Only the ones I havnt used or leveled up. The smg has the wrong ammo. I was proud of myself for eating all my veggies and using up 10 mm with two shot. Then I started to like the gun. An automatic laser pistol does the job too, mines two shot too. Rad weapons seem weak but havnt used them much. Was underwhelmed by .50 cal but don't have riflemen and don't think I had a true 50 just a modded 308. Pretty sure neither will be automatic. Have to check the gaus too. Stringer seems to be a let down for lack of ammo and low success rate.

Why is that a surprise? Lower damage for higher rof.

If automatic mods didn't make the weapon do less* damage, auto would be insanely overpowered and unbalanced compared to semi-auto, which some, like myself, prefer.

Lmao.

The .50 needs to be way more powerful; a .308 combat sniper rifle should not be so close to the damage range of a .50.

Only tried the Flamer once and I was not impressed. It took forever to roast a Mirelurk.

I agree with some here who say there seems to be a lot of inconsistency, but I it's more related to the enemies than the weapons. I've dropped Super Mutants with a single headshot from my pipe sniper rifle and 30 feet down the street (cause that's about as far as you can go in this game without having to kill someone) I had to shoot a Raider 3 times with the same rifle. And this is all counting headshots and sneak crits.

The Junk Jet. Horrid damage, weight, accuracy, and fire rate. Bad on VATS use too! This is a piss poor imitation of our beloved Rock-it-Launcher and should be busted down for scrap.

And why does the electric upgrade cost more parts, but add less damage than the fire upgrade? Is their something I'm missing here?

Except there is that little thing called "fire rate" which you did not notice. Yes, 10mm pistol does 18 damage per shot compared to 14 with automatic receiver. However later one shots 127 shots per minute compared to 46. Simple math will then tell you that you do 13.8 points of damage per second with semi automatic 10mm pistol and 29.6 with automatic one.

Automatic 10mm pistol is more then twice more effective then non automatic version. It's about the same with all other automatic version.

Those are the facts.

None of the small arms. If you take the right perks they are all powerful. I'm only good at semi automatic rifles at the moment though.馃槂

Ballistic Rifles:

Pipe weapons. These are garbage, but a vast percentage of found ammo works in them for the first part of the game. you can mod them to about 75% effectiveness of most other ballistic weapons, and shoot cheap ammo for easy fights.

Hunting rifle. The damage feels low for the recoil and reload, but works great as a fight starter, or for single opponent fights in vats (which basically ignores the single shot issue).

.50 upgrade. This keeps the hunting rifle relevant for a few more levels, with the best single shot damage. Once you get a gause rifle, this is really outclassed.

Double barrel shotgun. Solid damage at close range, reload makes life hard, Timing vats for the reload can help.

Combat Shotgun. Short to mid range only, but very good damage, and respectable clipsize make this my go to weapon when ghouls are likely to be leaping around corners

Combat rifle. Solid damage, versitile with mods, and precise to respectable range. As a single shot weapon it can get solid damage numbers, with a scope and stock, it has range and accuracy similar to a rifle without the recoil.

.308 chamber. Functions a lot like a hunting rifle, with less painful recoil and reload, but slightly lower damage than a .50 hunting rifle.

Assault rifle. Feels redundant to the combat rifle. I am still a level away from gun nut 4, but I am not hopeful that it will really distinguish the weapon.

Energy rifles:

Laser Musket. Respectable damage, only good for when you first get it, and as an opener later due to cranking. use in vats to avoid cranking somewhat.

Laser Rifle. Solid multipurpose weapon. damage is solid, but recoil is very low and fire rate/ap cost very favorable compared to other early rifles.

Plasma Rifle. Does little to differentiate from the laser rifle, and tends to require higher perk levels to mod out for the same benefits. May be worth it at level 40+ when you can get top tier perks into it.

Gause rifle. Very late game, and rare ammo, but this this hits like a truck. it is the clear choice for a single shot sniping type build. A fully charged headshot will drop an aweful lot of things.

One thing that skews the opinions is based on the skills you take. As I focused on rifleman, I have mainly listed weapons with that in mind.

