For sake of Argument,
5/5 Heavy Weapons Skill
Mini-Gun now does 16 Damage at base.
Armor System works like this, 10 Damage vs 10 DR, means 50% damage soaked.
Raiders typically have 20 DR, your 5/5 Mini-Gun now does 8 damage per 5mm.
Gunners have 30 DR, your Mini-Gun does about 4 Dam per 5mm.
If your 0/5
Vs Raider its 2 Dam
Vs Gunner its 1 Dam
So basically a High Strength Character would do far more damage by punching them in the face.
I know, I know its balanced cause we cant have Semi-Automatic Riffles fall off in usefulness or Because Legendaries...
Too bad for those players invested in Heavy Weapons Amiright?
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5/5 Riffleman
100% more damage plus 30% reduction in armor effectiveness
Raider with 20 DR now has only 14 DR....
-Thing is our weapon does 140 Damage per bullet....
-So that Raider is only going to soak like like 14 points.
-126 Damage done per bullet
For a Raider with 300 HP,
-gotta hit him like 3 times with the Riffle
-With mini-gun I gotta hit him with 100 5mm rounds or about 4 seconds of continuous fire.
But it's ok cause Legendary random weapon drops gonna equalize that.
My bad I didn't do the numbers for 5/5 of Mini-Gun awesomeness...
Gotta hit him with 40ish 5mm rounds if each round does 8 Damage vs a 300 HP target with 20 DR....
So it will take londer than 1 second for sure about 2-3 seconds assuming all the bullets connect.
Where-as a Combat Riffle can easily squeeze off more than 3 rounds in a second.
So whats the saving grace, it all comes down to this if you seriously want to use a Mini-Gun as your main weapon in the mid-late game you have to get the right Legendary Descriptor...
You cannot sustain enough ammo for the Mini-Gun in the early game and well without Legend, its going to be very hard to have enough rounds for late game.
But a basic Combat Riffle well you don't have to worry about that its good to go throughout the entire game.
-All purpose, suits every role god I love my riffle!
-No Legendary Descriptor needed this thing kicks butt 24/7