Is it just me or are unique weapons not as cool due to the aspect of weapon modding on normal guns which can easily overpower it's unique counterpart. For instance the Gobi Campaign Sniper Rifle is an amazing weapon. But once the sniper rifle has the suppressor you're practically getting free XP. plus the carbon fiber mod makes the sniper weigh less than the gobi. (by a half pound i know but still). What do you think. Are the unique the best way to go? Or do you mod and save time?

Most of the time unique have weapon mods built in don't they? Lek for instance Ratslayer has all the varmint rifle mods on already. Anyway I use the WMX mod that strips the uniques of there built ins and lets you mod them like any other weapon.

The uniques often have other features (and drawbacks) that the modded standard weapons don't have. The Gobi Rifle, for example, when compared to the fully modded base Sniper Rifle, uses 5 fewer action points per shot and has twice the health, meaning you'll repair it quite a bit less. OTOH, you'll do slightly less damage per shot with the Gobi. The Ratslayer does 5 points more damage per shot, has five times the critical hit chance that the modded Varmint Rifle has, and also has more health. The downside is that it takes more than twice as many action points per shot to use the Ratslayer than it does the modded Varmint Rifle.

It really comes down to personal choice. Me, I take the Ratslayer every time - the AP cost is not an issue since I almost never use VATS, and the 5X critical multiplier makes it a monster against the lesser enemies. Same with the Gobi - the damage hit is minor compared to the unique's other advantages.

WRT the Sniper Rifle mods, the carbon fiber parts mod was bugged at one time. It would show the weight reduction when you looked at the weapon stats on your Pip Boy, but your actual weight of items carried still showed the eight pound hit of the unmodded rifle. I don't know if that's been fixed in one of the patches or not.

Nope, the carbon sniper rifle still weights 8 when it's supposed to be 3

I think it depends on the weapon. For instance, the Q-35 is just so much better than the standard plasma rifle, no mods available will bridge the gap. On the other hand, the ubiquitous Cowboy Rifle, with the right mods, becones a highly serviceable weapon for a good part of the game. La Longua carbine might be better, but killing friendlies for their weapons is not my style.

La Longua Carabine is only hair faction better in damage and significantly worst in accuracy; but it most case, unique weapons makes a good run for their caps.

Ya I kind of agree with you but the unique weapons looks pay up for it.

Yeah well... The real question is do you wanna be a bad ass? Or have a supressor?

If you think about it many of the modded weapons are uniques in themselves. If the courier doesn't fit a suppressor to a sniper rifle a silenced sniper rifle won't exist in the game, for example.

To keep from wasting caps on broken mods take the time to research them on the wiki. Nearly all the weapon mods that alter weight and CND basically don't work at all.

Actually, all the alter CND mod works, and some of them works too well you never need to repair them.

Apply a few WRKs to a weapon that has had a +CND mod installed. Notice the CND of the weapon being repaired this way goes to 66%. On a weapon that's had such a mod installed 66% just happens to be the original unmodded item HP. So yeah, it doesn't work correctly.