One thing that came to mind after seeing and reading about the new leveling system is how will weapon mods and perks interconnected, particularly with ranged weapons.

We know that there are at least 3 perks related to ranged weapons, the gunslinger perk that affects pistols, the commando perk which affect full auto weapons and the new rifleman perk which affect single action of similar single shot rifle sized weapons.

Question is, what happens if I say, put the ful auto mod on a pistol, is it still covered by the gunslinger perk? Or is it now affected by commando? Or possibly both?

Feel free to share ya thoughts.

I think they're using a class system that gets reflected in the wepon's name/description. When the laser pistol gets the long stock, it becomes a laser rifle, for example. Hopefully it will be more clear once we get our hands on the system. In past Fallouts it wasn't always clear whether some weapons were covered by some of the perks.

Good question, I know in fallout 3 weapons with multiple attributes like that stacked with the combined corresponding skills for instance the gatling laser gun received a boost from energy weapons AND heavy weapons making it one of the strongest ( possibly THE strongest) weapon you can get with those two skills maxed out.

Good question. It seems like only a few weapons can actually be modified into different classes of weapons - like the Assault Rifle doesn't have mods to make it a regular Rifle, but of course you can change Laser and Plasma weapons to suit your needs since it's all energy, and a Pipe Rifle can be turned into anything since it's a homemade weapon to begin with. But can you turn a 10m Pistol into a 10mm SMG?

As for the weapons that can be changed, I'm guessing it depends on how you change them. A Pipe Pistol that gets turned into an Automatic Pipe Rifle will probably switch from Gunslinger to Commando, and so on. But do those perks only apply to regular weapons, or will they affect Energy weapons too? Are there any perks dedicated solely to improving the use of Energy Weapons?

we seen both a full auto firing 10 mm pistol and a semi auto firing assault rifle, so clearly full auto is a mod you can install and uninstall freely.

Also and this is just speculation on my part, but just like how you see a laser pistol get modded into a laser rifle o think it can be done with any conventional weapon (at least from pistol) my guess comes from the new assault rifle they show in the E3 that as similar anesthetics' to the 10mm pistol and also that if a laser pistol can be upgraded to a different type of weapon why not do the same to the rest.

I dunno, in the crafting montage they showed how the Laser Gun has Grip (pistol) and Stock (rifle) options in the crafting menu, as well as different barrels that change it into an automatic weapon or sniper rifle or whatever; same as the Plasma Gun and Pipe Gun. But the Assault Rifle only has options for different Stocks, and the barrel options are for different assault barrels. Also, in different parts of the E3 presentation I saw a Pipe Gun that took .38 ammo, and another that took .45 ammo - so one of the mods for that particular weapon might be to change the kind of ammo it takes. I guess a piece of pipe isn't too particular about what gets shot out of it.

It was pretty funny to see that you could craft a Plasma Pistol with a Sniper Barrel - the kickback on that pistol must be hilarious.

I was talking earlier in the new character system thread about how the programming for deciding what class of weapons fit into what is kinda simplistic in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and has most likely been changed pretty hard this time around.

It looks like the old and trusty assault rifle has mods to make it automatic and semi-automatic. So it could benefit from the Commando or Rifleman perks depending on which configuration you have it in.

For your 10mm example I think you're right in that it'll be effected by both. Gunslinger in previous games effected all one handed weapons, automatic or no. And although we don't know for sure I can't really see the perk system working any other way.

Tho I suspect some rifles can take pistol grips, for example I theorize this is one of the reasons the hunting rifle has a left sided bolt, so the gun can have a universal reload animation, whether it has a rifle stock or a pistol grip.

You're probably right, at least for some weapons.

Would a one-handed SMG fall under Commando, for being an automatic weapon, or Gunslinger, for being a one-handed weapon? I'm leaning towards Commando, but who knows.

Assuming a weapon can't benefit from more then one perk, I suspect commando supersedes the other two whenever you use a weapon with auto fire.

I think for a one-handed SMG like the old 10mm SMG it would benefit from both. These perks replace the skill system from days past, and I don't think they work on the same logic as New Vegas's Grunt or Cowboy in that they rarely overlap and are mostly extra damage, since these specific perks are meant to be the standard character development in gun use that would fall under Small Guns before.

That's what I think too. I've never fired a gun, but I imagine someone with a ton of experience firing assault rifles and other automatic weapons would be able to handle an SMG better than someone that can shoot your hat off with a pistol.

Some overlap might happen too, but wouldn't that make SMGs way more powerful for someone that took all ranks of the Gunslinger and Commando perks? Might be a poor balance.

Indeed, and of course the same setup will most likely apply to energy weapons.

Could be that the damage values of SMGs are also balanced with the multiple perk overlap in mind. It could also be that there that the weapon mod system is so crazy in depth that we can turn the majority of our guns into one/two handers easily. We saw going from a pipe pistol to a pipe LMG, whose to say that we can't go from a 10mm pistol to a 10mm carbine?