Well it seems that the old lore about plasma weapons being really really good has been thrown out the window to make place for "balance".
But I honestly don't think they'll patch it.
Maybe it'll be pride, maybe it'll be cause they don't want to, maybe it's because for some reason we players use the skill wrong but I doubt they'll "fix" it since they most likely don't consider the skills' weapons broken/unbalanced/not lore-friendly.
So until they fix the weapons (which I think will be: never) I'm going to stick to the other weapon classes.
Unarmed was really fun.
Trying Explosives now, but I heard it has the same problem.

Repair isn't staple, the most I ever get it too for non-gun chars is 50 so I can make repair kits. 70 for gun chars to get hand-loader. Science I usually get to at least 50 on non-energy chars, and at least 75 on energy chars.

Edit: to the poster above me, yah explosives have the same type of problem. Though even more so, they don't have as well a time with ammo as energy and don't have high crit rates either. Even with x3 demo expert and splash damage you are hitting armored enemies for low amounts of damage and spending more ammo that is pretty scarce.


The whole DT system needs to be revamped into separate classes like in FO 1/2. Too bad I'm on the x-box so mods for this will never be possible.

I want an explanation from the Devs on why EW were nerfed so bad.

I'm going to guess with "Cause we wanted them to be equal in availability to Guns so we had to make adjustments".

They should of been really rare but very powerful. I wouldn't of had a problem with having to really scavenge for ammo and weapons etc. as long as they actually killed things. i find robots to be pretty resilient to my EW as well. I have to use the plasma caster on them.

Well that's why they made an energy weapon just for them!
Only problem is, unless you use the wikia to find it then it's going to take a craplong time until you find, IF you find it at all. <_<

Yeah, and Xarnac already melted all companions except ED-E. Even still, we shouldnt need a special weapon to be efficiant against robots.

Yeah but how effective would a laser beam of plasma bolt actually be against a thick plate of metal armor?
So I think they need a certain weapon for them but it shouldn't have been this rare that it is and it shouldn't be this over-powered against them either.
Should be a little more easy to find and do a good amount of damage to robots.
Currently it's "use wikia to find and one shots robots to death.". <_<

Repair is awesome for jerryrigging. That alone makes it worth putting skill points into.

Yes, it's always at 100% condition.

Yup, the Pulse Gun, which is just plain cheating. Makes Power Armors one hit kills. Pretty difficult to obtain though, even when you know where it is. That and Gauss Rifle are why i play with Energy Weapons, have to try to locate the Plasma Caster some day too. Still my Current gun using character is much more fun to play with. Mainly because i love sneaking and sniping

Steal the Plasma Caster on display at Van Graffs.
Just press the "drag button" and drag it to the corner and wait until you're [Hidden] and pick it up.

My first playthrough before I knew what everything was I bought the pulse gun off of the lady in Silver rush. That means it will cycle through the silver rush at some point during the game.

If you go by the originals, Energy weapons made mincemeat of all "low tech armors" and PA offered moderate protection vs. Plasma and good protectino vs lasers. Only the specialty Tesla metal armor offered more against them.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_2_armor_and_clothing

Leather armor offered no DT against energy weapons and only light DR metal armor gives a tiny amount of DT and a little more DR Combat armor gives only slightly more then Metal and so on you don't break 10 DT against lasers until Powered armor. Almost nothing could stand up to Plasma too besides PA or Tesla. Pulse weapons are king as you see with very little armor being about to resist it.

A superheated bolt of plasma should either go right through anything, or overheat it enough to make it not work.

Lasers too, but a bolt of plasma would make a bigger hole or slowly go through, while a laser would pierce through exactly in a pin point.

lasers can cut through metals very quickly today, and the lasers in fallout are supposed to be more advanced.

Plasma weapons should have higher spread but completely ignores DT. Laser should do cumulative Dt reduction per shot that is restored after 3 secs. Explosives and missiles should double their damage. Nukes should be restored to fallout3 levels.

Warning, engaging rant/vent protocol >.>




Yeah, Let's just think about this one for a second... Conventional fire arms use a physical round to damage enemies....LASER WEAPONS use a high powered super hot laser beam to literally CUT THROUGH matter and travel at the speed of light... All of those stupid "let's balance the game" people ruined these beautiful weapons. In fallout, you're supposed to be nuking everything with a plasma rifle and the fire rate was much higher with plasma on fallout 3.

