Future Weapons Today is a work-in-progress that aims to increase the variety and usefulness of energy weapons, so that they are actually viable as a main combat class. A genius mad scientist that likes to vaporise people shouldn’t ever have to switch to a Cowboy Repeater.

I invite any and all modders that are enthusiasitc about energy weapons to work together to work on this definitive energy weapon mod. At the moment there are two or three mods on the New Vegas Nexus which give energy weapons armour piercing, and a couple of others that tweak the damage stats, and several that mess around with ammo usage or ammo recycling. Many of these mods actually share features and views in common with each other, so my hope is that we can pool our resources.

Everything listed below is imply my own ideas and suggestions, I welcome the input of others to try and make this a balanced but fun mod that will appeal to the most number of players.

The mod adjusts the stats of the vanilla weapons, it adds new Weapon Mods (upgrades), adds additional weapons based on "classic" weapons from Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics, and it enhances models, textures, sound effects and visual effects. It also alters makes some alterations to perks, like making Plasma Spaz affect real-time as well as VATS, and making Meltdown a bit more sensible.

The mod is named after the skill magazine for Energy Weapons; the headlines on the cover looked quite interesting, I wish I could read the articles!

Why make this mod? Is it really needed?

New Vegas was supposed to be the first Fallout game in which it was possible to play as an Energy Weapons guy right from the start, but those of us that have tried it have been disappointed that many of the weapons seem inferior to their more common Guns equivalents. The laser pistol and laser rifle have large ammo capacities and great accuracy, but remarkably low figures for damage. Why is a futuristic ray gun less powerful than a 9mm or 10mm pistol? And why is a plasma rifle outclassed by a 19th century cowboy repeater? There is no reason for a Guns player to dabble occasionally and try out a laser or plasma weapon, while being exclusively an Energy Weapons character imposes an artificial level of challenge, without any reward until late in the game.

According to Fallout lore, at the time of the war 10mm bullets were the standard ammo for civilian agencies while “the military was into energy weapons”. In New Vegas laser rifles are only useful if you can get lots of critical hits, and it is hard to imagine the US Military investing in expensive fusion-powered weaponry that is dependent on their troops all having a high Luck stat!

If you want you can exploit the game's bugs and steal late-game weapons like the Plasma Caster or Multiplas Rifle from the Silver Rush table, but if you actually progress through the game as intended then you'll find that the energy weapons are just generally less useful than Guns.

Main Features

Stat Tweaks

There are many little tweaks here and there, but generally speaking low level energy weapons have a damage boost of between 15% and 25%. Mid-level energy weapons are tweaked here and there when it comes to stuff like ammo consumption, availability and weapon mods. High-end energy weapons actually have a damage reduction. "Why would you lower the damage of the only good energy weapons in the game?!" Because the biggest change across the board is that all energy weapons ignore 25% of Damage Threshold.

Energy weapons do damage through the power of concentrated SCIENCE! Generally speaking they heat a target up and cook it, with added effects like ionisation or electric shock. Sometimes there’s a bizarre chain reaction with messy results (disintegration, gooification, etc). So it stands to reason that a "bullet-proof" vest would not be quite as effective protection against an energy weapon. The old Fallout games addressed this by armour having seperate resistances and thresholds for conventional damage, energy, electricical, fire and explosive damage types. The semi-canonical Fallout Tactics spinoff especially made use of this, as the main enemies are well-armoured robots in the second half of the game, and so you either need to get yourself armour-piercing bullets, or switch to using energy weapons.

It is worth noting that 25% is not very much. If an enemy's armour has 6 DT, while using a laser it will effectively be 4.5. If they've got 15 DT (quite common mid-game) then it is lowered to 11.25. A Securiton with 40 DT armour has it lowered to 30... which sounds like an impressive drop, but most armour piercing bullets do -15 DT and lower it to 25. So in all cases energy weapon armour-piercing will be outclassed by proper armour-piercing bullets. It is essentially a way of giving energy weapons their own special twist and recognising their energy-ness.

