I wrote a massive guide anolyzing all the weapons in this game for your viewing pleasure. I also indicate where to get them.

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to post right here.

You can download it here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/443421/fallout.new.vegas.weapon.faq.txt

Enjoy!

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_weapons

Shouldn't this be in the "cheats, hints, spoilers" section of the forums?

Forgot 10mm pistol with all mods installed. It's silent so the gun stays useful throughout the game once acquired.

Trail Carbine with the scope mod and SWC rounds. Well, before the PC patch broke it along with alot of the guns in the game. Great in VATS with 21 AP usage. Ammo is very easy to find in bulk. Degrades very slowly. Powerful in long ranged sniping with only full grown deathclaws needing anything bigger, with the Stealth Girl perk active it'll kill them with a perfect sneak attack to the head. Can swipe one from Ranger Andy early in the game with 50 lock pick. It was a crushing blow for me that the PC 1.2 patch made the weapon basically useless with that stupid reloading bug.

I didn't forget. Weathered 10MM section talks about all of those.

I looked into trail carbine, and I definitely used it when when I took it from Ranger Andy myself on my first playthrough. It doesn't compare to This Machine though, especially now as you indicated about the patch.

Sure one can look at the stats, but that doesn't tell you everything my guide will. That data needs to be interpreted, and actual play-testing also needs to be done.

What my guide does it offer commentary and anolysis, not a duplication of some manual or stats table.

I found this guy's guide a LOT more informative than the wiki despite the fact I already knew most of the information from having played almost 100 hours of this game
Still its very interesting to know that the Weathered 10mm pistol is mod-able. I suddenly found myself a new side arm that actually silenced and has ammo that i have way too much of

Thank you

While the Weathered 10mm pistol can be modded it lacks the meshes to display them in game. Just dropping the "Weathered" is the best thing do. It'll cover all the game copies across all the platforms, both current pre-order and future sales.

Still think the Trail Carbine should be on the list if the equally broken Brush Gun (for PC) is there. It's the perfect compromise between short range VATS and distance free-aim sniping with little hassle for both ammo and repairs.


"Ratslayer" and "Varmint Rifle+All mods" could also use a mention. I've put down many Legionaries with those two guns firing .223 rounds, or 5.56mm HP to the head, on Normal Difficulty.

Awesome guide, lots of detail.

I especially like the build, and plan on trying in out sometime.

Although I still don't get why you would pick Good Natured....

I also haven't experienced the problems you have with brush gun. Sometimes it locks up and I can't fire, but that's only happened 2 times for me. The vats problem hasn't happened at all for me.

The real issue is that none of those weapons (ratslayer, trail carbine, etc.) come anywhere close to the power of gobi, sniper rifle+ or even this machine. Taking down legionnaires in 1 shot is easily achieved by... i dunno... 10 or 15 weapons in the game? That's not really a good benchmark. So I don't really feel it necessary to mention them.

Let's look at Ratslayer. I hate to say it, but Ratslayer is an absolute joke compared to Sniper Rifle+. Ratslayer using 5.56mm, Armor Piercing (probably it's best ammo) does not come anywhere close to the level of carnage you can make with a Sniper Rifle+. Let's say you have a target that actually has 15 DT or less. Then you'll be doing x0.95 of 23 damage, which is 21.85 damage. If you've got the proper setup, you'll crit 100% of the time, so you'll deal about 54.625 damage.

I'm sorry to say, but Sniper Rifle+ does 62 damage with regular .308 ammo out of the box, with no crits. It already wins. If you use .308 JSP with the same gear as our theoretical Ratslayer user is, you'll be doing 232.5 damage per shot. On top of all of this, Sniper Rifle+ has a faster rate of fire, so over 2-3 second span it's going to be doing even more damage. Ratslayer is so far behind, you just can't see it anymore.

Conclusion: If you really want to snipe things, Gobi and Sniper Rifle+ are the answers. There is nothing better.

As for trail carbine, it does benefit from the Cowboy perk... but even so, it still doesn't beat out This Machine. Trail Carbine will get a +25% damage boost, so each shot will deal 56.25 damage. This Machine already does 65 damage out of the box.

Now, .44 Magnum ammo is not nearly as good as .308, because it doesn't have any hand loader version from what I can tell. I have the Hand Loader perk, yet there is no hand load option for .44 Magnum ammo. Anyway, .308 JSP does +50% extra damage at no drawback, and the ammo is super cheap and really easy to craft. WIth this ammo, you'll be doing 98 damage per shot. Again, I just don't see how Trail Carbine even comes close to this level of damage. We're talking about a 74% damage improvement here, not some insignificant number :/

On top of all of this, This Machine's rate of fire is 2.14 shots per second, while Trail Carbine is 1.85 shots per second. So it's natural DPS is going to be even lower.

Basically I've shown that in every way, This Machine is superior... so again, I don't see why I should mention Trail Carbine.

I hope I've answered all of your criticisms.

For efficiency. In the long-term, you net 10 bonus skill points, which is almost the amount you'd get by leveling your character. It's kind of a like a free level. We won't be using unarmed or explosives at all, so we actually save skill points.

