My new favorite is a Radiation Flamer that I just found. Don't know how it would actually work in real life but its awesome especially in the hands of a crazy person like Strong or Piper.

Interesting. Does it do any Energy damage?

If so, then that messes up my theory, but if not, then I'd say it is a reasonable working hypothesis: Rad damage by itself works as intended: (i) heals ghouls and (ii) has no effect on most other Wasteland critters. However, rad damage added to a weapon that does other forms of damage seems to not work this way and may actually be added on as damage when it shouldn't be.

Again, I'm not sure it works this way for creatures, but am speculating on how the Ghoulish perk works for the SS.

Let's say you start with a clean 200 Health and get shot a few times by that gun. After the first shot, you take 40 pts ballistic and the Ghoulish healing perk negates that totally, BUT the accumulated radiation also reduces your max hit points to 150. Second shot, same ballistic result but now your max hit points are 100. Twice more and you're dead from radiation poisoning, even though you were never actually damaged by the bullets' ballistic damage.

Given the stories about ferals killing Behemoths and healing Hancock, it's entirely possible that it doesn't work the same way for NPC's, however.

burning radioactive carbon would make it radioactive fire (like a carbon rod used in a nuclear power plant that has been exposed to radioactive plutonium) more likely it is made with radioactive material that iradiates the flamer fuel before it catches fire.

That is messed up. Sounds like Bethesda has some things they are hopefully looking at.

It would have to be a heavy flamer because if it is using radioactive fire, then the entire unit would have to be lead lined to prevent leaking radiation to the user.

None I avoid most legendary weapons and armor.

It depends on the weapon. I find bleed works best with fast attacking/automatic weapons so the bleed damage can stack as much as possible, which can make a lot of enemies die extremely quick when stacked heavily. As someone said earlier, its the reason why Pickman's Blade is a killer. However, if its a slow firing weapon, I'd probably pass on it. Even more so if that slow firing weapon already does enough damage as it is. For example, I remember finding a Wounding Gauss Rifle, but sort of shrugged it off compared to my VATS Enhanced one I already had. The Gauss Rifle being a weapon that is most efficient when fired slowly (because you want to charge the shots) and does enough damage by itself, stacking bleed damage isn't all that necessary. However, VATS Enhanced that allows me to fire off more shots in VATS with the Gauss Rifle? Yes please. Reason why I'm the VATS Enhanced effect is one of my favorites.

Mighty is more damage, which you can't go wrong with no matter what and would probably go with that if the weapon you're using doesn't need or won't work well with stacking bleed damage.

Penetrator is just ignoring some resistances, in which case, only applies to a certain amount of enemies in the game and honestly who gives a [censored] about their resistance in the first place because it makes very little difference anyway.

So yeah, really depends on the weapon.

Is it possible Cait picked up the Gamma Gun ammo herself because I know 100% for sure I didn't give her any. Ammo has no weight so I always keep it to sell.

I know if you supply your settlers with a minigun and 1 5mm round they will never run out of ammo. Maybe this somehow carries over to companions in some way as well? I dunno.

I have used Preston and Piper as companions for around 100 hours. They have never picked up any items on their own. However, people do give items to Preston every now and then to support the Minutemen.

Pretty sure Companions use up ammo and I have confirmed with a bit of testing that settlers definitely DO NOT use up ammo (one round is all they need).

However, if you have "acquired" an NPC (for example Cait) as a follower, and then dismissed them to live at one of your settlements (which is what I do with all of them). It might be the case that, in that instance, they are treated as a "settler" instead of as a "follower" and they do not need more than one round.

The way to test it would be: Use a save where you have a follower and a settlement with zero residents. Give the follower a weapon and one round of ammo, and send them to live at the empty settlement. Fast travel to the them and use console commands to spawn in some mobs. See what happens. If they need a round in inventory for every shot, then they will fire one shot, and then switch to their default weapon.

Sure, I've seen companions pick up weapons and use them until they run out of ammo, so probably.

I can understand where you are coming from...

I am at level 60 (Survivor difficulty) and other than the Never Ending double barrel shotgun (a recent addition) which is strictly used to defend against deathclaws I am using normal 10mm Pistol, .38 automatic pipe rifle, .45 night-vision pipe sniper rifle and a .308 recon combat sniper rifle. I wear light combat armor.... power armor are for wimps.

The legendary weapon is for my companion.

Explosive (heavy weapons only) > bleeding > explosive (other weapons) > Freezing > energy/ plasma > incendiary > Radiation (most weapons vs most enemies)

Vioelnt is better than freezing/ incendiary on guns with 40+ base damage, and better than bleeding only on weapons with 500+ base damage ( Fat man )

Radiation is only good against humans, all other enemies have high resistance and immunity to radiation poison.

