Again, the title is rather self-descriptive. Reading through posts, there seems to be a consensus that in NV, Energy weapons are actually the poorer choice, compared to the guns.

So, to those folks who have played the game at least for a day , I'd love to get the answers to the following - in a rather spoiler-free fashion, of course.

a) Have you encountered more 'interesting' (varied, unique, just plain cool) energy weapons or guns?
B) About the ammo - is it roughly equally easy to get ammo for these, or is there a clear abundance overhead for one type?
c) Do the NPCs (typical foes for a 'good'/'neutral' playthrough) use energy weapons, or only guns?
d) Personal preference, and why, if I may ask?

A- Not really but I'm a sniper and don't pay attention to energy weapons.
B- Yes you find energy ammo a lot, especially after you hit around lvl 20.
C- Fiends start using energy weapons a lot when you lvl up, Also security bots drop nice amounts of ammo
D- I'm a rifleman in real life, it's my main passion in life and I love using rifles in any game I play.

Also don't forget to recycle your depleted energy ammo! I might not use energy ammo but it's almost the same as reloading rounds for guns. Saves you money!

a) The coolest weapons i found regarding energy guns is probably the laser RCW and the regenerator rifle. The laser RCW is a frigging laser tommygun, and the regenerator rifle doesnt require any ammo. but you only have a total of 7 shots. (9 realistically, by the time you get down to 1 shot, it has regenerated 2 more shots about)
B) its... dificult to find. i find myself falling back to my regenerator rifle A LOT. (you can repair it with laser rifles)
c) gang members (jackal/viper/poweder) occasionally carry ammo, but like i said, its not very common. If youre looking for energy weapon drops, go just south of the strip, and go into the ruins, youll find enemies called 'fiends' or something like that. they almost exclusivly use energy weapons.
d) in fallout 3, my first playthrough i went with small guns, and in the end found that energy weapons were superior. i have made playthroughs with all weapons except unarmed and explosives. my favorite was big guns, followed by melee, energy, and small guns. my first playthrough of fallout new vegas i went with guns. i used the sturdy caravan shotgun, varmint rifle, and western rifle. i am enjoying myself fairly well this playthrough, except its hard to find ammo for my plasma rifle. its my favorite energy weapon!

a.) Theres more than twice as many unique guns and gun mods, so objectively speaking, guns are more 'interesting'.
b.) During the first 10 or so hours of the game, energy ammo is extremely scarce. Its made even worse by the fact that laser weapons do less damage than guns, while plasma weapons eat up ammo like crazy(2-6 ammo per shot).
c.) Early game, NPCs use mostly guns, which is why energy ammo is scarce. Later on its abundant, but like I said above, plasma weapons eat up A LOT of ammo soooo... 1 step forward, 1 step back.
d.) I prefer sci-fi weapons, so I tagged EW, but the annoyances of EW makes me wish I tagged Gun instead. The only advantage I've seen so far with EW is that it has a much higher ammo capacity before needing to reload. But if your damage is low(laser weapons), or you use up more ammo per shot(plasma), then the increased ammo capacity is kind of pointless. I might change my mind once I pick up Laser Commander, but until then EW has been a total let down. I'd like to mention that I'm playing on hardcoe/Very Hard, so the differences between Guns and EW are very apparent. If you're playing on normal, ammo shouldn't be much of a problem and the differences in damage would be unnoticable.

I use both. Guns for my killing, and Energy Weapons to buy more bullets/nicer guns. A plasma rifle is next to useless in the field due to ammo reasons, but it's also worth 1,000 caps or so on average.

Even just on Hard or Normal the Energy Weapon situation in the early game is rough. The Recharger rifle solves the ammo issue, but even at full repair and high EW (high for that early) it does piddly damage. Anything with decent DT is just going to laugh at you.

I'm becoming pretty frustrated with EW....

Energy weapons has few that do a high damage per shot and that's what you need to drop high DT enemies quickly. If you max out your critical hit chance, to get that high damage per shot, it might look end up working. Most definitely will require a highly specialized character (more so than guns) to make energy weapons sing.

a) Basically my choice for energy weapons from level 1-10 was a single laser pistol. Both the ammo and spares (for repairing) were rare enough in the first few levels that I ended up using guns for most part (even though my gun skill was like a third of my energy weapons). Around level 5-6 I ended up going a few places where ammo and spares were plentiful enough that I was able to use them exclusively (although still limites to just the laser pistol). I'm not sure if it qualifies ans heavy or energy but inicinerators were pretty common too. At lever 10 I ran into my first laser rifle although it was in poor condition so I stuck to my pistol. Just last night I ran into a unique energy weapon (at level 11) that is 100 times better than anything I've used so far. I have yet to test it in battle.
B) Pretty much stnadard FO fare. If you're careful, make sure you buy ammo every time you see it available and keep spare weapons that use different ammo types around you should be fine after the first few levels.
c) So far most meaty life forms use melee and guns. Robots and stuff use energy weapons. There are exceptions, but that is the general sense I get.
d) In all the other fallout games I always went guns. You get access to them quicker, they scale up quickly and (in previous fallouts) called shots in V.A.T.S (and the turn based system in previous fallouts) provided one-shot-one-kill type shots. I went energy weapons in this game because I thought it would be a nice change of pace. It also turns out that V.A.T.S is hobbled. Basically almost every shot is 95% to hit but the damage is trivial compared to just shooting

If you're going on hardcoe I'd suggest starting with guns because the game gives you a pretty sweet rifle right at the start of the game. This rifle will take you through the first 8-9 levels pretty easily.

Oh dear. :facepalm: Now I have to rethink my build. Struggling with lack of ammo, low damage, lack of repairs and less options is not sounding fun.

Guns it is, then - sigh.

I did fin a pretty early plasma pistol, and it certainly has more oomph than the laser pistol but it eats 2 ammo per shot.

Hmm. Maybe it won't be so bad.. How does the energy weapon ammo 'recycling' work?

You go to a work bench and look for the depleted batteries and then recycle them. It's pretty easy, more so then reloading bullets in that you only need to do really what I just said.

I wanted to specialize in energy weapons, but I've ended up using both. Sometimes energy weapons are great and sometimes guns are great. It just depends on what you are fighting.