What's everyone's opinion on the overall power of the various weapons in Fallout New Vegas?

For my first game, I'm primarily focusing on energy weapons, and was planning to eventually bump up melee skills a bit as well. I've been having second thoughts about that though - repair parts and ammunition haven't been very available, and damage output seems extremely low. I seemed to do similar damage with a Cowboy Repeater and 14 skill, and a Plasma Rifle with 65 skill (similar weapon conditions and basic ammunition in both rifles). It seems a little easier to land hits outside of VATS with the Cowboy Repeater as well, though the plasma projectile speed does seem a bit faster than it was in Fallout 3. Another drawback of the Plasma Rifle is that it eats up 2 units of ammunition every it's fired - ammunition which can be problematic (or expensive) to replace.

It's taking me many shots with laser weapons (and quite a few with plasma for that matter) to kill anything, even if I don't get the damage threshold alert on my target; I burned through ~50 shots with a good condition laser rifle and 65 skill to kill 3 lake lurks - which seems like an awfully steep time/ammunition investment. The only exception to my low damage seems to be when I get critical hits, which do enormous damage. I'm only level 12'ish right now, so I don't know what the late game weapon options are like, but so far it seems as though guns are the better option for ranged combat. Anyone else feel differently?

For getting up close and personal - I really have no idea how unarmed and melee compare to each other, since I've not used either one very much at all. Is fighting with your bare fists ever a viable option? I seem to do almost no damage at all with mine, but my unarmed skill is only like 10 or 15 (I think it was reduced by Good Natured?) What are the advantages of melee over unarmed? Is it only the weapon reach? I seem to remember Power Fists having very high damage output in Fallout 3, but I don't know if unarmed weapons still do much in New Vegas or not.

And lastly - explosives. Any opinions? I rarely used these weapons in Fallout 3, and haven't really been using them too much in New Vegas either. With my very low skills I'm not really doing that much damage, but did seem to cripple limbs fairly easily with the few that I've thrown.

I think Energy Weapons have been nerfed.
The good one's meant for high levels and dangerous enemies consume a crapload of microfusion and energy cells and most of them are plasma which can be very hard to shoot accurately outside of VATS.
So ammo drains very very very very quickly then if there isn't anything good to loot like NCR troopers [censored] service rifles then EW just starts to drain money like crazy.
I love Energy Weapons, the new guns are all very fun but they are really nerfed in my opinion in New Vegas.

It still seems that Guns>most forms of weaponry. Their ammo is more plentiful and there are just more of them.

Like in every fallout game except for EW in Fallout 3.
Well, except for the fact that Energy Weapons and Big Guns used to be good. >_>

I don't think the Energy weapons were nerfed because my favorite weapon is the Pulse Gun, which can take down a whole BoS base and any robots without even losing any health.

I'm now nearing level 15, and I can only speak on the guns skill. I have some opinions on which are best close, medium, and long range. But the ammo system is amazing, very cool depth to the game, which can make a big big difference. Choosing the right ammo for the enemy can be the difference in life and death.

For close range, the 10mm subbie seems to do the most damage, more so than the shot guns. You get three shots off in vats with each tick, and it's HUGE DPS. Extremely inaccurate, which is why it's only good at extremely close range. The hunting shotgun modified also works well, but the clip depth makes the 10mm subbie more appealing IMO.

For medium range, the cowboy repeater seemed to be the most accurate and most DAM gun until I came across the hunting rifle. Also, some pistols work great like the 10mm, .357 Revolver+, and .44+.

Long range, nothing beats any of the dedicated sniper rifles. Ridiculous high DAM, one shot kill almost always.

But the downside of Pulse Gun is that it requires 5 EC for each shot.
Meaning that ammo runs out pretty quickly.
And if you waste precious expensive ammo on things that don't give good loot (Feral Ghouls and random wildlife) then it drains money real fast.
(I don't gamble or anything so no, I don't have a lot of caps from Caravan games)

With a high Energy Weapons skill, Trigger Discipline trait, a few good perks and some ammo, everything seems to die in one hit for me.

Personally, I do not like energy weapons, I think it's to "futuristic" This is why I despise Halo. (I don't care what you think or say about that). I like the feel of more "realistic" weapons, so I stick with the Trail Carbine and the .50 cal sniper rifle, things of that nature.

Too... futuristic? :blink: Are you sure you're playing the right game?

Really? where is your repair skill at. With jury rigging, one "weapon run" will net me about 8000 caps per trip. i had all my implants and 1000s of ammo for each weapon before I was even level 20.

Did you take the scounger and fortune finder perks too? You're high level and powergaming by the sounds of it, not everyone is in your position.

Didn't focus on repair skill so I don't have Jury Rigging... Yet.
I usually don't go on weapon runs.
I know I could do that and I think I know where to do that but I hate "farming" in games.
Did that in fallout 3 and it ended with me having 5000 in every ammo type and over 800 stimpacks.
Not going to ruin New Vegas by farming this time around.

I'd rather have it that they should come up with new ammo types for Pulse, Multiplas, and Plasma Defender rather than having them require 5 EC, 6MFC and 3EC. (Actually, I find it to be very uncreative to just have them require more cells for each shot.)

Yep. The later level Guns pretty much mow over all energy weapons. Brush Rifle with Cowboy perk for the win.

