You don't worry about stuff like that because it's ultimately unimportant to creating varying effects on energy ammo? Especially considering that Fallout's world follows a different set of rules than ours for this sort of thing.

It's still far off the beaten path. There's still some level of true-to-realism. It's not "ultimately unimportant". The projectile is not the munition like Guns, the projectile is generated by the weapon using the "ammunition" as a power supply.

As I said before, plasma weapons fed by MF cells can get around it by saying the plasma was from the MF cell, but beyond that...

Thing is, there are energy weapons now that are SUPPOSED to be useful mid-game. Stuff like the plasma and laser rifle are not viable lategame because they are overshadowed by their stronger counterparts, and yet they're far too weak to be used at the stage in the game for which they are intended. THAT's a problem.

As far as the Tesla-Beaton Prototype goes, I think 10-15 ammo a shot would be more reasonable.

I also view the homogenous ammo supply as a DISADVANTAGE; given that most vendors have a tiny amount of MF cells and ECPs compared to the Guns ammo they have, and how fast Energy Weapons burn ammo, it's not a good situation.

It's hardly that unreasonable, as there's a bunch of other things you can change on an energy weapon- the lenses, the focusing arrays, all sorts of technobabble gibberish. So the alternate ammo can simply be a different setting, delivered through the mechanism of ammo.

Pretty much this, like a stun charge that does fatigue damage instead of regular damage.

Hmm......that is very interesting. Would it help to create a mod that adds new types of energy weapons into the game and mod the already existing ones? Thing is, I looked over the damage the energy weapons did in Fallout 1 and 2 as well as 3 and I have to say that in FO1 and 2 the energy weapons where not that powerful. I noticed that when I used the Classic Fallout Weapons pack for FO3 and the FO2 Laser pistol did less damage then the regular FO3 laser pistol. If New Vegas is supposed to play more like the classic Fallout games, then I can see why the energy weapons are not very good to begin with. On the other hand, energy weapons are the most advanced weapons in the Fallout world and should do more damage.

I also do not understand the whole "lasers can go through armor" thing. Aren't lasers SUPPOSED to go through all types of armor, expect Combat Armor and Power Armor? Its a bit of a anachronism that energy based weapons are less effective then bullet based ones. But this problem already existed in FO3 as well, I think there where mods that solved this problem.

It seems to me that energy weapons are going back to how they were in fallout 1 & 2, that is to say they are more of a support weapon spec to compliment your other choice and aren't to be fully relied upon until much later in the game. In FO1 & 2 you wouldn't even get your first laser weapon until 1/4 of the way into it practically, and they weren't that superior to other combat specs until much later into the game. In FO1 & 2 you would start with say, small guns and later in the game, if you wanted energy weapons, you would tag energy weapons, but would not tag energy weapons at the start, expecting to be able to rely on them for your entire playthrough. The same thing went for big guns, though that's no longer an issue.

I really have no problem with it working that way assuming that they do get better at higher levels, because at higher levels they should be better than most other weapon specs, assuming you built your character right. Again, I haven't really used energy weapons, when i do though, I plan to start with guns and later, tag energy weapons.

I just wonder if by buffing energy weapons to be more usable early in the game, will that make them brokenly OP later in the game? I guess I'll see how they work out when i try them.

I looked over the damage again from original Fallout 1 and 2 and have to retract what I stated previously. The Wattz Laser pistol has damage states raging from 10-20 and the Laser rifle damage from 25-50, compare that to the New Vegas Laser Pistol and Rifle: Pistol does 12 damage Laser Rifle does 15, so yeah, the energy weapons in Fallout 1 and 2 where a lot more powerful then in FO3 and New Vegas.

Guess its time to get to work and port the classic Fallout weapons mod over to New Vegas, using the original weapon stats.

You cant do a straight comparison of FO 1&2 weapons to FO 3 and NV weapons because of how different the games are. Heck you cant even do a straight comparison between FO3 and NV because of the introduction of ammo types and DT.

I've only started to use the Q35 and was thinking it was underpowered against anything that has any kind of DT. Against stuff like Geckos it just tears them up, but against stuff like Deathclaws, even with Max Charged cells, it just bounces right off of them unless it crits. It doesn't make sense to me that a really big bullet does more damage than super heated gas and pure energy to a flesh based target.

As for the ammo usage, for things like the Gauss gun and Tesla cannon it is kinda nice that they tried to balance them compared to the FO3 ones that were just kinda thrown out there with no thought put into them, in FO3 they are stupid powerful and use next to no ammunition, which in the Tesla cannon's case is just doesn't make sense. However, I think when using over and max charged ammo all of the guns should use less ammo than just normal cells. Is there a way to make them act like that?

