up in the air a ways, but incendiary grenades launch them all up in the air like mini-moonshots, trailing streamers of flame behind them like they were napalm bottle-rockets. Good clean fun. The only downside is, some of the remains may be hard to find, to loot... I've had incendiary munitions blow bodies clean out of the playable area, before... they landed somewhere in Idaho, I think...

Keep Lucky over the .45 as long as your crit rate is decent. Lucky is just damn awesome and arguably the best side-arm in the game, despite having clearly inferior DPH to the Ranger Sequioa.


What I do is a gun/weapon for every situation:

I carry Pushy for close range encounters.
I carry the Gobi Sniper for sniping.
I carry an Assault Carbine for cazador swarms/other possible enemy swarms.
Then I carry Lucky and a Brush Gun because both of them are just incredibly versatile. Sometimes Lucky is superior to Pushy, for example, if it's close-range with multiple spread-out enemies. Lucky gets the job done quicker since I don't have to run to each individual target and can also have a superior DPS to the Assault Carbine if you just take the time to aim, since it's more powerful (with Cowboy and hand loaded ammo, 47 damage a hit with a 50% chance of 30 additional damage) but still fast firing shots instead of weak but constantly firing shots. Lucky also has the added benefit of costing practically nothing in exchange for being very deadly, whereas the Assault Carbine breaks down very quickly and requires a lot of ammo. Other times the Brush gun is superior to the Gobi Sniper, since a sneak attack crit from a Brush Gun hurts like hell.


Just try grabbing one for close range (fist, shotgun), one for long range (sniper, lever-action rifle), one for mid range (lever action rifle, service rifle variant), one for spray and praying (SMG, LMG, assault carbine or mini gun; your preference) and one that's versatile. (Lucky) If you can ask yourself "what can this gun do better than any of my other guns" and you can't think of anything, put it away.

Easy, don't use them.
Go Energy Weapons with YCS, RCW+ or Holorifle.
Or Unarmed with Pushy.

I sometimes carry a combat knife as a role-play object, but I rarely actually use it (since my melee skills are not very high). Since I play on hardcoe, I tend to play more 'realistically', I like to think, carrying a main weapon and a sidearm, and usually not more than five or six reloads for it. The knife makes sense as a survival tool as well as a weapon, and I usually end up carrying binoculars, too.

As for what Gabriel said, this character isn't an energy weapons user. She's a former NCR soldier, and grew up in the closest things to slums in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Energy weapons are very expensive and generally not something she's comfortable using. As for melee weapons, she only tends to use them if in a pinch, but she is a semi-decent unarmed fighter. Just not fond of mechanical gloves and so on.

What are your traits?

I've got Fast Shot, Finesse, 10 Luck, Cowboy, Light Touch, Hand Loader and Joshua Graham's armor. All of that means that I literally crit just about every other hit with Lucky and Lucky's low spread (and the Hand loaded .357 ammo) cancels out the spread increase of Fast shot. The result is that I have a powerful, fast firing revolver that does a deadly 77 damage every second hit. This is why I specifically picked Lucky above all other sidearms: nothing can out-do it for my specific character build. It amplifies my strengths and reduces the degree of my weakness.

However, if you've got Trigger Discipline, lower luck factors and plan on getting the Grunt perk from the DLC, you'd want A Light Shining in the Darkness as your sidearm. It has higher spread and crits less, but fires faster and has higher base damage.


Same thing goes for rifles. The Gobi Scout Campaign Rifle fires quick and doesn't have enough spread for my Fast shot to be noticeable, and on the side it has a nice increase in crit rate and crit damage; something my build reaps the rewards of. If I had the Grunt perk and no particular interest in critting outside of sneak attack crits though, I would take the Survivalist's Rifle. If I had higher STR, I might take the Anti-Material Rifle. (though admittedly, this gun is VERY specialized and not of much use outside of sniping, so it's very cumbersome.)

For the same reasons I use an Assault Carbine instead of an SMG: Fast Shot limits me to a rapid-firing gun with much lower spread, which is either the Assault Carbine or a Minigun, which I don't have the STR requirement for.

It's all about just finding the right gun to compliment your character's build.

My Eli (from book of Eli) character right now is rocking only Liberator, Lever-Action Shotty, and That Gun.

I fully plan on giving him Dinner Bell, 12.7mm pistol or Light in the Darkness, and Gladius by the end of the game.


Now my last Cowboy toon used Ranger Sequoia, Trail Carbine with Scope, and Lever Action Shotty

My Sniper used fully modded Sniper Rifle (didnt use Gobi as it had no Silencer) or sometimes AMR and the 12.7mm Pistol Silenced.

Fun fact: with the Grunt, Cowboy, Slayer, and two ranks of Melee Hacker perks, Chance's Knife becomes the fastest killing machine in the game. Right behind it is the HH War Club with both mods, which will actually swing even faster.

Former NCR?
You could do a melee and survival oriented cannibal who's amazed at big screen House. (That's my latest character.)

Or... Roleplay as Jimmy T.
A punk who wants to become a big shot, strolls around in a suit with SMG's and revolvers only and thinks he's the big man around Vegas.
During the travels his mind grows darker and darker as he has to make difficult choices to earn money.
His plans on becoming a rich son of a gun at The Strip is abandoned for the new merc lifestyle that he adapted.

Ah, good ol' days.
Fun character to roleplay as.

But he's male...
Still, think up a role and roleplay then only use weapons suited for the character, in Jimmy T's case: SMG's and revolvers, and later on Liberator for Melee attacks.

Former, yeah. She's technically allied with them, but does not support them. She's going to side with House, simply because she respects his wisdom and his resolve. She hates the Legion, though their methods of brutal, unbridled justice do both terrify and impress her. She was so taken aback she could not bring herself to kill Vulpes when she ran into him in Nipton, though she had adequate room for cover and ammunition to do the job.

As for perks, I currently rock Shotgun Surgeon, Trigger Discipline, Finesse, Better Criticals, 7 Luck + 1st Recon Beret (not hers from her time in NCR, but a gift from Boone which she felt great respect for), and I plan on getting Grunt, yes. Cowboy is a fun perk, but since I really only like Lucky and the LA Shotgun, it doesn't benefit me as much as it could.

Well, I technically do favour weapons suited to the character, Gabe. For most of the early game she used the Service Rifle and 9mm Pistol (former issued weapns from her NCR days), but found her punch in close-range lacking, so she switched to a shotgun.

My fully buffed lvl 30 guns char can take out an advlt Deathclaw with one sneak-attack shot to the *torso*, with the Brush Gun. Who needs an AMR? :thumbsup: