What are your thoughts on the combat effectiveness of the various companions?

In Fallout 3, if you gave Charon a fully repaired Chinese Assault Rifle - he was a beast.

In Fallout New Vegas, Boone was a killing machine (Veronica and Cass were not bad either)

In Skyrim, most companions, if properly outfitted, were adapt at combat.

In Fallout 4, it seems that most companions are only good for drawing fire away from me and being used as pack mules.

I gave Curie a fully modded double shot laser gun and she is reasonably effective with it. However, I have given McCready a fully modded assault rifle, Cait a fully modded 50. cal hunting rifle, Nick a plasma pistol and they are all fairly useless in combat.

Are other having the same experience, or have you figured out how to make companions more effective combatants?

good question. my experience has been they are useless except for drawing attention away from me.

next question is what are their stats? maybe characters like Danse was built to be more effective vs a medic like Curie. dunno..

Nope. Not even with the companion perk that buffs their damage. But i will say Danse is decent.

I have been more than satisfied with Cait especially as I increase in level. I gave her the Silver Shroud armor and a helmet that offers +10 to damage. However, I do notice that companions are crippled more easily at lower levels in the game which supports my theory (and others as well) that the baddies do not level at the same rate as a player (i.e. the game becomes much easier). I play at very hard difficulty and notice the game becoming easier around level 25.

The human (and human-ish) companions have weak default weapons excluding Preston who uses a laser musket and Danse who uses a laser rifle. They won't die much if you give them good armor, but if you want them to do more damage you need to give them a weapon and, unfortunately, ammo as well (even if the weapon you give them uses the same ammo as their default, for example, Nick's default weapon is a pipe revolver pistol that uses .45 ammo, if you give him a combat rifle then you'll need to give him ammo for it as well even though the combat rifle uses the same ammo as his default, I think it was different in Fallout 3). Strong and X6-88 are pretty tough though, IMO, and get only tougher if you give them armor as well.

Also, as far as I can tell, the companion AI fights best with relatively quick-firing and high-damage weapons such as the combat rifle and the plasma rifle or with high-end melee weapons such as the Super Sledge and swords with the electrified serrated mod.

Yep, I use companions to draw fire away too, they seem underpowered

I ended up equipping Cait with a Legendary Penetrating Deathclaw Gauntlet.

She is surprisingly effective, with heavy enough armor.

Draws plenty of Agro and the martial arts moves that seem to come with the weapon are really good at keeping anything even remotely humanoid rooted in place or flat on its back.

I found Fallout 4 companions to certainly be effective in combat. Heck, I had Danse pal-ing around and before I knew it we had completely incinerated a Deathclaw with our laser rifles (me using the Righteous Authority Danse had given me early on). You can customize their gear to an extent, it seems. I would like to try modding Danse's personal rifle, if possible.

It does not seem like companions are combat effective because they do not have access to the perk system. That means they do not get any bonus to weapon damage unless the weapon has a legendary effect.

For example, a modded a Wounding automatic pipe rifle and give it to Piper. The base damage is 13, add 9 for the most powerful automatic mod and another 25 for bleeding damage. The means the total damage is 47.

Oh... I forgot that Inspirational Leader level 1 allows your companions to do 20% more damage. But I do not know if that is a modifier for just the base damage (13 x 1.2 + 9 x 1.2 + 25 = 51.4) or for total damage (47 * 1.2 = 56.4).

No but in sneak mode they all go toward my companion who happens to be Preston. So I just headshot them one by one as they run toward him.

There are perks to make your companions more useful in battle, but I won't waste my points on it. I only use Preston as a mule really. I snipe everything so effectively, he rarely gets the chance to do anything to help anyway.

I've found giving them a powerful melee weapon seemed to make them more reliable in combat, because they would always charge into the fight and actually inflict damage (most of the time anyway), not when using ranged weapon and their being a chance at them standing somewhere doing absolutely nothing to help.