New Combat Options

Most weapons have been given a variety of upgrade options; strangely the 9mm and 10mm pistols had three upgrade options each but the developers did not provide a single one for any energy pistol. You'll be able to wreak havoc with classic energy weapons such as the Wattz laser weapons and the YK pulse weapons. There's also a non-lethal energy weapon; there were boxing gloves and beanbag rounds for Unarmed and Guns players, but energy weapons were overlooked, which is strange given the sci-fi tradition of weapons with a "stun" setting, as well as real-world weapons such as Tasers and other stun guns.

Perks

The Plasma Spaz perk was never worth picking as it just provided a 10% reduction to the VATS AP cost of plasma weapons. This was useless for players that primarily use real time combat rather than VATS, and even if you were a VATS user it could not really compete with Maths Wrath (which affected ALL weapons), or more generally useful perks like Finesse or Better Criticals. Now Plasma Spaz also improves the real-time rate of fire of plasma weapons by 25%.

Meltdown was a mixed bag - the idea was interesting, but the execution was a little disapointing. You get a critical kill with an energy weapon, and as well as your target disintegrating you also damage nearby enemies. Problem is that the "harmful corona of energy" was just a plasma grenade explosion, which was rather strange when using a laser or gauss weapon, and pretty silly when using a conventional flamethrower! Also, the critically-exploding victim himself would NOT be disintegrated, despite disintegrating others nearby, which was a bit strange. Those that have played Fallout 3 with the EVE or EWE mods will recall some rather nice body explosion effects that were unique to the type of energy weapon, with any luck it should be possible to remake the perk using those sorts of effects.

General graphics, sounds and effects

Some players may not care about stats; a big draw will be asthetic overhaul in the tradition of mods such as Fallout 3's EVE - Energy Visuals Enhanced and my own EWE - Energy Weapons Enhanced. Expect improved sounds, weapon meshes, textures, projectiles, impact effects... and ghastly death effects in the best tradition of Fallout 1 and 2, like enemies being char-broiled extra crispy or reduced to a skeleton.


Full weapon list:


Laser Pistol
DAM: 13 Ammo: 24 SEC (1 per shot)

A Wattz 1200 Laser pistol. Civilian model, so the wattage is lower than police or military versions (and lower than a 9mm pistol). But it still does 1 point more DAM than the laser pistol did in vanilla New Vegas, and of course it benefits from ignoring 25% of damage threshold. It is based on the classic Wattz 1000 from Fallout 1 and 2, but with a capacity of 24 rather than 12. It replaces the standard laser pistols at the start in Goodsprings, and approximately three quarters of the laser pistols in the game. Repairs are incompatible with the Combat Laser Pistol without Jury Rigging perk. Can be upgraded into a Magneto-Laser Pistol from Fallout 2.

Upgrades:
Laser Pistol Mag Targeting: Tightens the laser emission, increases damage by 4
In Fallout 2 the Magneto-Laser Pistol upgrade gave it -5 DT and negated 50% damage resistance, but weapon mods can't do that in New Vegas, so instead it is just a damage increase that makes it more powerful than the Combat Laser Pistol. And given how BADASS the weapon ends up looking, a damage increase is fair enough!


Combat Laser Pistol
DAM: 15 Ammo: 32 SEC (1 per shot)

This is the vanilla AEP7 laser pistol, given a little damage boost to reflect the fact that it is supposed to be a military sidearm. Also the ammo is upped from 30 to 32, just so that it matches the plasma pistol. Approximately a quarter of the laser pistols in the game game will be of this type. Repairs are incompatible with the weaker Laser Pistol without the jury rigging perk.

Upgrades:
Cmb. Laser Pistol Stealth Module: silent, invisible ultraviolet beam, at cost of -2 DAM
I thought it was odd that there were no silenced energy weapons, especially as “The Professional” perk also applies to energy pistols. So here you go. Steathifying the beam makes it a little bit weaker.

Recharger Rifle
DAM: 14 Ammo: 7 recharging shots

The Recharger Rifle has an excellent retro sci-fi design and I like the idea of an infinite ammo backup weapon. Most players buy it at the start of the game in Goodsprings, it comes in poor condition and you can’t find any others to repair it with. I’ve given it a damage boost to make it as powerful as a laser pistol; it was absurd that this great big rifle was weaker than the weakest energy pistol; especially as it has an unusually high weight of 15 and a strength requirement of 5.

