Well after a little experience here and there i think the list of someting akin to:
1. Rocket Launcher
2. Flamer
3. BoS Hammer
4. Alian Blaster
5. Red Ryder(uniqe)


After some arguening i think the list is more akin to this:
1. Rocket Launcher
2. Power Fist(Slayer, duh)
3. Turbo Plasma Rifle(you could apparently get the attacks to cost 2 AP!)
4. Alian Blaster
5. Gatling Laser
6. Red Ryder
7. BoS Hammer or Ripper

I don't know where you get the impression that the minigun is pathetic, unless you're taking armour into account, in which case I'd also contest the power of the rocket launcher.

Though 'strongest' is a very black and white argument, it measures raw power. However the 'best' weapon is, arguably, the Alien Blaster, being able to tailor your character to make 6 unaimed shots, or 3 aimed shots, with incredible power.

I'd also personally pick the Ripper over the Super Sledge (BoS Hammer?) as I find it has a greater knock back potential.

The Alien Blaster and Turbo Plasma Rifle.

Since we have the other weapon skills covered already, I'd say the Power Fist is every Unarmed expert's best friend.

I'd like there to be more of an unarmed variety of weapons in Fallout. I like alot of what Tactics did with weapon variety, I mean c'mon, punch gun!? Sounds pretty awesome even if you didn't know what it did Hint: It involves a glove and a .12gauge

I second that.

Combat Shotgun can 1 hit kill everything but the Master.

itd have to be the flamer when you get a crit the enemy burstes into flame dances alittle and dies

You guys fail to mention the awesomeness of the .223 Pistol!

It is pretty awesome. In terms of being easy to get hold of, and not requiring a decent amount of luck to find the right special encounters, it's the best thing going. My main gripe has always been its small magazine limit, I like to build fast shot characters so small magazines can become a problem when you're using 2AP/shot However the main flaw with the .223 in Fallout 1 is that annoying hardcoded error in the engine that makes all the different ammo types, not different at all. So .223 FMJ just becomes .223 NVS (not very special ) but in light of this the .223 pistol is powerful enough in its own right to still be a win gun.

Minigun does 4-5 damage against my avatar with Combat Armore. And anybody remember the mess of entering the Mutant Base? They got 3 Super Mutants there, 2 with Miniguns and 1 with a Rocket Launcher and AP rockets. I remembering entering that base several times, easly dieing against the Rocket Launcher several times. And i dare anybody who is not using Improved PA to dare say they did not attempt to kill the guy with the rockets first.
Hmmm, never really tested out an Energy Weapon char with the blaster so would not really know. But it does sound powerfull. Also the TPA sounds powerfull, but not really tested so.....

My choice on the BoS hammer against the Ripper? I just got to say Burst to the Eyes for that argument. The Ripper also requires Power Cells, and the Hammer got 2 hexes range. I say they are about equal, but the Hammer does have a small edge.

I did the whole game only with Unarmed as a weapon skill. Trust me, the Power Fist is a very, very powerful weapon. Hit a mutant's head and you knock him. Hit his arm and you cripple him. Hit his eyes and he'll surely miss you at the next turn. Finally, hit his groin and you'll put him down for at least two rounds.

I did the whole Military Base with the Power Fist, the Combat Armor....and lots of stimpacks. Missile-Launcher wielding mutants can be difficult to kill.

Don't know 'bout FO1, but FO2s best gun is definately YK42B Pulse Rifle. It can deal 150+ damage to Horrigan in criticals and 50 in normal attacks, while Gauss Guns make barely any damage.

MIRV

Ahem.

Fallout 1.

Actually, I've done criticals of over 200 with the Gauss Rifle and Pistol against Horrigan, not to mention the over 400 criticals I've sometimes scored against Horrigan with the Bozar if I remember correctly. Not to deny it though, the Pulse Rifle is a very nice gun.

Fail.

Strongest weapon is the 10mm SMG. I have just started playing and I'm a small guns type so the burst is owning right now.

P.S. off topic can someone PM and tell me if the game actually ends like FO3 or is open ended like Oblivion

Open ended like any TES game. But if you do not have Killap's Unofficial Patch (NoMutantsAloud.com), then the people around you won't regonize that you have beaten it. It will be kinda like if in Oblivion you defeat Mehrunes Dagon and save the world but everyone still complains about Oblivion Gates layin' around everywhere. It's not intolerable though.

I have to somewhat disagree with the new list. For starters, you've applied the Slayer perk to the usefulness of the Power Fist, which I don't think is fair on the judgement, personally I think the slayer perk is extremely overpowered, and shouldn't be taken into consideration, but maybe that's just me.

TBP can at best be fired unaimed for 2AP a shot (FO1 only), though I imagine you may have misread the wiki, which is understandable

If Slayer was lvl18 to get, i would agree on Slayer. But lvl15 is reachable in contrast to 18.
In F2 its the exact same perk except they increased the level to 24(ridiculessy hard to reach).
The power fist is inferior damage wise, but Unarmed is made for Slayer. And the -1 AP perk...... I think the designers wanted Unarmed to be the most overpowered skill, in contrast to some other games.

Actually, the strongest weapon(s) in Fallout are THESE FISTS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8mfjw-qUBw

Hopefully that wasn't too corny

I just don't think it's fair to apply Slayer to the result if other weapon sets aren't going to get the same treatment. With your argument a powerfist has the potential to be bad-ass, but when you get down to raw power it's still just a powerfist. When you start throwing these variables in it becomes a whole new debate, and that's fine, but I think the two should be kept separate.

*sigh* Stop going of-topic! This is F1 not Waistlander.

Wow, wait till you get the BB gun... easy to find ammunition, great hit rate, incredible critical rate. Combine with PA and you will one shot super mutants like there's no tomorrow. BTW, can someone please tell me how to run in Fallout 1 without clicking on a character or object you can interact with?

You're humouring the guy right? You can't be serious about the ammo or the crit rate. Ok ammo's sorted if you know the stores that sell it. It's critical rate is no different than any other weapon though, weapons only work that way in FO3. It's also important to mention you'll want the Red Ryder LE BB gun. The normal Red Ryder BB gun is the weakest gun in the game.

You should be able to run by going into preferences and activating "always" on the "Running" tab. Your character will automatically walk if they're close enough to the object you're trying to interact with, but any other time they'll run. Or you could just just double click where you want to move to without changing the preferences.