Again, finding ammo not the issue... lack of damage and armor destroying varieties of ammo is the issue.

Energy weapons weren't any good in Fallout 3, either. The only laser ones worth the effort were Protectron's Gaze, the Metal Blaster and the Tri-Beam rifles.

The Plasma Pistol wasn't all that good either, but the MPLX Novasurge was downright insane.

The thing about Plasma weapons is that they're really only good at short/medium ranges.

Well maybe I'm playing a different game, I keep finding powerful unique energy weapons everywhere.

Pity I picked guns, the only unique ones I've come across are Maria (my new favorite gun ever) and That Gun.

Having armor piercing ammo types wouldn't make sense (the ammo is batteries, you want armor piercing electricity?!), BUT there should be more mods for energy weapons, mods that can modify DT.

Like for the laser rifle, they have the beam splitter that increases the damage by 30%, you should also be able to chose a beam focuser that doesn't increase damage but penetrates armor better.

Also Laser Commander should be -10 DR instead of +15% Damage, like the Shotgun Surgeon perk.

Yes, obviously you would not have armor piercing ammo variants, but you need something that reduces DT significantly, as is available for basically every bullet weapon in the game.

They try to make the differences between energy and guns significant. To that end, I would think that the overcharge and similar ammo would be the ones intended as AP while not actually mimicking AP ammo. I've not personally run tests, however.

The Gauss Rifle has a higher DAM than the Anti-Materiel rifle and requires significantly lower strength. Speculatively, one could throw some overcharged ammo on that baby and it might not be as much a problem.

I would rather that Obsidian focus on patching / fixing quest-related bugs and other bugs rather than making these types of changes.

And I'm pretty sure they won't make these types of changes.

For better or for worse, energy weapons are what they are. In my opinion, this falls squarely in the realm of user mods.

yeah, no one is arguing that the gauss can't keep up. We're arguing that the rest of the weapons in the next tier down from the one shotters (Gauss and Anti Materiel) are NO WHERE near as good.

My above example was there being basically just the plasma rifle to compete with trail carbine, .44 mag, brush gun, hunting revolver, hunting rifle etc. All of those guns are the next tier down (or even two tiers down in the case of the .44 shooting guns), but do MORE damage, even without their armor piercing or hand loaded ammo varieties.

It's arguable that given the inherent lack of variety in Energy weapons (there is basically only the laser rifle, tri beam, plasma and recharger as non unique sub-types for rifles- compare that to the number of rifles availble for guns; the same holds for pistols and shotguns, if not more so) there should be some redeeming feature to make them a worthy choice.

It certainly isn't their damage potential, which equals guns at best, and is vastly inferior in many cases.

I agree most E-weapons svck and it's not very fair. Very difficult at the start especially. but the 2 weapons that are good are insanely good.


Simple Guide if you do chose to get those 2.
1. Get slightly higher strength at the start, as well as Intense Training for strength since Energy Weapon builds have alot of empty perk spots.

2. Get Plasma Caster and/or YCS/186 asap Convert all energy weapon ammo into MFC's for these 2 guns (while having recycling perk). This should result in massive MFC ammo count. I have 3k in my chest.

3. Profit. 1-2 Shot everything.

Why would you want higher strength? Energy Weapons generally have lower strength requirements compared to guns. The mainstays of the arsenal require only 3. It's heavy hitter requires 5, the default strength. Even the Gatling Laser and Plasma Caster only requires 8. Start with a 6 and never add to that, get the 2 point lowering perk later on and you're set.

Energy weapons are a weak category when compared to the universal utility of guns.

As far as the overcharge ammo mimicking AP it does not, not by a long shot. It just tears up the weapon.

I maxed out energy weapons and took the right perks to crit as much as possible and 95% of the weapons just fall FAR short of even basic guns.

That said, I'd rather the game just worked before any balance issues would ever be addressed and something like this probably just won't be.

Well I did mention if you wanna use Plasma Caster, and did say "slghtly higher"

you're right tho you can get that -2 requirement from that perk. But +1 from IT and +1 from implant also works if you don't wanna wait till level 16. I got the plasma caster at level 7, I rushed to Silver RUSH

I'm confused as to why people are saying energy weapons need a -DT ammo type. Now before you yell at me about regular guns having -DT ammo, the regular -DT ammo also REDUCES DAMAGE overall. While this is negated by the -DT, you still need to remember this. Now energy weapons have ammo types that increase damage by 25%-75%. I can kill a reasonably high DT enemy like a Giant Radscorpion or a Ceasar's Legion member with the Cowboy Repeater with like 27DAM and no special ammo, I'm sure you can kill guys with your 20-30 + 25%/75% damage increase weapons.

Gauss rifle svcks, was my favorite weapon in FO3, but in here it only takes few bars from an enemy for me. i use it, it blows them back or so and does like 2-3 bars of damage lol

To the Bolded part: 5.56 round AP does -15DT and .95 dmg. So you're removing 15 points of armor while doing 95% damage. Sure, against unarmored opponents it'll do less damage, but to anything with armor it will destroy. Totally worth it in every way.

Also, you can absolutely stockpile AP rounds- I have hundreds of 5.56 rounds, and a couple hundred .308 AP rounds in addition to hundreds of .308 JSP rounds.

Hell, right now all I'm using are hand loaded .308 JSP and AP, .44 SWC, and 10mm (smg) along with 20g magnum shot.

Nevermind, I read it wrong. Had an anolysis here, but it was based on faulty statistics.

Ok, going over some numbers, let's have a Rifle and a Laser do 25 damage each. Against an enemy with 10 DT, they do 15 damage base, correct?

With the AP rounds, it goes like this
10DT: 25 - (25x.05) - (10-15) = 28.75
15:DT 25 - (25x.05) - (15-15) = 23.75
20:Dt: 25 - (25x.05) - (20-15) = 18.75

With Max Charge (MC) rounds, the Laser looks like this.
10: 25 + (25x.75) - 10 = 33.75
15: 25 + (25x.75) - 15 = 28.75
20: 25 + (25x.75) - 20= 23.75

The Laser gun actually does MORE damage than a regular gun with AP rounds does. If people are complaining about the Lase guns being weak, I can't help but wonder if they are even using the MC rounds.

Looking over a full list of weapons, I can see what some people are complaining about in a way. There are many more high damage guns for Guns than Energy, but the fact is that the guns still do roughly the same damage as their counterparts in each category, and Energy weapons with MC rounds scale much better than regular guns do (i.e., as they go up in damage, a Laser with MC rounds will keep doing more and more and more damage than a gun with AP rounds. In the example I used there is a 5 damage gap, but with 30 DAM weapons the gap becomes 9, etc.

I never had any trouble with energy weapons personally. While they aren't as varied as normal guns, there seems to be more unique offerings, which really helped level the field. Also they all share similar ammo, and with a bit of Science you can interchange the 3 ammo types easily.

In addition to this, the smaller pool of weapons means that upgrades are more common, allowing enhancements to made much more easily.

Meltdown was a brilliant perk as well, especially with the gauss rifle. I actually switched from a gun/energy hybrid to pure energy for the second half of the game, so I personally do not share the experiences as some others have...