Recharger Pistol:

DAM: 13 Ammo: 20 recharging shots

Pretty much the same as the vanilla recharger pistol, just with 1 extra point of DAM to match the standard laser pistol. I was pleasantly surprised by this weapon as it is great for erradicating weak enemies without wasting ammo; it has a nice large capacity, it doesn't slow your movement because it is a pistol, and it has great visuals and sound effects. Unlike the Recharger Rifle, this weapon didn't have much room for improvement.


Spasm Gun
DAM: 5 Ammo: 24 SEC (3 per shot) Bonus: Fatigue damage, mild EMP effect

Set phasers to stun! There are beanbag rounds for shotguns, but no non-lethal weapon for energy players. So I’ve brought back the Spasm Gun from Fallout Tactics. I’ve given it the Pulse Gun weapon model, because I love the Pulse Gun design, but I also wanted to bring back the powerful Pulse Rifle weapons from Fallout 2 and Tactics. The Spasm Gun has a small amount of EMP damage, doing bonus 15 damage to power armour and 30 damage to robots. Note that the Brotherhood won't be interested in studying this weapon, they'll want a powerful Pulse Pistol or Pulse Rifle.


Plasma Pistol
DAM: 25 Ammo: 32 SEC (2 per shot)


Identical to the vanilla plasma pistol, just with an extra 3 damage, to scale it with the increased power of lasers, and bringing it closer to the power of the 357 magnum. Combined with the better crit chance you might think this makes it better than the magnum… but the magnum is quite accurate, and slow-moving plasma bolts often miss their mark.

Upgrades:

Plasma Pistol Adv. Reaction Chamber: Increases durability by 50% (the plasma chamber is replaced by a green glass tube, like the plasma rifle or the Mr Gutsy plasma pistol)
Plasma Pistol Upgraded Coolant Coils: Increases rate of fire by 25% (combine with Plasma Spaz perk and this weapon may still be of interest later in the game!)

Laser Carbine
DAM: 18 Ammo: 24 MF Cell (1 per shot)

The AER9 Laser Rifle, but I've renamed it a Laser Carbine because the thing is a weak lightweight rapid-fire weapon intended for lightly-armoured targets, while in the previous games laser rifles were powerful sniper weapons. The stats are similar to the vanilla game except for +3 damage; it was pretty absurd that the vanilla laser rifle had the same damage as a 9mm pistol, and wasn't really usable until you got a +3 damage Focus Optics modification. The situation was worsened by the fact that the first laser rifles found early in the game are in dreadful condition and in the vanilla game they can’t penetrate even the lightest armour. The slight damage increase and 25% DT reduction will go a long way to making them usable rather than junk. Also I found that in the vanilla game the Beam Splitter modification was not very helpful, because making it a laser shotgun meant that each individual shot was not strong enough to penetrate simple armour. The slightly higher base damage and the 25% DT penetration should mean that the weapon is still effective in split-beam mode against enemies in mediocre armour.

Upgrades:
Laser Rifle Focus Optics: Increases damage by 4 (rather than 3 as in vanilla)
Laser Rifle Beam Splitter: Increases damage by 30% if all three beams hit (same as vanilla)
Laser Rifle Scope: Adds long-range scope (same as vanilla)


Laser Rifle
DAM: 28 Ammo: 24 MF Cell (2 per shot)

The classic Wattz 2000 Laser Rifle from Fallout 1 and 2, aka the Sunbeam Laser Rifle in Fallout Tactics. It is mentioned on the front cover of the Future Weapons Today skill magazine, a story about a marine sniper, and that gives you an idea of the function of this weapon. It is a slow firing energy sniper rifle that comes with a night vision scope. The normal laser carbine has the advantage in damage per second, but the Sunbeam Laser Rifle is better for sniping, or against enemies in moderate armour.

Upgrades:
Sunbeam Laser Recycler: Recycles half of all used energy, lowering ammo consumption to 1 per shot and allowing 24 shots per reload.


Laser RCW
DAM: 15 Ammo: 60 EC Pack (1 per shot)

The Laser Rapid Capacitor Weapon... or, as most people like to think of it, the Laser Tommy Gun! How awesome is that? Same as in vanilla, except of course that you get the 25% DT reduction. As the damage on the RCW has not been boosted, the Laser Carbine is now slightly more powerful on a damage-per-shot basis, which is fair enough as the laser carbine is a semi-auto weapon.

