Ah, never mind.

But on topic, i also noticed that Gauss gets the shielded barrel that increases damage even further and scope with just Gun Nut, so no, there's never any reason for me to use .50

I had pipe .50 pistol, but for some reason the .44 revolver does more damage than it Well, i suppose it comes with the pipe weapons being poor quality home-made ones

Heh. Well, like I mentioned somewhere else, I don't have any legendaries with useful effects (I think I might have an incendiary, but it's on a double-barrel shotgun. ooh, aah.)

My generic .45 Combat Rifle is 92 dmg, and my generic .50 hunting rifle/sniper is 120. And I've got like 1700 .50 ammo. At least, the last time I connected my Pip-Boy app.

That's weird, how can your .45 combat rifle do more damage than my .308 combat rifle?
Or do you have higher level Rifleman perk? I have level 3.

That is sort of the point. The ammo difference in itself has a good damage difference, as the OP hoped, rather reasonable even. But what could maybe be called an overlooked design flaw is that it's missing all the further improvement options the .308 has. As soon as the official mod tool is out I'll propably aim to make one that offers the same range to receiver options for the other calibers as the .308 has. (Unless someone beats me to it, totally possible). It should bring the .50 well on par with.308 without just increasing the damage of basic .50. That small damage difference now between highly tuned .308 and basic .50 however is due there being more damage increase options for .308 at the moment, not because .308 and .50 compare poorly in themselves. .. ok this might be more semantics than anything else, sorry for that..

Yeah, it's 4 Rifleman.

A modded gauss rifle might be able to match a vanilla fat man. But once you get into the realm of legendary fat mans or the big boy then nothing comes close. Also, the maximum potential of a fat man outmatches the hell out of the gauss rifle since the fat man draws upon heavy gunner AND demo expert whereas gauss rifle only benefits from the rifleman perk.

I think there are some issues with damage and effective range with the ballistic weapons (bullets like .308 and .50) especially compared to energy weapons. At best I seem to be able to get a .308 or .50 rifle to do max damage out to 200 or so. Plasma and Laser weapons will reach 380+, and it seems to me like the damage of a laser or bolt of plasma should be degrading a lot faster than something like a bullet that is doing its damage through inertia.

I don't have problems with the amount of damage the ballistic weapons are doing (though I agree that .50 seems to hit light, especially against high armor foes) but it seems like ballistic weapons should be better than energy at range, and not the other way around.

Well that's true. If we actually had a Powerful .50 Receiver to add to the basic Pipe Bolt-Action the damage should increase dramatically. But this even more so makes the whole idea of modding a .308 pipe bolt-action gun to use .50 ammo ridiculous. Bethesda should have just given us more base weapons to use the other ammo types ... or just not give us the ammo types. I mean where is our .223? or .22 or .32 or .357 or .44 mag or 410/20 gauge shotgun shells or my freaking BB gun?

Honestly when I first saw that there were sniper plasma rifles I kinda went "what??". I kind of liked the fact that if you really wanted to reach out and touch someone you had to use a traditional projectile. Now that we can vaporize someone from 200 yards I'm not sure I like the idea.

Yeah, between different weather effects and certain principles like thermal blooming, one would expect lasers to degrade after a certain, rather short range.

I'm not sure how plasma would work but it to should weaken considerably. Ballistic on the other hand retains a lot of kinetic energy for a rather good range so it would make sense that ballistic should get the longer ranges over the energy weapons.

But then again, bringing realismis a little bit dangerous. Next thing you know, you'd have to start accounting for gravity and wind when sniping which would make the gametoo realistic for the likes of many, myself included.

Mm, sadly I think the reason is close the same as for why we got these "legendary" frames. It's cheap to add a sense of special weapons that way, instead of running stuff through the graphic design department. All increases to content that are just numbers are easy to make.

About the numbers, mine is based on hunter rifle, not pipe bolt action, but at the moment my hunter rifle on .308 does 99 damage on rifleman 4, which suggests 55 damage without the perk. If my source is not wrong, the damage should be about 37 on standard stock, which suggests the highest tuner received is roughly 1.5 times the damage. If the .50 damage without perk is at 64, it would give about 98 or so with highest tuned receiver option. That with perk would be roughly at the 200. So yeah, rather nice increase. I'll get some actual numbers later when I get to my game.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not pushing for anything like "realism" here, I just think that ballistic weapons should have their own niche and it seems like really long range engagements would be a good fit for .308 and .50 (BMG).

Of course, if you want to talk realism, we could talk about how the magnetic fields containing plasma would quickly destabilize making the plasma lose energy, or lasers would only need to be focused for best damage at one exact range

And then there's the .50 ammo, is it .50 AE, .50 BMG, .500 S&W? What about the .45? Is it .45 ACP, .45 LC, .456 SOCOM, or what?

I'm joking around mostly, it's a Fallout game and it's an RPG, it isn't meant to be the most realistic or have the same bullets we have in modern america, either (though .45 ACP and .45 LC both exist in the timelines and the earlier games).

With such a limited amount of weapons in this game, you would think the .50 hunting rifle would be near the top.

Honestly, I'll speak out of my ass here and say that the .50 is .50 Browing Machine Gun and the .45 is .45 Automatic Colt Pistol. Bah, none of that matters anyway.

