Energy Boost
v1.5
by Nekhanimal


http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38315


Some people say that Energy Weapons are useless in Fallout: New Vegas. I respectfully disagree, I just don't think they are very satisfying, and definitely not all they're jacked up to be. In Fallout 2 I usually Tag that skill, so I demand it to be equally fun in this game. I've made this mod in order to improve it.

In short:
Weapons do more damage and degrade slower.
Plasma Spaz is now good, Meltdown no longer damages you.
Energy ammo reduces DT of the target.
Energy ammo now always returns Drained cells.
OverCharge/MaxCharge is more useful.
You can now craft Bulk from normal ammo, and normal ammo from Bulk.
Beam Splitter is useful now.


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Weapons:
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Recharger Rifle: +7 damage, +3 Clip Size.
Laser Pistol: +3 damage.
Laser Rifle: +5 damage.
AER14 Prototype: +5 damage.
Laser RCW: Condition increased from 400 to 450.
Tri-Beam Laser Rifle: +2 damage, Critical damage increased from 15 to 54, Condition increased from 50 to 80.
Gatling Laser: Now fires 2 lasers per shot, each doing 8 damage. The Focus Optics mod makes them do 10 damage.
Pew Pew: +25 Critical damage.

Plasma Pistol: +8 damage.
Plasma Defender: +6 damage.
Plasma Rifle: +18 damage.
Q-35 Matter Modulator: Damage/Critical damage changed from 32/62 to 50/50, name changed to Turbo Plasma Rifle.
Multiplas Rifle: +30 damage, Condition increased from 50 to 80, name changed to Multi Plasma Rifle.
Plasma Caster: +2 clip size, Condition increased from 80 to 120, name changed to Plasma Cannon.

Tesla-Beaton Prototype: +95 damage, condition increased from 40 to 80.
Tesla Cannon: +60 damage, condition increased from 80 to 100.

Incinerator now uses 2 ammo per shot.

The Laser Rifle's Beam Splitter mod does not work. It has been changed to an External Diode, which increases the weapon's condition instead.


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Ammo:
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Energy Ammo now reduces the Damage Threshold of the target by the following values.

Electron Charge Pack:
Bulk: -1
Normal: -2
Overcharge: -2
Max charge: -3

Small Energy Cell:
Bulk: -4
Normal: -5
Overcharge: -6
Max Charge: -7

Micro Fusion Cell:
Bulk: -8
Normal: -10
Overcharge -12
Max Charge -14

Flamer Fuel:
Homemade: -3
Normal: -4

Microfusion Breeder:
Normal: -4


MaxCharge and OverCharge ammo has been changed to be more useful:

OverCharge:
Old - Damage 1.25, Condition 1.50.
New - Damage 1.35, Condition 1.35.

MaxCharge:
Old - Damage 1.75, Condition 2.50.
New - Damage 2.00, Condition 2.50.


Energy ammo (ECP/MFC/SEC) now *always* returns Drained ammo, since the batteries aren't ejected and maybe lost like bullet casings - you just take them out and put them in your pocket.

The chance of retrieving Drained Flamer Fuel has been increased from 25% to 35%. This chance is 70% with Vigilant Recycling. Homemade Flamer Fuel has a Condition penalty of 2x down from 3x.

You can now craft Bulk from normal ammo. This requires 40 Science for SEC, 50 for MFC and 60 for ECP.

With Vigilant Recycling you can craft normal ammo from Bulk. This requires 70 Science for SEC, 80 for MFC and 90 for ECP. The conversion rate from normal ammo to Bulk is 7/10.


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Perks:
---------------

Plasma Spaz:
Now reduces AP cost by 20% and increases fire rate by 20%.

Meltdown:
Name changed to Atomic Apocalypse, now uses a different explosion, radius increased from 200 to 350, does damage over time, and you and your followers are *not* damaged by it.


---------------
Future Plans:
---------------

Tesla Cannons will behave like chain lightning, i.e. a beam that arcs from enemy to enemy. I may also give them the sound from C&C:Red Alert Tesla Coils.

Making the Beam Splitter effect work as intended.

Great, I've been looking for something that would buff energy weapons for my next playthrough and the other major overhaul in the works is not forthcoming. Thanks for this.

A new version is up.

Changes in v1.2

Energy Ammo now reduces the Damage Threshold of the target.

Homemade Flamer Fuel now has a Condition penalty of 2x down from 3x.

Tri-Beam Laser Rifle has +15 condition, Multi Plasma Rifle has +10.

The Gauss Rifle and its unique counterpart has +1 clip size.


And another one!

Changes in v1.31

Changed the properties of OverCharge and MaxCharge ammo.

Shortened the text on the External Diode mod.


