Hey, everyone, this is my first post on the forum.

I've been playing NV since a couple of months after it came out, and I currently have all the DLCs. One thing that I have noticed, which was also present (though much worse) in Fallout 3, is that many of the weapons in the game are superfluous. This is especially true in the DLCs.

Basically, I have found that a Guns-oriented character is best off with the Gobi Campaign Sniper Rifle and the 12.7mm SMG.
The Gobi Campaign Rifle has incredible damage (especially on a critical), reasonably quick reload time, excellent armor penetration, rapid fire and not-too-explosive recoil. It has some of the best Hand-Loaded ammunition, the .308JSP as well as easy-to-obtain armor penetrating rounds for robots and other heavily armored beasties. It functions, not only as a sniper rifle, but also adequately as a point-blank rifle (I have murdered plenty of death claws spraying GCR fire at them while running backward, they're so big it's impossible to miss...)

The 12.7mm Submachine Gun, on the other hand, has a very high rate of fire, decent reload time and magazine-size, enough damage to get through even most armored enemies and thousands upon thousands of rounds can be obtained from Contreras and Gun Runners.

There is basically nothing else, even in the DLCs, that competes with these two guns for efficiency of blowing peoples' heads off. Some of the weapons, such as the .45SMG, the LMG and the Anti-Material rifle, do offer viable alternatives. However, the .45SMG does less damage and the magazine-size is rather irrelevant since most enemies are encountered in small groups and "reloading in the heat of battle" isn't very dangerous at all. The LMG fails to compete simply because of spread, relatively weak per-shot damage and poor armor penetration. The Anti-Material rifle does amazing damage, as is a great rifle for boon, but its slow firing speed, insanely expensive and rare ammo and crazy recoil give the Gobi the edge.

Other competitors would include the Shoulder-Mounted-Machine-Gun. A nice weapon, but it actually fires rather slowly, has inferior per-shot damage to the 12.7mm SMG and is incredibly expensive to repair.

I think by this point I've used or seen used practically every unique weapon in the game, but I still don't see any competition for the GCR and the 12.7mm SMG as the ultimate kill-spree weapons, especially when combined with the relevant perks. The Gun-Runners Arsenal, while introducing new weapons, actually exacerbated this problem by introdicing the 12.7mm SMG [GRA], which is even more over-powered than its vanilla brethren.

It seems like, if I want to play efficiently, I will more or less ignore all the DLC weapons, as they just aren't worth the ammo, caps and weight; especially considering how trivial it is to get a 12.7mm SMG and GCR fairly early in the game. I'd still be using the same 2 guns I used on my first character!

Not really complaining here, just pointing out that in the numbers game - especially in VATS - a lot of the newer weapons fail to offer a real alternative to the old-standbys.

I also find explosives useless 99% of the time, since it's usually just easier, faster and cheaper to just VATs everyone in the face from half a mile away. The damage and splash-radius of explosives in this game is underwhelming, to put it lightly (a rocket launcher that can't kill everyone in a 10' trailer is a lame rocket launcher).

I've found the same is true of armor. There are some good light-armors in the DLCs, but for medium-armor users the Combat Armor Mk.2 is the best except for the unique Elite Riot Gear, and for heavy armor most of the Power Armor is nearly identical.

Red glare, Holorifle, Esther, ALSID, and Survivalists rifle.
Your arguement has been invalidated.

The Holorifle is so-so, but it's also an energy weapon.
Red Glare is one of the best explosive weapons, which is to say, inferior 99.9% of the time to any decent Guns weapon.
Selling rockets > using rockets. If rockets actually killed people and had a radius of more than 5 feet it'd be a great gun, but it's much faster to VATS everyone in the face than to bother spraying expensive rockets everywhere.

It's also, monetarily, vastly more effective to only use 1 or 2 weapons, and of the same ammo category. I break-down and convert everything into 12.7mm and .308JSP, meaning I can fire all day and night without worrying about ammo.

Holorifle is very powerful, just ask users here on the fourms.

Mercy, GMG, Red glare, Esther, Fat man, Thump-Thump, 25mm APW, Grenade launcher > Guns, EW, Melee, Deathclaws.

The Survivalists rifle is easier and better to use than both those guns, uses the very abundant 12.7mm round and Very durable.

