So far it feels like Frost Magic in Skyrim: not very good in general and the majority of enemies are immune to it anyways. Is there some secret way to make it really good? Ive even gotten the unique one (you know the one) but it is even worse because it doesnt do more damage which defeats the purpose for me. I know you can mod it to do energy damage but that doesnt seem to be a lot of damage either...

Point it at weakling humans and pull the trigger = not too bad . . . well at least equal to a mini-gun . . .

Thing is, ANYTHING that is not affected by radiation (the awareness perk is useful to find that out) is not going to be bothered by any gamma gun.

That is what i meant by my Skyrim comparison. 90% of the enemies in Skyrim had frost resistances, likewise almost everything non-human is near-immune to radiation in F4. This makes the gun seem super useless

It can actually take down anything on survival in 3 shots where they'd be bullet sponges to any other gun. Trick 1, it works off of the science perk not any of the guns. 2. It's damage doesn't show in vats because it is not normal damage. It is rad damage same as you. It will not take away the health it takes away where that health would be. 3. It is even good against things with rad resistance despite what the loading screen says. They have low level ambient rad resistance like being in the glowing sea with 10-20 rads. Meaning 20 is the highest defence anyone has against rads except robots which truly dont care but i havent tested them. They may be vulnerable too once you break 20 dmg. 4. The zeta gun is truly worse, it is not a reward it is a kick in the face. If you have that you sided with Lorenzo and your reward was the medicine and the worse zeta. The zeta can be modded to just a normal gamma gun. There is no real use for zeta. You may have gotten lorenzos version which i'm not too familiar with. It may be able to be made into just a gamma gun to be stronger but has the special ability to also give a force push effect. 5. Aiming the thing is hard. It looks to have a wide aoe but it seems more like only the center impacts and while it should go through stuff it doesn't. You have to hit them dead on in the center of the blob. Easier with vats. To top it off there's no sights and no clear way of knowing what its pointed at. I tried using a little v notch chipped out of the top but thats just a chip not a sight and it sends the shot high. I think you have to line up the middle of the dish itself with the target and just eyeball it, or hip shoot or vats. It's a good underappreciated gun even against high level rad scorpions who take no damage from a minigun or even a maxed assault rifle unless the rifle has explosions or something. most interesting is its tied to science. The guy who uses one actually wears a lab coat and is of course a scientist. Don't think int effects it though.

Really? So strange that it would be affected by a perk that doesnt mention it...cant imagine why Beth thought that was a logical step...i guess i will try that out

It says right in science something like effects rad damage. At first i thought that was lasers but its the gamma gun.

The gun is too situational for me to bother carrying it. Pretty much all enemies are immune to radiation except humans....so why waste the encumberance on a gun that can only injure one type of enemy....

I prefer my Overseer's Guardian to start fights and swap to my Incendiary Advanced Combat Shotgun for the people who close the gap on me....

I use a freezing gamma gun myself. Its actually very powerful. First it is one of the few guns that benefit from the nuclear physicist perk. It also benefits from the demolition expert perks since it actually deals direct damage followed by explosion damage. This means it will deal massive rads and energy damage if boosted.

Secondly its most plainly effective against other people since generally people will have the lowest rad resistance. There is actually energy resistance and energy immunity in the game and the gun is actually more effective against rad immune enemies rather than resistant but will still hurt resistant as well.

A fully modded and perked out gamma gun will do about 400 rads of damage per hit. The gun works just like rad damage for you. So it doesn't hurt enemies as much as it lowers their max health. Which makes it great against legendary enemies that will regenerate health. It will actually make them incapable of going back to their true starting health just like radiation does to you.

What I meant was that the gun was not designed to be used on already irradiated things or robots. It was meant to be used on those dreaded gunners and their combat skills.

I have found it quite good at taking on Raiders and Gunners and other human trash. I would use it more if the ammo were more plentiful. If I find it gets more plentiful I will definitely use it on all humans.

In my experience the only thing that seems to be effected by the gamma gun is me

It's good overall, as mentioned above in a wall of text. Though I'm waiting to get a Frosty version of the gun and then applying the Lorenzo Artifact to it...

Sneak attack freezing effect + force push effect... That's gonna be fun. (Assuming you can find a Legendary version of the Gamma Gun. I'm assuming it's rare since it's seems to be rarer to find the Legendary version of unique gear VS common gear).

The Zeta Gun being so lousy is due to the Mysterious Serum being so good. Personally if I did the quest to get infinite Mysterious Serums instead of Lorenzo's Gun, then I would not want a lousy Zeta Gun as well.

the one i found was off of a legendary deathclaw to the far east near the center of the map.

You're thinking of the Nuclear Physicist perk which is a little further down the INT tree. 2 ranks will give you double damage.

The special one you are talking about is my go to gun for

I love that gun. Not good for anything else.