Since Piper and I are now lovers I decided to give her a new pistol. I thought she would like a .44 snub nose revolver so I went with that. I had read here that if you give a follower a new weapon all you had do was give them 1 round of ammo and that round would sort of replicate itself. In other words, give them 1 round and they will always be able to reload. I also made sure the .44 was equipped.

The 1st fight we got into after that I noticed she was using her 10mm (Which I didn't take from her). I checked her inventory and the .44 was still there but the 1 (I think I actually gave her 2) round of ammo was gone. I think is what happened is she popped off the 1 or 2 .44 rounds then pulled out her 10mm.

After that I gave her a couple hundred .44 rounds and she is using the .44 in every fight now. No problem. I didn't check to see if the number of .44 rounds she has is diminishing and I can't check right now as I am stuck at work for a couple more hours.

Was I misunderstanding how a companion's ammo works? Have I simply lost my mind? Can someone clarify how a companion's ammo works in terms that even a dummy like me can understand?

Thanks

Since the 1 round thing was most likely a glitch, its not sure to work with every gun, or heck by now is patched.

Giving them 1 round only works for -settlers-. Not for companions. If you want your companion to use a different gun, you have to regularly provide them with ammo or they're just going to switch back to their default gun.

You can equip settlers with other guns and as long as you give them 1 round, they'll have unlimited ammo for it.

Followers burn through ammo just like the player. Settlers on the other hand only need the one round.

Thanks Remmus. I didn't know if the 1 round thing I had read about was a glitch or it was by design. I thought is was possibly by design because of how you don't have to feed ammo to the companion for them to use the weapon they come with.

I just meet Cait yesterday and noticed she only comes equipped with a baseball bat. If I would have to feed her ammo for any and all ranged weapons I give her that may become problematic.

Followers will burn through it alot faster than the player does. Unless of course the player has a habit of just unloading the weapon at a target even though they are behind cover. Followers just seem to keep shooting no matter what.

Got it Quantum & GK. That's where I was confused. That clears it up for me.

Can the settlers replicate missiles and mini-nukes same as they can with small arms ammo? That could be fun.

Yes, I believe so. Though I've never tried. I don't trust my settlers with a Fatman...lol They'd probably end up killing half the settlement during an attack.

Settlers can certainly replicate the 1 ammo with grenades.
Something I have learnt the hard way

If I recall Companions only use up ammo if they are actively assigned to you.
If you dismiss them and send them to a settlement they don't use up ammo.

if you want to give your companions a new weapon make sure you also give them plenty of the right ammo or they fo back to their default weapon,

1 round works only on NPCs. On followers it works only if they are not following you. When they accompany you, they need ammo.

Nah doesnt work for heavy weapons for those youll need to supply em with ammo, than again i dont think its a good idea to let em use fatmans or missile lunchers anyway.

I see. That's probably a good thing though really. A settler with infinite mini nukes trying to take out some blood bugs doesn't sound like a good idea.

Piper really annoys me when she chases after radstags, blazing that precious ammo all over the wasteland.

Note that if you give your follower a similar weapon to his / her default weapon, you still need to give your follower ammo to use weapon that you provided.

For example, Piper's default weapon is a 10mm Pistol. I found a 2nd Wounding 10mm Pistol last night which does an extra 25 bleed damage (I think). I am going to mod it and give it to her, but I would also need to give her 10mm rounds. Once she runs out of ammo she will default back to her own 10mm Pistol.

Jup magic free companion ammo only works for their base weapon which you can not modify.

Word of warning: companions spend ammunition like it's... uhhh... *insert euphemism here*


I gave MacCready a minigun and 9000 rounds of ammunition (console commands helped a bit) before my expedition to the Glowing Sea. Sounds like a lot, but he still managed to spend them all by the end of it.


It's not just the minigun, but all automatics.

Some friendly advice here. If you want to equip your follower with a bada** weapon, make it a slower fire sniper mod. Make the firing mechanism as slow (or as far wayfrom auto) as possible. This usually makes each round do more damage and your follower wont use as much ammo per fight. Cheers.

All my companions are prone to procurring new weapons on site a lot of times...

No idea where Hancock got that Flamer, but he's got a flamer now.

Piper also got ahold of a rifle somewhere along the line.