ive seen alot of people post builds with very low perception that use energy weapons. does perception even affect that skill or just the red arrows?

It affects the starting value of Energy Weapons.

Yeah, just the starting value. It does affect VATs accuracy over distance, though. Also understand that characters with low perception may never have been intended to use energy weapons-they just wound up using them and getting better with them for whatever reason.

The following SPECIALs have the following unique effects tied to them aside from their skill level boosts:

Strength: Governs how much you can carry and how effective you are with some weapons (not meeting a weapon's STR requirement will make it less accurate/slower swinging) Can't recall, but it may also provide a minor damage boost to melee weapons.
Perception: Governs from how far away you can see enemies on your compass.
Endurance: Governs your HP and how many implants your character can have. Can't recall, but it may also provide a minor damage boost to unarmed weapons.
Charisma: Governs the damage and damage threshold of your companions.
Intelligence: Governs how many skill points you get per level up
Agility: Governs how fast you reload and draw your weapon
Luck: Governs your crit rate, your success in the casinos and various other luck based factors (for example, may govern how often enemies crit you or how often the Mysterious Stranger shows up. Not sure but somehow I doubt it)


To be honest? I think Perception is the most useless SPECIAL possible in the Mojave. Just get ED-E, problem solved... The only reason to get perception is if you want some of the perception based perks, which there are quite a few.

Longknife:Or even better, get a high Perception AND Ed-e

It says that it does, but it does not. I've tested this pretty thoroughly and there is absolutely no change in VATS percent to hit at any distance going from a perception of 1 to 10 or even 100. There is also no change in the max VATS engagement range either, so what they tell you about perception and accuracy on the vitomatic is pure hogwash.

-Gunny out.

I thought it also reduced spread for all weapons?

Question: Does reduced spread tranlate into lower VATS percentages? If it does, then the answer is no. I went to the test range, loaded some weapons and toggled perception from 1 to 10 (and eventually 100 for [censored] and grins) to see if there was any change in VATS to-hit percentages. The test range is a very controlled environment, the targets *can not* move, so you can stand there and get the same VATS results time after time. I observed no change at all in VATS to-hit percentages no matter the perception.

If if does reduce spread, but not VATS to-hit percentages, then I could take a fairly crappy spread weapon and toggle perception up and down to see if I can actually hit something, but the experiment won't exactly be SCIENTIFIC!. Unless I record hit percentages over a fairly large sample size, it's not gonna mean much.

-Gunny out.

I understand

If I get a chance, I'll try it. It won't really take that long to fire a coupla hundred rounds downrange. That ought to be enough. If I mod the target's DT to something like 100 and health to 1000, I can just shoot one target, at one distance and I'll know when I get hits because the DT shield will come up each time. I think I'll use a BB gun. That's got a pretty bad spead, so the difference should show up pretty well. I just gotta get one of my kids to sit there with a tote board to log the hits. :hubbahubba:

-Gunny out.

Gotta have it at six, minimum, for the Better Criticals perk. Never will make a char that doesn't make sure to get that one. But with implants and hats, it always ends up around 8, anyway.