I think Plasma rifles ignore DT. someone might want to check that in the Geck?

Basic plama rifle I found late last play fixed most of my annoyance with NEW VEGAS.

I do hear the Gatling is nerfed, however haven't seen if for myself.

And there's a really good laser rifle in which is a place fairly easy to deal with at lower levels, escpecially with sneak.

Energy weapons are appalling, ammo for them is MUCH harder to find than ammo for guns yet they eat up ammo SO MUCH FASTER.

Just a few examples:
-The Gauss Rifle takes FIVE MF cells a shot and does crap damage;
-The Tesla Cannon/Tesla-Beaton Prototype takes FORTY-FIVE ELECTRON CHARGE PACKS (45!!!!) a shot and does terrible damage relative to the amount of ammo spent
-The Plasma Rifle takes 2 MF cells a shot but has much worse killing power than FO3 (can't even penetrate the armor of freaking Giant Radscorpions...)
-The Laser RIfle still only takes 1 MF cell a shot, thank god, but is utterly useless against any kind of armored enemy
-The Plasma Defender takes 3 EC packs a shot
-The Pulse Gun takes 5 energy cells a shot
-Gatling Laser has been transformed from one of the best weapons in the game to a laser machinegun that's terrible against any kind of decently armored enemy (i.e. any kind of enemy you're going to find lategame)

I just don't understand why they'd make the weapons that are supposed to be more powerful and harder to find ammo for eat ammo so damn fast. The sad truth is Melee/Unarmed really are way better because you can get Piercing Strike and weapons that do as much as ninety (90!!!) damage a hit and ignore virtually all enemy armor with the horrifically overpowered Piercing Strike. Melee/Unarmed are by far the most viable combat types.

And no, Plasma Rifles do NOT ignore DT. I got rolled by a freaking Giant Radscorpion because my Plasma Rifle was doing about 5 damage a shot to it...things sure have fallen a long way since FO3. I love Energy Weapons, but the truth is the only thing that really makes them viable lategame is the Plasma Caster and the Meltdown perk as it allows you to actually do lots of damage quickly.

The Plasma Caster is great, but nearly every other energy weapon has serious flaws. If they just didn't eat so much damn ammo, they might be more viable, but as it stands you use tons of ammo to deal pathetic amounts of damage. Might as well just grab a Ballistic Fist where you don't need any ammo and your DPS is 4-5 times greater than that of most energy weapons...

I've downloaded one of the Armour Revamping mods to make the armour more realistic!
This way, you CAN use energy weapons efficiently!

Hell, in my Brotherhood T-51b Power Armour I am practically invincible against guns, but as soon as the Energy Weapons come out, I run for the hills!

Two words: Strength Requirements

What does Strength Requirements have to do with Energy Weapons?

Nah, I figured it wouldn't be worth the price the Gun Runners were selling it for, and its strength requirement was too high. Besides, I'm finished with that character and I've only got one save for him left... right before I kill Oliver. Perhaps that was a mistake.

And I agree with pretty much everything you said, Tuninator; the Plasma Caster may be the only weapon that does Energy Weapons any justice. Well, maybe the unique Gauss Rifle, too, but sadly, I found out I'll be getting the Alien Blaster instead... great.

I ound it was similar to FO3. The energy weapons just weren't as useful as guns.

To quote Yahtzee's CoD4 review: "It's a gun [censored]".

I did mange to one-shot a deathclaw pup with Q-35, max charge and sneak attack headsgot, but only reason i'm surviving is Veronica's gauntlet, ED-E and me are just comedic sidekicks using flashlights on enemies

my YSC does over 250 dmg with MC rounds... so it svcks up 4 rounds so what.. deathclaw dt like 30 ro so thats 220 dmg on a regular hit... its insane.. not to mentioin plasma caster doing in the 100's VERY rapidly only svcking up 1 cell.. everything melts its like making grilled cheese on vc/hc

ya gotta have science 70 then pick recycle and just buy up all the EW ammo you can find and start converting i never had a problem with ammo i always keep like 200 regular cells and like 400 MC cells and buy/recycle whenever possible.

try it out.. i experimented with several builds and in the beginning i was pretty sad that EW svcked.. then... i figured out how to use them and i believe the key is in the MC ammo and associated crit perks high luck etc... now that I've done all this they seem VERY effective..

