I don't know if this would ruin balance but New Vegas has a perk called Cowboy for western themed weapons such as the sequoia and cowboy repeater which improves their DAM by 25% or so, making them even more overpowered, could you create a similar perk for energy weapons or at least one which raises their armor penetration to 50%, the other energy weapon perks are frankly pathetic, laser commander is practically worthless. You could call it "Soldier of Tomorrow". Also, if you could, would you consider making the shotgun surgeon perk work with multiplas, tri-beam, and a laser rifle with a beam splitter.

Oh... Cowboy perk. <_<

"Soldier of Tomorrow" does sound like a cool name for a Cowboy-like perk for EWs. Though rote damage increase seems kinda bland... I'll ponder on something for it.

Shotgun Surgeon for the tribeam and multiplas seems a bit too specific IMO. Buckshot would handle a lot differently than laser beams or plasma bolts shot in a scattershot manner. Also, there's no known way to detect what mods a weapon has on it via conditionals, so the beam splitter is out of that. Beam splitter is broken anyway and does no damage boost, and in fact simply makes the laser rifle even worse against armor.

The Cowboy perk is intended to make 'Cowboy' theme characters viable later in the game, so you can run around with a repeater rather than a Marksman Rifle and not be totally useless. An 'All EW get better' perk doesn't help you theme characters, it does the opposite- every EW character would be pretty much forced to take it, eating up a perk they could've used for something interesting. If it's necessary, it should be folded into the base stats.
Good perk name, but sadly not good game design.

In that vein, I'd say 'Son of Nikola!', a perk improving the damage of all pulse weaponry, including grenades, as well as enhancing the Tesla Armor in some way.

Let the lightning flow!

Actually, according to the wiki the Cowboy perk increases the damage for the brush gun, all revolvers, and the ranger sequoia so it affects some of the most powerful endgame weapons so I disagree in that respect because cowboy themed characters would be quite viable without the perk, I think. I haven't entirely considered the ramifications on game balance so I will admit that something more interesting could be done, but now that I've got that off my chest what is your opinion on, say, reducing the degradation of energy weapons by 20% (even without accounting for OC or MC energy weapons degrade too dang fast), while all energy weapons do 15% more damage when repaired above 75%- I call it "Technophile" for the breed of character a little too comfortable with high end weapons.

@madcat

So, I take it you're not fond of the cowboy perk.

Yep, I'm not. It exacerbates the complete outclassing of the plasma rifle by the cowboy repeater, and throws in the plasma pistol getting the shaft compared to the .357 Magnum as well.

What do plasma weapons get in terms of specific perks? 10% AP use reduction. Woo. That amounts to... 3 AP less on the Plasma pistol/rifle. Which only makes a significant difference if you have between 80 and 90 AP, and makes no significant difference at all on the Multiplas. And that's available at L10 and 70 EWeaps skill, wheras Cowboy is available at L8 and 40 Guns.

I've fixed all this in my mod. I'm having a lot of fun playing as a crackpot scientist right now, he grills anything that comes close!

Aha, well I don't know if I'd describe your changes as a fix, they're a tad more band-aidy to me.

I'd still argue it's the perk's main purpose- Brush Guns and Sequoias might be top-tier weapons but they'll be the Cowboy's only ones- they won't have miniguns or antimateriel rifles, so they'll be stuck using weapons that aren't always appropriate. Plus they need a buff to account for the horribly under-armoured nature of Cowboy PCs- wearing light armour when you could be in Reinforced Combat Mk 2/Power Armour is a huge penalty that justifies a damage boost as a tradeoff (making cowboys glass-cannony lategame).

Technophile's an interesting one given how rare energy weapon repair parts are. It'll certainly change the way you play.

Perhaps two perks that exclude one another, which would focus on a plasma or laser weapons preference.

Also I always thought/felt that laser and plasma weapons were meant more as competing types of energy weapons rather than one being an improvement over the other.
In Vanilla it seems like plasma is supposed to be a step up from laser (in terms of both DAM and DPS). But their projectile speeds, spread and ammo consumption give them a more distinct feeling and a bit of a drawback.
I'd like both to be a bit of an option late game. Without hurting nerfing yourself very much in the process.
Your mod seems to be going in the right direction, but I'd like choosing between plasma and laser to be more like choosing between revolver or automatic pistol.

I'm going to add this to my mod, but here's the idea in case anyone else likes it: A craftable item called Solar Recollector, needs the Efficient Recycling perk + some scrap electronics and other materials to craft. It weighs 8 pounds, but carrying one in your inventory will slowly convert Drained SEC/MFC/ECP into filled ones as long as you are in direct sunlight. Carrying more of them will increase the recharge rate. I'm also thinking of a high-end craftable item that will let you spend Fission Batteries to do the same.

I think power from the skies would be a bit too easy, but fission batteries are a good choice. IIRC FWE had something like that.

