Actually, I find that the Laser Rifle (and the Wazer Wifle) are excellent sniping weapons. They aren't scoped, but do good damage at extreme ranges with pinpoint accuracy. They also serve well at closer ranges (in fact, becoming even more lethal). Toss in a high rate of fire (for a semi-auto) and a fairly fast reload, and it's a weapon that can serve reliably through the entire game in nearly ever role. Provided, of course, you can keep your MFC supply strong.

I have made snipers - manual aiming is a must. It is not true sniping unless you are too far away to use vats even with 100% skill. Sniping is generally effective against weaker enemies, but compare that to the gatling laser:
5 min to sneak into position, time the shot to pull of a headshot from so far away the target is only visible with use of a scope. Only to find out you sniper rifle didn't drop that super mutant master/overloard/etc. And now he isn't happy.
OR
10 sec to run up and blow him away with a gatling laser. hmmm....

on a side note to the sniping post: WHERE IS MY .50 CAL SNIPER!??! WHERE? I am fighting mutated freaks with 1000+ hp and the best sniper rifle I can get is a .308!? That is why I now use big guns. Oh and I play on PS3 so I can't even mod a sniper rifle.

Except for the part where the friends of the guy you sniped from so far away have no idea you even shot him, while those same friends will swarm you after you uncork the Gatling Laser. It might not help them to do so, but the risk is still there.

I will grant that at close ranges the Gatling Laser is devastating, but the ludicrously overinflated efficacy of sneak head-shots renders the need to get that close to unleash said devastation moot.

It's true that the higher-end opponents will usually not drop to a single sneak head-shot, however at the same time they won't react either if you are at extreme long ranges since they cannot detect you, which gives you unlimited opportunities to do it again. It's not necessarily the fastest way to clear an outpost but it is by far the safest, thus my 'removes the challenge' comment.

A .50 would be good, but a 20mm anti-tank rifle would be better. Preferably with explosive shells.

after my last post last night I did the reillys rangers quest and got Eugene, but i had work the next morning and was already up too late so I haven't used it yet. The quest wasn't very hard, more like rather long. I got all the special goodies in both buildings as well. Everybody made it out alive. I only used about 1000 rounds lol. At this point I found that the rock-it-launcher isn't very useful, and at the range I can actually hit stuff decently I am better off using my power fist.

Now I have to decide whether I want to get the radio dish, or go do the those quest to get my strength to 10 as I already got the bobble head.

At what level would I be strong enough to brave death claw sanctuary to get a certain bobble head and a certain big gun? Maybe also pick up a few hands. Right now I have a 65 DR, and eugene as well as about 80+ stim packs as I don't use that many with such high health as I can often go a whole outing without healing and then go home to sleep.

This build is working great by the way and I never use VATS. Crow the traveling merchant died early on. I think he was saving a captive as he was found dead by one without his guard or pack animal. on the bright side I got a trader hat and coat/suit/body covering thing, which gives me +10 barter when combined. He died after leaving rivet city. Found him on the raised scaffolding at the Jefferson memorial.



I wonder what would do more damage, a 5mm mini gun, or a .50 Cal machine gun (I think the M60 is a .50 Cal)

Also, a 20mm anti tank rifle sounds good. Maybe make it the sniper rifle equivalent for big guns. Small guns has the sniper rifle, energy weapons has the gauss gun, but no real dedicated long range big gun. And yes, the rocket launcher is long ranged, but 70 caps a shot is rather costly.

I wonder what would do more damage, a 5mm mini gun, or a .50 Cal machine gun...

I don't know, since I have no ballistic data for the 5mm round. I think it was supposed to have been invented in the future. You'd have to weigh the minigun's higher rate of fire (probably about 2000 rounds/minute) vs. the .50's greater destruction (if a .308 does 40, a .50 would probably do at least double that).


