You'll be pleased to know someone has already addressed this: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36165 Though I myself was thinking perhaps red rings on the barrel but keep the light near the ammo-drum green, a sort of "everything is OK" indicator. Perhaps even have an animated light that changes colour like on That Gun and Plasma Defender.



There's a mod that adds an extra energy weapon vendor to an abandoned bunker: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36861

Also, if anyone has issues with Gloria van Graff's shop inventory never changing (still just laser rifles and plasma rifles at high levels, etc), there is a fix here: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36785
At first I thought it was a lazy fix because it completely removes the level restrictrions so everything is available if you have the caps... but then I discovered that with level restrictions the shop inventory will not respawn properly, any mod for it that still uses the level restrictions suffers from the same problem as the vanilla game. So unless Obsidian patch it themselves somehow, this is the best possible fix.

Madcat221's already made a lovely laser pistol with iron sights. http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34847

As a side effect, it makes it a fully automatic weapon, necessary to avoid animation problems. But the rate of fire isn't any faster than the semi-auto rate of fire if you clicked your mouse finger rapidly. So basically it just saves your finger some effort rather than changing the weapon balance in any way.

Note that if you want to try the "refurbished laser pistol" which does 15 damage rather than 12 then the textures might be in the wrong place, I think they are in meshes/1handpistol when they should be in meshes/weapons/1handpistol.



Bear in mind that the actual raw damage figures of the weapons have increased. So a laser rifle does 18 rather than 15, and with the focused optics upgrade that is up to 22, AND combine that with reducing DT by 25%, that should be enough to make quite a difference. And a plasma rifle would be doing 38 instead of 32 damage, and again reducing DT by 25% will give that some extra oomph.

In any case, we've been discussing various options when it comes to armour piercing. We might have a system where you can convert a generic microfusion cell into a Focused Laser cell or something, which would only work with laser rifles, and that could give a big -DT effect similar to conventional armour piercing ammo. And maybe "phased plasma" for plasma weapons? A bit like the "focused" and "spread" options in the ECKO mod, but specific to a weapon type.http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36426

I've never been entirely sure what the hell "phased" plasma is supposed to be... I understand how a laser can be in phase but how does that work for a plasma bolt? But they say it in the Terminator films and also in Babylon 5. And to me making it "phased" sounds like a good excuse for extra armour piercing, heh.

Who cares? It's not science, it's SCIENCE!

cheers, your evil twin - you're a lady and a gentleman!

I'll give that laser RCW wotsit a spin, and the other mods, too. Still, it'd be nice to have all that stuff in a single ubermod rather than having to download several mods.

I have an idea for the AER 19. Maybe it could fire a continuous beam of green laser on an enemy and have an effect where the longer the beam is in contact with the enemy the higher its damage slowly becomes. ( this is like the voidray of starcraft 2)
edit let me add please make all energy weapons rarer.
EDIT AGAIN It seems that people have problems with the 25% DT reduction maybe you could implement a chance to ignore DT for normal shots for the laser because they are precision weapons. Plasmas should corode or lower DT overtime.

For Laser weapons, it could perhaps something like a blinding flash, stunning NPCs for a few seconds in a somewhat larger radius than the Plasma one, with the "igniting nearby NPCs" thing being given to flame weapons.

Interestingly, they've added a Constant Beam projectile type. Not used it, so it may not work, but they've added it.

Wow, that mod makes the laser RCW look pimpin'!

I know it's a tiny aesthetic change but I love it.

Like an infinite lightsaber?

That's true, and the stat increases seem quite reasonable (such that they're equal or very slightly better than their gun counterparts.) However, equal/slightly better doesn't seem to be worth:
- 2 or 3 times the cost per shot over bullets
- the limited availability of energy ammo
- hitscan vs slow moving projectile for plasmas
- lower durability and generally less parts around to repair from
- heavier ammo
- this and all the other EW problems I'm sure you're aware of.

The cost per shot is probably the biggest issue. For 2x the cost, I'd want the weapon at least 1.5x more effective, not 1.1x or 1.2x.