Classically, lasers always had problems with armor, I remember specifically, in Fallout 2 when you attack the Salvators, it was very difficult at first, but if you were able to get a set of metal armor first, it made it fairly trivial. Instead of taking 15-30 dmg per shot you took about 5 dmg per shot. Unless of course you were a high level when you do it.

It makes sense when you think about it too, a bullet has a chance to penetrate armor where as a laser really does not unless it cuts straight through, which would require more prolonged fire at the precise point. IDK much about plasma but in FO 1&2 i seem to remember that doing better than laser against armored targets but I still am not sure that it did as well as guns using AP ammo, or the Gauss rifle, which was in the small guns category in FO 1&2.

Here's the thing: I would be fine with energy weapons being solely extremely powerful, late-game weapons.

But they AREN'T in New Vegas. There are energy weapons that are fairly accessible. As such, those weapons should be balanced equivalent to other weapons of their level, but they aren't; the Plasma Rifle and Laser Rifle svck. Pretty darn hard.

Energy weapons don't get any better at higher levels than Guns do, the difference is Guns are more viable earlier on than Energy Weapons are.

I also do appreciate that they tried to balance the Gauss Rifle and the Tesla Cannon, but they overcorrected severely.

Except making them lategame only weapons means an Energy Weapons character is much more expensive to play because you need enough skill points to get guns to ~50 early game so you don't svck utterly, then buy EW up when you get them. It also means Energy Weapons is a trap choice- whilst to all intents it *appears* to be a valid tag choice at the start of the game, it's not- it's a waste of SP and you only find that out in play. Ever tried the first 3-4 hours of F2 with EW tagged? You don't have enough SP from levelling to up something else, and you can't find an EW. It makes combat utterly unfun, and it isn't apparent to you that it'll be the case until you start playing. Trap choices are a significant games design flaw, and one RPGs suffer from all too often.

To make things worse, energy weapons weren't better than everything else- sure you had the Gatling Laser and Turbo Plasma, but they were no more powerful than the Gauss Rifle, despite the significant extra skill cost.

Wondering about buffing early-game EW breaking lategame is, not to mince words, stupid as there's a pretty clear weapons progression- upping the damage of early-game guns isn't going to affect the power of lategame ones because they are different guns.

It's not like energy weapons were designed to replace small arms or anything...

Energy weapons should outclass small arms to the nth degree, it is what they are designed to do, obviously they should have the disadvantage of being more rare, their ammo more expensive, and they are more fragile than small arms. However in this game energy weapons have 0 benefit over small arms, even the mighty gauss rifle can be replaced by the Anti-material rifle.The Plasma caster can be insane with fast shoot trait and the electode upgrade but the realisation soon hits that the gun only has 95 points of health.

In a word Energy weapons were a total failure in fallout new vegas.

We'll than like most RPG games, sometimes it takes playing with different builds before you figure out what works for you, that's just part of RPGs. And as far as the SP issue, I ran out of places to put points at lvl 24 now im just dumping points into repair because guns, science, speech, and lockpicking are all maxed so I don't think running out of SP is really that big of an issue.

I disagree, they may not have been more powerful than the Gauss Rifle but their ammo was much more common than Gauss ammo, not to mention the Solar Scorcher and YK42B. In fact if you compare the actual stats of the weapons the energy weapons blow the small guns out of the water damage wise, the only reason they balance out is because it was incredibly easy to make a sniper character that could 1 shot with pretty much any gun with a 95% chance to hit in the eyes at max weapon range.

Maybe it'd be different with energy weapons since they use the same ammo but I use all the guns that i have gotten, i even still use the 9mm at times, same as in FO2, my favorite gun in that game was the .44 magnum with a speed loader, used it through the entire game.

You may not think so, but in FO 1&2, energy weapons were the best in the game once you got to a certain point, if it's not like that in NV than i'll agree that it should be changed to be so, but I'd rather see it done like FO2, where they were more endgame weapons, and not something you can rely on throughout the whole game. Just my opinion though.

I think that we should make the energy weapons like this:

Lasers have a chance to randomly bypass DT(depending on skill level), slightly higher damage(but still very weak in comparison to the plasma), higher critical chance and increased critical damage because they are precision weapons.
Plasma on the other hand, should have a higher damage output, slightly less critical damage and chance and consumes more cells than the laser rifle.
Also I think that we should make them very rare, expensive, more durable but harder to repair.
I also think that we lack variety in the death animations for the energy weapons.
If the values were fine tuned then they will be more distinct and different from guns and explosives.