They're generally much lower than their gun equivalent, excepting the plasma caster and IIRC tesla cannon.

Anyway, for you guys saying max charge cells beat out AP ammo... Yeah, in raw damage. Problem here is that max charge cells also have, what 2.25 times the weapon degradation rate? And E-Weapons are already awfully fragile and hard to keep in working order.

Edit:



Oh? Which one. Could you link to it please? I'm curious.

I found keeping my energy weapons maintained was quite tricky early on, but by the time I was crafting Max charge ammo I was using the green laser rifle and had plenty of spare laser rifles stolen from the Silver Rush to repair it with. Now I use the Gatling laser and the Gauss Rifle, and while the GR is pretty fragile the Gatling laser is very tough, allowing me to use most of my repair kits on my rifle.

Maintenance is definitely more of a concern for Energy weapons but weapon repair kits aren't difficult to make.

They're lower, but the point is the rifle-level Guns are actually good while the rifle-level energy weapons svck; Strength rarely enters into the equation there.

To make a quick comparison to illustrate just how bad some energy weapons are:

Plasma Rifle: Damage/shot-30
DPS-44.6
Clip size-24 MF cells, but 2 MF cells are used a shot
Shots travel relatively slowly

Laser Rifle-Damage/shot-15
DPS-46
Clip Size-24 shots (1/round shot, but MF cells are quite expensive)
Shots travel quickly

Marksman Carbine-
Damage/shot-24
DPS-136 (over THREE TIMES as much as the Plasma Rifle, almost 3 times as much as the Laser Rifle)
Clip Size-20 shots (but 1 round used a shot)
Shots travel very fast

The Plasma Rifle is just downright awful, the Q-35 is what all plasma rifles should have been, and even then it's still pretty crappy. The Laser Rifle is just a joke too compared to its Guns equivalents; the Assault Carbine embarrasses both the Plasma Rifle and the Laser Rifle as well.

There's honestly no justification for them being that bad.

So everyone wants a new version of EVE huh ?

Multiplas is FUN.

Just to point out, this is an unfair comparison. The two laser rifles you listed are Tier 2 weapons (25 skill requirement), while the marksman rifle requires 100 guns to be effective. The RCW would be a better match up, but not perfect.

A more fair gun to compare it to is the cowboy repeater in skill requirement category. Using two entry level guns compared to a fairly later gun is pretty one sided.

With the Laser commander perk and 100 energy weapons skill I found all laser weapons to be useless against any type of enemy wearing combat armor or better. It could never break the DT enough to do anything until i got a critcal hit. I was using max charge MF cells as well. I HATE wasting perks in fallout so i started a new character and didnt pick up the laser commander perk, instead i just kept the Meltdown perk (which owns) and used the Gauss rifle and the plasma caster. A plasma caster with the rate of fire mod and max charge MF cells will one shot most things and make short work of enemy armor...and it only shoots 1 MF cell per shot. If your using Raul then the rergular maintenance will help alot and if you have jury rigger then your golden. I was super irritated that I couldnt use my scoped laser rifle for anything more than a glorified varmint rifle. Also the rate of ammo consumption for energy weapons is insane ....why does my plasma rifle do less damage than the plasma caster and use 2 units of ammo wheras the caster only consumes one? why does the plasma defender use 4? and why in gods name does the tesla cannon take 45??? on hardcoe mode its seriously limits what type of weapons you can use or how many you can bring with. ...i mean its like the devs made a game based on loose theories and innaccurate assumptions rather than real facts revealed when properly play tested. All i see are half fleshed out ideas on the screen , and to make it worse...most of them are really good ideas worthy of refining.

You would think that laser weapons would be easier to find than plasma weapons but not in Nevada i guess.... there are 4 types of laser weapons and only 1 unique variant (which is rediculously inefficient when it comes to ammo conssumption), with all of them being questionably effecitve and a plethora of effective plasma choices...yet there is no perk for plasma weapons past reducing AP costs (and i find this game way to easy when i use vats all the time) which is only situationally benificial. And meltdown is the only good energy weapon based perk in my opinion.

