I have to admit, despite loving the game, I was disappointed when starting and thought there might be no regular weapons and we'd be stuck with these pipe guns. For some reason I do not like the pipe guns, maybe it is the ugly aesthetic or maybe because they seem unrealistic. But then again maybe they are realistic in a wasteland two centuries after the last real gun was manufactured. Is there a redeeming quality for them? Anyone prefer them?

When I was around 12 years old (Back in 1982) we used to make "improvised weapons" very much like the pipeguns in F-4.
We called them "zipguns" though.

If they have redeeming features, it's that they're quite light yet highly modifiable. For example I use one as a sniper rifle because it weighs about 10 pounds less than a "real" sniper rifle.

i do not like them, they are ugly, everywhere and 80% of the legendaries i find. finding them in vaults is even worse. they did not need to be introduced at all, they took out half their roster of guns originally in fallout 3 and replaced them with a wasteland coverd head to toe with guns no other area in america is using. if there were more weapons (DLC will add them) and they werent so damn frequent i would hate them far less

As you go into the more dangerous (higher level areas) the pipe-guns disappear, replaced with assault rifles

The one redeeming feature about the pipe weapons is their light weight compared to a nicer looking gun. At high Gun Nut ranks they can be modified to take differeent calibre of ammunition?.

I have made these homemade "pipe guns" as well, however they generally shoot BB' s and if you really want a heavy hitting irl pipe gun you can make a potato gun lol, pvc pipe and air pressure to launch potatoes...but I thought every kid had the shoot a potato at the neighborhood bully experience, it was well worth the grounding my parents gave me : )

I don't like them but I like that they are in the game. Frankly said I would have liked if there were a lot less "real" guns and more of the pipe guns. Which should be much more unreliable and with homemade ammo. The real guns should be very seldom and seldom should be the ammo. It's 200 years after a big desaster that destroyed industrial production and especially advanced infrastructure. Fallout is much too gun centered for my taste. Would be good if there were bows and crossbows as the usual raider weapons.

You are probably right, hard to tell. Doing the math, there's something like 300M privately owned guns in the country now with probably 10's of billions of rounds of ammo. In an apocalypse, the population would be decimated, maybe into the low millions. Which leaves a lot of unallocated firepower laying around to be scavenged. Of course the 200 years going by wouldn't do any of it any good.

I like them a lot in the beginning of the game. Highly modifiable, you can turn any weapon into any type, you can put any magazine on any combination of whatever you want. Early. For that they're great. It would be no fun being stuck with only 10mm handgun for the first 10 levels.

I like them, they allow proper, pre war guns to feel more powerful (since they can be of a higher power tier) and are reasonable armament for disorganized raiders and not so clever super mutants.

it needs to be "gun centered" , there's plenty of melee games with bows and stuff like that, there's not many open world games that use guns primarily, most of the open games are midevil/fantasy and so there is already a shortage of open world games featuring regular weapons and i don't count far cry cause its setting is lame, always in a jungle or some islands with no city areas etc, fallout 3 and 4 are unique because of this and i'm glad bethesda is so heabily into "ranged" combat in all their games, even in elder scrolls there's a lot of ranged options.

Yeah, it wouldn't be the same without the guns, whether they are realistic to the situation or not. If I couldn't snipe I probably wouldn't play.

A lot of the weapons would be destroyed or lost under debris. But a lot would be still there and there is not much machinery that is as durable as weapons. You can still shoot many guns from the 17th c. AD and all-steel and plastik weapons are even stronger than those with wooden parts. I see more problems with the ammunition. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons need a certain quality of ammunition. I'm not from the USA but as you perhaps know there are some US Army rules about the handling of ammunition, f.e. that you should not load and unload the same round twice into the chamber in a M16/M4 system. But that's true for every gun with a chamber. Every time you rack the round into the bullet is slightly relocated in the shell and sooner or later the round can fail. That's just an example about problems with ammo. I don't know how the powder in an 200 year old round would behave. I wouldn't like to use it. I have a Swedish Mauser from the year 1942 f.e. but I would not like to shoot ammo from 1942 from it although most rounds would work fine I presume.

I like them but I wish there was a way to make them a lot more powerful. Even when my piple rifle was fully modded, it did 2x less damage than my hunting rifle. They become obsolete very quickly which is a shame. Aesthetically, I don't mind but wish they were dyeable. Sick of that gross brass colour lol.

I like to think that, in the Fallout Universe, America's pre-war miltary-industrial complex is even more ridiculous than it is in the real world. Weapons mass production is on a much larger scale, and the majority of Americans were packing at least a pistol, if not a Shotgun or Hunting Rifle too.

I love the post-war pipe weapons, I just feel like they're too widespread. I don't mind them being the staple weapon for raiders or Super Mutants, but I wish common yokels had better gear. I also wish there was a non-Pipe weapon chambered for .38 ammo.

It doesn't bother me that they're in the game because they do have a wasteland look to them. I don't actually use them though because the 10mm is just a better gun. When you start seeing combat rifles and shotguns the only purpose pipe guns seem to have is scrap n caps.

I'm so glad that they included a "makeshift" weapon this was sorely missing for the atmosphere of the previous games.

Also not at all worried about the amount of guns, I can assure you that there in fact are a high number of gun nut modders in the community that will add whole punisher armories that will leave you feeling bewildered with choice.

We will likely see a large array of modifications that can be made to guns and likely the earliest will be a flashlight mount...

Though a lot of really nifty ones you might imagine will of course likely take a script extender and special animations >< ya Im thinking underbarrel shotgun mount and aux-grenade launcher. Of course if Bethsada was to release those in a comprehensive weapons pack hint hint I'm sure it'd go over really well!

I dunno, I'm low level, 11 now, but the modded pipe sniper is giving me headshots all the time. Seems to do the trick on nearly everything, well some Super Mutants have tough heads.

I have sold rather a lot of Legendary weapons, only found one worth keeping.

Honestly no, they're ugly, boring and absolutely everywhere to the point i just get sick of seeing them. Really disappointed in the base weapon selection in this game especially compared to new vegas.

I use a modified pipe pistol most of the time. I have an abundance of ammo for it, so I don't mind wasting the rounds. I quite like how you can modify them so much. I like the idea behind them, that they have been thrown together from scrap materials being a wasteland and all.

I primarily use hand guns so the pipe pistol, with my 10mm and a laser pistol has satisfied every need so far.