Hi everyone,

I already did a research about this, but I couldn't find anything. My question is : Why are Plasma/Laser- Weapons so much more effective against certain groups of enemys compared to 'regular' weapons even though they have a lower damage per second- value ?

For instance I played Fallout 3 on the highest difficulty grade with both energy- and small weapon- skill 100 and it took a very long, almost ridiculos time to take down enemies like the enclave soldiers, but also enemies like albino scorpions and other animals. I was using rifles like the Lincoln Repetier and the Chinese Assault Rifle in perfect condition, but then I switched to the Plasma-Rifle and I was able to put down a enclave soldier with like 3 shots.I realised this while playing the final mission in Broken Steel, I was really struggling with regular weapons there

How is that ? Where's the secret ?

Greetings

Critical hits, maybe? Energy weapons have multipliers on crit hit chance.

No, the basic damage seems to be WAY higher, it's like its dealing 3x damage or something, regardless of the crits :/

Well just think for a moment Power armor in-lore is bullet proof and the only thing that can penetrate it is energy weapons in-lore

So it would make sense for energy weapons to do more damage to it. Even regular enemies.. think about it, a laser or plasma weapon would do a ton more damage then a measly bullet

My answer doesn't have to do with the specs of weapons but it's the logic that I use when I'm wondering why energy weapons are so amazing

After one of the last patches, regular EW ammo had a built in -2 DT, the only regular/"full metal jacket" conventional gun ammo that has a -DT effect is 5mm.

That and most laser weaps have 1.5x crit multipliers and plasma rifles have 2x multipliers and gauss rifles, and automatic and heavy EWs don't generally have as low multipliers as their guns counterparts. Most guns have just a 1x crit multiplier, and shotgun crits are calculated per projectile and their crit damage per pellet is pretty low.

Fallout 3 used a whole 'nuther system where the enemies' damage resistance would just shave that amount of damage you dealt off the top and there were no weapons that surpassed DR at all (deathclaw gauntlet was supposed to, but iirc it got broken with a patch). In NV, there are very few instances of DR, and there are various ways of mitigating DT through various ammo types and specialty weapons and perks.