Edit: @ above. With hardcoe though, you cant have 800+ for every weapon Maybe over 800 for two or three of the smaller guns, or a couple hundred of the .50 at a 1/4lb a peace..

I know, I am playing on hardcoe.
But one can still store ammo on followers and in one's safe-house.

I'm using energy weapons currently. Pretty satisfied, but repairing can be a little more difficult if your using one of the rare and powerful weapons. I feel a little limited just choosing between plasma a lazer. For some reason I feel like the GUN modding has more options than the EW modding, but maybe that's just me

The multiplas rifle is a beast of a gun, though it digests MF cells, I think 6 per shot.

Though other have been disappointed with DAM output for energy weapons, the critical strikes with some of the weapons do crazy damage.
I believe the rule of thumb for EW is lower critical rate / higher critical damage. Please correct me if im wrong.

After taking better criticals w/ and using the multiplas rifle, I was able to one shot the Death Claw Matriarch.

I would LOVE to hear some feedback about explosives.

Energy weapons are all about the crits. It's always been that way. Anyone properly specced for EWs will destroy when they get momentum.

Yup. I got 9 luck, built to destroy, that great beret, finesse, about to get the EW mastery perk. That gives you ALOT of criticals.

guns- pretty good through the entire game. ammo is everywhere and they aren't to shabby in combat. the best in the early game.

energy weapons- not great at the beginning of the game. but some of the later level energy weapons are great. ammo isn't everywhere, but not impossible to find.

Unarmed- terrible in the early game, at least for me. but after you find weapons like the zap glove and ballistic fist, you kick total ass.

melee weapon- i prefer Unarmed, but with weapons like the bumper sword and super sledge, it pretty good

explosive- not great. grenades svck in vats, and i have yet to find more then 5 C4. though i have not yet found the grenade machine gun yet. so maybe its awesome and i just haven't given it enough credit

So going by what you guys are saying about energy weapons, it seems as though the "later" weapons (ie, past laser and plasma) are strong, but eat up significant amounts of ammunition per shot? Hmm, not entirely sure how I feel about that. So far I've only found laser and plasma rifles/pistols, and not very many of them at that (I also found one laser "Tommy Gun" - but have miniscule amounts of ammunition for it and no like-weapons for repairs). I've heard about a particular type of enemy that commonly carries energy weapons, and I suppose I could go hunting some of them - assuming they're not too tough for level 12'ish.

Still, it seems as though guns may very well be clearly superior to energy weapons, assuming that they can kill the same targets in a similar number of trigger pulls. Using so many units of ammunition each and every time the weapon is fired seems like a pretty big drawback, in my opinion. For guns it's always one bullet per pull of the trigger (not counting some automatic weapons in VATS), and if each shot is doing similar damage to a comparable energy weapon, then that's a pretty big advantage. Plus, it seems as though all of the bullets I've encountered so far are lighter weight than their energy weapon counterparts.

Needing so many trigger pulls with my current energy weapons is a bit of a drag, and while it's nice to hear that higher up weapons can kill enemies faster, I'm sort of wary about the ammo consumption - especially if I'm in an area where the enemies won't be carrying any of the type I need. And this brings me to the point of ammo-less weapons: melee vs unarmed. Any opinions here? Without getting into spoilers, I know that there are a few situations where having a higher unarmed skill seems like it would have been really helpful - but would it have been? Has anyone tried going bare-fists with a high unarmed skill? Because with only 10 points, it took multiple punches to kill one of the little low level mantis critters

un-armed is really good. and by that i mean using an un-armed weapon like ballistic fists. if you have a lot of AP and a good un-armed weapon,then you are lethal in vats. i haven't tried it totally unarmed

So far I like guns and melee the most for all around weapons.

Guns are common, powerful, and accurate. Getting sneak criticals from sniping is pretty fun and effective.

Melee or unarmed are really strong with the Super Slam perk, it is almost overpowered. You can win pretty much win any one on one fight easily, even with deathclaws, because you can just knock them down constantly. Fighting large groups of enemies with melee or unarmed is a little more difficult.

Explosives have been a little disappointing. They are rare and expensive and don't seem that powerful. It is hard to justify using them at low levels because they are worth so much money. The main problem I had was that they seem like a waste against weak enemies and they are hard to use against strong melee enemies (like death claws) because they charge up next to you and you end up blowing yourself up. Mines are fun, especially bottlecap mines, but cherry bombs seem ridiculously rare so I haven't been able to make very many.

I haven't used energy weapons much, I plan to have my next character specialize in them. The recharger rifle has infinite ammo and is nice to use against weak enemies when you don't want to waste your expensive ammo. The Alien Blaster is crazy powerful, too bad it has a limited amount of ammo.

Its still early in the game for me, and I'm still low-level (very hard/hardcoe), but I'm having a blast with unarmed. I use the boxing gloves to knock my opponent out (takes 3-5 hits most times) and then smash their brains in with a 9-Iron while they lie there helpless. Good times.

In Fallout 3, the strongest point of Energy weapons, especially Lasers, is that the cost to use VATS is relatively cheap, and you can get a high amount of criticals. The same might apply here. As a rule, I think that Energy Weapons in Fallout are the high-end weapons, requiring extensive care, ammo, and stats to make the best of them.

IMO flame weapons need to be moved to explosives to make that skill worthwhile.

Plus the pyromaniac perk requires explosives anyway.