I guess one of the problems with comparing EW to guns is that AP ammo for guns is overpowered. There's no downsides (doing 95% of damage is nothing. The DT decrease will almost always make up for it.) If focused EW ammo is going to work the same way, and can be exchanged 1:1, there's no reason not to convert everything to focused ammo. If it's not a 1:1 conversion, then you're looking at 12 caps a shot for a plasma rifle again, as opposed to ~3 caps for a AP gun round. That's why I'm in favor of making AP (50% DT reduction) basically free for EW weapons (since the cost per shot is still one or two times more expensive compared to AP gun rounds anyway) and it'll make EW enemies more fearsome to boot. It'll give energy weapons more differentiation when you see a fiend and you know that your power armor is only half as effective.

Anyway, just my thoughts, much thanks to you/Toaster/Madcat for working on this!

Noone's told me to shut up yet, so I'll keep posting my nonsense

I was thinking about possible mods for energy weapons and here a few that occurred to me

In terms of extra mods for guns that don't overbalance/overpower them, I'd like to reiterate my earlier idea of improving general durability a little, since most EWs have pathetic durability compared to their gun counterparts and even a small boost would be nice without making them so robust it nullifies their uniqueness:

Maybe something like...

'Laser pistol (RCW/tribeam/etc) polyceramic insulator - durability +10' (or whatever seems appropriate)
The idea of it being some kind of insulation applied to the gun components to reduce wear and tear on them from heat buildup. Might not need a new skin/model for it as the mod would be internal.

Plasma weapons could likewise have some sort of small durability mod, since they're pretty delicate too. Maybe call it a 'reinforced plasma chamber' or something. I dunno.


Also, I was thinking for the gatling laser you could have something like a 'Gat. laser advanced rangefinder - VATS accuracy +15% (or whatever)'
The gatling laser is surprisingly accurate at long ranges when fired manually, but has far poorer VATS accuracy. A mod to boost out it's range a little in VATS to better match what it's actually capable of would be nice. The gat. laser model has that little bit on the right hand side of the gun that looks like a little nub connected by a wire, with this mod it could have a laser-sight effect applied to it, if that's possible.

Anyhoo, just a few ideas I thought I'd throw out. Sorry if I'm blathering on too much.

Just to add a dissenting opinion, I'm actually fine with the fragility of energy weapons. IMHO, they should be expensive, hard to maintain items with some distinct and significant advantages over conventional weapons. Right now, the vanilla game has the first part right, just not the second

Also, I think laser weapons should be silent, or at least some kind of silencer mod.

Realistically speaking a Laser Rifle would be a perfect stealth weapon. Under normal circumstances you can't see the beam, it's only visible if it passes trough dust or smoke or something. The weapon shouldn't make much sound either, much less than a gun anyway.

Actually, a realistic weaponized laser weapon would make a 'crack' sound as the laser ionizes the air it passes through and creates a little void around it as well as a loud 'bang' sound at the target as the bit that the laser hit explodes. The beam-producing mechanism might also create some noise. Realistic industrial lasers of today are already powerful enough that they might little 'crack-crack-crack' sounds, too.

However, 'realism' has nothing to do with Fallout laser weapons. They make a 'pew pew' sound due to Science! and that should be that.

Right, like a lightning. I was thinking only the gun's mechanism there. And i agree with the "Pew pew!", it's not a laser otherwise

Bad news on the subject of iron sight laser rifles... I can't find any workaround to make them function properly. There is no animation in the 2handrifle sets that is adequate. The closest one makes the iron sight jump off of center, making it hard to rapidly fire while aiming. Switching it to auto just borks everything up.

So no laser rifle ironsights. Sorry...

Unless someone around here knows how to fiddle with the animation NIFs and alters the laser rifle attack anims to work with ironsights...

what about replacing the meshes and textures to something else that might work. there were several mods for fallout 3 for the wattz laser gun which was shaped more like a sniper rifle.....perhaps that one would work. i alwasy thought it was weird that the laser rifle was bigger and clunkier than the supposedly more advanced plasma rifle.