And... another one...

Changes in v1.4

All energy ammo except Flamer Fuel now always returns Drained ammo. The chance of Flamer Fuel returning Drained Fuel has been increased from 25% to 35%. Vigilant Recycler doubles this chance.

You can now craft Bulk ammo from regular ammo, and regular ammo from Bulk ammo.

Hi, I'm trying out your mod pending the new patch ...

First think I want to say is: Gatling Laser is still grossly underpowered compared with RCW!?! What were you thinking!?!
+2 damage only raises it to 9 dmg per shot compared to the RCW's 15 dmg per shot, using the same ammo?! The RCW has the advantage of the recycler mod too!?
What about x3 damage (i.e. 21 dmg per shot)? I would think that would be reasonable and makes the Gatling Laser usable as an end-game weapon.

Otherwise, good boost across the board. I would have argued for more damage from the humble Laser Pistol/Rifle (was thinking of 20/25 dmg per shot) but since you gave a hefty DT penetration, I can accept it.
Other things I have issue with:

1) Having shots always return drained cells. This seriously impacted the benefit of Vigilant Recycler. In vanilla, Vigilant Recycler significantly boost the % chance to recover drained cells - your mod negates that advantage and makes VR's return minimal.
To compensate, I would suggest either or both the following:
(a) Weaken the recycling efficiency w/o Vigilant Recycler
(B) Improve recycling efficiency with Vigilant Recycler:

2) Crafting bulk ammo ... hmm, ok, I think this won't be efficent from cost POV but I need hard figures. I used Bulk MFC for the YCS in my first energy weapons char (largely Vanilla with a minor boost from MadCat211's Energydenerf) and purchasing Bulk MFC was so cheap I don't think I'll ever use your bulk ammo crafting receipt, but I should investigate further.

Actually the RCW is the equivalent of a SMG, while the Gatling is an EW anologue for the mini-gun. In those terms they both function as expected.
The Gatling Laser does have very low spread compared to the minigun, so a reduced DAM in comparison is fair.

The Gatling Laser fires a bazillion rounds per second, it's for those times when you just need to clear a room as quickly as possible without worrying about the ammo cost. The Van Graffs, for example, will shoot you dead in a matter of seconds, so you want to reduce the number of guns pointed at you as quickly as possible. Having greater ammo efficiency means nothing if you don't survive. With Max Charge ammo, Laser Commander and the Focus Optics mod the Gatling Laser does around 30 damage a shot AND shaves off 3 additional DT from the target because of the ammo. Since it fires about 10 rounds per second that goes a long way.

I think we have different philosophies in game design: if something's overpowered, I leave it that way and compensate by boosting everything else instead, rather than reducing its power and leaving everything nerfed. Here's the deal with Vigilant Recycler:

Vanilla -> Energy weapons is unplayable without Vigilant Recycler, becomes playable, but still no fun with it.
With EnergyBoost -> Energy Weapons is playable and fun without Vigilant Recycler, becomes much easier with it.

To clarify, here's exactly what it does:
Gives you a 25% increase in the return from recycling ammo, which now is a much bigger deal since you get much more Drained Cells.
Doubles your chances of retrieving Drained Flamer Fuel.
Lets you convert 10 Bulk ammo into 7 regular ones, with some additional Science.

This is a lot for one perk. I believe perks should be what their name implies, an added bonus, but not something you absolutely need in order to play a character the way you want.

Ok, there is a flaw there due to how damage is calculated in FNV. I can't remember where is it posted in THIS forum, but there is a confirmation from the developer.

The thing is. the damage multipler from ammo only applies AFTER damage has been reduced by Damage Tolerance. This is a significant and a bad problem for energy weapons in Vanilla because you can't simply boost damage (via Over or Max ammo) to overcome DT. Someone ran a test and figured it out.

Under your patch, the Gatling Laser (+ Focus mod) will do a base of 12 dmg per shot, 14 with Laser Commander.
A Target with DT 17 or more would negate most of the damage from the GL regardless of ammo.

I'll try to find the post so you can read it firsthand - I'm certain it was made and a developer confirmed it.
Ok found it: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1141220-screenshot-evidence-that-overchargemaxcharge-means-nothing-to-dt/ JE Sawyer posted a confirmation on page 2 of the thread.


(P.S. My char at level 7 just ran into my first Fiend with a Laser Rifle - your mod performed as advertised: I got cut to pieces despite a DT of 15 (Reinforced leather 10 + Helmet 2 + Toughness 3), which in Vanilla would have let me execute a frontal charge with abandon).

But that's not the point of a high rate of fire weapon like the Gatling Laser. It's not supposed to be some high powered gun but rather mostly useful to overwhelm defense with bleedthrough or cut down lesser armored targets.
At least now that armor is Damage Threshold based.