This would of been useful a couple weeks ago. Oh well, thanks anyway. :goodjob:

Yeah, well, Obsidian didn't send me a copy of the game to play for a 2 weeks before launch so I could get this info out at the time for release. You hear me Obsidian?! Send me the game in advance!

In all seriousness, it's not possible to give an indepth anolysis unless you play the game a lot. It takes time to form valid, objective opinions about things like this.

We already know what opinions were surfacing the first week this game came out. "Anti-Materiel Rifle is the bomb man!" That pretty much sums it up. They were clearly wrong.

1. Agility doesn't increase running speed.
2. You forgot Tri-beam with Laser Commander!
3. Dumping CHA is so... last week.
4. Small Frame? Why? Trigger Discipline, Fast Shot, Kamikaze?

Yes, it does influence walking/run speed, doesn't it? I seem to notice a difference. Even if it doesn't, I'd still nab the agility anyway for the bonus to AP

I didn't forget Tri-beam, i just ignored it. It's all junk.

I took small frame because I wanted more agility. As for the other traits, there are more or less balanced, no? I honestly didn't want to give up anything. I never thought fast shot/trigger discipline were overpowered or better than the default in any way.

Again, Agility doesn't affect running speed. Travel Light does, by quite a lot.

Small Frame is a bargain, one free SPECIAL point - at expense of real pain in the [censored] fixing limbs on hardcoe is. Fast Shot with Plasma Caster or Trigger Discipline with Multiplas are fun ways of playing energy - I always pick one of the two for my characters. +20% accuracy/fire rate is neat on its own - but what I am more after is spread reduction which boosts shotgun-ish weapons nicely.

I'd also look into Comprehension if I were you. There are 4 skill books per a skill, 13 skills so 52 free points to gain in the game, 30-ish if you count only skills you are intending to use (excluding unarmed, explosives and such). This also lets you upgrade most skills to 55 (where highest checks are at 75 like Medicine) or 80 (Lockpick, Science, Speech) using magazines to deal with the rest saving typically 10 points per each skill here.

Yes, moving it there ...............

Fast Shot is quite good with the YCS/186 as well, dealing almost 700DPS on 100 energy weapons on top of the 250 DMG it does with Max Charge MF cells, before factoring in a critical or taking Psycho or Slasher.
The drawbacks are the massive amounts of energy ammo used (20 MF cells cost per shot when using Max Charge), although less than doing it with a standard Gauss (25 MF cells cost per shot when using Max Charge) and just be sure not to miss with a shot.
The high ammo cost tends to help towards making every shot count though, unless you are so loaded you are wiping your butt with NCR 100 notes.

My guide was not tailored for hardcoe. The build section isn't the corner stone of the guide at all. This is not character build faq. Section 2 is the heart of the guide.

As for reducing spread, I don't see this as desirable since almost all of the the best weapons in the game have low spread anyway - gobi, sniper rifle+, ranger sequoia, brush gun, etc. To me, taking any of these traits will skew the results of the faq and would drastically throw the anolysis off. This is bad.

I'm well aware that Comprehension is a good perk. Like I said in my FAQ, this wasn't meant to be a serious build. It was made to try out all the weapons and experiment. There's no room for extraneous perks like Comprehension in a build like this. Likewise, I'm sure you find tons of perks to cut to make the "perfect" build that is right for you.

Honestly, this build should bring a lot of confidence in my anolysis because it was the exact build I used to get the results. If i had taken the traits you suggested, the anolysis would be just wrong.

There is .44 recipe available from a guy in north vegas square, you need guns 50 and survival 60 to get it

Hrm, I thought the Hand Loader perk was supposed to unlock all recipes? Who wants to put 60 in survival? (not me).

What are the stats on this ammo? For some reason, I would be surprised that it gave +75% damage. If it did, then maybe his argument has a case. If it doesn't, then my argument that I gave him a few posts back holds up anyway.

How about 40 + Magazine? You want Survival quite high if you play hardcoe - which I'd assume is played by the majority of good players, especially those who go on giving tips to others.

About ammo, http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hand_Loader - well worth it, just like every single hand-loaded recipe in there. You can kill everything in this game with those bullets, Mysterious Magnum and Trail Carbine...

So you're saying that because I didn't feel like dealing with inventory weight issues that I am not a good player? Please. I used to like games a lot more when they didn't have inventory restrictions at all.

You don't have a valid point. All my "tips" are perfectly valid.



Well, I obviously have the Hand Loader perk. I wouldn't be writing a guide talking about Hand Loader 19 times in my FAQ if I didn't know about this perk. Then why is it that I can't make this .44 Hand Load version? It does not show up for me.

Anyway, I see that it only does +20% damage, which is still way less than Brush Gun with 45-70 Gov SWC Hand Load. It's still less than This Machine. Clearly Trail Carbine doesn't belong in the guide as a top weapon. My argument that I gave you a few posts back is perfectly valid and true. I'd be happy to explain the math if you didn't understand it.