On heavy weapons both heavy gunner and demolitions expert increase the damage, from 15 up to 60 with both at level 5, other categories are only effected by demolitions, for 30 damage aoe

Bleeding increases with the relevant weapon skill, up to 50, and is superior in total damage on one target, but no aoe compared to explosive, except on heavy weapons

Freezing is a fixed damage and gives crit freezing, plasma and energy only provide damage,

Burning is better if you only fire once every 5 seconds or slower, otherwise multiple shots do not increase the burn damage the way bleeding does, making faster firing weapons waste damage.

Explosive is better in most circumstances due to aoe, however some enemies wear armor that reduces explosive damage randomly, while no enemy has bleeding resistance.

Freezing, fire, energy, and plasma damage are all effected by energy resistance.

Radiation is reduced on most creatures, and some humans have radiation resistant clothing and armor, all power armor clad humans have radiation resistance.

Mighty and violent are best on the most powerful weapons, but are only best suited on missile launchers, and thee fatman

Edit.

Armor piercing is about equal to a 15% damage increase against enemies with an armor rating higher than your weapon's base damage, making it both weaker, and more situational than a 25% increase that is already weaker on most weapons than the other damage boosts.

Only humans really have high armor values, super mutants get up to around 30 in their top gear, but usually fall around <10. Brotherhood, Raiders, Gunners, and some high level synths are the only enemies that make use of armor.

Most enemies have hitbox related damage resistance which the armor piercing does not effect.

Hey http://www.gamesas.com/user/1005930-misguidedworm7/ , thanks for the info.

So it seems Wounding would be the best legendary effect for the modded pipe rifle I will be giving to my follower.

Yeah I figured Mighty and Violent would be better for weapons doing above 100 ballistic damage since 25% of 100 is 25 which would be equal to the damage Wounding does. I never bothered with armor piercing mods on weapons since they are too situational; most effective on human as you stated, but I would have thought armor piercing would be effective against robots since their outer shell should be armored similar to a tank in real life.

I would say 1.

just never, ever give your companion splash\area effect weapons! they will ruin your day at the worse time!

Yeah, I had a combat shotgun with the 'explosive' effect.... and I have killed MYSELF with it... One shot will cripple both arms, two will kill me. (into a target at very close range, like, ghouls.....)

None of the above. Give me something to regenerate health and heal RADs without my being level 50 and I'd be happy. I am so tired of carrying around food!

Robots don't have high armor, they just take less damage on their torso, and other body parts, which does not work in the same way, rendering piercing rather poor on them.

Beware that some damage bonuses are based on the weapons base damage only, not including weapon mod damage increases. Most notable is two shot, which adds a second projectile with the same damage as an unupgraded shot, then balances the damage between them, making the first shot less powerful than the mods should, this does however work in revers as well.

If you have a weapon, base damage 50, modded to do 100 damage, with the two shot prefix it fires two shot that deal 75.

If you have a gun that deals base 100, modded to do 50, it fires 2 shots that deal 75.

This is why Big boy is so powerful, the mirv reduces the damage, but the second shot adds way more damage, causing you to fire more bomblettes than expected

I went with #3 - Wounding which does an extra 25 bleed damage and seems to (but not confirmed) work on robots as well.

The 25% extra damage for Mighty is nice, but in order to do 25 extra damage the weapon must be able to do 100 base damage before any bonuses are applied. NPC do not have perks so all weapons simply does the base damage. In this case it is a pipe pistol that does a base damage of 13 which is increased by 9 using the .45 receiver mod for a total of 22 damage. I could be wrong but I think Inspirational Leader level 1 increases the base damage by 20% so the .45 pipe rifled does a total of 26.4 damage.

Mighty .48 Pipe Rifle - Damage would be increased by 25% or 6.6 damage for a total of 33 damage.

Wounding .48 Pipe Rifle - The +25 Bleeding damage increases total damage to 51.4 or 51 damage when rounding down.

========================================

Assuming the worse case scenario where bonuses are only applied to the weapon's base damage (which excludes the +9 damage from the .45 receiver mod, then damage should be as follows:

Mighty .48 Pipe Rifle

Base Damage = 13

Inspirational Leader = 13 * 20% = 2.6

Mighty effect = 13 * 25% = 3.25

.45 receiver mod = 9

Total Damage = 27.85

Wounding .48 Pipe Rifle

Base Damage = 13

Inspirational Leader = 13 * 20% = 2.6

Wounding effect = 25

.45 receiver mod = 9

Total Damage = 49.6

or just a lot of lead based paint which would go with the whole 50s theme going on even though paint cans only give you oil and steel.

Heal rads is easy, just stay under the effect of Mysterious Serum at all time.

Combine that with Ghoulish and never leave the Glowing Sea and you have healing, too.

@OP

Take Bleeding if it's only Pipe.

As others stated Mighty works well with high damage weapons.

Yep, I created a Wounding .45 pipe rifle based on the calculations I made two posts above yours.

Now I need to find a pair of Ghoul Slayer auto rifles...

Again. BEFORE level 40 or 50.

You can have the serum with level 5 or so, depending on your difficulty, I did the quest level 18ish on survival unarmed without PA.^^

As to Ghoulish you can pick the 1. perkpoint with level 1 if your END is high enough. ;P