And by broke, I mean exploded, causing Veronica to explode into a mess of appendages and blood.

I got the perk (forgot the name) which causes a small implosion to happen when you kill an enemy with an energy weapon. This would be AWESOME. If... well Veronica couldn't be hurt by it. Howeverrr, I am now doomed to either give Veronica a weapon (Which I refuse since I'm not giving her ammo every 10 minutes), or to never attack anything she even runs near. Last time I tried that, all of the White Glove Society exploded and she ended up lodged into a railing.

Any suggestions for a companion to replace her with? And don't tell me where I can find them. Thats half the fun!

Tell her to use a weapon instead of melee then. Save the game often so you don't get to lose her.

I'll make it easy and just quote the sentence I already established.

Veronica does have a default ranged gun weapon (no ammo required), y'know. Not that it's a great one...the 10mm pistol I think?

Replacement non-melee companion? Take your pick. Obviously if you're Legion supporting, Boone won't do, but beyond that he's always a solid choice for long ranged support w/his default weapon (it's a .308 hunting rifle, typically still effective even against higher enemies). Since he uses a rifle by default, he usually maintains a good distance from enemies/backs up/strafes (at least outdoors).

Other than him, imo the best default ranged weapon a companion has is Arcade's Plasma Defender (it does 38 dmg/95dps). However, in the early stages, he can be a rather poor shot (accuracy), taking quite a few shots to kill anything most of the time. But since it's his magical ammo/rapid fire, not a big issue.

What can be a problem (for you) is that his combat tactic with his pistol tends to be 'start firing, then start walking forward while still firing" ... this is because pistols have a much shorter effective range than rifles, so his AI tells him to get closer. eg, he can still get fairly close up to the enemy pretty quickly. Raul's .44 revolver, Veronica's pistol, & Cass's shotgun can have the same forward-walking issue.

All ranged companions are still going to have up-close-and-personal issues indoors/in vaults, because of their AI/aggressive search & attack behavior.

P.S. - if you choose Boone, he's currently a bit buggy re:headtracking & constant re-holstering. If you're encountering this and are on PC, you can use http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38842 to take care of it. Works great.

All companions have weapons of their own that require no bullet, now if you want them to use a different weapon you must give them bullets.

Shouldn't have taken that perk.
It's more trouble than it is good.
Killed/crippled/Neardeath myself tons of times because of that perk.

Get Boone; his rifle raqes face.

Don't use energy weapons at close range. I would have thought that was a pretty damn obvious solution.