» Sat Aug 31, 2013 7:57 am Thread concept is simple. Post a list of weapons you consider completely impractical and non-viable options regardless of character type.
For me?
Paciencia -
Here's the problem. This is a gun built for sniping. And admittedly, yes, it will out-DD a normal hunting rifle with a sneak attack crit, as Paciencia has the same crit damage of an AMR. Nevertheless, I think you'd struggle to find someone who'd prefer Paciencia to the normal hunting rifle simply because hunting rifles suffer from inaccurate ironsights. Yes, you can learn from experience and adapt to aiming with Paciencia, but the scope mod for the hunting rifle just seems so much more simple. Likewise, for those situations where you DON'T kill your target ASAP in 1-2 shots, Paciencia is royally screwed whereas the modded Hunting rifle is prepped and ready for round two.
Some of you may be thinking "right but accuracy is a non-issue for me at this point and I'm willing to adapt to inaccurate ironsights if it means more damage," but all of this is made moot by Paciencia's pricetag. For the same price it takes to buy this damned thing, you can have a fully modded GRA AMR, which btw, still hits harder. It enjoys a larger clip size, a nice accurate scope and superior damage (60 points of superiority, 140 with explosive rounds) and AOE capabilities with explosive rounds. You could argue that Paciencia may be a good alternative for people who lack the strength to utilize a GRA AMR, but Paciencia requires 6 and the AMR requires 8, meaning there's only so many characters that'll actually benefit from it, and you have to ask yourself if said characters are really going to shell out all that money for Paciencia when a modded Hunting Rifle is cheap and available, the Gobi Sniper Campaign is free to anyone with good lockpicking and Christine's COS Sniper Rifle even offers a scope and respectable damage. (124 damage on a crit vs. Paciencia's 160, though one should note this gap grows if you have Better Criticals)
All-in-all, Paciencia is almost completely and utterly inferior to a GRA AMR while costing a crapton, all while having god awful ironsights and rather attractive alternatives as it's competitors.
The Bozar -
The same weapon the Chosen One wouldn't leave home without is the same weapon the Courier leaves in the trash bin. To each their own, I guess?
The Bozar is simply a Light Machine Gun with reduced damage and a MUCH smaller clip in exchange for a scope, decreased spread and higher firing rate (which it should be noted, can easily become a moot advantage when the LMG enjoys higher DPH and needs to reload less frequently, have 200 clip size if modded vs. the Bozar's mere 30). But one really has to ask oneself.....why on EARTH would I want to use the Bozar's scope and "snipe" with it when this is a game where the major benefit of sniping is sneak attack criticals, a feature that largely benefits DPH weapons over DPS ones? Why on earth would I use the Bozar on a deathclaw to get a mere 38 damage on a sneak attack critical when I could use a GRA AMR with explosive rounds and hit 300; hell, 600 if I land a headshot (something that'd be more difficult with the Bozar).
And even then, for all it's reduced spread and scope capabilities, the Bozar's spread is still quite high. Ever use This Machine and find it's spread too high to be practical at long-range? The Bozar's spread is even higher. You'll often surrender your sneak attack critical altogether to a miss. Lucky is more accurate than the Bozar, and even if you use hand loader ammo for the Bozar, it's still only about as accurate as This Machine.
And through all of this, you're actually surrendering a good amount of damage, DPS and sheer clip size to the LMG. The LMG can benefit from Grunt, giving it 7 more points of damage per shot than the Bozar and letting it overtake the Bozar's DPS, let alone the dramatic difference in DPS you see once you factor in their reload frequency. What you're doing is nerfing your DPS weapon for the sake of making it more well-rounded and practical at long range, a category where it can never in a million years hope to compete with any form of DPH sniper, nevermind the fact that the non-scope ironsights of the LMG will be FAR more practical than the scoped ironsights of the Bozar for close-ranged swarm fights, where you'd need to use the Bozar the most. The only "sniper" the Bozar can outclass is the Ratslayer, and even that's debateable given the Ratslayer can provide more consistent headshots and thus exploit the x2 damage bonus on headshots.
On top of all these problems, we also get one more: the pricetag.
All-in-all, the Bozar is a weapon that tries too hard to be good at everything and ends up being pathetic in everything instead. You want a sniper? Get the AMR. You want a DPS weapon for close-range groups? Get the LMG.
A Light Shining in the Darkness -
I know what you're thinking: "But this weapon is awesome!!!" I'm afraid I'd have to disagree.
Ask yourself: what kind of weapon is ALSID?
The gut reaction is a sidearm, because well...it is. But does it function like a sidearm? To me, a sidearm is a weapon that, admittedly, is not as powerful as your rifle. However, the advantage it has over your rifle is that it can be more practical, economical and helpful vs. weaker or unarmored foes, therefore allowing you to conserve on that rifle ammo longer and save it for the enemies where it's needed most, thus saving you both money in the long-term and saving your skin in the near future for battles-to-come. For lower strength characters, sidearms can also offer a logistical advantage in that they're very lightweight and use lightweight rounds, allowing for more shots to be fired while still offering the exact same effectiveness, AKA, you can carry 1000 rounds instead of 300, but your 35 damage sidearm is more than capable of oneshotting weaker foes all the same, and if you're experiencing a mix of unarmored and armored foes, your sidearm's DPS is comparable to your rifle's on unarmored foes and can thus act as a substitute for it in those fights. For example, Lucky's ammo has half the weight of the Medicine Stick's, but given Lucky's frequent crit rate and the various perks to increase it's damage, it's quite likely you can actually trust Lucky to kill a Cazador since every critical hit will deliver damage on par with that of the Medicine Stick and 50% crit rate is easily doable with Lucky, but you can carry twice as many bullets for Lucky as you can for the Medicine Stick and therefore carrying Lucky and utilizing it for such foes affords you more shots and more damage overall throughout the course of your travels. Therefore, Lucky is a logistical advantage that any character who can properly utilize it (a character with Luck, Agility and respective perks) would be negligent to pass up.
