Weirdly enough, I found as random loot a weapon that came as 'Short Automatic Laser Musket'

Key parts being the automatic on a laser musket?

When I fire it, it basically auto cranks the hand crank by itself, isn't terribly fast compared to true autos but is very fast for a musket. Problem is, on a weapon bench it doesn't recognize the weapon at all - there is no option to modify it.

It has a star next to it indicating it is a legendary weapon - so somehow seems like some automatic fire mod legendary affix got attached to a spawning laser musket.

Anyone else found one of these? And figure out way to mod it? Since I can't even view it in the weapon bench, have no idea if the crank is single, 3-4 crank, etc. The dmg says 73, fire rate 28.

Sturges gave me one, and when I took it to a workbench I belive it showed up yet there were no mods for it, so I guess that svcks.

Yeah, the Automatic Laser Musket is a special case, you can't really mod it.

I know Preston and the Minutemen are like the 'every man' version of an army/militia, but how the hell have they not grown to use better weapons? I know it plays into the whole historical Minutemen thing to have them used something called a musket, but damn those things are terrible.

Laser Muskets are some of the best weapons in the game, though, especially as sniper rifles. Just don't miss.

I guess I never just put in enough work with mine. Always just left it stock and abandoned it when I found something I liked more.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty biased towards all ballistic weapons and against energy weapons. Maybe I'll have to change that.

If I recall, a 6 crank laser musket will insta-kill 90% of the enemies in the game, I think the only one that survives it is Mirelurk Queens and late-game Deathclaws.

Yeah no they aren't, cool looking and fun to use, but definitely not best. The best weapons can be found by joining the Brotherhood.

Laser Musket isn't as good as the Gatling Laser or Gauss Rifle, but a Six-Cranked Musket shot is not something you want to trifle with. It also seems like the most damage-efficient way to spend six Fusion Cells, especially if you use it as a sniper rifle.

Mm, guess the definition of a best gun is subjective to the playstyle. Brotherhood weapons tend to be good for the "Let's run in with guns blazing" sort of approach to combat, less so for "I want as much damage as possible to one shot, even if it's slow reload" style.

No because the Gauss Rifle accomplishes just that, allows a suppressor, looks cooler, does more damage, and uses only one shell.

I think the best gun in the game is the assault rifle.

The suppressor makes it look hideous, honestly. The rest though? Definitely, though I do miss the old look.

Interesting. My Focused Automatic Laser Musket shows that they can be modified. I am using the PC version so using a console might prevent it from working. Selecting one of the Crank mods removes the Automatic mod and turns it back into a regular Laser Musket.

There seems to be a bug with it. Equipping the Laser Musket removes it from the Workshop list, but dropping it and picking it back up allows it to be modified again.

I'm not going to get into "best weapon" discussions, and I don't have the knowledge needed to throw out DPS numbers. What I can say is that I did some testing to see how the damage of a Laser Musket scales with multiple cranks. I only had a five-crank version, but at 5 cranks, the weapon inflicted 8.5x the damage of a single crank. The paper damage on my version was 32; multiply that by 8.5, and you get 272 damage. Add in a "Double Damage to Enemies at Full Health" and a basic Sneak Attack, and you've got 1088 damage. And that's just on a five-crank version; the six-crank will be even higher.

Frankly, the Laser Musket is to Energy Weapons what the Hunting Rifle is to Ballistic Weapons: high damage per shot, but a delay between each shot that makes it better suited for long range work. It's also worth noting that the Laser Musket is the only weapon that can easily modify it's damage. If you're sniping a basic Raider, you don't need 6 cells worth of damage ,so you don't use the full 6 cranks. The Gauss Rifle can modify it's damage through charging, but the damage goes from extremely powerful to Simply Ludicrous™. Using a Gauss Rifle against anything but the toughest enemies is basically a waste of ammo, as most enemies don't have the health or damage resistance to require that much damage to put them down. I'm not saying that the Gauss Rifle isn't useful, but it's more of a BFG that you pull out against massively powerful and tough targets rather than a workhorse weapon for general use.

Pretty much this, the Laser Musket is a workhorse that can do great amounts of damage, has relatively common ammo, and it's a fairly good weapon from the very start of the game. It can't compare to the most badass endgame weapons, but it's dependable. That's what sells me on it.

An 6 turn musket does almost as much damage as the gaus, lower rate of fire but you can pre charge.
Main downside is no supressor

I never like energy weapons in Fo3 and NV. Fo4 has improved them no end though. I actually use them now.