Upgrades:

Laser RCW Recycler: Every 4th shot is free (same as vanilla)


AER14 Laser Rifle Prototype
DAM: 26 Ammo: 24 MF Cell (2 per shot)

Same as vanilla but with +4 damage.


Tri-Beam Laser Gun

DAM: 52 Ammo: 24 MF Cell (3 per shot)
Same as vanilla. It is as effective as I would expect it to be.

Upgrades:
Tri-Beam Prism Assembly: Splits beams into 9 beams (like Fallout 3 Metal Blaster), increases damage 30% if all beams hit


Plasma Defender
DAM: 36 Ammo: 48 SEC (3 per shot)

The amazing Glock 89 Plasma Defender was one of the few good energy pistols in the vanilla game. (I made up the model number.) It's clearly based on the classic Glock 86 Plasma Pistol with the Extended Capacity upgrade from Fallout 2, though lacking the scope and with the energy cells loaded in a different place. Although it has the Extended Capacity parts, rather than having double the number of shots, instead it uses more energy per shot for overpowered blasts as powerful as a plasma rifle. And the gun is so light and tiny! I've left it the same as vanilla, as it is already kick [censored]. But now it has upgrades.

Upgrades:
Plasma Defender Scope: Adds medium range scope. (Just to make it more like the classic Glock 86)
Plasma Defender Mag Accelerator: Increases speed of projectile (alternatively maybe just have a faster projectile anyway?)
Plasma Defender Recycler: Reduces ammo consumption to 2 per shot


Plasma Rifle:
DAM: 38 Ammo 24 MF Cell (2 per shot)

In the vanilla game the Plasma Rifle has a painfully slow rate of fire and does just 32 damage, less powerful than a Plasma Defender pistol! Crazy. In fact the damage was the same as a Cowboy Repeater, and the Cowboy Repeater has the advantages of a better rate of fire, of being an instant-hit weapon you can snipe with, and having more common, cheaper ammo. Now With a six point boost in damage and the 25% damage threshold penetration, the Plasma Rifle will actually be worth using, but still weaker than a Hunting Rifle or Trail Carbine or Sniper Rifle. New weapon mods include a very expensive upgrade to increase the rate of fire, which looks like an extra set of porthole cylinders on top, like the Q-35 Matter Modulator and the Multiplas Rifle.

Upgrades
Plasma Rifle Mag Accelerator: Increases speed of projectile (same as vanilla)
Plasma Rifle Dual Cooling System: increases rate of fire 25%, costs 1000 caps!


Q-35 Matter Modulator
DAM: 40 Ammo 24 MF Cell (1 per shot)

If the normal Plasma Rifle was inferior to a Cowboy Repeater, the unique Q-35 was about just as a good as Cowboy Repeater. A unique energy weapon only as good as a common weapon designed in the 19th century? In any case, I've boosted the Q-35 damage up to 40, two more than a normal plasma rifle. I've also given it the same capacity as a normal plasma rifle, even though it uses 1 ammo per shot so that allows for 24 shots per reload rather than 12. It made no sense to have half the ammo consumption AND half the ammo capacity, though I do give them credit for trying to justify it by the fact that the MF Cell has a different texture.

Multiplas Rifle
DAM: ? Ammo: 48 MF Cell (6 per shot)

The Multiplas doesn't need any help, it is already awesome. So I've left it the same as in the vanilla game, except nerfed slightly in that the capacity is lowered from 60 to 48, so that it simply has double the capacity of other energy rifles, rather than 2.5 times as much capacity. This means it fires 8 times per reload rather than 10. Given its awesome power, 8 shots seems pretty reasonable!

Upgrades: I am open to suggestions, but I suspect any upgrades would make this weapon overpowered.