Functionally, ALSID is not a sidearm. It's three immediate competitors would be Lucky, Maria and That Gun. All three of these sidearms offer ammo that weighs far less than your average rifle round (.50 MG, 12.7mm, .308, .45-70 Gov't) whereas http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_ammunition And despite it's ammo weighing so much, ALSID acts like Lucky in that it requires a crit to be on par damage-wise with a good rifle. All three of those offer ammo types that are very VERY common throughout the wastes, cheap, affordable and easy to find both in containers and on fallen enemies, but ALSID's ammo literally will not be found anywhere but by vendors in the Mojave itself and never within your travels.
What you end up with is a flashy little sidearm that can be as cumbersome as a rifle, but for the performance standards of a sidearm. It simply gets curbstomped and outclassed by other sidearms for that particular job.
But hey, maybe ALSID is another weapon functionally even if it's a sidearm in literal terms, right? I mean, it fires extremely fast and reloads equally as fast, making it's low clip size practically a moot point. Maybe ALSID could function as an SMG, right? In this sense, it's like a more accurate and economical SMG, since it's easier to aim with it via VATS for that headshot damage bonus, and it crits far more often than an SMG so more damage per round.
Again though, it has problems. One is that ALSID's ironsights are off, so it's treated more like the regular .45 pistol when aiming. This can be adapted to and you can learn to circumvent this, but it does mean headshots out of VATS might not be as consistent as you'd like and aim in general may suffer. Another is that again, much of it's strategy is built around being able to use VATS. The moment you have a non-Vats-friendly character, it doesn't seem like such an attractive alternative. Likewise, the moment you're in a fight where you quickly use up all your Action points, you're surrendering ALSID's increased aim over an SMG to an extent, meaning your advantages have just ceased to exist and the only advantage remaining is the x2 crit multiplier. Finally, one simply has to ask themselves the validity of trying to conserve on ammo with a DPS-class weapon....You can literally buy 2000 5mm or 9mm rounds for 2000 caps. This is HARDLY in high demand as the DPS-class weapons are the last weapon type you'd expect to find people looking for ways to be more cost effective in. DPS weapons are the kinds you specifically bring out BECAUSE sh** is hitting the fan, you've got a ton of enemies on you and your options are be wasteful and non-economical or die; a slower firing weapon won't save you. You expect situations like this, and you're fully ready and prepared to spend caps for situations like this.
Lastly, even IF you want to argue that yes, being economical with DPS weapons is a valid niche group and you'd like to do so with ALSID....
Each bullet you fire with ALSID is triple the cost and double the weight of a 9mm round. ALSID can hit a good 47 damage per shot with the proper perks, Vance's SMG can hit a good 24 damage per shot with it's proper perks. Vance's gives you the exact same weight consumption and superior damage when ALSID isn't critting or landing headshots Vance's can't (cause SMGs are fully capable of headshotting too). Meanwhile, Vance's is a gun you gain the luxury of spraying and praying with while with ALSID, you cannot. And even if you still think ALSID is more economical, ALSID can NEVER hope to be more economical than a simple melee weapon. A melee weapon can provide the same DPS and then some, all while being cheaper.
I've tried to like this weapon and I've tried to use it in various ways, but you can quickly see how another type of weapon can almost ALWAYS substitute for ALSID, and thus the benefits it affords you are either non-existent or SOOOOOOOOOOOOO specialized that you'd be lucky to actually encounter a situation where having ALSID benefited you as opposed to having one of the alternatives. It's plenty flashy and fun to use, but in a practical sense, it just seems to lead to dead characters that could've lived had they not been blinded by the flashiness of the light.
The Fat Man/Esther -
I don't think this one really needs an explanation. I think this is a realization we've all had very very quickly. This is a weapon that, even IF I'm playing a character that has all the right perks and setups to use it optimally (AKA better than any other character), I still find little reason to bother with it because it fails to ever be neccesary and there's plenty of alternatives that are more practical.
With 3 pound ammo, an absolute limit to only being viable at long distance, plenty of risk of killing yourself on accident, and the reality that an explosives weapon such as Thump-Thump or Annabelle can STILL get the job done more than easily (why the HELL would I need Esther's 2000+ damage? What even has that? If I really desire to hit hard, why wouldn't Annabelle's 900 be enough? It's ALWAYS enough), but for much cheaper cost (both coin-wise and weight-wise), there's simply no reason to use this aside from the sheer novelty of it. And novelty? Novelty isn't practical. I can use Pack Rat to drastically increase the missles or 40mm grenades I can carry, but mini nukes? Pack Rat does nothing for their weight, so I have a definite limit on how many I can carry, and the damage I'll deal with the nuke is always, ALWAYS. excessive. Never neccesary. "No need for bombs when hate will do."
Those are the ones that stand out to me the most, I may add more later. How about you?
(Improved damage, clipsize, and accuracy). As well as Minigun and Missile Launcher, though i've replaced that with Red Glare since Lonesome Road.