I feel rifleman is the best of the specializations, as it affords the widest range of weapons, though energy weapons has a pretty wide spread as well. Pistols and automatics are both pretty limited in versitility. Also rifles in general have the best base damage before perks as well.

You can mitigate a lot of the pain points with weapons by putting a good fight starting single shot weapon into a favorite slot, and a good all purpose close range weapon into another, as weapon swapping is basically instant (its actually often faster to reload by swapping weapons out then back). Using vats also vastly speeds up reloading.

Never use VATS, and always play on default. The best guns for me are the 10 mm, 44 pistol and the assault rifle. With the advanced receivers and full points in the respective perk trees they are doing enough damage for any purpose.

110ish for the assault rifle

168 for the 44 and

70ish for the 10 mm pistol.

The 44 needs to be double action, and something needs to be done with scope as they are currently useless compared to the reflex sights.

How can you have a discussion about under powered weapons without mentioning the syringer? It's bad for a plethora of reasons, so many it deserves it's own thread:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1564038-syringer-next-to-useless/

I do agree that the .50 does feel somewhat weak, but if you find a .... legendary, the one with 2 shots in 1?, it does get into the 181-18x damage range.

Pft... That's with 3 ranks in single shot weapon damage perk.

.45 Sub-machine Gun is WAY under-powered. It's the only TRUE sub-machine gun I have found so far, but totally not worth the time to use..

what a bummer...

Bring back the old 10mm Sub-Machine Gun PLEASE!!!

oh gosh yes, minigun damage is utterly terrible.

The ashmaker is even worse, because fire damage doesn't stack or even refresh, enemies burn for 3 seconds, for am miniscule amount of damage, from the first round that hits them, any additional rounds are irrelevant

You're making two assumptions here:

1. That you actually hit with all of those rounds. automatic weapons have huge recoil

2. That you have enough ammo to feed the damned thing. Combat for me is a constant exercise in resource conservation

All of the full autos are under powered as is the .50 cal sniper

i agree here, enemies seem too able to take cover from it.

i think the fat man's explosion should penetrate walls, and damage everything in the radius regardless of cover.

it should also irradiate the area for a while imo

50 cal weapons svck
Plasma kinda svcks
Laser musket svcks
Junk guns svck
Most melee weapons svck
45 smg rreaaalllyyy svcks

Guess rifle, gatling laser and homing quad barreled missile launcher...all is forgiven lol...but seriously I'm very underwhelmed with bethesdas weapon choices...Obsidian handled it much better IMO..Most of the weapons in fo3 kinda svcked to ...it's weird because bethesda does a great job I feel with elder scrolls weapons

they should be penalised on accuracy and recoil instead, imo.

I have to dispute this. I'm playing on survival, and a six-crank laser musket is my mainstay for when things get tough. even when factorign in the cranking time, it basically does more damage over time than anything else i have, and you can hide in cover while cranking to avoid getting shot, then lean out and snipe.

It wipes almost all non legendary enemies in one headshot, which is more than can be said for any of the other sniping weapons i've found

lol I rephrase I svck with that gun I literally cannot hit anything with it and I have no idea why lol

10mm pistol with automatic receiver is de facto 10mm SMG.

Recoil is the same as with semi auto version. Of course, it's harder to control because you fire faster. However shorter the range, less an issue it is. Plus there are mods to tackle that.

Institute laser weaponry.

By the time you can mod them to something decent, you'll have found plenty of true laser weaponry. By all rights, they should be equal to laser weapons, but they're barely better than a pipe gun. Why would the Institute exclusively use weapons that are so hilariously underpowered?

I recommend you look at the quote in my post.

I'm not advocating for automatics to deal the same damage shot for shot and I too prefer semi automatic in all my guns with the exception of the Gatling laser which has no semi auto mod.

Except when you face higher armor enemies. Then you get what I call the "minigun" effect.

Also, the longer the range of the engagement, the more you're bound to miss.

And many semi autos (like the 10mm) have beyond decent fire rates provided that you have a good trigger finger.