Personally, I really have to disagree with you on this one.

As someone who loves Energy Weapons, I'd really, really like to be able to use them for as much as possible. I'm fine with them being a bit harder to obtain, IF they are proportionately stronger. Thing is, they are harder to get, take more ammo, and are weaker. It's just bad. Making them absurdly powerful lategame weapons isn't the answer either, because it a) reduces enemy variety and B) is unfair to Energy Weapons fans.

Lasers in particular are unbelievably weak in NV, all kinds. The only one worth using is the Pew Pew 75 DMG Laser Pistol, which still eats half the clip per shot.

Say I wanted to use the best Laser Rifle I could find. AER14 Prototype, and compare it to the second best Project Rifle: Trail Carbine

WEAPON-----------------Base DMG---------Mod. DMG------AP-----------Crit---------STR-------Ammo

################################################################################################

Trail Carbine-----------------45------------54 (-6 DT)-------21 -----------x1-----------5---------SWC(Handload) +20% DMG -6 DT

AER14-----------------------22--------------38.5------------20------------x2-----------3---------Max Charge +75% DMG -150% Cond.


If I add in perks, things seem to get worse, Laser Commander increases DMG and crit by 10%, but Cowboy increases dmg by 25%

I understand that allowing them to be used through the whole game could make some people happy because it would add variety to your weapon choices, but i really liked the way fallout 1&2 did it, it made more sense as far as the game world. They were relatively new tech, not even fully implemented into the military when the bombs fell, so finding a ton just seems not right to me. But I am also a big fallout 1 & 2 fan so i probably have an unreasonably biased view that fallout 2 did no wrong.

I will say that i greatly dislike how they tried to balance energy weapons by making ammo weigh so much and firing cost so much ammo, and making them break like 5x faster. I mean if a weapon could only fire some 50 times before its not usable anymore than that's not really a practical weapon and would not have been produced.

Since they are experimental weaponry and are MILITARY tech they should be deadlier, rarer, harder to repair and the like. (please refer to my previous post)

Ah man, have you opened any of the FO2 critter proto files and looked at them in a hex editor? Well no, I guess you haven't, since that's only for people like me, who have no life But anyway, armors in fo2 (which are stored separately in each NPC's file, meaning you have to edit 500 files for each armor type you want changed) have ridiculously high resistance to Laser damage. Laser weapons are useless in Fallout 2, but the Turbo Plasma Rifle and the YK Pulse Rifle can get pretty nasty, though the Gauss Rifle (which is not an Energy Weapon) owns anything. I've changed that in my mod, but from the get-go Energy weapons are pretty lame in Fo2, until the endgame where 2 of them are pretty good.

Energy weapons are cool though. I think they should be a viable choice as a main damage dealer for a Science/brains type character, which is why I'm going to make sure that they're useful enough for such a character to use in the early-mid game. I might do some changes to the endgame energy weapons too, but I think ammo scarcity is a good thing. In any case I have to finish my Hoverboard mod first.

I think that the recharger rifle should be turned into the solar scorcher.

Well, yes but I still think that if anyone ports the Classic Weapon mod over to NV, that the ported energy weapons should use the original damage types. I also know that in FO2 the Advanced Power Armor has a 95% laser resistance so energy weapons dont do jack. Still, I always wondered why Metal Armor does protect against lasers as well. I can see that with Combat Armor and Power Armor, but Metal Armor?

Also, whats the whole "Damage Threshold" thing? What the hell is a "threshold"? I am German btw and unfamiliar with that word.

Sure energy weapons should be harder to find and maintain, but just having a higher DAM as the trade off seems like a pretty boring solution to me. Energy weapons have a potential for some unusual and 'mad sciencey' type weapon mods, the beam splitter was a good idea, so was the stun beam idea from this thread and there's 'scope' (no pun intended) for a lot more. Like one that allows laser weaponry to fire a constant energy beam, charge shots, plasma shots that burn through and destroy armour, flamers that cause NPCs to panic and flee, loads of things.

Threshold: The point that must be exceeded to begin producing a given effect or result or to elicit a response: a low threshold of pain.

In the game, this means that a weapon with less damage than the target has of DT is only going to be doing 20% of it's damage the target (this is a min damage they added so that you can still do damage to the target). So say a target has 20 DT and you use a gun that has 18 damage, you will only be doing 3.6 damage per shot. What i'm not sure about is if, say they have 20 DT and you have a gun that has 25 damage, does it just subtract the 20 from DT so you do 5 damage?

Also, DT is maxed at 45.