That did it. I had given Veronica a fully modded out Power Fist and now she's lost it. I have no idea how it happened. The only casino we went into was the Atomic Wangler, which doesn't take your weapons anyway.

I already had issues with Cass losing Dinner Bell, now it's Veronica. Best I can tell is that some enemy must have targeted it and it lost all it's condition, after which it gets dropped. The problem is I have no idea where she might have dropped it as we've been in several battles. The thing cost a fortune to buy and mod so I'm not going to bother trying again.

Is there any 'trick' or even a mod out there that stops companions from losing their gear? I hate to leave them with just their default weapons, but I really don't have much choice anymore.

Well, when stuff like that happens, i just use console commands to get the items back

For some reason my weapons lose some mods sometimes, but a good old player.additem fixes that right up

just give them decent things. Not your best/favorites. I only give my companions loot that i find that is good, except raul i just give him a better melee weapon and advanced combat armor MKII.

I only give companions upgraded gear if I'm going into a tough battle (places like the crashed vertibird, deathclaw promontory, dead wind cavern), but I don't play on hardcoe so I know they won't die.

Yeah no hardcoe yet for me. Heck if I had Veronica would be dead right now just because she stood too close to the door before I closed it when blowing the gas in Vault 22. I tried to lead her further into the room, but she decided to stand near the door. I tossed a grenade and closed the door, but not before she was engulfed with flames. After that no matter what I did she was near death and kept complaining about it. I finally got tired of hearing it and dismissed her, then rehired her and she was all healed up. Odd bird that girl.

I am considering using the console, but honestly having to check her gear all the time will get awfully old after a while. I think I'm just going to let it go. I do have her in Mk II Combat armor and that seems to be staying on.

Yea any armors you give them to wear don't degrade in condition and seem to be pretty safe. It's just when the weapons get hit in combat, or confiscated and not returned.

Followers don't benefit from weapon mods so you can save yourself some money next time: http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Fallout:_New_Vegas_followers#Weapons.

I generally find that the bigger a weapon is (e.g. a gauss rifle), the more likely that your good-for-nothing follower will lose it in combat, probably because of the weapon's larger hit-box. Although Veronica with a LAER still rips everything apart without the LAER's costly maintenance.

Thank you so much for that link. A lot of stuff there I didn't know about. I did note that when I told Veronica to use ranged weapons once she had a 10mm pistol. I thought that was really odd for someone who was supposed to be specialized in Energy Weapons.

Yeah, I learned awhile ago to have her and ED-E wait for me on the second floor with Keeley. It was hard enough to keep my own skin intact during that blast, never mind having to worry about them as well. It took me a few tries before I finally figured out where I was supposed to stand.

Yeah the problem I had was that the idea was to throw a grenade and then quickly click the door to close it. The problem is that as soon as I throw the grenade my character is going through the animation of arming themselves with another grenade and I couldn't click the door until after it was finished. Sometimes I'd make it, sometimes I wouldn't. Long fuse dynamite works well here.

So does a Grenade Rifle. That's my Explosives weapon of choice. I don't understand why people would use Frag/Pulse Grenades when that's available in the game.

I stash followers in that stairwell area where the AER-14 prototype is located before I set off the gas, get into that room that has the entrance to the caves, toss a grenade and then run like hell into the caves. It usually does the trick.

There is also a flame thrower in the vault so I came to the conclusion that it must be the weapon I'm supposed to use for lighting the gas. That ... really didn't turn out too well.

I always just have everyone standing in the room where you get the research data. Works ... unless the companion stands too close to the door.