I have never found explosives of any kind better than the Gobi. I have used every weapon you mentioned, with 100 Explosives skill and the improved radius and they still blow. I sold all of them after finding them basically useless, expensive and dangerous.

For an explosives weapon to be useful it should kill most human enemies within 10' with one shot. Otherwise it's just a really terrible sniper rifle.

I kill 90% of enemies with one head shot that costs less than a cap. Can't really beat that.

You understand nothing of expolsives.
I can kill anyone, Anything, with Mercy on VH, HC, in less than a clip.
Gobi cannot compare to that, It lacks power.

Mercy>ALL
Master Chief>Mercy

I've used mercy extensively. Just because you can kill people with it does not make it superior to the Gobi. And I critical almost all the time with the Gobi, which means it does more damage than mercy. And the bullets cost a cap apiece. It also reloads faster and weighs less. Considering all the loot I haul around, that is important.

And kill any enemy with less than a clip? I can kill almost any enemy with one shot from the Gobi. Especially with improved crits, elite riot gear, finesse, a 10 luck and Boon's ranger cap.

Mercy Does over 350DAM per shot with 40mm Plasma.
"Just because you can kill people with it does not make it superior to the Gobi"-I beg to differ. A Weapons goal is to kill people, Mercy is the best for this role.
Criticals mean nothing to me, DAM and DPS are all that matters.
Caps mean nothing to me, there too easy to come by.

Kill Ulysses with one shot, On VH of course.
I will send you a bottle of champange if you manage it in a clip.

Almost every shot I take is in VATS.
Almost every shot I take is a critical.
Criticals matter, with high-crit weapons like the Gobi. Especially with sneak attacks (50% of all attacks I make, at least) which is an auto-critical.
Caps matter if you want to have unlimited ammo and perfectly repaired weapons and armor all the time without carrying around/collecting weapon repair kits.

Thats all I needed to hear(Or see).

I would agree that the DLC weapons are about the same in power as the New Vegas weapons but there's no comparasion for the armor. The DLC armor destroys the armors you get in New Vegas.

lol, is this some kind of Fallout elitism? "WHAT KIND OF FOOL USES GAME FEATURES TO HIS ADVANTAGE?!"

VATS ups criticals and it allows you to pull off headshots on people you can barely see. Once your skill in the relevant weapon is high enough it is a no-brainer to use it whenever possible, especially since lots of AGI, Action Boy, Nerves of Steel and Grim Reaper Sprint means you are almost always able to use VATS against EVERYONE, headshotting a room clear in a couple of seconds. Obviously melee and explosives don't fit into this, which is yet another reason they are inferior to guns.


Elite Riot Gear is great, but I was not impressed by the others. The skill boosts/stat boosts are irrelevant...all the stats I care about are at 9 or 10 already (starting Charisma and Perception 1 FTW!)

I don't think that DLC weapons should or need to be so powerful that they invalidate the standard weapons in FONV. DLC weapons should offer the player new variations and features, new styles of weapons, but not necessarily a weapon that just does overwhelmingly more damage than any other weapon type available.

Yeah I suppose you could call it elitism.
By using VATS you have not actually used the weapons themselves.
VATS takes out the challenge and difficulty of combat.
When you beat the game on VH, HC without VATS, only then can I see merit in your choice.

Explosives>Guns.

Urr, if I wanted to play Halo? But I bought an RPG.
Anyways, I couldn't give a crap about this gamer BS. I'm talking about what kills stuff in the actual game, not some arbitrarily-self-limited nonsense you decided to play. Almost half the Perks in the game are VATS related. As long as VATS is still in the game, my point stands: explosives fail. Whether that's true in the game where you make up rules and choose not to play effectively is neither here nor there.

To the OP: I would suggest using Paciencia (GRA) instead of the Gobi rifle if you are going for critical hits. Paciencia is capable of inflicting massive amounts of damage if you score a critical hit, and it uses the same .308 rounds as the Gobi rifle. I would also suggest replacing your 12.7 mm SMG with a .45 SMG if your going for the best stats. The .45 SMG is capable of the highest DPS out of any weapon in the game, and it far exceeds what the 12.7 mm SMG can do.