Even the BoS was crapping themselves saying "Oh man, the Enclave has Plasma weapons!!!!".

A lot of people complain that Fo3 was too easy or whatever or unbalanced but you know what? If I shoot a laser beam and you're plinking me with some stupid little 5mm bullets... my laser will rip through your reinforced LEATHER armor and kill you. That's pathetic, lasers suddenly now lose against leather? are you f-ing kidding me? and forget trying to use ANYTHING except the pulse gun or plasma caster vs robots/power armor... you'll end up losing over 200 rounds before the day is done.

And what's the f-ing deal with the Gatling laser? I mean, it's great, don't get me wrong, but remember in Fo3 when you could JUST have that weapon and literally chew through like 50 guys without reloading? That's what it's supposed to be like with that, i'm sorry for all of the fools who thought melee was cool, then saw a laser rifle and got all whiny and lo and behold, the nerf monster comes around and destroys a perfectly good weapon class.

Energy Weapons should NOT be a "secondary backup weapon class" no...just no. Either introduce a new class of ammo for the weapons, or just don't have such high ammo consumption rates. Either that, or, here's an idea, "BALANCE" it with guns, having guns take 5 ammo for every shot with every weapon, since each gun has pretty much its own ammo type, that's fair to me. The one that made me laugh was the tesla cannon 45 rounds per shot... Do you see ANY other weapon using that much ammo? Put that into perspective for a second, if you can buy 120 ECP's from someone, which is usually the case, and you want to use the Gatling AND Tesla, you can only fire the tesla 3 times, and have no ammo leftover for your gatling, then you want to switch over to the multiplas to actually hit a dude wearing basic metal armor... now you wasted 60 MFC's... and you usually can only buy around 100 or so per vendor, and if you're on hardcoe, fast traveling isn't really a smart idea if your meters start to get low

But I guess i'll be called "that guy" who's rediculous for addressing some serious issues. It's not that with every map load i'm praying to god it wont' freeze like it does all the time, or that one of the ten bugs per quest don't happen, ... or run up into an invisible wall making me travel 10 minutes just to get to the same location when my character clearly could have vaulted over a simple ledge, I now have to worry if my ammo stores will hold out or if my weapon will even punch through thier armor... rediculous i'm sorry, i'm "venting" but if I pay 60 dollars for a game, I expect it to not have all of these issues with it. I expect their darn QA department to do their job. This game has SO much potential and SHOULD have been pushed back and not launched so early. There's just no way I remember all of these problems being in Fo3 and call me a Fo3 really devoted fan if you want, so be it, but it was far superior in the quality of the game mechanics.

I love the story of this game, I love the factions, crafting, unique endings and followers, new weapons and mods but my god, before you put that stuff into a game, make sure that it actually IS fair and balanced and that just because you give a weapon a more damaging ammo, make sure every weapon class has the ability to deal with all types of enemies or have some kind of mod that makes your rounds peirce through armor.


And for the record, my energy weapons character has plenty of caps, it's just that vendors for energy weapons ammo are so few and far between, and it's either settle for a meager amount of ammo per run, or use crappy surplus ammo that does even LESS damage. or tediously keep hitting the wait button over and over and over and over again just to stock up for a while.


There is one advantage to this though as far as energy weapons go. I don't have that stupid reload problem where my game crashes when i'm reloading my Hunting Shotgun or Trail Carbine. Or where I have to wait 5 seconds after I reload because of of a bug or my gun gets bugged and it won't fire no matter how frantically I press the R1 button. At least energy weapons don't have that problem for me thank god.



oh well... i'm ending my rant now, i'm sure many people will disagree with me or call me a newbie who can't play or something but the amount of issues in this game are simply annoying and they could have been prevented had this game had more time in development.

I agree with you for the most part.

