I never manage to get sneak attack on enemies with explosives.
Thrown weapons always alert them and the projectile one's are so loud that they notice me directly.
Besides.
I don't like sneaking around.

So, what is the down side from guns or EW. Cause you can drop anyone from a distance - AMR or Gauss(one hit kill). Or you can drop anyone upclose - Riot ShotGun/Multiplas......

Why bother with Explosives other then fun/novelity

Sneak attacks don't work with Grenades. You could just as well be standing there and let them charge.

Currently Guns have no downsides and it's not likely to change either.
And EW is too hand in hand with Guns to have their true downsides either.
So honestly?
New Vegas' combat skills all svck (IMO I guess) and are not properly balanced (IMO?) and won't change until maybe the next game.

How I interpret Guns and EW:

Guns should be the all around great availability class.
They have tons of weapons available for them right at the start and have tons of ammo as well.
All great right?
Yeah?
Well they don't match up to EW or Explosives in terms of damage.

Guns real Pro is it's availability.
It's Con is that once you get near the end level then your weapons that "do" good damage will require special rare AP rounds which CANNOT be crafted. So you've basically made the choice to have an easy ride all the way up to mid-high level, and now at very high level you'll suffer the consequence for it.

Now don't get me wrong, the end game isn't "impossible" for a Guns user.
But it's harder.
A lot harder.

EW is different.
Pro's
* Great damage. (A lot better than guns)
* Great critical damage. (Better than guns)
* Little variety in ammo.
* Great critical hit % (Better than guns)
* Very little spread with laser weapons. (All except gatling laser and RCW should have 0.0 spread, and even GL and RCW should be incredibly accurate)


Con's
* Scarcity of weapons and ammo.
* Expensive repairs.
* Expensive weapons.
* Expensive ammo.
* Horrible availability.
* Ammo weigh... A LOT!

So, EW is meant to be the top dog when it comes to direct damage. (Not AOE damage)
So what is it's con that is suppose to even it out?
Well. Ammo is [censored] expensive!
And it's rare as well. (Not like Alien Power Cells rare but yknow, rare...)
So finding 30 MFC would be like finding 2000 caps within the first 10 hours of the game.
It's power in direct damage is balanced by it's horrible availability and expensive items.

So missing 5 shots with a Multiplas Rifle would earn the TV a remote through it's screen.

Anyway, that's how I interpret them.
And no, this cannot be done in Vegas.
What's done is done.
All I can hope for it that by FO4 it's more along these lines.
Cause I don't believe that Guns and EW should be "equals".
On one side you have a bullet, on the other you have a freakin' laser beam!
They're not the same and should not follow the same tier system IMO.

Explosives have means to kill melee opponents and it is called " run in the opposite direction while dropping mines and grenades at your feet" and it worked to at least cripple the legs of opponents in my experience while minimizing collateral damage.

EDIT: @gabriel77dan

Guns are awesome if you use the handloaded ammo perk and the ammo is not very hard to make.

EW have tons of aoe damage with meltdown, but that makes their melee usefulness 0 unless flame weapons do not trigger meltdown (I killed groups of raiders with 1 YCS shot)

Explosives as a think now are only great against light armor targets except the change to missile launchers makes them the effective long range/single target option

O_o
I feel quite stupid for never thinking of this close-combat method. :facepalm:

Yep the run backwards and toss a mine at someone is a tried and true strategy.
It also requires less patience then the trap and lure, where you place mines stagered and fire a crouched grenade / missile at the foe..
If the missile hits and does damage it's a plus, otherwise they run into the mines, and you can finish them with a punch...
However it's a good idea to know what the foe is, in quarr junction I did this on all deathclaws and thought I'm free...
Headed out saw some shapes in the distance, planted my last 15+ mines in a loose pattern fired a frag, only to have a little baby D run forward and trigger every mine..
The other shapes were rocks gaaaaah.

Mines are so incredibly time consuming and expensive to acquire, isn't it ? and just as likely to mess up and prematurely blowup your trap; and still somehow end up relying on other combat skills.

Say if you were going to take unarmed anyway, might as well juice up on turbo and punch everything to death instead. Plus, Veronica approves.

Since Gab's view on EW is too "traditional", one which I do hate with a passion, I would simply make one statement: EW as late game Gun is lame.

Now back to the center of the topic. Yes under current GECK power we can only make a ball of explosive, but with some manipulation you can make something behave like a HEAT round for a single target; in short, AP grenades turn grenade launchers into low velocity ballistic gauss.