There's a few mods already doing it http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36188.

Would it not be possible to release this mod now and then update it when the next patch is released? From the comments we've seen it sounds like they're just going to change the stats of the ammo types involved. Not anything that would be too difficult to adapt to. Plus, I want laser guns now!!

No, because there are other parts that are still WIPpy.

It has the potential to become either a overpowered thing or not be worth the weight. Depending on the rate of recharge it could make the workbench unnecessary for recycling and probably make the recharger weapons even more useless.

I'd rather the Vigilant Recycler perk did something more for EW-users. It's arguably more necessary than Hand-Loader, in that Energy ammo is scarcer and more expensive than bullets, but Hand-Loader is easily much more powerful.
Currently it's a purely economic perk and money isn't much of an issue in the game. Wouldn't really know what more to give it, other than some unique ammo types

Agree on this, IMO Vigilant Recycler perk can do with enabling more efficient receipts for Overcharged / Max Charged ammo. IIRC, current workbench receipts could convert 3 standard energy ammo into 2 overcharged ammo (66.7%) and 5 standard into 2 max charged ammo (40%). Maybe VR can enable significantly better conversions rates like 5 standard > 4 overcharged (80%) and 2 standard > 1 max charged (50%).

Or maybe enable a "Super-Charged" conversion receipt?! Say x2 damage but x3.5 CND?

Personally, I never used Max Charged ammo for anything save the endgame - but I remember converting my ECPs into over charged form en-massed for the Laser RCW (IMO one of the few decent damage / ammo efficient energy weapons in vanilla FNV) once I start swimming in caps.

Has anyone discussed a workaround for the four eyes trait involving helmets.

Anyway, I thought of a revamp for "Soldier of Tomorrow" which consists of +2 perception (+1 without the four eyes trait) when wearing a Power Armor helmet, raises the Damage per shot of the Gatling Laser, flamer, and Incinerators and by 8 points, and reduces AP consumption of energy weapons by 20%. It's a hearty bit of text, but it's meant to be used late in the game at level 20, science at 90, and energy weapons at 90. If it's under powered add an extra 4 units of damage threshold when wearing power armor.

I'd like to see all energy ammo always returned a Drained cell on use. The batteries aren't ejected like casings which may be lost, you just take them out and put them in your pocket. Currently the chances of regular ammo are about 20-40%, and max charge/overcharge 5-20% (!)

Any news or updates? Also, will this be compatible with http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1142839-wip-weapon-mods-expanded/?

Still in wait mode for the patch.

And yes, it'll be compatible. I've done quite a few meshing contributions to Antistar's mod in the interim since we decided to wait for the patch.

To fit in with the "theme" characters, how about a pulp-'50s Spaceman-theme perk? Basically providing a damage bonus to any weapon that wouldn't look out of place on a show like The Adventures of Captain Cosmos, which IMO would be the following, as well as perhaps granting a bonus of some kind for wearing the Spacesuit+Helmet combo:

Unarmed
Displacer Glove
Zap Fist
Power Fist

Energy
Recharger Rifle+Pistol
Plasma Pistol
Euclid's C-Finder
Pulse Gun
Alien Blaster
Plasma Defender
Plasma Caster
Tesla Cannon

Explosive
Pulse Grenade
Pulse Mine
Plasma Mine

I don't really think it should include the Multiplas/plasma rifle, IMO they look a bit too industrial/jury rigged for the theme, and the laser rifle/pistol are too square and modern by far. I was a bit on the fence about the Plasma Pistol due to the same reason as the rifle, but the fact that it's a pistol with roughly the right shape helps, plus the plasma arcs at the end just scream "50's sci-fi" to me.

Regarding the laser carbine.
Am I right in thinking that you will make it the Marksman carbine of EW?
I was just wondering if you intended every weapon to have an unique role or whether you would do some scaling.
Obviously the laser and plasma pistols look to be scaled. But aside from the pistols most EW weapons in your list seem to fill a specific unique role. (Aside from the tribeam and multiplas and the Wattz 2000 and gauss rifle)

There will be a "black" laser carbine that will be the Marksman Carbine of E-weaps. The vanilla one will be the Service Rifle of the E-weaps.

Okay that's cool.

Any new ideas now that the patch is out. I'll try it later today, but I'm actually waiting on FWT to start a new EW-character.

Space Cadet? A high-level perk that grants a DT boost so you can keep wearing the spacesuit when you should really have switched to something better, and then adds various benefits?
It'd be a lot easier to decide which weapons it uses by 'energy type' or ammo type (like Plasma, Pulse, Microfusion Breeder) than individual weapons, but given your list it'd be easy to cover them all like that.

The patch has unfortunately come out at the most inconvenient time, as Twin is currently away for a bit and my hard disk just died, so I'm in the process of redownloading FNV across a suddenly inexplicably terrible internet connection.