I have the Better Weapon Mod Descriptions mod installed, and just noticed something: Energy Weapons have higher Critical Damage multipliers from their mods. Both Laser and Plasma weapons have Photon Exciter mods that increase their crit damage, much like Ballistic weapons have Calibrated Recievers. However, while the basic Photon Exciter has the same crit damage boost as the Calibrated Recievers, the higher versions actually have double Crit Damage boost. If I'm understanding the math correctly, a normal crit does double damage. A Calibrated Reciever or a Photon Exciter bumps this up to three times damage. And a Photon Agitator or Boosted Photon Agitator would boost this to four times the damage.


The catch, of course, is the .44 Pistol (mainly because it's the base form of Kellogg's Pistol). While the Recievers for those don't have a Calibrated version, the damage is about twice as much as that of a Laser Pistol (assuming no mods or perks), so I'm not sure if the lower damage of the Laser and Plasma pistol is made up for with the higher Crit Damage. That's part of the reason behind this thread: to try to figure out of the higher Crit damage bonus beats out the sheer power of the .44 Pistol.


Thoughts?

Without GECK it is hard to know a lot of the mechanics right now but your findings might get some users to look under the hood sooner. I hope so anyway.

My favorite build/play was a pistol vats crit.

I used both .44 and plasma pistol. With the critical modifier attatchment I think Plasma Pistol did roughly the same damage, but had more shots per vats AND waaay more ammo per clip (x5) AND more ammo per vendor. To me the choice became clear to stick mostly with my fully modded two shot plasma pistol, and my lorenzo's artifact pistol as backup vs. invisible targets. Either way, All three pistols are powerful with two-shot or junkies, and made Survival a breeze.

I finally managed to wrap my head around the math for the Critical Hit, so I've decided to sit down and do the math. The equation on the wiki is as follows:

Crit Damage = Paper Damage + Base Damage * Crit Multiplier

Paper Damage is the damage value shown in your Pip-Boy, and includes perks and mods.

Base Damage is the damage of the weapon before perks, but including weapon mods.

Crit Multiplier is 1 by default, but can be increased with perks, mods, etc.

My current character has a Laser Pistol and a .44 Pistol. I also added a Plasma Pistol to my inventory via the Console. I then checked damage numbers for the Boosted Photon Agitator Receiver mods for both the Plasma Pistol and the Laser Pistol, and the damage number for the Advanced Receiver on the .44 Pistol. All weapons had standard mods in every other slot, and nothing in the Muzzle slot. I also have no ranks in the Gunslinger perk. Damage values for the indicated Receiver mods were as follows:

Laser Pistol with Boosted Photon Agitator - 30 Energy

Plasma Pistol with Boosted Photon Agitator - 30 Ballistic, 30 Energy

.44 Pistol with Advanced Receiver - 84

These numbers are the Base Damage numbers. For Paper Damage, we double these numbers to get the Paper Damage.

Laser Pistol Paper Damage - 60

Plasma Pistol Paper Damage - 60/60

.44 Pistol Paper Damage - 168

Now, the equation for each:

Laser Pistol - 60 + 30 * 3 = 150

Plasma Pistol - 60 + 30 * 3 = 150/150

.44 Pistol - 168 + 84 * 1 = 252

Out of curiosity, the damage for the Lucky effect adds another +100% Crit Damage, and is easily obtained with the Righteous Authority. If we factor that in for the Laser Pistol, we get 60 + 30 * 4 = 180

Overall conclusion: the Laser Pistol is the weakest weapon you can choose for dealing crits, despite it's higher Crit Damage multiplier. The damage on the .44 is just too high to overcome, even with Legendary effects. The Plasma Pistol, on the other hand, beats the .44 pistol pretty easily, but only because it 'cheats' by having two damage types; while each on it's own is weaker than the .44, both of them together out-damage it. So the best pistol in the game damage-wise for a Critical Gunslinger is the Plasma Pistol, but the .44 Pistol is still an excellent weapon, as the Plasma Pistol has lower projectile speed that the .44 doesn't have to worry about. The Laser weapon, unfortunately, just doesn't have enough damage to keep up with the other two weapons.