(I think the M60 is a .50 Cal)

No, it uses the .308. A .50 machine gun like the old M-2 weighs about 100 pounds with the ammo, I think. .50 MG's are mounted, not hand carried.

And yes, the 20mm will pierce a tank, with the right ammo and at close range. It would probably drop a mutie master with one shot.

"Piercing a tank" is a big vague without specifying the model tank you're going to pierce. Modern anti-materiel rifles aren't really anti-tank weapons as much as they're generally anti-everything that isn't loaded with massive armor. Trucks, jeeps, hummers, normal brick walls, and anything else that isn't more or less impervious to normal bullet fire. 20mm, by the way, is borderline cannon ammo, isn't it? It's something like 4 by 1 inch in size and very much something most people wouldn't feel like carrying around only to use on something as fragile as a human.

Using that against a single, humanoid target, be it a super mute or a person, is going to create a movie-style hole through said humanoid (and whatever humanoids may be standing behind). Regardless of how tough they're supposed to be, a single round to the face is going to create immense brain ventilation in a super mute behemoth. Heck, even a .50 cal anti-materiel round should do that, but 20mm? You're just having a laugh if you're killing regular enemies with that kind of rounds.


Define "damage". Normal weapons aren't really measured in hitpoints and humans die just as well from being hit with a burst of 5mm (essentially .2 cal) rounds as they do from being hit with .50 rounds. The minigun is going to send so many bullets into a target that it's literally sawed in half (didn't they do this on a tree once in Mythbusters?), while the .50 is simply going to create a number of very large holes in a person. As such, the result in either case is "fatal damage" and there's really no category beyond "fatal", is there?

They do have different strengths, of course. A 5mm gatling would provide much greater rate of fire than a .50 single-barrel heavy machine gun. If the target is light on armor then a greater rate of fire means more projectiles on their way to cause misery. Against armored targets the picture is somewhat different. 5mm is still just pistol caliber and thus won't really go through steel plating no matter how many rounds you're firing. .50 cal is quite a different story as the half-inch diameter provides for a much heavier projectile and thus a lot more energy transfered on impact. Even though the single-barrel machine gun will only be firing at a rate of one fifth the gatling gun, the bigger projectiles will get through plating (or other obstacles) that might render 5mm rounds ineffective. .50 cal would probably also have a bit of a range advantage, but that's just a guess.

Now, what you really want is a .50 gatling gun. Well, you wouldn't want to carry one around (nor would you want to carry the 4000+ rounds it's bound to eat per minute) but I'm sure all that gear would look lovely on Fawkes. :laugh:

Oh, certainly a 20mm would be overkill against ordinary humans. However, this is the Fallout universe, where people routinely survive head hits from assault weapons, Magnum revolvers, and sniper rifles. And creatures like muties are even more durable than that; I've pumped multiple assault rifle bursts into a mutie master's face and barely depleted his health. If I was in a place regularly visited by Overlords, giant radscorpions, and deathclaws, I would be only too happy to have a tank-killing rifle handy.

Cartridge and weapon have a great deal to do with things like penetrating power. Compare .22, .22LR, .22MLR, and .223. Huge, huge differences, especially between the first three and the last one. 5mm caseless from a Metal Storm pistol is just as nasty, if not nastier than 9x19para. Then you have questions like JHP, AP, FMJ, HEAP, HEAT, Flechette, Jacketed Sabot, DepU, Solid Slug, the various forms of buckshot, $5 worth of dimes, Phos rounds for shotguns...

.50, while impressive, is a fairly slow round usually. All depends, however, on what's firing it, and what cartridge that projectile is attached to. Huge difference between the old .50 buffalo gun, and an M-2 Browning.

I'll take a GE-XM214 over a 5mm pistol anyday if those are my choices and I need penetrating power. The compression given by the chamber and the propellant from the cartridge is simply far superior. Toss in that obscene rate of fire and if you have to (and you can keep the gun running) you can chip your way through something pretty fast.

