I got the Ashburner and thought it would be a really powerful weapon, but when I use it is seems like it barely does any damage at all. My customized 10mm pistol was killing faster than the minigun was and my guy doesn't have any points in any particular weapon skills except for one point in automatic weapons. How is it that a heavy weapon like that can barely put out any damage?

I've not really played around with the mini guns, but on the subject of weak weapons. I was amazed if not slightly disappointed when a raider survived a direct hit from my Broadsider. I guess people in the post apocalyptic world are more resilient to sudden death.... from a cannon ball!

Miniguns work well at a range of about 3 metres or less. Beyond that there are so many misses that you are just wasting ammo. The assault rifle with the 80 round drum, reflex sight and advanced receiver on the other hand slaughters everything.

Needs perks to give it more oomf.

Get both the heavy guns+demolition(grenade/explosive) perks, and it'll be doing 300+

Wounding/Exploding/Furious + rapid fire weapons like MiniGun = someone didn't test this game much.

Much godmode

I used a minigun against a pack of ghouls in ideal conditions - a tight corridor where they were all coming at me from straight ahead, no aim necessary.

I used 400 rounds of ammo to defeat them, my handgun could have accomplished the same result with two dozen rounds...

This is something that's really bugged me about gunplay. "How do we balance automatics?"
"Divide their damage by their fire rate"

ha yeah, I am somewhat annoyed. I spent all the perks to max out my heavy weapons skill.. and even that Ash minigun is awful. Clearing a single dungeon of supper mutants used up all the 5mm ammo I saved up in 37 levels (with max scrounger perk). And no, I wasnt just hosing down the area, I got up into their faces with my power armor and unloaded.

I had a legendary one with bleed that worked pretty well in survival. But only because of the bleed I suspect, no perks in heavy weapons at all.

Ah right must be where I'm going wrong. I have all explosive perks but I've concentrated more on my sniper rather than heavy guns. Cheers for the tip.

I have an exploding one. Max big guns and max bloody mess. I can clear a room in seconds with it. Ash maker isn't amazing because fire damage in this game is severely lacking.

Found a +10 plasma damage minigun really early in one of my playthroughs. Extremely OP. Just found an exploding minigun today on a different character, which is +15 area damage, so presumably even more broken.

Automatics are just really bad guns. Without any sort of legendary prefix they barely do any dmg.

"with perks they good" is a bad argument because semi automatics don't need perks to be good. Last minute in last voyge quest is just one shot one kill vs spray n' spray which takes 1000-2000 ammo to clear one wave.

I kinda like automatics depending on which one you use. When Danse gave me that special laser rifle after helping him out I found that I got the best use out of it with the automatic barrel. (Noob tip: Don't use the shotgun attachment for laser or plasma weapons. Makes them really svck) The Overseer's Guardian w/ auto reciever is one of my favorite weapons I'm using right now, and I have an Irradiated plasma rifle I added the automatic barrel too that is great. Granted some weapons that start as automatics do tend to fall a bit flat (Spray n' Pray was great when I first got it but the OG beats it by a mile and doesn't kill me by accident so I switched) but single shot weapons that can be converted to auto tend to do really well.

Seriously - just mod a combat knife and take the blitz perk. Now you are a one man mini-ginsu.

You want the legendary mighty mingun, has an extra 25% damage and is a beast with the tri barrel upgrade

Also he can just get overseer's gun, spray n' prey, or kellog's pistol, and with the appropriate build just face roll the game just

Thats one thing I do kinda like about this game, with the right build and/or legendary any weapon style can be a king. You can't go wrong. MiniGun just requires you to find the proper legendary, which might be pain even if you do know the legendary farming methods. Wtb enchanting.

Eh, if you are forced to find a very specific set of legendary just to make a weapon effective, then its probably broken. Anyone at this point anyone would be better off with a shotgun and one of those legendary perks on it. It'd weigh a boatload less, do more damage and cost less to use.

Almost all weapon categories have legendary traits that can make them overpowered. But comparing non-legendary weapons, it is obvious that the minigun is terrible at its' job, even under ideal circumstances. The point of the minigun should be that you can tear enemies apart, but at the expense of huge amounts of ammo, not that I waste 500 rounds of ammo on something I could have killed as quickly and easily with a dozen rounds of .44 ammo.

Its awful, until you max your big guns perk and get a legendary mini gun with exploding rounds or some other bonus damage. Then it rocks.