Ok, so I have been playing FNV since it came out for PC and never got into the mod scene for it. Which is odd because I generally jump headfirst into Bethesda's modding community to get patches and such for the game.

I guess what I am looking for is possibly graphics enhancements, maybe some patches, a little balance type of mod that allows for Energy Weapons to be practical (I can never find any of the fricking things or people that use them except the Bright guys.).

Any help or direction on this would be much appreciated.

Also just a note, I do have all the DLC for this game already.

For starters, grab the New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE) and New Vegas Stutter Remover (NVSR). The former is the foundation of any complex mod, and the latter will just make the game more enjoyable. For NVSR I'd recommend removing the 30 framerate cap unless your computer is just really awful.

For graphics ''enhancements'' there are a few areas you have options in. A handful of high resolution texture replacement packs; they're RAM intensive and load slower than default textures. Some model replacements for plantlife. Environment normal map replacements that alter the way light affects the ground and rocks. There are also DirectX wrappers (ENBSeries namely) that implement additional effects, but these generally have steep performance costs, and the visual changes made are of dubious benefit; eye of the beholder though.

Weather and lighting mods tend to be fairly benign (gameplay-wise) but can really spice up the appearance of the game.

There are too many bug fixes to name, but I can't think of any that are essential; the game is functional as is, and pretty much anything that causes a crash doesn't have a fix available (in general). If you're getting random crashes near Jean's Skydiving for example, no mod to fix that. =/ You'd be better off simply looking through what bug fixes are available and snagging anything that claims to fix a bug you've noticed before and that annoyed you. Large bug fix collections tend to include garbage changes that you might not want.

Like bug fixes, there are too many gameplay rebalances to name. Plenty of good ones, but I don't know what'd be right for you off the top of my head.

Start off slow; load up one or two mods at a time, make sure they work, then see what else you want to add to the mix. Pretty much the worst thing you could do is download 50, research any compatibility issues between them, think you've got everything set up right, then have an unplayable mess.

Queue

Just jumping in on the discussion as I've finally bought a PC copy of FNV to match my non-moddable 360 version. To FOMM or not to FOMM, that is my question. I've implemented a couple of graphic/texture tweaks (Mojave Nights, Hi-res eyes, and the less advlt oriented Type 3 body/armor replacer to be specific), but have just manually installed them. So far, so good, but they aren't major changes. I'm sure there'll come a point where the game won't be agreeable to my selection of mods, but the whole archiveinvalidated invalidated and FOMM stuff intimidates me. Maybe my reading comprehension skills are lacking, but it just seems like there's a lot of problems setting these modding programs up. Am I setting myself up for failure by neglecting these seemingly important programs?

Not exactly. FOMM (or its successor, the Nexus Mod Manager, or NMM) is REALLY simple. Easy as pie. You download it and put it anywhere. You run it from anywhere and it detects your New Vegas install folder. It shows a list of detected ESPs/ESMs the same as the ''DATA FILES'' entry in the game's vanilla launcher, escept that you can drag them up/down to reorder them. They have little checkboxes to turn them on and off.

Aside from being able to reorder the mods in the list (which is important when the mods need to load in a specific order), the mod manager also keeps track of which files are associated with which mod ONLY IF you install the mods via the mod manager. This makes uninstall of mods that have a mess of loose files much easier. Archive Invalidation is a simple checkmark in the mod manager, so if you want it on, you just check it.

That aside, I don't use a mod manager, but I only use a handful of mods, and 90% of them are ones I made myself, so they're easy to keep track of and I don't have compatibility issues that require careful mod ordering.

Queue

Well, what I am trying to find is a mod that lets Energy Weapons be more practical, I mean EVERYTHING uses Guns making it difficult to maintain your Energy Weapons as well as getting Ammo for them. And then when you do have Energy Weapons, from what I have noticed through different play throughs is that they just don't do the same damage as Guns. Guns out-DPS Energy Weapons just about any day of the week.

You probably want to check out:
Classic Energy Weapons which adds some more energy weapons from Fallout 1 & 2
EVE (Essential Visual Enhancements) that adds newer effects to energy weapons
and
Energy Boost which makes energy weapons more powerful (and degrade slower)

just to get you started. There's several other energy weapon tweaks/fixes/etc but these seem to be higher rated. I haven't actually used any of them, although I'm eyeballing that EVE mod. Seriously though, just go to newvegasnexus.com and run a search on the word "energy" and you'll be treated to 4 pages. Try 'em out, and let us know what works.

Gophers Vids Channel is always a good place to start http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdfJME1nhGA is the first video tutorial