Plasma Caster
DAM: 60 Ammo: 20 MF Cell (2 per shot)

The plasma caster is pretty great and doesn't need improving... in fact I've nerfed it a bit by lowering the damage from 65 to 60, and making it use 2 ammo per shot. The Plasma Caster was absurdly energy efficient, doing 65 damage with just one energy cell, while other energy weapons needed two cells to do around 30 or 40 damage. Now it will eat up your ammo at the same rate as a plasma rifle. (If a plasma rifle were incredibly powerful.) Also, the 5 point damage reduction helps to slightly balance out the 25% DT penetration.

Upgrades:
Plasma Caster HS Electrode: Increases rate of fire by 25% (same as vanilla)


Gauss Rifle
DAM: 90 Ammo: 60 EC Pack (10 per shot) Bonus: Penetrates multiple enemies

Damage is lowered by 25%, to account for energy weapons having 25% armour penetration. (Whether it has 90 damage or 120 damage, if you use it on an unarmoured target the target is pretty screwed anyway!) The gauss rifle projectile now has a blue glowing trail of plasma, similar to the railguns in Eraser, Quake 2, Red Faction, MechWarrior and Command & Conquer... and Fallout Tactics. And in most media gauss rifles and railguns are supposed to be the ultimate penetrating weapons, so now the projectile can shoot through multiple enemies at once! The amazing gauss rifle has its ammo type changed from microfusion to electron charge packs, and changed to having a large capacity so it can be fired 6 times per reload. There are several reasons for this. 1) There are lots of weapons using microfusion and only a few using electron charge packs, and variety is the spice of life. 2) According to Fallout lore only the US had microfusion technology. The Fallout 2 gauss rifle was a German weapon, and in the Fallout 3 Operation Anchorage DLC there were gauss rifles on Chinese propoganda posters, so it seems unlikely that this is a US weapon, so it shouldn't be microfusion powered. 3) The old ammo type in Fallout 2 was 2mmEC, because it contained 2mm projectiles and an Energy Cell of some kind... or perhaps it could have been EC as in Electron Charge Pack! 4) Weapons that only fire once before reload have a problem where you'll never see their proper muzzle flash. Also, a gun that needs to be reloaded after every shot seems unlikely, especially as the old Fallout 2 gauss rifle could shoot 20 times per reload.

Upgrades: I am open to suggestions.


Pulse Pistol:
DAM: 40 Ammo: 25 SEC (5 per shot)

The YK32 pulse pistol from Fallout 2 and Tactics. It has an EMP effect that is a quarter as powerful as the vanilla Pulse Gun effect, but the bolt of electricity is pretty effective at disintegrating conventional enemies too! Very inefficient energy usage though, making the plasma defender a more sensible choice for combat against conventional enemies. I hope to make it so that the Pulse Pistol and Pulse Rifle replace the Pulse Gun in the Brotherhood quest, with the ordinary Pulse Gun model repurposed as the Spasm Gun.

Upgrades: I am open to suggestions, but I suspect any upgrades would make this weapon overpowered. (It's a very powerful pistol with bonus EMP effect!)

Pulse Rifle:
DAM: 52 Ammo: 24 MF Cell (3 per shot)

The classic pulse rifle is back! Well, almost. Rather than the YK421B, this is the YK421A, which is not quite as powerful. (A true recreation of the old pulse rifle would be more powerful than a plasma caster and practically into Alien Blaster territory.) It is also a little less energy efficient, firing just 8 times per reload. It has an EMP effect that is half as powerful as the vanilla Pulse Gun effect, but you will not notice this as the bolt of electricity does a large amount of conventional damage. This allows you to use it as an extra powerful plasma rifle or a lightweight nerfed plasma caster, with the bonus of doing double damage to robots and power armour. I hope to make it so that the Pulse Pistol and Pulse Rifle replace the Pulse Gun in the Brotherhood quest, with the ordinary Pulse Gun model repurposed as the Spasm Gun.

Upgrades:
Pulse Rifle Improved Transformer: Doubles projectile speed
Pulse Rifle Recycler: Reduces ammo consumption to 2 per shot


Tesla Cannon
DAM: ? Ammo: 60 EC Pack (20 per shot)

The damage is the same as vanilla, but the attack animation speed is lowered, and you can fire it three times before reload. I left the damage figure blank because the damage is a combination of projectile and explosion, and secondary electrical arcs to other victims.

Upgrades: I am open to suggestions, but I doubt it needs any.