Umm... yes they do. I spotted an enemy behind a rock (saw it on the radar). I lobbed a grenade over the rock just for the fun of it. Sneak Critical Strike message popped up.

They might not work as good as "snipe from the shadows" kind of sneaking but they're good openers. Which makes explosives a secondary combat skill. Blowing your way up through the game won't work, no.

Not tryign to be a d bag but they did hire a well known gun nut to balance the weapons,its obvious there would be bias*ness*.Its trully pointless why the hell would the government make weapons that cost so much when a typical fire arm does the same or more even?Energy weapons are supposed to be superior but rarer in everyway due to the fact they were at a early stage before the end war.Tbh i wouldnt be so angry with ew if the bloody goo and ashe pile glitch was gone haha.

@Snowy - Sorry Grendaes/Missiles can sneak attack critical all day long. Take Living Anatomy and report back on the "extra" damage it did. Here is a hint - NONE.

On the mine drop Kite - that is a super lame strategy. I am going to run backwards while the monster WATCHES me drop mines and then the dumb thing is going to run right over it. Sorry, just rather pop the console up and type KILL. Way lame, even more lame then sneak attacking a group of Raiders that sit there and let you snipe them one by one. There is bad AI and then there is really bad AI.

Holy Grenades

But I didn't realize just how bad they were until I read that list.

If the AI had the opponents avoiding the explosives you would gain distance from them which allows you to use other explosives.... so I do not see your point. Either way it would work.

Deathclaws are known for their reasoning in tactics..

"I say someone appears to be dropping rudimentory fragmentory devices what, oh rather".
"I think I should desist in rending his head off in the most linear fashion, yes that's the ticket old pal" .

They wouldn't have to be end-game though.
Just rare('r) and more expensive and that their tiers' weapons are always better than Guns' tiers.

Which is what we have in NV after the patch? but you sounds like (to me) you wanna up the power of EW another level up.

Not really.
As I said, what I think EW should be like cannot be changed to the way New Vegas is designed currently.
They'd be more powerful than Guns weapons but their ammo and weapons would be more scarce, powerful and expensive.
Currently they're a tad expensive, but not powerful enough (without the Max Charge ammo.) and not scarce enough.
So what I interpret EW to be can't work with how NV is designed.
So no, I don't want EW in New Vegas to get a power up again.
Laser Pistol and Plasma Pistol should get higher damage though but other than that EW is adequate for now.

If you keep using OC/MC they are scarce:lol:

IIRC Laser Pistol is actually design as home-safety/law enforcement weapon (quickly check the Vault....I am thinking Wattz 1000:lol:).

Nope, just annoyingly ammo consuming.

You can justify however you want, it is a single player game. Play as you wish. You like to Mine Kite, I think it is lame and boring. Not to mention expensive/ineffective - how many frag mines does it take to kill a Deathclaw. - 8 -10. It still does not change the fact that explosives are weak.
:facepalm:

So....scare to use? It also increase repair rate.

*sigh*
Let's just drop it.
I don't feel like sitting here writing a post long enough to be a novel to explain in full detail how I mean.

New Vegas on the other hand, right now, you can get ammo too easy, so there is no scarcity of it.
Even if you use Max Charge it isn't scarce to find/buy/use/craft.

If you don't use the vendor reload exploit you only get like 20+x(single digi which the vendor sells)OC/12MC per vendor @ Lv30. This is even rarer than .45-70 Gov't outside of Hoover Dam. Fiends do upset this balance, but that's if you "farm" them.

If you kill the Van Graffs and BoS you would have 2 less vendor and 1 less source; although stealing from Van Graffs do set you up for the game (woops).

I don't use any exploit.
I don't farm fiends.
I don't buy from BOS or use their gift service.
And I don't buy from Van Graffs all the time. Sometimes, but not all the time.

The Wattz 1000 is designed as a such.
The AER 9 however is a military sidearm. It's damage is pretty abysmal and you're pretty much forced to forsake it for the plasma pistol first chance you get (despite the slow inaccurate projectile of the latter).

It would be best if they could give explosives a direct damage and a radial blast damage. That way you get a bonus for hitting a target properly. This would mostly work for hit on impact weapons like the grenade launchers and the missile launcher and perhaps mines.
Frag grenades should have a -DT bonus, for the shrapnel. The bottlecap mine as well.
Perhaps fire damage of the incendiary grenade would last longer or be upped a bit, since it already ignores DT.
Up the initial damage on mines while intensifying the drop of from the blast, to compensate.