The multiplier-thing is known and works that way to facilitate AP and HP ammo.

Ah! Though I guess this does make sense, 30 damage would be a bit overpowered. I'll have to get a hold of one of those bad boys myself and see how it performs. I've massacred the Brotherhood and the Van Graffs, is there another place that has them?

I do expect the base Gatling Laser to at least have the same damage per shot as the Laser RCW (i.e. 15). The RCW would have the advantage of having the Recycler mod, but the Gatling can boost damage further via Focus mod and have better critical percentage.

Crafting Bulk ammo is cost inefficent for MFCs. Cheapest price for MFC is 3 caps, but a box of 100 Bulk MFC can go for as low as 100 caps (ie. 1 cap per Bulk MFC!).

The Laser Rifle Diode mod apparantly also results in the same problem with Weapon Repair Kits as other weapons mods that enhance weapon condition: Weapon Repair Kits would not function properly.

Anyway, I'm also watching for the patch to see how it affects Energy Weapons.

You know what, you were absolutely right. I tested it extensively yesterday, the gatling laser does svck against pretty much everything. So here's a new version:

Changes in v1.5

Changed the Multi Plasma Rifle and the Plasma Defender to fit the new stats in the patch.

The Gatling Laser now fires two lasers per shot, each doing 8 damage. The Focus Optics mod makes them do 10 damage.

Removed the extra ammo in the Gauss Rifles.

The Multi Plasma Rifle has +10 condition, +15 damage.

The Plasma Cannon has +2 clip size, and slightly less spread.

Fixed the Tesla Cannons not doing the listed damage.

Corrected a couple of typos.

quote name='Nekhanimal' timestamp='1291961613' post='16775094']

Changes in v1.5

The Gatling Laser now fires two lasers per shot, each doing 8 damage. The Focus Optics mod makes them do 10 damage.
[/quote]

I'm keeping an eye on your mod, as it seems to add a little more than Energy Weaps Denerfed, (or at least fill in some voids). However, I think that simply making the Gatling Laser have two beams at 8 DAM will not help with stronger enemies (Dt over 12 ish), considering the DT without DR and the little amount of bleed through. It will be calculating two seperate beams at 8 DAM, so any thing with a DT of 8 or above is relatively unharmed (if I am understanding correctly).

My thoughts are that since the Gatling Laser is rare, expensive, and generally hard to find, maintain and afford, it should have *some* benefits to it. Right now the only benefits are that it looks cool, and if you find one you can sell it for some caps. That's about the extent of it's usefulnees, Vanilla or not.

I would suggets making it one laser at 10 base damage, with focus optics bringing it up to 13 or so, and laser commander bumping it to around 15.

Another suggestion I've read in other EW specific threads is to lower the fire rate, and up the DAM. This will make the gun better for higher end opponents, but remain about the same for lower-armored enemies (which were shredded almost immediately to begin with). This alteration will lower the DPS, but increae the DAM. I think that is a fair trade off. Cutting rate of fire down by 30% and increasing damage by about 50% from vanilla (giving a base damage of 10) should do the trick.

It's really disheartening for a Military grade laser minigun that fires super heated projectiles at the speed of light have the same effect on Legionarres as shining a Mag-Lite in their eyes. You have to pray for critical hits, and even then because of damage calculation i'ts somewhat 'meh' .


Just my $0.02. I'm liking everything else so far, just waiting on a true fix for the Gatling Laser before I switch over from the EWDenerfed Mod.

I've tested the Gatling Laser a lot, it's quite deadly with Focus Optics now, and especially with Laser Commander. It fries anything below Metal Armor, kills people in Metal Armor in about half a second, and uses about 100 rounds to kill a Deathclaw. I don't want it to be an unbeatable god weapon, which is why I've made sure that the differences between laser and plasma are preserved in the high level weapons as well as the rifles: plasma has high damage, slow rate of fire and low accuracy, laser has low damage, high rate of fire and high accuracy. For tough, heavily armored opponents, use the Plasma Cannon. For everything else, use the Gatling Laser.

So for damage calculations, is it two seperate beams at 8 DAM, or one for 16? A deathclaw at 15 DT should still not be hurting much from a Gatling Laser at two 8 DAM beams, even with focus optics, but 100 rounds seems pretty quick if it's putting out only 10 DAM (11.5 to 12 with Laser commander).

I'll have to test it out and see, because it sounds like you've got it about right. I'll be removing the current EW mod I have to test this one. I'm sure with the Energy Surgeon perk (negating 10 DT from your enemies), the Gatling laser would most defiintely be a powerhouse.

Thanks for the hard work.