Not sure WTH Obsidian was thinking when they revamped the concept of energy weapons. Well I haven't come across the tesla cannon, but at 45 rounds per shot. [censored] it. What's up with that anyway? Look at sniper riffles, the regular sniper uses one round but the damn gauss riffle uses 5? WTF? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they are relatively similar when it comes to damage output so why the [censored] does the gauss need 5 rounds per shot? Looking at the multiplas and tri-beam laser, both use 3 rounds...although I swear it feels like the multiplas uses 6. But why? Because it fires off 3 beams/plasma balls at a time? If that't the justification, that's a pretty piss poor reason.

To use water as an example, not that water and plasma are similar but you could compare a stream of water to a laser beam. If I were to turn on a water faucet and let it run, one continues stream would pour out. If I were to then take some triangularish object and insert it at the source of the stream, then the stream would then split 3 ways. Does that mean I'm now using 3x as much water, no. I'm altering the path of the water, and increasing it's pressure all with the same amount of water. I don't see how that would be any different with a laser and say a crystal or mirror of sorts. Why the [censored] do I need more ammo? Again, correct me if I'm wrong but ammunition is generally made specifically for a certain type of gun. No weapon/ammo crafter would create something that needed multiple rounds of ammo to fire one "shot". They would make ammo for that gun to use 1 per shot. Hell if you want to limit the gun use, GIVE IT IT'S OWN AMMO. Don't make it use 5+ a shots...damn.

K I'm done.

you can make them work, that is true.
still, i'm with many of those ranting here, as i don't like the simple fact, that you actually have to put thought(and perks) on making them powerful.
i mean, energy weapons were supposed to be the latest and greatest in weapon technology.
it's hard, very hard to understand why they should be, by default, way weaker than some rifles from the early 20th century. this is BS, end of story.
and if like this wasn't enough, the whole ammo consumption concept...yeah, whoever of the devs can explain to me on what logic a unique laser pistol is supposed to eat up 15!! energy cells per shot, while a big huge behemoth called plasma caster only eats up one per shot is welcome to elaborate this here.
the game's bias towards gun powder based wepaons is ridiculous at times. it's not only the energy weapons affected here, the same goes for missle launchers and even the fat man.
making the missile launcher even more weak than it already was in fallout 3 is almost an achievement. those warheads seem to be filled with cherry bombs
and why a player should favor carrying a 5lb mini nuke over 2 rounds of .308 jsp, which are doing basically the same damage is beyond my imagination.
folks, there's is an alternative to gimping weapons you consider too powerful: make them (ot their ammo) rare! or make them appear late in the game, whatever.
but please, if i launch an effing nuke, i want to see a corresponding effect.
the weapon balancing was way better in fallout 3, no doubt.

I recently was attacked by fiends with plsma rifles.. Ok now I know there is a BUG. First of all they couldnt hit me at all.. plasma bolts were going everywhere BUT at me.. and then even close in the rifle wasnt hurting me. a 9 mm pistol yes that hurts me.. a shotgun yes that hurts.. but the plasma rifle wasnt hurting me. Lasers they did hurt me rcw laser rifle was hurting me but the plasma rifle wasnt.

It wasn't a bug. You experienced the [censored] that energy weapons have become. Those fiends probably had no perks, were drugged up, and should have been using guns knowing damn well their energy weapon skill was 0....haha

Gauss Rifle or the unique YCS/186 with 100 energy weapon and Max Charge MF cells = everything dies. You can 3 shot the Legendary Deathclaw with no criticals.
The YCS has the bonus of only using 4 Cells per shot, bargain when you are using Max Charge as it takes 5 to make one of those anyway.
Sure not exactly an environmentally friendly conservation of power there, but when it comes to scorching the planet they cannot be beaten. What you don't kill personally will die with the hole in the ozone layer you have just created, if only that was true.

Pop a Psycho down your neck for an extra 25% carnage, if overkill is you thing.

Actually, EW is just late game Small gun in all Fallout Games prior NV (but still over shadow by top tier Small guns) and Gatling Laser is Big Gun.

For me, who love energy weapon in general, is bad because I have to spend half the game without a weapon that I would enjoy more.

Laser RCW, no matter how many times I have to voice about it, is a good direction to make EW more fun. If there is something similar for EW pistol and rifles to fill up the lower tie I am sure we will see a lot less rant about EW.

I wish. A Bottlecap Mine is more powerful than a mini-nuke, after all.