You've just disturbed me irl, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy ( hides behind the sofa, calls shrink ).

I was thinking frenzy, friendly fire, more prone to fleeing or even issues that I can't / won't discuss on this forum taking place during combat.
That was a good example though I had not even considered the roleplay aspect of this.

Eh, only tribals are afraid like that. Most "city folk" know what energy weapons are. They might not know how they work but they aren't anymore afraid of them as a normal gun.

Plasma pistol in an early tier weapon its available from Cliff at low levels. The 12.7mm pistol is a high tier weapon. They shouldn't be compared to one another.


Your weight to death ratio is silly and proves nothing absolutely nothing. If you can hold enough ammo to clear out a "dungeon or two" you can always go back to base and grab more ammo from storage. I've had no problems carrying enough ammo to keep energy weapons feed. The laser rifle and marksman carbine are equally effective damage wise. The laser rifle fires slower but has a higher critical rate.[especially with perks] So the damage evens out, but unless your always firing as fast as you can the laser rifle might be more damaging. The laser rifle has the advantage of having a 25 skill requirement and 1/8th the price and is available much earlier.


You need repair for armor and science for hacking terminals. Chances are you need both skills no matter what weapon your using.
Given that there are five science books, a coat that adds 10 and you can buy programers digests its really not much of an investment in the science department.


You can make AP ammo for energy weapons.


By and large energy weapons have superior critical rates, they also have laser commander +10% chance to critical and the set laser for fun challenge perk, which can add 4% after getting both ranks. So they can get more millage out of there multiplier.

It sounds like you tried energy weapons for five minutes but spent hours on guns.

The patch has seriously changed energy weapons for the better. Lower tier weapons got a big boosts, making them no longer useless.

The heavy ammo (especially MFC) can be a bit frustrating, but I don't think that it is a major deterrent.
Overall you have only three normal types with three variants for nine total, if you're using a wide range of guns you'll easily need more types ammo adding to the ammo weight.

IMO, armor should have plasma, electricity, laser and fire resistance instead of set DT.
All energy weapons should have at minimum 1.75x critical multiplier.
Energy weapons should have equal critical damage to base damage or more. (Base dmg 30 means critical hit is 30, base + critical = 60, base dmg, greater critical means 1.5x critical dmg, base dmg is 30, critical dmg is 45, base + critical = 75.)
Energy Weapons should be incredibly powerful, their ammo should weigh a lot, their ammo and weapons should be scarce.
They're not meant to be equal to Guns, in any way what so ever.
Frankly, they're suppose to be over powered.
But they have their own drawbacks, such as expensive repair, expensive ammo, weighs alot and are less likely to find.

What Guns is suppose to be is the standard all around great combat skill that fails to live up to it's brother and sister skills.
Explosives should be even more powerful than Energy Weapons, because they weigh A LOT, has even more scarce ammo, they're double edged against you and your companions and they blow everything in the area away from you, so looting off of shelves is harder.

Melee and Unarmed should work in their own way as well.
Melee is the counterpart of Guns for close combat, this weapon class get's a lot of weapons which means greater availability.
While Unarmed requires a lot more finesse and different unarmed moves.

They failed with everything in Vegas.
Explosives have all the downsides but not the upside of incredible one hit kill damage.
Energy Weapons are forced to play nice with it's brother Guns and in doing so is nerfed to hell and back, even with the new patch.
Melee seems to want to merge with Unarmed by sharing the same perks and also requiring both skills for several perks.
Guns had too much focus put onto it and is too powerful when compared to the other classes. (Except Unarmed which is ridiculously strong)

And honestly, I'd rather have Melee split into Blunt and Blade skills, blade skills allowing faster attacks with higher chance of critical hits and bleed damage.
While Blunt has higher damage, requires more AP, has greater chance of knockdown (without that [censored] perk) and has the chance to ignore DT (without a perk).

But I think they'll patch Energy Weapons and Explosives a bit more but what it is now it will always be.
I just hope that Fallout 4 can get the specialization of the skills right instead of trying to make them work like equals.


[edit]

And to put it simple with how powerful energy weapons should be: finding 30 microfusion cells should be considered a treasure.

Me and my Multiplas Rifle with 950+ MF cells slaughtered the enemies of my choosing in the final battle. It was kind of cute how they tried to attack me with melee weapons when i was gooifying them left and right ^_^ Not to mention YCS with Meltdown perk, 350 XP with one shot :lmao:

your relations, completly uneven.