I'd say the safest way to remove opposition is taking the Silent running perk, putting on the Chinese Stealth Armor, then using melee/unarmed attacks or a silenced gun.

Of course and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Point merely remains that a 5mm projectile is rather small and that a 12.7mm projectile is rather larger. Bigger projectile means it has more mass, means it can carry more energy without vaporizing or turning into plasma. More energy would all things equal mean more damage on impact, assuming the projectile is capable of transfering the energy to the target. In the case of soft targets, it doesn't really matter whether the projectile has a caliber of 5mm or 12.7 mm. Both will dig into the target and cause a world of hurt and then a gatling gun wins out over a single barrel machinegun due to the rate of fire. In the case of a hard target, which the skull of a super mutant behemoth seems to qualify as (despite all sense), you just might want a projectile that leaves a bigger footprint on the target. That's really all I'm saying.

There are more factors that affect penetration power than just the caliber, sure, but that's not really within the scope of his question, which was whether a 5mm gatling gun or a .50 HMG would be more damaging. My answer to that was that both will kill whatever is being hit, but the gatling gun will cause relatively more gore in an environment rich on softer targets whereas something like an M2 will happily punch holes in vehicles, humans, equipment, normal brick walls, and just about anything else you put in front of it. It doesn't saw stuff in half by chipping away at the target with a crazy amount of rounds, it saws by creating large holes next to the other large holes. Obviously, what you end up going with is a bit of a tradeoff between how big holes you really need and how heavy you care for your weapon and it's ammo to be. Bigger isn't always better and I'm not suggesting it is. I'm merely saying, there's probably a reason why anti-materiel weapons tend to be high caliber.

When I said I wonder which one would do more damage I was speaking in terms of if the designers gave you a choice, not real life scenarios although it is interesting to talk about. Seeing as I can carry 300lbs and ammo is weightless I think I'll take the .50 Cal mini gun lol.

Funny story about my first super mutant behemoth. My first file ever I was a big guns character and in the main quest line when the behemoth came it caught me by surprise and I couldn't get to or find the fat man. I proceeded to unload my assault rifle into him while running away until he died. Thinking back I am surprised it worked, although I probably had help from the BoS guys. And this was with a really low small guns skill lol.

Yeah, the whole weightless ammo thing and high carry weights has made me seriously consider putting together a GAU-8 mod as a joke. Definately a joke, the thing as a man-portable weapon would be absolutely ludicrous.

I am currently saved at a point inside the deathclaw sanctuary. I am level 12 at this point. I had to save and set my big guns character aside for now as I am hating being in death claw sanctuary. The worst part about it is how it isn't linear so you could get ambushed at any moment. They are rather quiet too I will mention. I killed 1 outside with Eugene, 2 inside with bottle cap mines, and another one inside using eugene. It takes about 200 rounds to kill one of them on average. I just can't stand the tension so I am taking a break from my big gunner. I really hate not having a high perception at this point as it would be really helpful to have better knowledge of where they are. I am not very good at using the mines on them. I only did it twice so far by finding a bottleneck and laying 2 side by side and luring one into them. Sure, I have 100 stimpacks, and sure I have 65 DR , but the whole psychological strain in getting to me lol. I think I am going to go make a gauss rifle sniper. I feel like doing something easy. Sure, some people say it takes the fun out, but honestly First person shooters are not my strong suit. I have played a lot of morrowind and oblivion and other rpg's, but the last FPS I played was Metroid Prime for the game cube lol. If that even counts.

And I will admit this has all been on easy mode lol.

At this point just for the sanctuary I wish there was a god mode like in morrowind and oblivion.


Update: I figured out how to go god mode and I cheated. I justify doing so in the fact that I could handle fighting them and killing them just fine, and it was simply myself being psyched out that held me back. Going god mode made it not scary anymore. I have vengeance now yay! Still think I might take a break and dabble with an energy weapons character.