The RH ironsights mod has modified the laser rifle with proper iron sights. Maybe you can ask if you can incorporate his changes?

Yes, with a system I suspect is compatible with FO3's system, not FONV's system. The weapon anims appear to be altered in more ways than just the iron sights; for instance, reloading.

To add another opinion, I disagree with this somewhat. If energy weapons were supposed to be the replacement of conventional arms in the military, why would they replace a 10mm pistol that does OK damage and lasts a while with a laser pistol that does maybe a bit more damage, but might be knocked out of alignment if the soldier falls over? I think the AEP and AER weapons should be more durable than say, the Wattz variants.

On another note, the ammo requirements of the weapons always annoys me. Why does the small energy cell I pick up off the ground have 20 shots in it, but the exact same cell (size wise, obviously) when placed in a pistol suddenly have 30 shots in it? A standardization across all weapons would be nice. You said you were doing that with the laser pistol, bumping it up to 32 shots like the plasma pistol. I just think it should be the same with all energy weapons. A small energy cell in any weapon should always have the same charge. The exception here being the Wattz pistols, as they look like someone took the energy cell and pulled off that piece that holds them together (would this be a good idea, considering how much energy the things hold). Would it be possible to get a remesh of the Wattz pistols with a full sized SEC in them instead?

Also, as mentioned previously, energy weapons should do a comparable amount of damage to their counterparts (a bit less with the DT reduction).

And thanks for this. New Vegas did need an energy weapons overhaul. There just aren't enough of them, they don't show up often enough, and they most certainly weren't powerful enough.

A silencer or atleast a sound reducer would be good, yeah. The laser rifle with scope makes for a decent sniper weapon against weaker enemies, but it also makes a hell of a noise compared to a silenced scoped pistol.

In terms of the increased durability I agree that having energy weapons much more fragile than guns makes a lot of sense since they're precision, high tech weapons full of complex, delicate parts and not just metal tubes and hammers that explode a bullet in a direction. The kind of durability boost I was thinking of would be pretty small, maybe equating to a dozen or so extra shots before the weapon breaks.

I just had a breakthrough on laser pistol ironsights... I just up and completely replaced the vanilla 1st person attack anims for the laser pistol (1hpattack3.kf, 1hpattack3is.kf) with the AttackRight ones (1hpattackright, 1hpattackright.kf), and the gun now ironsights properly on firing as a semi-auto. The gun doesn't recoil at all anymore... :blink: ... and there is a bit of a hang glitch when exiting ironsights while sneaking that is fixed by momentarily going back into ironsights, but... a less kludgey kludge! No clue why just switching it to AttackRight doesn't work but this doest... But hey, I'm not gonna look a gift brahmin in the mouth...

Now to see if it holds true for laser rifles...

The problem with just switching straight out in the GECK is that the recoil animations makes the laser beam recoil upwards too, as if still attached to the gun. The impact point is still on target, but it gets kinda immersion-jarring with the laser beam kicking upwards.

Not to mention the whole 'laser gun with recoil' thing being a little odd by itself.

Yeah I've no problem with the laser pistol having no recoil... if possible I'd have the laser rifle that way too! I guess they gave the weapons recoil for the sake of user-feedback, but logically speaking they should be recoiless.

But then, "SCIENCE!", the classic lasers in Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics actually fired Buck Rogers style laser bolts rather than instant-hit beams so I don't mind recoil. But if fixing something else makes us lose recoil, I'm certainly not gonna complain.



Well you'll notice I already suggested a silencer for the combat laser pistol. Laser rifle already has three upgrades, and the game doesn't allow a weapon to have more than three upgrades. Then again, does anyone actually like the beam-splitter upgrade? Perhaps replace it with a silencer, heh. Bear in mind a proper laser stealth system would also make the beam invisible, not sure if people want lasers with invisible beams.



I'm thinking that in terms of durability most of the weapons are pretty much OK... though the more damage a weapon does, the faster the condition goes down, so I guess we'll have to bump up the condition by whatever percentage we also increase the damage.

