Bah! Sneaking is for pansies!
No weapon can one shot rawr, But Mercy can make very quick work of any Deathclaw or Cazadore.
If they get into Melee range, Your not doing it right!

I don't remember VATS in FO1........

VATS is a situational tool. There are two cases I can think of off the top of my head: If getting a lot of bullets out there is more important than damaging the target is, like CZ57 vs Deathclaws, then VATS might not be necessary. Second, if you're shooting using a weapon with a scope, at long range you're actually better off doing it manually.

@Ledgend: In FO1, they called it "Aimed Shot".

-Nukeknockout

Pro's and cons time, all types of weapons.

Guns
Pros - many different types, wide variety of ammo (Especially with hand loader), often great DPS or DAM, wide variety of mods and easy to repair.
Cons - often lacking in DT reduction (unless 5mm, in that case lacking in DAM), often are heavier than the energy weapons.

Energy Weapons
Pros - Often more powerful than guns, easy to convert ammo, often have DT reduction, often lighter than guns of the same role and often require less strength to use.
Cons - Often Rarer than guns, heavier ammo in hardcoe, harder to repair and more expensive.

Explosives
Pros - Great crowd control, powerful as all heck, aiming is often optional and they often have lower strength requirements compaired to the level.
Cons - Expensive ammo, high colateral damage, and harder to repair and replace than even energy weapons.

Melee
Pros - Plentiful, potent up close, fast and/or powerful and easy to repair and replace.
Cons - Useless at long range (including spears and the like), you will be shot when going up against guns, and they are often fragile.

Unarmed
Pros - Varied, potient up close, wide variety of unarmed skills, cheap to repair and replace and tough as heck compaired to melee.
Cons - Harder to find than melee, useless at a range, you will be shot when going up against guns and often higher strength requirements compaired to melee.

In the end, there is no one superior type of weapon. It all depends on you style of play.

sounds like you came from playing a first person shooter and expected this game to play similarly

I have mixed feelings about what you said... On one hand, I do kinda agree, I don't really use any of the DLC weapons outside of the actual DLC itself. I tried the .45 SMG for awhile but it just doesn't compare to the Hand Loaded 12.7mm Rounds in a 12.7mm SMG (GRA). 57 DMG and 515 DPS is INSANE! I used Red Glare for awhile but the problem is that the splash damage from the rockets just doesn't do enough to enemies, even with Explosives Expert (3). Most of them just feel outdated after awhile, or useless. On the other hand, I have a few DLC weapons that I use constantly and one is the most powerful weapons I've ever seen. The weapon in question is the Saturnite Fist Super-Heated. With Slayer it attacks extremely fast and what it doesn't kill in a few hits it burns to death with its ability to set things afire. The Survivalists Rifle, while not as good for late game, is amazing for the first half of it. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but thats pretty much it. So, anyway, I will say again, I have mixed feelings, but I'm satisfied as it is.

No it's just that you're using a sniper rifle in VATS. Sure VARTS give you the +5% crit chance. You know what beats that? Sneak attack's +100% chance. Weapons like the Gobi are best used from maximum draw distance on completely unaware enemies. Sneak headshots do 8x normal damage, and that's without any crit damage perks like better crits. Also, as an added benefit if you use your sniper weapons outside of VETS where they are much more effective, you free up all those valuable perk slots for global damage perks that can help every weapon you use, BATS or not.

PS I'l take you on with your puny little bullet and I'll use my 40mm 'nade launcher. It this were the game or real life, either one, which one would you choose? I'm takin' the artillery, thank you very much.

-Gunny, former USMC 81mm mortarman.

Mortarman would be the wickedest superhero

I find the Riot Shotgun the most efficient weapon in the game - maybe not the best dam or dps, but with And Stay Back it makes any encounter a complete joke. You can waltz into any Deathclaw pack without a care in the world, don't even need any armor or stealth, everything will get knocked down and stay there while you take your time and fill them with pellets.

