to me it just dosen't make any sense whatsoever, how can fragile weapons who require specialized care and maintenance still be so common 200 or more years after the complete collapse of civilisation? which is even more baffling considering that, according to the official lore, they were only issued to some specialised military units.

also, the design of laser pistols and rifles in F3 and FNV is horrible, they look very unwieldy and innacurate due to their shape and end up contradicting themselves as the concept behind real energy weapons is to have accuracy, long-range and lethality, all in the same weapon.

they just make no sense whatsoever...

cany any of you make sense of this and enlighten me?

Well, in Fallout 1/2 they actually looked like weapons and weren't common.
Bethesda didn't care about that and decided to throw them around the entire gameworld.
And J.E Sawyer of Obsidian didn't like how EW and Guns were different so he tried to make them the same with how you progress with them, which is completely missing the point of the EW design in the first place.

Simply put, you want them to make sense? Play Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, there they aren't common and they actually look like weapons and not a brick with wires.

Personally I hate energy weapons. Granted I've only played Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

I lean more towards guns and spitting lead with silencers attached. Yep, that's me, call me old fashioned.

Yeah, that sums it up nicely. In the originals i always viewed EWs as rare, but worth the investment once you got to them. They didn't really have that in place in the recent games, they were just everywhere; although NV had a much better balance/array of EWs

so, as i already guessed, they completely destroyed any sense of realism and all logic just to add more "cool lazer weaponz" in order to reel in their target audience, which is apparently composed purely of the most unintelligent people on earth and action junkies. it's depressing really, how gaming is dieing a slow and horrible death due to the "explodomaniac" generation

They're not so common in the Originals and Plasma weapon are supposed to be slow and accurate while Laser weapons are quick and inaccurate.

still does not make much sense, according to science, weapons based on lasers are supposed to be fast and accurate while those based on plasma would be medium-fast and very damaging, but consume a lot of energy and would be prone to overheating.

The Plasma Defender and Caster were in the originals as their version of plasma pistol and rifle respectively.

This isn't reality, you can't apply real world physics to Fallout physics this is how people in the 1950s the thought it would work.

uhhh, lasers are pretty much accurate by their very nature. Both here and in 50's scifi/futursim.
Perhaps they are hard to calibrate over a long distance, but you cant get much straighter than a concentrated beam of photons.

Could it be that there are more energy weapons in the DC area because it was the DC area?
Assuming that DC is still the nations capitol, it would be pretty logical that in the FO universe, where the US is an isolationist nation that, the capitol city would be pretty heavily gaurded.

i'm pretty sure people in the 50s were smart enough to understand the physics of lasers, hell H.G wells described "fire beams" fairly accurately much earlier in "the war of the worlds".

If that's not a good enough answer for you then how about it's for gameplay balance so Energy Weapons have equal advantages and disadvantages:

Plasma- Slow but Accurate

Laser- Fast but Inaccurate

I can respect having balance.
But it would be much more logical to balance by making lasers rapid and weak, or rapid with a high ammo cost than to take from accuracy.

There has always been explodomaniac people, its just now the industry is all about making money and caters to them.

that's what i meant, by focusing so much on these gamers, who only demand graphics and "boomsplosions!" games are losing any sense of story, depth and, saddest of all, logic.

slipperly slope. There are plenty fo things about games that you wouldnt consider to be in your"Boomsplosion" catergory that dont necessarily make a lot of sense.
It all depends on what you care to focus on.

I used to yell at kids to get off my lawn, too.
Then I realsized that everyone takes their turn on the lawn and yelling at others on the lawn.

Whats ilogical about Energy weapons is counting the Gauss rifle as one of them.
Someone care to explain how that makes any sense?

if things don't make sense, and no suspension of disbelief was intended, well then the devs just din't do their research.

Well technically normal guns are energy weapons, but I don't know what magnetism would be considered.

Also in New Vegas there were so many added, because JE Sawyer wanted to make all weapons a viable option from the very start of the game.

Dude it's a game where people had hovering robot butlers, examples of pychic powers in Fallout 1, cars powered by nuclear car-batteries and such like; it's call a setting and despite bearing similarities to the real world it is not.

To answer your question it was purely a Bethesda move. In the original energy weapons were just crossing over from being weaponised heavy industrial tools, no stupid glass tubes or exposed cabling on plasma rifles or any of that [censored].

actually even energy weapons as a skill makes no sense, if it was up to me energy weapons would be consolidated with small guns and big guns, rather than fusing small guns and big guns.

@ the enclave, floating robot butlers and nuclear powered vehicles will exist someday (hell, there are already nuclear submarines), and there is a lot of evidence supporting the existence of psychic powers.

There are laser weapons in real life, they are just massive.

Are we really doing this? Okay, the physics of energy weapons is wrong and because the developers clearly didn't know their stuff - as was your argument a few posts above. I guess the Fallout world is, *gasp*, not realistic!

When you get shot in the leg you don't just pop a stim-pak either, I guess the original devs were unknowing of basic common sense?

And nuclear powered submarines have a specific function related to the operation of a submarine, the day that we can miniturise nuclear power and make it cheap enough to install in basic automobiles is the day when nuclear power is going to be pretty obselete.

i know, my point was that hand-held energy weapons would never look as ridiculous and impractical as those in fallout 3 and new vegas.

@ the enclave, no, you don't just "pop as stimpack" when you get shot in the leg, but there are already "adhesive substances" designed to treat bullet-wounds, so who knows what will be used in 40 years time.

I am simpl;y saying tha there will always be things that dont make sense. Always has been, always will be.
Take lizard men for instance.
What makes sense about those? I am sure you could tell me how they make sense in a cetain context. But not evenyone will share the same POV or interetation of that context.