Tesla-Beaton Prototype
DAM: ? Ammo: 60 EC Pack (30 per shot)

Like the normal Tesla Cannon, except it uses 30 ammo per shot, in same way that that the vanilla version used more ammo than a regular Tesla Cannon. This is to be expected, it's a prototype.

Oh dear.... I was planning on a comprehensive denerf with Toaster too...

That's cool, I'm happing to absorb you guys into my mod or be aborbed into yours, whatever; I just wanted to create a thread to suggest it, and pitch my own ideas. I'm now replying to your PM.

I was hoping something like this would come along. Best of luck with the project, whichever mod emerges victorius

Yea, I was wondering why there were so many mod for small guns but none for the energy pistol and only around 5 or 6 mod for the whole energy weapons. The starter energy weapon feel weak as well and most of them are weaker than the bullets counter part except the late game energy weapon which are 1 shot per reload weapon with crappy accuracy even though you got 100 point in energy weapon skill. The caster seems to deal much more DPS than the guass rifle.

I'd definitely love to see energy weapons improvements.

I'd particularly be interested in energy weapons being lower DAM than guns but with superior penetration (rofflez) or some other effect such as slowly heating up and opponent with multiple hits, cooking them from the inside out (think ed-e's laser smoking effect or something).

Hope this gets done! Wish I could contribute but I have zero modeling/skinning talent. Might be able to knock up a few sounds, but I suppose there are plenty in FO:NV as it is.

Also, I see no mention of the Gatling laser! In it's current form there's not much reason to use it over the laser RCW.

I'd suggest a significant boost in damage output without changing energy consumption. I did a simple G.E.C.K mod that basically just doubled DAM and CRIT to 14 and halved the fire rate, but doubled the ammo consumption so it was doing basically the same DPS to unarmored targets and consumed the same ammo for damage but was significantly more effective against anything moderately armored, making it a decent upgrade to the laser RCW instead of a heavy, weaker version of the RCW like it is now.

In terms of upgrades for the more effective energy weapons, I'd suggest ones that increase durability slightly (say, +10 or something) as they won't really effect weapon effectiveness in combat but its makes them slightly less of a pain to keep in good condition and gives people something to upgrade to.

Thinking about it, Meltdown is also a bit of a double-edged sword for a perk. True it's great for blowing up groups of weaker enemies or doing some splash, but it's far too easy to kill yourself, companions or allies/neutral npcs with it. If there was some way of implementing a similar kind of thing without it hurting friendlies that would be nice as it's currently almost too much trouble to be worth it.

Toaster, Evil Twin and I have discussed it, and Twin's on board for the E-weapons comprehensive revamp that Toaster and I already had in the works. We're taking a lot of his good ideas (especially the mod name... my working title svcked ) and merging them with our mod, and he's on board for a third point of view on things.

Due to alt ammo types altering projectiles, it'd be silly for a plasma rifle to load an alt ammo and start shooting laser beams. Toaster's devised a centralized mod resource master module that provides specialized ammo lists to sorta limit this problem and group together weapons with closely similar projectiles. Think of it as sorta like CALIBR but for energy weapons. He calls it "Frequency", and FWT will be (probably) the first mod to use it.

That's good news :goodjob:

And now for the "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? ..."

Shaddap or I'll shoot you with the Spasm Gun. :stare:

:P

I was thinking about doing some kind of energy weapon revamp but figured it would be out of my league. I'm glad to see others have realized the faults of their current implementation.

One thing I wanted to bring up about your current numbers, is that the Wattz 2000 seems a little weak. The guns sniper does 62 damage by default and 28 just seems so meager in comparison, especially so if the AER14 can be upgraded for +4 damage, it would then do more damage and (I assume) shoot faster than the Wattz. Buffing it to something above 30 would also allow it to mitigate the armor of Securitrons, which it wouldn't seem right if it couldn't.

I also never understood why the Flamer and Incinerator were grouped in with energy weapons, they seem much more appropriate in something like explosives (which, frankly, could also use some love). As a replacement, I was thinking energy weapons could get some kind of continuous lightning beam weapon to fill the same functional roll of a Flamer. I was thinking about attempting a recolor of the plasma caster with the gatling laser backpack as the model, though I'm sure someone more talented could accomplish something much better. Speaking of the Gatling Laser, I don't think you mentioned it in the OP, it could definitely use some work too.