But besides that, I find them not very efficient and no where near as reliable as companions in previous Fallout games.

Piper seems to be able to handle herself with a modded flamethrower and legendary missile launcher. But man oh man if she has that missile launcher equipped and you don't have the Inspirational perk yet you better stay the hell out of her way or she might blow you into the afterlife when enemies are around. Anyways, if you mod their weapons and armor, gain all the ranks in the Inspirational perk, and find all the Live and Love magazines your companion will be a force to be reckoned with.

When I give them modded gear, they seem ok. If they're just at defaults they are taken out quickly. I don't want them that good though. I don't like any sidekick stealing my thunder.

Codsworth and Strong seem to be particularly effective at combat. I suppose it's to mitigate the fact that they cannot sneak. Codsworth seems to always draw the enemy towards my location (robot is always up my butt) and I don't use Strong with my Sneak character

I personally avoid companions like the plague. I only take one on board if the story dictates I really have to.

First time I've enjoyed companions in a bethesda game. With the right perks and gear they can be useful, bu they are so stupid....it's easy enough for me to tell Cait to stand at the entrance while i assess the situation but I'd rather she had the common sense not to run in and start on a small army of her own accord.

Curie seems to do pretty well with the laser rifle I gave her. If nothing else she gives the enemy someone else to shoot at besides me.

The human companions are very good at getting shot at by me, it seems. So I have Dogmeat as companion always. He always charges into the fire zone like the human companions do, but Dogmeat is not tall or big enough for me to shoot at like I would the human companions, lol. Almost all the enemies are either taller, bigger, bulkier, or, in the case of flying creatures, positioned higher than Dogmeat, so it is hard to shoot at Dogmeat by mistake. Radroaches and the likes are the only things that Dogmeat towers over, so he may get friendly fire from me. But of course Dogmeat can handle them by himself.

With melee weapons they are but otherwise no. I gave Piper the blade from the Dunwhich mines and Kellogg armor now she helps out a lot in combat

In the last 3 games, I've been a VATS player , aside from the occasional snipe to kick things off. For this reason, companions are largely ineffective, because I take everyone out before they can really get any shots off. They do provide cover and distraction, while my AP refills, though. Admittedly, the main reasons for me to take a companion are added quests, perks and pack mule capabilities.

I think they're fine. Use to much ammo but fine otherwise.

Just to bring this up because no one has yet; On higher difficulties such as survival companions are actually pretty effective. It seems they don't get the 50% damage nerf the player gets or the 2x damage received so they tend to be pretty tanky and really high damage compared to the player. I noticed this when I gave piper a short laser rifle vanilla no upgrades and she was matching my maximized old faithful then I realized she must not get the damage reduction so companions pretty much do double damage compared to the player. (I did have inspirational but I don't think that's whats making them do so much more damage then the player.

I have had a lot of success with Danse, Piper, and Hancock. They all have better armor on though and their starting weapons have been modified to max.

I found that the companions in this game with the obvious exception of Strong, Codsworths and Dogmeat to be as good at stealth as the companions are in New Vegas in that while in sneak mode they won't attack an enemy on sight unless you do. Skyrim companions basically charged straight in and as far as I recall Fallout 3's companions do too. All you need to do is give them a silenced weapon to not get spotted.

Combat wise they are definitely far superior to the ones in Fallout 3 and Skyrim considering the fact that they cannot be killed. Honestly, there is no better display of those new takedowns, judo and tripping moves than seeing your companions do them to enemies as not only do they look awesome, it also makes things easier as you can shoot at them while they are on the ground.

I was once at low health and Nick valentine saved my life by knocking over a gunner with a missile launcher while I healed. Real teamwork!

This has been standard since Oblivion, higher difficulty don't affect them.

And its weird they don't have perks? In Skyrim I think NPC had perks then I looked in the creation kit, still its weird, Lydia can do stealth forward roll but still sett off flor traps who is an lower perk in the tree.