12.7, dude, its suppose to seriously maim a deathclaw
plasma pistol, yep, have fun killing a deathclaw with this.

marksman carbine, death to all men... from afar.
laser rifle, only useful if your REALLY trigger happy (or if you have all mods)

ALSO, most rounds are meant to be in automatic rounds, THATS why they are light.
microfusion cells and energy cells are mean to be one click one shot.
except for elecron fuel cells, which are meant to go fast, extremly fast

sides, theres good sides to energy weapons, like they have only 3 ammo types, MFC, ECP, and SEC.
heres the gun ammo...

and including that recycling these are a pain in the... neck.

You should really exclude perks from comparison. Guns have perks of their own, like cowboy or what is it called which adds 25% damage to level action rifles and revolvers. Thats more than 20% of laser commander.

Critical bonus chance is nice but to really make it matter you have to spend points in to luck or use luck/critical chance raising gear which prevents you using those points in some other equally useful skills or wearing something more protective. Also if you spent 10 points in to luck, chance is you will not have skill requirements to meet perks like finesse, that somehow cancels each other out.

EWs are more or less on par with guns after patch, if not on par than close at last. They however sill have heavy drawbacks like heavy ammo, low reliability (HP) and are significantly less available. At last in the first half of the game so you will not be able to keep them repaired. Unless you gone use only laser pistol or recharger rifle that is. That alone makes guns much more variable option. And of course, there are more gun types than EW types. I was not counting but its close to double (which is perfectly OK otherwise).

few notes:
Ammo is heavy. While it is logical that "cell" weights more than "cartridge", I find it strange that one shot costs whole cell ...its MICROFUSION cell after all, miniature reactor, not stuff you put in to your camera. And some e-guns consume more than just one cell. Shouldn't it be more like one cell can power several shots from laser rifle? That would actually make heavier weight justified.

Improved ammo can literally tear your gun in to pieces in few shots. Combined with EWs fragility that makes otherwise very good ammo more or less useless since you will end up using it just to fire but few shots now and then in to but toughest enemies. best use of overcharged ammo I found so far is to equip friendly NPCs with it. They need single piece and newer have to worry about repairs.

well, when you reload a plasma rifle, you actually just put in one MFC, but can fire 24 of them

it's just makes it simpler, i think


the Tesla Cannon you put in one but it uses 45, etc.

Maybe the canister weighs like a feather but the microfusion/energy/electron charge increases it's weight.
How?
Radiation magic! :bonk:

Requirements for Finesse is being level 10, so how does it cancel anything out? No matter your weapon of choice[save explosives] a high critical rate is a good idea. Luck effects everything way beyond skills, criticals and gambling.

That is the problem, you SHOULD get 12 shots and only use the one cell you put in. The current system is akin to putting 24 MAGAZINES into an Assault Carbine and firing MAGAZINES out of it.

I know, but its not really what I was commenting. Its not matter of reloading, its matter of consumption.

But point you make is useful actually ...it shows how ridiculous is it to load your laser riffle with 24! cells. That is nearly impossible on gun of this size, there would simply be no place to put them. And if implemented properly, you would need to feed them one by one in similar manner as you do with say cowboy repeater.

Not really example of well thought concept. Yes I know its just game and EWs are something close to science fiction, so there is not much you can base such concept on.


You need luck 6 and agility 6 for finese if I remember right. While you can do it, you still have some 5 skills which also requires skillpoints. Putting 10 points in to single skill means you have to live with other skills be underdeveloped. And those have consequences as well. Like not meeting strength requirement for using some weapons or having less points to use at levelling and so on.

Simple as this:
I have a Plasma Rifle and 1 MFC; now, I SHOULD be able to fire said Plasma Rifle 12 times, as the 1 MFC i had placed into it should have sufficient stored energy for 12 shots.
That is how EWs should work, ammo would be MUCH rarer.

For the sake of simplicity Fallout just tracks the ammo not a full clip. Just as you can drop a clip of ammo one bullet at a time you can drop an energy cell one charge at a time. They didn't want to over complicate things by having energy weapon ammo work so vastly different then the others. They could have had a single 3lb energy cell provide 30shots the problem is when you reload mid combat? how to you sort out all those half energy clips?

So for simplicity you can divide the energy ammo into individual shots just like you can divide a clip into individual bullets.

The problem is that the cells AREN'T like bullets in a magazine, they ARE the magazine!