Best of luck with the mod, I'm eagerly awaiting a release from you guys.

Oops, yeah I forgot the Gatling Laser! I quite like the idea of doubling the DAM while keeping the damage per second the same, that could do the trick nicely.

Some good ideas people... yep Meltdown definately needs some work. I can't think of a way to make it only hurt enemies and not friendlies. If someone else can, then yeah I'd definately do that, heh.

One idea I had was having only energy rifles able to cause meltdown explosions, so you can safely do close-range combat with energy pistols. (Though Plasma Defender is powerful enough to still cause the explosion; it has to, the perk picture shows a Plasma Defender!)

Another option might be to make Meltdown explosions a plasma-only thing, and have something entirely different for lasers. By taking the Meltdown perk, you'd effectively be putting plasma weapons into a grenade rifle/Incinerator type role where it is great for clusters of enemies but you don't want to use it close range or near to friendlies. While for lasers instead non-lethal criticals would set enemies on fire. (And fire needs a damage boost... being burnt alive only does 2 damage per second for 5 seconds? Pathetic. 4 damage per second more like!)

Yeah I did have the Wattz 2000 a little weak, this was because I didn't want it to approach plasma rifle levels of damage. Then I realised that in the old games the plasma CASTER was the plasma rifle; the new vegas plasma rifle effectively does the same amount of damage as the classic laser rifle! Yeah, can certainly afford to do 30 damage rather than 28. Perhaps even 32.

But I wasn't having the AER14 upgradable for +4 damage, it is just +4 damage from what it is in the vanilla game. (I think Obsidian were right by making unique weapons non-upgradable.) 22 in vanilla, 26 in Future Weapons Today, the idea being that it is a rapid-fire laser carbine type weapon that has a damage close to a Wattz 2000 laser sniper rifle.

As for the flamer and incinerator stuff... yeah I'm not sure what I think about them being energy weapons myself. They could just as easily fit into explosives as energy weapons. Also, I had considered doing a continuous lightning beam weapon of some sort, along the lines of the Particle Cannon from the 2009 version of Wolfenstein. But that could be a bit too similar to the gatling laser. Also, don't forget the Incinerator, that has a very different function to a flamer. It's a tough one.

Overall I'm really glad to hear you guys are working together on this. Some great ideas, and certainly something that is in need of being done.

I'd offer to help, but you already have all the talent working on it that you need - so I'll just focus on my own mod for now, and keep my eyes peeled for you folks to put out a release!

- DU

Personally i like that flame weapons are energy weapons now. Big guns skill was removed so those guns had to go somewhere, and energy weapons seems most logical for things that shoot fire. Besides, guns have shotguns and sniper rifles for close and long range engagements respectfully. Explosives have grenade launchers that do the same as Incinerators (minus the DoT effect), and I don't really see explosives being the only combat skill of any character, which means close range weapons come from Guns, EWs or big sticks :toughninja:

My opinion would be to keep them governed by EW skill.

I've always been a bit torn since I first heard they were going in that direction.

On the one hand, I certainly see how it kind of "sullies" the EW skill...

...on the other hand, it seems the lesser evil for the most part.

I can understand that opinion, but game balance wise they add valuable weapons to the EW skill. Flamethrower fuel is plentiful, and those weapons allow dispensing it in two very useful ways :flamethrower:

It looks like you've put a lot of thought into this. One thing I didn't see mentioned (Though I only skimmed the OP, so apologies if it was) is perhaps you should make two different sets of stats. One that balances them according to default gameplay, and one that makes them more powerful, but cuts their spawns down by ~90% or more so they're proper rare and difficult to acquire/keep maintained. Just a suggestion.

Aha! I knew someone was going to start up something like this sooner or later... pulling together the most prominent and skillful modding minds in order to create a far less imbalanced and impractical Energy Weapons skill. Now that I know this to be the case, I suppose I'll definitely have to include some of these in my weapons breakdown and reconstruction and blah-blah-blah mod. Energy weapons were going to be sorely lacking... and my mod would suddenly have made REPAIR a skill that a player almost entirely NEEDED if they wanted to do any kind of manufacturing. That would make for a fairly boring mechanic.