Here is a thread you find interesting: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1235883-damage-calculations/page__hl__damage+calculations and http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1240728-more-damage-calculations/

If your interested in seeing what any weapon in the game (DLC included) can do, then ask http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/user/585390-46acp/ about his Fallout New Vegas Weapons Damage Calculator. It calculates damage and critical damage for every weapon available and also accounts for factors such as chems or special ammo types.

Just checking but you have been using the right Perks in conjunction with these weapons correct? I always found that with the Grunt Perk and the handloaded ammo from the Handloader perk that the .45 SMG was far superior to the 12.7 SMG. It's so good that I don't even use the .45 SMG as it seemed almost like cheating. Similarly you may get a nice surprise if you use Explosives weapons in conjunction with 3 levels of Demolition Expert. Thump Thump with 3 x Demo and Grunt on top of that is pretty impressive and dirt cheap to keep in ammo.

The Gobi Campaign rifle is also a good weapon but not that much better than the COS sniper rifle that it justifies the amount of skill points you have to dump into Lockpick to get it.

To the OP. Have you by any chance tried Christine's COS rifle from OWB? The damage is MUCH more powerful than the Gobi's and its crit chance is also higher. It's not a straight upgrade though since it wears down in condition much quicker and the Gobi technically have a higher rate of fire (though barely noticeable imo). At the end of the day it really depends on how you like to play the game. I personally find that using sniper rifles in VATS is a bit of a waste since to get in close enough range to use VATS in the first place already places the character in 'mid range', in which case there are better alternatives i.e. the Survivalist Rifle. If you're going for the sneaky 1 hit kill when out of VATS, then definitely get Christine's rifle purely for the fact that it's silenced and it's so powerful per shot.

Oh and welcome to the forums!

Don't make me do math.

You really don't want that.

It's not that they should be more powerful, it's that most of them will only be acquired in a DLC after superior weapons have already been found in the Vanilla game. I mean, going through a whole DLC just to sell all the loot because it's unnecessary and you don't have ammo for it is kind of meh.

And, I know some of the other rifles have a better straight-critical, but the Gobi is extremely useful as a close-range weapon, too, since it will still critical, is reasonably accurate even while running and tends to cripple enemy limbs with one hit even without a critical.

I do snipe a lot, but I more-often-than-not just shoot people with the Gobi within 10-30'. It's quite easy to get right up on someone and still be 'hidden', and it works fantastically as a room-clearing device. I often don't even get shot at in a battle because of that.

I do take your point that with Grunt the .45SMG would do murderous damage, even more than the 12.7mm, unfortunately I'm not interested in the other weapons Grunt covers. The .45SMG is already (even without perks) one of the best guns in the game, though, it's pretty comparable to the 12.7mm in most respects.

Explosive weapons are not generally intended as a "one shot insta-kill" against solo targets, so don't expect to be using a rocket launcher or thump gun as a replacement for a sniper rifle. Explosives are designed for splash damage, the ability to injure or kill multiple targets with a single shot. And all explosive weapons have a variety of munition types available, allowing the player to select his munitions depending on the situation.

The Red Glare fire rockets, not missiles. Didn't you ever pay attention to what those rockets looked like when you picked them up? They were smaller than a cigar, with the entire magazine of 13 rounds being crammed into a beer-can sized canister. It relies on multiple rounds fired rapidly to produce the overall DPS, but it offers a lower dam/shot. While it looks neat and has an almost endless supply of ammunition, it lacks the overall firepower of other explosive launchers (missiles, nuke, AGL, etc).


Personally, I find the 25mm APW to be the most effective explosives weapon overall. It has a pretty low weight when compared to the GMG or Mercy, and isn't much heavier than Thump Thump or the other M79 clones. The APW doesn't have a massive dam/shot, but when fired in bursts it can still deal a lot of damage. It has a pretty fast reload for such a weapon, and an excellent RoF. You can burp out all 8 rounds into a cluster of fiends, or pepper an area full of plasma grenades. Add the fact that it offers five munition types, that makes it a very versatile weapon system.

One of the advantages to using grenade launchers is that they are a low-velocity munition, capable of being arced into places where you are unable to fire rifles directly. So you can still engage targets hiding behind cover, or you can thump the bad guys who are on a ledge above you. Use the timed grenades, and you can bounce them around corners into rooms full of baddies without ever exposing yourself to enemy weapons fire.