High Perception + Luck character EW> Explosives.

Wait, wait, high agi + crit stacking gear and/or perks Guns> EW

Oh, wait, that's right. There are a lot of different viable builds and weapon choices with none specific superior to the others. That's the beauty of Fallout: New Vegas.

Now that I have made a perfectly valid point, you may proceed with your regularly scheduled e-peen measurements. Carry on.

It's at least thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.

You make the most important point though. And you don't even mention role-play reasons why people won't even try to use the "most effective" weapons. I'm about to start running a Bond-like character (Bond. Bail Bond.) that will only use very concealable spyishlike weapons. After a certain point, and you've played all the different angles the game has to offer, you just want to do something different, rather that run yet another Supersniperarmoredtank character through.

And it really is thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.


Mortarman and his trusty sidekick "Why do I have to carry all this heavy [censored]man".

-gunny

I think I killed Rawr in one shot with the YCS/186 with Max Charge ammo and appropriate perks. But Esther with Big kid ammo and appropriate ammo should make short work of him. He would die from a heart attack before the mini-nuke exploded.

At the original post (get your abbreviations out of here ) I would exchange both weapons. First I would grab the Survivalist's rifle. It uses the easily obtainable 12.7mm, has pretty quick reload time, The normal damages are about the same, but with perks the Survivalist's Rifle's normal shots can almost match the Gobi Rifle's critical shots. Plus the clip size is biggerm and it shoots faster. The only thing that the Gobi beats it on is spread and that is due to it being a sniper rifle, the Survivalist's rifle is still good medium range.

And for the closer range variety of targets I would switch your SMG with the riot shotgun, much more diverse ammo types, even to kill robots if you have GRA, and the ability to set things ablaze. It also has much much higher damage than the 12.7mm SMG if used properly, and the ability of semi-auto makes it very good even against fast enemies. It's large clip for a shotgun also keeps you safer than other shotguns, and due to the ammo being in a drum it reloads quickly too.

Edit: Explosive weapons are arguably the best if used correctly. You just have to have every perk you can get for them. I have also used VATS to kill people in one shot from Mercy that was a considerable distance away. It is always fun to count the seconds while watching the shot fly through the air, then the unexpecting enemy gets it in the face. Also everyone seems to forget about Annabelle, that thing with HE ammo is devastating, and most likely kills limbs in one shot if it doesn't get the enemy.

I've one-shot Rawr with both the holorifle and anti-material rifle.

On flat terrain cazadores are easy to take out with the grenade MG, but in hills they can fly up to you before you kill them. With a gun or energy weapon, you can immediately enter VATS when one gets near you and shoot it in the wing to prevent it from flying up and stinging you. With any kind of explosive weapon it's harder to react to something that gets up into melee range without damaging yourself or your companions.

VATS was in Fallout 1 & 2 in the form of the targeted aiming feature.

I still think you all are missing the OP's point. He plays stealth, VATS, probably likes scoped sniper type rifles and likes an SMG as his side arm. With all the DLC's nothing compares to the Gobi and 12.7mm in HIS opinion. We can all say that other "rifle" and "SMG" type guns may or may not work better but for his play style those are the 2 best.

No, if stealth is what he is going for, Christine's COS rifle would be much better with its natural silencer. It also has a critical chance of 2.5 opposed to the gobi's 2.0, so guess he found a new rifle right?

Yeah, for a stealth character I would use either the COS silencer rifle or Paciencia. Paciencia because it deals a massive amount of damage with a sneak attack critical, and the COS rifle for the reasons you pointed out.

I personally play a stealth based character and I use the COS Sniper rifle, doesn't mean that for his playing style that I'm right and he's wrong. You have to be comfortable in which weapon you use and he's more comfortable and feels he does more damage with the Gobi.

I think most of these arguments can all be boiled down to play styles and personal preferences. Its neat to read the back and forth's though and its always cool when Gunny chimes in (I always picture R Lee Ermy whenever I read his posts, though I doubt he's that old). Perks factor in so much, and with so many build options, it's harder to nail down what is the best weapon in the game.

