So, I am out just after starting, and I have the option to redo my skills, I went through to tweak some stuff, and I notice that Science lets me recycle used energy cell ammo (and I am making an energy weapon character).
Now that I see this, is science worth getting compared to how useless it was in FO3?

Right now my skills are Energy Weapons, Lock Pick and Speech.

I am now debating going with

Energy Weapons, Science and Speech.
or
Energy Weapons, Science and Repair

What do you guys suggest for my other two skills after energy weapons?
I am willing to take suggestions, my game is sitting idle on my skill screen til i decide (:

EW, speech and repair

Lockpick and science can be secondary skills.

Science is definitely more useful than it was in FO3 now. Science tends to affect big things while Lockpick affects little things like loot or dungeon shortcuts.

EW, Lockpick and Science makes a good prospector. Science also allows you to access a chem-making

However, I cant immediately remember many things where the choice to get past a roadblock with science didn't also come with a lockpick (or combat) option; However there are lots of "Story Terminals" full of easy XP for the science player.

How useful is repair now then?

Cause i noticed after getting like 5-6 varment rifles, with a 45 repair, I put one to full

Theres a few items you can only make with repair, a side quest or two thats easier with higher repair, but I found having it about 40 or so seemed about right.

Are any of said items useful for an energy weapons character?

I don't think so. Im sure I remember seeing some items, but I'm struggling to remember what they were (other than Bullet Ammo).

Speech is super helpful. Do not neglect it.

I would go with Guns, Speech, and Repair then pick the Thin Body perk for the +1 agility which has an addition boost effect to Lockpick and guns. Whenever I make a character I do the +4 points into Int then +1 into End for the enhancements. After that I choose the Intensive Training perk for +1 into Int to max it out. This gives me the most bang for the character generation I found.

Really found speech to be more useful in FONV than FO3 due to what it gives you. Science does give more useful things, but I wouldn't call it "Super Useful" unless you like to craft chems and such.

Scratch that, I just checked the Wiki. You can create "Weapon Repair Kits" with 50 Repair, Duct Tape, Scrap Electronics, 3 scrap metal, 2 wonderglue and 2 wrenches. Useful for almost all characters.

I am not using guns. I am using energy weapons, so agility has no use for me.

Repair 90 unlocks Jury Rigging, and repairing a Guass Rifle with a Laser Rifle is a lot cheaper than paying-for-repairs/buying-another-Guass-Rifle

without spoiling. how far into the game is the gauss rifle? could i throw repair up later into the game and get my science and EW up?

Depends on whenever you choose to make friends with the Mojave BoS Chapter. Their bunker armory shop is an EW equivalent of the Gun Runners

Depends on your role play. Lock pick is more useful though.

I got mine after becoming a full brotherhood member. The First (or Second depening on your choice of NPCs) Brotherhood quest point isn't easy to complete until you make progress in first quest in the NCR chain, or the second in the Ceasar and House chains (its the same objective in all quests), the rest of the brotherhood quests should be completable at that time.

I'v realized I need to remake my character. Never did anything for perception for my EW character. So now I need to make sure thats higher.

Now I think i'm going to almost entirely ditch agility, throw up SPE as my highest stats, and grab EW, repair and speech (i can throw science up now and then, and hopefully all of those will get to what I need by the time I get the good stuff. If not, i can get a few levels and pump up repair .

Thanks alot guys.

Well, it depends if you're going to be a good person or not, I guess. If you want to keep a good karma, go with speeceh. Otherwise, repair.

And science wasn't completely useless in F3. It had a multitude of uses (though, they were spread apart pretty far). Science does help you recycle energy cells, and even makes special perks available for making drained cells into both charged & overcharged & so forth more conservably. And probably the best part is with a high science skill you can

Agility affects movement speed, weapon handling, and AP. So do not neglect Agility.

Gauss is occasionally available in the BoS vendor's inventory and pretty common armament for Paladins. You're most likely to acquire one by killing a BoS at some point.

You'll want a good Repair skill since EWs are really fragile now.

They're both skillpoint sponges once again. I svcked it up and sacrificed weapon skills to get 100 Lockpick by reading all 4 volumes of Tumblers Today with Comprehension, that buys you +16 permanent LP and you only have to dump 60-something points to max out. This all depends on your Perception and Intelligence, too, as each point buys you another point to Lockpick.

Science thankfully isn't as necessary as it was in FO3, most terminals contain passwords for or unlock a lock you could pick anyway or find a holotape or key to unlock in FONV. I read all four volumes of Big Book of Science for +16 Science and dumped points to get it to 80. Then I had lots of copies of Programmers Digest to boost to 100 for the few Very Hard terminals in the game or the rare 100 Science speech options.

Can't wait for Dead Money or Kind Hearts, whichever comes out first for PS3, so I get like 80 something more points to drop with the extra 5 levels, depending on Intelligence of course. The more you have, the more points you get to spend. Don't forget Dr. Usanagi's implant, either.