If your character is configured to rely on stealth or critical hits with firearms, then it's understandable why you would find explosives less useful. Getting away with a clean headshot is always going to be more effective than simply spamming an area with things that go boom. But I like having the option of killing enemy that I can't even see yet. Like lobbing a Big Kid nuke over a crumbled building and wiping out 5-8 fiends with a single shot. Or dropping mines/satchels along an approach route, shooting a bad guy in the face, ducking behind a wall, and hearing bangs followed by raining body parts as his buddies take the bait.



As for using VATS for "every kill", I think you're overdoing it. VATS wasn't intended to be used in such a manner, hence the limited AP. And if you somehow manage to have enough AP there to wipe out "entire rooms of enemies", then you must be high on chems. Personally, I consider it exploiting. I don't see why you'd even want to play like that, this is an FPS and not some turn-based strategy game. You are completely removing the player-based skill from the equation. In other words, it's an "Easy Button".

Your point is invalidated by the fact that you have only gotten spalsh damage perk for explosives.
Explosives are the most powerful weapons in the game.
VATS is like a cheat.

*snorts milk*

Explosives are top tier weapons man! The best explosive weapons can trump the best EW/Guns weapons.

All of the weapons categories, and pretty much any weapon in the game, can be devastatingly effective but each demands a different overall build and strategy. This gets repeated on several levels down to each individual weapon. Guns -> Grunt weapons -> SMG -> .45 SMG for example.

Guns are, traditionally, the "easy" weapon skill in Fallout. Guns are powerful, reliable, and everywhere. It's easy to work with guns because for the most part, you just sneak up to your target, and pull the trigger. Boom, done. It's almost unfair to compare Guns to other weapons skills simply because it's so practical. Pistols and SMGs synch with VATS, Sniper Rifles come with that freaky scope, and Miniguns are just mean. For cost-efficiency, Guns are third-best.

Energy Weapons have had a varied experience in Fallout. In the first two, EW were rare, expensive, and hard to find ammunition for, but inflicted vastly increased damage compared to Guns and were absolutely LETHAL under a crit-heavy build. In New Vegas, EW aren't easy to find or reload, typically inflict less damage than a comparable gun, and do not have specialized ammunition types. However, Energy Weapons have awesome crit damage, their supply problems are mitigated in the late game, and EW includes three of the most powerful ranged weapons in the game: Alien Blaster, YCS/186, and Tesla-Beaton Prototype. Energy Weapons depend on a crit-heavy build with a player who is able to locate a steady supply of power cells.

Explosives are designed to damage multiple foes rather than destroy one. I haven't used them an awful lot except the mines, but the mines are seriously incredible. What is it about letting the enemy walk into it's own death while you do nothing? Explosives don't synergize with VATS....at all, really, but there's a lot to be said for firing Red Glare's clip at the ground underneath the two Deathclaws that are charging you and seeing Red Glare cripple all legs involved. If you're a cost freak, though, using Explosives is going to slowly drive you crazy.

Melee Weapons are for people who don't want to worry about ammo. Melee Weapons are reliable against all sorts of enemies after a couple perks and when combined with poison, they can bring down just about everything. Interestingly, gun-armed NPCs are both the designated counter for this strategy and the favored prey of Melee Weapons.

Unarmed is the most cost-efftective fighting style in the game. The only thing you have to worry about is medicine and weapon condition. You can never lose all your weapons, you are always a threat to what lives...Unarmed is for people who don't like Melee or who just want to be sure nothing can bring them down.

I'm personally playing a Melee/Unarmed character at present, and the above is my take on this whole thing.

-Nukeknockout

There are a few problems with explosives weapons, though, beyond the DPS.

1) Explosive weapons and sneaking do not exactly synergize, while guns/energy weapons do. At least not to the same degree.
2) Explosives are less effective than guns and energy weapons against the two nastiest opponents in the game: cazadores and deathclaws. You aren't going to one shot Rawr with a grenade MG or Red Glare, and the best way to prevent Cazadores from hitting you is to cripple their wings in VATS.
3) Explosive weapons aren't that great of a choice for things that get into melee range for obvious reasons.

Obviously if you don't use VATS explosives become relatively better, but I don't know why you wouldn't use VATS in a Fallout game. It's been around since Fallout 1.