It seems obvious to me that pipe guns are purely a post-war innovation. Making something that can fire off ammo when you. can't find a 2077 weapon. Prior to the war, no one had any need to create a pipe gun. Just toddle down to the nearest Guns 'R' Us and buy whatever suits your fancy. Yet, throughout FO4, you find pipe guns in places where it is obvious that the character is the first person to enter a pre-war facility that has been unbreached until the character enters, 210 years after the war.

I've seen that,

Its the Leveled Loot List, which will likely have to be tweaked but until the Construction Kit is out well we wont really know if certain containers can be segregated or not to prevent pipe weapons from being in pre-war stashes.

Because container inventory is randomized in Fallout and containers are not divided in to pre and post war categories. They use the same lists to draw items from.

*breaks into a room that hasn't been opened since 2077*
*finds pipe pistols, a jar of bottlecaps, some rad-x and radaway, and a teddy bear smoking a cigar (still lit)*
*thinks "oh Fallout, you are completely bonkers" lmao*

And in Skyrim, one finds Imperial currency locked away in Dwemer ruins. You learn to ignore this stuff in Bethesda games (or wait for a mod).

'Pipe' guns and other home made firearms are a living reality many places that don't have the US mass proliferation of firearms.

But yes, time travelling gear is a Beth standard.

This and mutated meat & vegetables in sealed pre-war environments are really breaking immersion.

Most game with Random generate loot have this problem. Aka most games.

For the same reasons that we found fresh food and septims in tombs that were sealed up long before the Septim dynasty in Skyrim.

Mershins

Outside sealed areas, Pipe Weapons are ike your go to because finding an actual working pre-war rifle on the east coast in Boston is rarer than a Raider Den without a bottle of Jet laying around.

In sealed places.............Probably put there by the same person who puts Imperial armor in the chests of Draugr barrows that have been sealed off since before the Empire was established along with a "fresh" Apple.

And a undecomposed dead body

pipe guns are surprising common in backward societies with access to ammo but limited access to gums such as Papua New Guinea etc. Unfortunately now most such places can easily obtain AKs if there is a real need.

On the Kokoda trail we were "held up" by "raskals" with 12G pipe guns fired by rubber bands and nails. I laughed at the weapon so he showed me how effective it was as it blew the head off a possum. With rifles the absence of

rifling is often managed by using a barrel with a slightly smaller calibre barrel. This increases the velocity (and also makes back fires more likely) and they , while not exactly sniper class can still do well at range.

The absence of high grade steels and the lack of necessary tools makes pipes the natural way to go.

Which is an irrelevant consideration as all of the Fallout games take place entirely in the US. (Even Canada, which in FO3 was shown to have been annexed by the US.)

Except that 210 years after the apocalypse most, if not all, firearms dating from that time would have likely degraded to the point where they either wouldn't work, or were more danger to the user than the target. Taking it one step further though, the mass proliferation of firearms in the US is only a fairly modern thing, dating back to the early 1980's, when certain interest groups and the firearms industry became much more active to bring a halt to declining sales and ownership. 1950's northern America firearms ownership was fairly limited to actual hunters, and target shooters, and there were very few handguns...the concept of a society armed for it's own self-defence didn't come about until the late 1970's, when pushed by a particular interest group to strengthen their position and to generate more sales for their industry affiliates.

I suggest that the situation in FO4 is closer to what we would actually see than the developers may have intended.

We had a raging debate during Wasteland 2 -- Wasteland being the game from which Fallout was derived -- concerning this particular point. A few of us were pointing out that the life expectancy of modern weapons even where they were meticulously maintained and serviced regularly was unlikely to exceed even one century, much less two. The few of us arguing that point were drowned out by the "It's just a game!" crowd that felt using familiar (-sounding at least) weapons made for a better connection between character and player. FO4 is actually the first (to my knowledge) post-apocalypse game that features LOTS of homemade weapons in lieu of well-preserved "antique" (modern) weapons.

Do you not remember the SUPER MEGA BANDITS FROM HELL from Oblivion?

Yea, like everyone has already said, the game has a somewhat random system of what weapons an enemy can carry. It also depends on your level.

Bethesda probably did not want to put a high-tech weapon in the hands of enemies when you are a low level player just starting out the game. Realistic? Maybe. Too difficult and game breaking potentially? Yea.

They should be very common over the regular firearms. With no proper machining factories left to manufacture said modern firearms. And without proper maintenance materials those firearms that survived the bombs dropping, would rust away from lack of maintenance.

How does a Fatman fit into a toolbox? How do you carry 100+ items? If you think about it, tonnes of things don't make sense. So just take the crappy pipe pistol, and enjoy your weird and wonderful loot before ALL immersion is lost!

Went into one building companion says looks like no ones been here forever. Go around the corner pack of Raiders.

I don't take random loot and messing around seriously. That's just Bethesda being Bethesda.

Like this. These aren't for the serious nature of gaming. It's just Bethesda having fun with clutter.

Then by that logic Raiders shouldn't have the ability to operate Power Armor, unless they have training. And Raiders have the attention span of an acorn.

And theres a mod that fixes that by adding Dwemer coins to Dwemer ruins and ancient Nord coins to Nord tombs and removes imperial currency from both leveled lists.