I whole-heartedly agree that nothing with energy should outrange heavier caliber, purely ballistic rounds. I wouldn't have an issue with energy weapons outranging rounds like the .38 and even the .45 which shouldn't have all that great a range. But the .308 and .50 should be the masters of ranged warfare with only perhaps the 2mm EC being the only other competitor.

I'm inclined to agree. The .308 is the round in the game that just shouts "Sniper!" to me, and it seems like .50 should be like a .308 but better at punching through armor and a bit less accurate (maybe just more recoil?) as a sort of trade-off.

Of course, if the .50 were just a straight upgrade it would make sense too, but right now the improvements aren't so great, especially if you're taking crits into account with the modded hunting rifle reciever.

I would be fine with bethesda perhaps doing something where you can upgrade to .308 with ease, but in order to get .50, you need to meet certain requirements (along with gun nut 4) like you must have a long ported barrel and you must have a muzzle break.

But with that being said, I think .50 should be 1.5 times more effective as an upgrade than it is now and should also add by default, 10% armor penetration.

Also, I don't know how the .308 bolt action sniper rifle compares to the .308 combat rifle. But, in case they're the same (with the exception of fire rate), it should be that the bolt action sniper rifle has better range and accuracy than the modified combat rifle, by default.

Yeah, i'd expect the bolt-action to be more accurate at longer ranges as a game mechanic (even if it isn't always that way in reality). On my current playthrough i've got a Legendary Modded Combat Rifle in .308 that ignores 30% of target damage resistance, and it has made my .50 Hunting Rifle with a chance to Stagger completely obsolete.

Stagger is meant for higher fire rate weapons anyway.

I've got a legendary violent .50 sniper rifle which is rather good (although the damage is a little dissapointing for a .50). It deals 25% more damage and 25% more limb damage, with a lot more recoil, but who cares about the recoil when using a bolt action?

It would be a lot more useful if some of the Legendary effects scaled with the mods or weapon kinds they're assigned to. As an example, if a weapon with chance to stagger modified the stagger chance by some factor of how much damage the weapon did, or its rate of fire, it could be useful even on weapons where right now the chance is far too low to make sense.

And then there's the case of the Gamma Guns with 50% more damage to ghouls (maybe you could use it to heal a ghoul companion?) that doesn't seem very useful to me.

It is a game, also google the ferret .50 cal. It's essentially an AR but with a modified upper receiver, allowing it to fire .50 BMG rounds. It's totally a thing in real life, though not on a hunting rifle. To some extent you can certainly argue the realism, though I'm not certain that it matters much since there isn't really a way to account for the thickness of the skull of a super mutant, a mirelurk, or a deathclaw.

Very disappointed with .50 in the game. It has a great sound and weapon effect, but if you're waiting for that sledgehammer, knock 'em across the map damage, it's just not going to happen. Like I said disappointing.

Really wish it had it's own model as well. so we had something really special to look forward to. Chambering .50 on a Rem 700 frame is pretty eye-rolling. And yes the Ferret is a very cool weapon, but even it has a wickedly different silhouette than a standard AR, not to mention it is only designed as a low-cost single shot weapon for .50 BMG, as opposed to being a combat frame.

Really miss the Hecate knock off in New Vegas with the option of explosive and incendiary rounds. Everything weapon and ammo-wise was really teed up for Bethesda after New Vegas. While the mod system is truly fun and interesting, a lot of potential was squandered, and guns overall feel pretty blah. Seems like they really only want you to play this game with energy weapons and power armor, and that's a little sad coming from a developer that wears 'player freedom' on their sleeve. Small arms did not take a step forward like they should have from New Vegas. It all feels very regressive.

Although I love the game, I am really disappointed with weapons in this game from looks, to damage balance, to ammo balance, to the insane weights, and seemingly head scratching effects (both positive and negative) that these mods provide. Gun performance and design should have been the last thing anyone was disappointed about in FO4. All they really had to do was iterate on New Vegas, throw out the trash, and overlay their system on top of it. Just let down really. Still a great game despite their weird weapon vision and blah ammunition system.

TL:DR: .50 cal is disappointing in performance and aesthetics. It is far too underpowered and should have it's own stand alone, model design. It should reflect a similar DAM value as the Gauss (the Gauss should probably have a higher DPS unless using explosive or incendiary ammo), and ammunition should be scarce. Not having any ammunition reloading capability has hurt my outlook on weapons and ammo as well. We can create entire towns but not a single round of ammunition. It appears that I will have to wait for modders to fix what I can only consider a not so well thought out weapon/ammo mess.

There are at least two mods on the nexus that modify the hutning rifle damage, don't think there is one that specifically affect the .50 mod only though.

I don't entirely disagree with this. While you can turn just about any weapon into another it does end up feeling a bit superfluous when the weapon options have been so significantly reduced. I do like the random legendary and the specific unique system but overall I really wish that they would expand the options more. Maybe we can keep our fingers crossed for another DLC similar to the GRA DLC in FONV.

I loved the Bozar in Fallout 2. The Turbo Plasma rifle too.

Hopefully an update will buff the .50 calibur power if enough people talk about it.