I suspect they were just trying to make gun modding cool (which they did). I don't think te goal was gun smithing fidelity and simulation

What Thungrim said. I do wish they added an anti material rifle.

Is there a dedicated .50 rifle in the game (one that starts in its native form as .50 BMG)?

No. At least I haven't seen one.

Yes its a game, but i think I'm not the only one who would have liked to have, a gun that actually looks like a caliber 50.

wait a mod, make this

For a .50 it kicks like a kitten too...

I've actually gone over to my plasma rifle instead. Was getting really demoralised using the ingame .50. The gunplay in F4 is way, way better than F3... but could have been tweaked just a bit more.... I got my first .50 really quickly too so it felt a bit worthless.

I bet they'd say something along the lines of "it's a pre-war hunting rifle made specifically to take down behemoths".

The .50 is underwhelming in my opinion, at least on Survival or Very Hard. A real .308 Winch. deals about 3500-4000 Joules, a .50 Browning at least 12000 but mostly more than 15000 Joules. In my gun it increases from 90 to 102 damage when I changed from .308 to .50 caliber. And that's the strongest powder cartridge. My laser rifle deals up to 136 damage at the moment and shoots much faster.

The .50 really does feel underwhelming.

It should be the in-between in damage from .308 to the great 2mm EC Gauss rifle round.

If the .308 dealt 100 damage, and the gauss rifle dealt 350 damage, then the .50 should deal somewhere in the range of 175-200.

I agree. I still love my silenced .50 with recon scope at lvl 41 or so, but I always carry the Gauss rifle for when I really need some fire-power.

Uh, oh! Glowing-rad-scorpion-out-of-nowhere! Psycho-jet. Gauss rifle. Rad scorpion steaks for dinner.

I don't like the Gauss especially the loading with pressing LM. I like the .50 BMG, I'm conservative, must be "boom", not fancy stuff. But for real foes I take my laser musket and wind the crank. I don't have points in Science but I found a 5x laser gun.

I concur that the .50 BMG should deal about 200 damage.

I have a hard time finding .50 caliber ammo, so I just stick to the .308. The difference in damage with a calibrated powerful receiver and a .50 caliber receiver seems so miniscule that it hardly seems worth it. Plus the extra critical damage and accuracy just makes up for it overall.

It just feels overall that not going to an energy weapon in this game at some point will limit your damage potential in the end, and that disappoints me a bit as someone who loves to roll sniper classes with traditional guns. Maybe with the right perks it balances out, at least in the DPS.

The game has deathclaws and artificial intelligence. And grenades made of soda. You can make beds out of hammers and money. And fire a miniature nuclear warhead with a glorified slingshot.

I don't think a .50 hunting rifle modification is all that far fetched given the universe we are playing in.

Yeah, I absolutely love my silenced Violent .50 sniper rifle.

But it's sad that having changed it from .308 to .50 made it go from like 148 damage to 160.

Meanwhile my gauss is 400+ per shot so it's like eh.

The .50 needs some serious buffing that's for sure.

I think my .50 sniper rifle is the only type of weapon of which I HAVEN'T found a legendary version. Starting to get me bummed!

Baseball bats, pipes (melee), and even a Furious Power Fist.

The Furious Power Fist is awesome, but I am not a melee type.

I am looking forward to Enraging sniper rifle. Plunk one baddie from afar, and watch the ensuing mayhem! (was a fan of illusion in Skyrim!)

I had the F power fist for a while but then I found a legendary shishkebab sword thingy that was worth like 1200 caps.

I figured since the F power fist was not even half the caps of the shishkebab, that the shishkebab should be better. As I soon found out, the shishkebab is a piece of [censored] trash. But then again, I have a lot of strength and I use PA, but I have ZERO perk points into anything melee related.

Game balance & relative power levels of weapons has very little to do with reality or physics. (similar to how an end-game dagger in a fantasy game does much more damage than a low-level two-handed sword.)

Now, if you were trying to program an accurate gun physics simulator (for crime scene reconstruction, let's say), that would be an issue. But that's not a game anymore.

I tried out the F power fist, it started with like 45 damage per hit, then after some psycho-jet and a furiously bludgeoning a rad scorpion to death, I checked the damage in the pip-boy, and it said like 145 damage per strike. Was probably about 5 or 6 hits I think. Unfortunately, you cannot use it with Power Armor, or I might have tried to use it more. Still have it in a crate back in Sanctuary, I think.

For the .50 I would like the two shot, or the one that gives you double on the first hit on an undamaged opponent. No luck so far.

Are we really discussing realism regarding guns in a Fallout game? Really? Again?

A game that has lasers that have sound and recoil? Aliens? Deathclaws? A friggen Mini Nuke launcher?

C'mon people: Rule of Cool.

I was underwhelmed upon modding my Hunting rifle to .50, actually I was underwhelmed by all of the .50 options in the game especially as its strangely outclassed by the combat rifle modded to .308 and I've a lot of .50 and 5.56 mm ammo sitting around, so I 'have' to at times pull these lesser weapons out of storage until my preferred ammo supply builds up again.

And a .223 pistol and a 14mm pistol, and a Bozar and Unique weapons (non-magical)

I admit just changing out a rifle to a .50 cal doesn't make a lot of sense. But ... ok, it's a game.

I wasn't real impressed with the increase in damage though, and considering the rarity of the .50 cal ammo I just stuck with the .308.

Well .50 sound is the best, and damage is the best too among standard weaponry but by not far,

.50 is very slow, it nice at start as a sniper rifle, later you'll find faster weapon more useful.

Even Gauss Rifle which damage is better than .50 have much faster shoot speed.

I think yes, hunting rifle OK to have .50 mod,

but there should be another genuine AM Rifle, which have BETTER damage than .50 hunting rifle for it to become more useful.

Yeah, two shot is easily the most broken legendary effect in the entire game.

Violent is really good though for a bolt action rifle (it would svck ass on a semi auto).