Couple that with lever action weapons and other (one bullet at a time loaded weapons) not being reliable with all the bugs they have and you really dont have many options when it comes to choosing your weapons.

And why make a mod for a laser rifle beam splitter when you already have a tri beam laser rifle in the game that does tons more damage??? And in gods name why make a mod like a laser rifle beam splitter when its already lacking base damage fails to even be useful against medium armor???

DT blows...in a game that penalizes you for carrying too much equipment, they sure made it hard for me to justify using any weapons that werent capable of overcoming enemies with medium to heavy type armor....in hardcoe mode there is no way Im gonna waste precious space for weapons that are only situationally effective when I could just as easily use higher caliber weapons and just carry more ammo for them.

Pretty upset with my options..or lack there of in this obviously untested game.

Too bad there arent any late game acquired laser guns to compare. And besides...most players who know they are gonna use any type of weapon alot will put the required points into the skill that governs them so skill requirements arent really a valid bases to critcise. And a laser rifle (when scoped and focus optics) is almost the same as the marksman carbine in terms of per bullet damage but at least you can load your carbine up with AP rounds and still be effective even when not landing a crit.

I believe that if we have problems with the energy weapons maybe we could make a request in the modding forums.

It appears the beam splitter on the laser rifle is simply there for the way sneak attack crits work. The sneak crit does alot more damage AND the damage is PER projectile so the beam splitter makes it do 3x crit damage on top of a big crit bonus and the crit damage all together winds up being rather massive and ignores armor.

I feel like they were too liberal with DT numbers and awarding them to creatures. For instance, a low DT on ants would make sense, but the DT enjoyed by Deathclaws is nuts. I wonder if they can even support different DT numbers for different body parts.

Once you get the RIGHT energy weapons, the game becomes almost too easy.

Plasma Caster is just utterly brutal, though it fires very slowly in VATS it fires very quickly in real-time, and can lay down four or five praetorian guards while backpedaling before they can really touch you.

Plasma Defender is equally vicious and is one-handed so you can run around with it out everywhere without slowing down.

The Unique "Pew Pew" laser pistol is undoubtedly the DT-breaker of the bunch, hitting for over a hundred damage fully repaired, it's basically the alien blaster of FO:NV.


There are a few key things about playing energy weapon characters though:

1) You need to take advantage of perks specific to boosting energy weapons like Plasma Spaz.

2) You must gain access to a source of high-quality rare high-level energy weapons. Sadly this usually means siding with the Van Graffs and losing access to a companion.

3) Energy weapons have varied ammo now, unlike any other fallout-series game. You wouldn't take on a Mr. Gutsy with hollowpoints, mix and match your ammo to maximum effect whether your weapon spits lead, photons or high-energy hydrogen.

All I know is that fully automatic laser rifle that uses EC ammo (can't remember the name) that you see on the Silver Rush display table is pure pwn sauce. I stole it and after using it on some legion terds I was all like "WOW! Holy crap!" It's my new favorite weapon.

I kind of like the change myself. In Fallout 3 the only gun I ever used was A3-21's Plasma Rifle, in New Vegas I don't think I've used energy weapons once other then the Van Graff quest.

It is strange in the original fallout 1 and 2 Laser weapons were strong against light to medium armor and plasma weapons were made against very tough monsters since plasma ignored most armor. It was mandatory against troops in Power Armor and Deathclaws. Even in Fallout 3, plasma rifles were very powerful against enemies with high armor. In New Vegas they can't bypass the armor unless it crits, which wasn't the case in any of the previous games, and it was never stated that is how Energy Weapons now work. They need to rework plasma weapons at the very least, lasers are fine against medium to low armor targets, or at inform the player that energy weapons are now highly dependent on crit and can only hurt heavily armored targets when it crits.

Energy Weapons can't be too powerful because that would be boring as all hell. If they do change them to be more powerful, I think making their ammo truly rare to find would be a good idea.