I love sniping and blowing things up at a distance, plus having the option to nuke it from orbit just rules with me. But there are times when up close with VATS just feels right. This is Fallout after all and not a run of the mill FPS. Being a former grunt I always feel obligated to take that perk (pisses me off no-end that it doesn't affect GRA weapons) which makes most 40mm weapons much more effective. I tend to avoid most energy weapons that leave goo and ash piles to try and lessen bugs, memory leaks, and such. One day I may throw it on my PC just to play with mods again.

I personally prefer to carry a mid ranged battle rifle of some sort, which is why I like the Survivalist Rifle so much. But in terms of versatility I have yet to find a perfect replacement for the All American. The biggest problem with that gun though is the lack of pure damage per shot, but the AP cost is so low it's really not too much of an issue unless you're going against the Divide's Deathclaws.

It also has 62 damage normally, and with its few perks it is even better. The only rifle I take over it is the suppressed Anti-Materiel Rifle, and over that is the YCS/186 due to it being more powerful than the anti-materiel rifle.

Not if you're sniping at a Cazador.

Re: Explosives- One of their oft-overlooked advantages is VATS accuracy, counter-intuitive as it is. You can reliably score hits with 5% or less hit probability.

Also overlooked is one attribute that no other weapons class has: Indirect fire. All other weapon classes, you must see your target to hit it. Using explosives you can bounce grenades around corners, shoot over hills, lay mines in likely avenues of approach, etc. Since we're talking about killing cazadores, one of the easiest cazadore hunting methods I've found is to take one of the grenade launching weapons, get ED-e with his enhanced sensors perk and go fire for effect. You can use Ed-e's perk to find targets well before you can actually see them, use parallax to triangulate their distance and then unleash a barrage of grenades at them, even firing over large terrain features at hidden enemies. I once cleared out all the cazadoes in the NE section of the map without barely even seeing any of them. Locate target. Fix target. Fire adjusting rounds. Adjust fire. Fire for effect. Dead cazadores. Walk over the hill and loot corpses.

This can only be done with explosives. And that doesn't even cover indoor techniques like bouncing 'nades around corners, using the new timed munitions, placing minefields and luring enemies into traps. Maybe I'm biased (OK, I am biased. I've blown more [censored] up than most folks I know) but artillery isn't known as the King of the Battlefield for nothing.

-Gunny

I ruthlessly abused the Grenade Launcher's looping fire when I ran Bruno through Honest Hearts, and often killed the White Legs lining the river banks before they could actually see me since I typically hugged the rocks along one side and would detect them while visual was still blocked by the rock face and then fire over the top of the 'wall'.

I used to do the indirect fire trick with the Heavy Incinerator.

I've just started my first Explosives character, after long agonizing over which traits to take (ended up with Kamikaze and Loose Cannon). Still not a fan of timed explosives, mines and grenades, but I plan to practice. I can see how the mines from Primm and the Powder Charges from Powder Ganger camps can be useful for boobytrapping the Powder Gangers' approach route in Ghost Town Gunfight, and later on doing the same to Legion troops at Bitter Springs.

Hmm, I wonder if I can use Gas bombs to pre-boobytrap the rooftops that the Fiends spawn on during the Ranger Morales' Corpse quest...

P.S. Isn't it a pity that you can't use frag grenades to boobytrap doors?

Actually Christine's Silenced CoS Sniper Rifle is better than the Gobi-Campaign sniper rifle in every way! :biggrin:

A courier armed with Mercy and 40mm Plasma Grenades is a destroyer of worlds. I know cause I just got through building up my Explosives specialist and I obliterated every Deathclaw and Marked Man at the Courier's Mile on Very Hard by just straight up blasting everything, and no strategy. But that still doesnt mean it's the most efficient weapon cause you can only rely on it if enemies arent too close to you.