So yea, i agree that there should be a new way to load energy weapons

-----------------
lets say you get one MFC and one plasma rifle

the MFC weighs like .5 pounds

With the one MFC you get 12 shots of the plasma rifle
-----------------

now lets say you get the Q-35 and a MFC

with the one MFC you get 24 shots
-----------------


the energy weapon system would have to be completely revamped and the weapon used would change how many shots you get out of the MFC, instead of using multiple MFC's for each shot

MFC's would then have to be stuck to the weapon using it unless they find a way to correctly switch halfway used MFC's from one gun to the next
-----------------------

it could possibly be like this --

each MFC has 60 energy. each plasma rifle shot uses 5 energy from that MFC. The Q-35 uses 2.5 energy.

lets say you fire 6 times with the plasma rifle, using 30 energy. you then switch to the Q-35. you would have 30 energy left in the MFC and can fire 12 shots with the 30 energy left in the MFC

^^ This.

So why then the same level of simplicity is not used for guns? Why bother to load 7 cartridges in to c.repeater if you can load one then fire 7. Because that is what l.rifle does with 24 cells. It would also simplify things. I think it was not really simplification which lead to this design.

Yes, that is what I meant. It would actually made perfect sense in context of current game design. Including heavier weight of cells.

they could just rename the MFC Microfusion Energy, the SEC Small Energy, and the ECP Electron Charge

that would make it so it's like you are carrying the ammo and when you reload you put in a Cell or pack

For those who don't fully understand, I'll use a gun, applied to current EW logic. I'll use the Assault Carbine.
You put in clip, you get an ammo count of 576. Every time you fire, one bullet flies out of the gun, but your ammo count decreases by 24, so you shoot 24 bullets, but you spend, in all, 576 bullets.

Alright, so here are my 2 possible fixes a little more organized

------------------------ Option 1, Energy -------------------------

- MFCs, SECs, and ECPs all have 60 energy

- The energy weapon used detemines how much energy is used in one shot

- For Example: The Plasma Rifle uses 5 energy a shot, making one MFC amount to 12 shots. The Plasma Defender uses 3 energy a shot, allowing it to fire 20 times with one SEC (more than now, but it is simpler than 3.75 energy a shot). The Laser RCW uses 1 energy a shot, allowing it to fire 60 times with one ECP

- MFCs, SECs, and ECPs would all be heavier then they are now and be rarer and more expensive (one MFC being equal to 24 now or something)

- Each MFC remembers how much energy it has left, so if you switch which gun is using that MFC the energy drainage is changed but not the overall energy

- You could mix together Cells to add their remaning energy amounts together (30 energy + 30 energy = a full cell)

- Converting Ammo would would not be completely switching the ammo, but would require empty cells. For example you could have one full MFC and one compltely empty SEC. you could fill the SEC to full with 30 MFC energy. (MFCs have more energy in them than an SEC.)

- Over Charge Cells and Max Charge Cells decrease the amount of energy total but make up for it by increasing damage and DT penetration. for example, a Plasma rifle with a normal MF could fire 12 shots, with 60 energy. One using a MFC Max Charge can only fire 6, because the energy amount would be halved, to 30. An MFC Over Charge would be inbetween, at 9 with 45 energy.

- There would be weapon mods that lower energy usage. There could even be some that increase energy usage slightly adding more damage w/out the negative effect Max and Over charge cells have on condition

------------------------ Option 2, renaming ---------------------

- Simply rename the MFCs, SECs, and ECPs as follows

- MFC - Micro Fusion Energy

- SEC - Small Energy

- ECP - Electron Charge

- This way it would be similar to picking up ammo and when you load a weapon it is like loading a cartridge rather than a bunch of cartridges

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I like the first option better

It would be more logical but harder to implement. Only thing I would do different is not giving all 3 cell types same amounts of energy. MFC should store more energy than EC. Else you would need to change conversion ratio to 1:1. it would also made existence of 3 different cells kind of strange ...why to have 3 types if they have same capacity?

This would be great Omega, but how do you handle partial cells? its common practice to reload a partially empty gun so you don't have to do it during combat. If you think of the cells like magazines and you simply have the ability to magically divide them into there components. Just ignore the handwaving of being able to divide a cell up like a magazine and things make more sense.


Few energy weapons have a high strength requirement, the plasma caster needs 8 but is so inaccurate you can't use it beyond close range to begin so failing to meet the strength requirement is rather moot. I don't see this huge loss you do.

And once again Finesse has no requirement beyond level you remember wrong. Your probably thinking of Better Critticals which requires perception 6 and luck 6 and gives you a 50% damage boost when a critical hit is scored. And Better Criticals is a fantastic perk even for stealth exclusive characters as it dramatically increases the damage of sneak attacks to.