Hopefully the community comes out with some truly awesome energy weapons... this group here puts them into the game and makes them comparable in power and effectiveness to the 'guns' skill... and then gives me permission to let the player take their precious contributions to the community apart and rebuild them


Of course, I still wish I could figure out an alternative to making guns and energy weapons using the same workbench as every other damn thing.

It seems like there ought to be a separate menu or system for that, which likely I would have to script... which means I sure hope my scripting guy comes back around soon, so I can convince myself to get back to work.

If he doesn't, I might have to find someone else to help. T_T


Anyways, good luck! I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for this.

I feel that I should point out that according to the Fallout 3 http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8340 page, someone is currently working on porting EVE to New Vegas.

Meltdown was on my list of things to play with, so I'll happily give it a shot.

Personally I'm a fan of that, as ToJKa mentions energy weapons have a pretty limited range (semiauto mid-range rifles, semiauto mid-range pistols, one relatively high-level SMG).

Yeah I'm thinking flame weapons do have their place among energy weapons. They seem a bit awkward and low-tech compared to the other stuff, but they certainly do add variety. And most of the energy weapons inflict damage via heat, so... yeah.



In the early game energy weapons are pretty rare though. You get laser pistols at the start, you have to buy a Recharger Rifle, you can kill the Powder Ganger leader Eddie for a plasma pistol. I found two laser rifles, a plasma pistol and a plasma rifle in Nipton. And that's about it. Oh, some random dudes have laser pistols, but laser pistols are rubbish, heh. Later on energy weapons get more common, but they are still far rarer than conventional guns.

If there were any fewer energy weapons then it wouldn't actually be possible to be an energy weapons character from the start of the game. And that was annoying in all the other Fallout games.



Awesome. Yeah as I said the actual Meltdown script appears to be hardcoded cause I can't find it in the GECK anywhere, so we've probably got to create something from scratch.

Well that was the intent of my suggestion, but if it doesn't interest you that's fine

Sounds good, particularly the increased number of weapon mods, but I think a 25% reduction in DT will hardly be noticeable and not enough of an incentive to go energy weapons given the much higher cost of maintenance and ammo (esp since you're keeping the extra ammo consumption for the plasmas.) IMHO, it needs to go up to 50% DT reduction, or reduce the ammo consumption. I'd lean towards the DT reduction since it's a change that would also work against the player (for EW enemies) whereas an ammo change is a buff to the player only.

Curious if there's any intent to add proper iron sights to the Laser Rifle/Pistol which irritatingly lack them in their entirety, which really bothered me upon first coming across a Laser Pistol in Doc Mitchell's house.

I've been greatly looking forward to someone de-nerfing energy weapons and now I'll most certainly hold off my Energy Weapons playthrough, especially since the character I have for it was forced to downgrade to punching everything since energy weapons do jack all damage against anything.

I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but currently the unique prototype laser weapon lacks and animation for zooming in - your view just sort of scoots forward like it used to in Fallout 3.

EDIT:

A couple more things occurred to me -

first of all it always kind of bugged me that the laser RCW has glowing green bits on it, yet it shoots a red laser. Petty, I know, but it annoys me. Since green lasers are the preserve of awesome pimped out unique laser rifles, would it be possible to change the laser RCW skin to red?

Also, it would be nice to do something about the weirdness of actually trying to buy energy weapon ammo. Like most good characters, I ended up killing gloria van graph and lost access to most energy weapons mods and ammo. The only other place I can find ammo reliably now is on the quartermaster at Hoover Dam, which doesn't really make any sense as the NCR don't use energy weapons - yet the brotherhood of steel quartermaster only sells conventional weapon ammo and never seems to get any EW mods in stock.

Perhaps after Gloria's death a Van Graph family vendortron could appear in the Silver Rush with the same stock? it could explain that it had been sent by the van graph family as a temporary stopgap while they find a replacement shopkeep.

Just a thought, anyhoo.

Sorry if I'm posting too much, you guys probably have enough on your plate as it is, but little things like ammo and mod scarcity all contribute to making energy weapons more of a PITA than they ought to be.