In the case of the AEP9 laser pistol (Combat Laser Pistol) and AER7 laser rifle/laser carbine, they should be very durable. In fact there was a terminal in Fallout 3 talking about the great durability of the AER7 laser rifle.

But in the case of the weapons where I haven't thought of cool several cool upgrades, then yeah a durability upgrade is an obvious choice.



To be fair Obsidian did a much better job of energy ammo consistancy than Bethesda; in Fallout 3 you had ludicrous situation of the same energy cells giving 30 shots in a laser pistol and 16 in a plasma pistol, and a unique laser pistol having 20 shots despite looking identical to others. And laser rifles having a capacity of 24 and plasma rifles having a capcity of just 12, despite having identical-looking microfusion cell. By making the plasma weapons use 2 ammo per shot, in most cases the inconsistancies mostly disappeared, with just minor differences like 30 shots in a laser and 32 in a plasma pistol, and yeah I figured why not bump up the laser pistol to 32 shots and make it more consistant.

When it comes to ammo pickups, I was thinking that maybe when it comes to ammo pickups we shuold bump up the SEC ones to 32 shots and the microfusion ones to 24 shots, since those are the capacities in most of the weapons.

In the case of the Wattz laser pistol, yeah the model Joefoxx did has it using two batteries rather than the normal model of three held together. (I figure the thing that holds them together is effectively a sort of speed-loader.) So I gave it 24 shots. Of course 2/3 of 32 isn't 24, but it's close enough, and the old Wattz laser pistol in Fallout 1 and 2 had 12 shots. So this Wattz laser pistol is a model with double the number of shots.

Something to bear in mind - two energy weapons might be both microfusion powered, but could actually use a different energy cell. When it comes to Guns, you pick up boxes of 10mm ammo, and magically off-screen you load those bullets into 10mm pistol magazines, and 10mm SMG magazines, which have different capacities. So perhaps the cells the player reloads in an energy weapon are actually weapon-specific "magazines"; in Fallout 1 and 2 the idea was that you were using Small Energy Cells or Microfusion Cells to charge up an energy weapon's internal battery. The microfusion ammo pickup was a blocky battery that held 50 energy, and a laser rifle held 12 energy and a plasma rifle held 10. Bethesda didn't impliment an internal battery idea, but it's still plausible that the battery that gets replaced is a weapon-specific battery. This would justify why in Fallout 3 energy weapons could use the same ammo type and have such widely different capacities. The problem was that the energy cells for laser and plasma weapons were identical and looked the same as the ammo pickups.

In the case of the Q-35 Matter Modulator, it actualyl has a microfusion cell with its own unique texture. It occurs to me that in the case of weapons where the ammo capacity is inconsistant with the others we could give the energy cell a unique texture.

In fact, we could replace the ammo pickups with different models, like old-style rectangular blocky microfusion cells, to make clear that the things you pick up in the world are used to charge-up weapon-specific energy cells. Anyway, these are just ideas I'm throwing around. "If it ain't broke dont' fix it", so perhaps I'm overthinking this ammo stuff.

You've got some cool ideas there.

The laser pistol and laser rifle also have that little nub connected by a wire, and yeah it's always seemed likely that it was a laser sight of some sort. I was thinking that there could be an optional download that would add 10mm pistol style laser sights to all those laser weapons. I don't think it should be a weapon upgrade though, cause that nub and wire is on the unupgraded weapon, and it seems silly to need a attach a weapon mod to enable a laser sight that already seems to be on there.

(Then again, it always looked to me like the 10mm pistol had a laser sight, yet bizarrely Obsidian did a weapon mod that replaces that thingamijig with another little whatsit that enables the laser sight, so... yeah whatever.)

Interestingly the Focus Optics mod on the laser rifle puts something extra in front of the little nub thing, so maybe it's not just a laser sight for aiming. If they were particle beam weaopns rather than true lasers, then the little nub could fire an ionising laser that that the main particle beam then travels down or something. But all the Fallout games have been pretty clear that they are supposed to be beams of light, not particle weapons, so...

Wow, I'm rambling. Shouldn't talk about this sort of stuff at 1am, heh.