yah as has been already covered the nerf to fat-man is a major fail.
but there are other cool explosives to use at the moment

Masters mentioned AP missiles? Maybe you are thinking of another game. they might integrate those weapons technologies in future Fallout games, but we are discussing Fallout New Vegas here, Masters. And a headshot with a missile is the same as a foot shot w/ missle, they are within the blast radius of each other. Go go sniper foot shot!

And wait....Take the "Oh Baby!" against a super mutant and tell me that armor wouldn't matter.

I'll have to play with that, the next release of DENV is focused on adding EMP and Incendiary rounds and boosting the Fat Man's mini-nuke back up to lethal levels. So I've been play-testing that all weekend.

It seems a bit stupid for explosive ammo to be rarer than bullets, while being less effective. If I have to scour the wastes to find one mini-nuke, it should decimate an entire nest of deathclaws, not just tickle one of them. The one good thing about explosives is that they seem to cripple multiple enemy limbs with ease.

I'm of the opinion that skill in explosives should determine your ability to effectively place a grenade or missile. It should not increase the damage of the explosive. It would also be nice to be able to make your own explosives (not just mines/bombs but also grenades and missiles), perhaps using the explosive skill as the crafting skill.

Explosives are awesome for clearing packs of enemies..... but I could not kill a normal deathclaw with 4 plasma mines and 6 plasma grenades... the grenade machinegun with HE rounds did nothing to a normal deathclaw too. Hard to get the unique grenade machinegun when I can't kill the deathclaws standing on it. Errrr maybe I should stealthboy in there and nab it, I guess.

Ya... 100 explosive skill and all of the +damage perks and not being able to kill a normal deathclaw......ugh. Sneak attack head shot with Annabelle did diddly squat too. Anything with high DT seems to be impervious to explosives. That said, raiders and animals and cazadore and stuff get royally jacked by them.

It would of been a nice to be able to strap 4 or 5 sticks of dynamite together at a workbench with some Shrapnel stuck on. Improvised frag grenade. All that would be needed is 4 sticks of dynamite, duct tape, scrap metal.

One of the most useful skills IMO.

When I got a Fatman to fire my one mininuke, i was proudly presenting myself to Quarry Junction to get some Deathclaw eggs for Red Lucy (The sole reason being ) ... I almost cried when that 8000 Cap gun and it's rarer-than-a-hell ammo did NOTHING.

I only use it to disarm mines.

Eff DLC's they need to make an expansion, and in that expansion they need to put a store that sells explosive weapons and explosive ammo cuz for me no one sells 40mm grenades which pisses me off since i want to spend more TLC with the Mercy.

now that launchers are explosives and not heavy weapons, they are definitely very worth it.

The biggest boost explosives got though is that unlike FO3, where you had to be fairly wealthy and mid-high level before you had ready access to large amounts of explosives (and energy weapons too) in FO:NV you have access to all branches of weapon from the very start.

A few minutes of powder ganger farming every three days in-game time can net you plenty of dynamite to make an effective explosives character.

But you will need a backup gun to make maximum effect out of explosives, you don't always want to hammer in a nail with a sledgehammer.

Especially when you're the one holding the nail between your fingers. If you're companion is holding the nail, swing away!

Did you check Mick? Store in Goodspring? 188?

Grenades (especially frag) should be more available across the Mojave; there is also need for mid-tier/"small" explosive weapon (i.e. unique grenade launcher).

I have to agree, Explosives got ultra-Nerfed in FONV. They never land right by the enemy, they shred your friends, but barely scratch your enemies. I loved having 100 Explosives with Explosives Expert in FO3, you could turn people into frag/thermite meat with frag or Nuka Grenades. BTW, Incindiery grenades svck as a replacement for Nuka Grenades... >:(

Ya explosives is useless, just to put it in perspective... Energy weapons are 100x better than explosives.. I know i know, and guns are 100x better than energy weapons.. I guess that makes guns 10,000 better then explosives.
I haven't came across any points in the game where i went.. Well that area is packed with hostiles i wish i had a mini-nuke. The only cluster of enemies i've encountered was a pack of wild dogs. And a 9mm w. a full clip takes care of that.

FFS atleast they could of made missiles weight 2.0 pounds so pack rat would lower it to 1 pound. And don't tell me well ed-d and another companion.. NO thx, i like to play on vhard hardcoe and its already easy as it is playing solo.
To sum it up, explosives is a luxury boredom skill for nonhardcoe where you can stack up 25mm, 40mm, & missiles, which would weight 100-300 pounds on hardcoe, and have fun blasting stuff away. Otherwise .308 will do the job of any explosive ammo/weapon for a fraction of the weight, time, cost, and effort.

(I'm taking notes for http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36208...) :deal:

One of the things I'm doing in the next DENV is adding more 25mm/40mm/missile ammo to 8 or 9 vendors (in addition to the 40mm EMP, the 25mm Incendiary and EMP Missiles). Changing missile ammo to only weigh 2lbs instead of 3lbs to take advantage of that perk sounds like a good idea as well.

On my non-combat oriented character I picked up explosives to complement my companions. Mines and grenades cripple all of the enemy limbs quite well, even heavily armored foes, and leave the opponents to the mercy of my posse. Trying to kill end game stuff solely with explosives is just not practical.

I am well aware there are no AP rounds for explosive weapons in F:NV, I was offering an example of why there should be some. Furthermore, the rest of the post was agreeing with you that explosives needed to be more powerful to begin with, thus why I did the changes I mentioned in FO3.

I can already see I am going to have to mod the Fat Man, 86 DMG from a MINI-NUKE? Pfft, should be more like 500... Will have to check if it's in the DE form list, might be one way to fix the problem. This only reinforces my decision to not commit to a particular combat skill early on and potentially 'waste' the points...

I changed Fat Man damage to go from 165 to 500 in http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36208 1.04, plus it now places a flame effect on anyone caught in the blast zone. Plus turned off LoS checking so that the effect doesn't get blocked by small pieces of debris or a maple leaf blowing past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepiWdwyVz0

Been having a blast (no pun intended ) with a sneak/explosives/energy weapons character. The skill is not a waste at all, just more of a situational use. Quite funny seeing enemies blown high into the air, and to finish them off with a laser disintegration

I second/third/n the suggestion about being able to craft more explosives.

I mean....

Tin can + Powder Charge/Long Fuse Dynamite + Turpentine (Fuel) = Homemade Missile
Bent Tin can + Legion Denaris + Dynamite = Bouncing Bomb (Erratic but damaging)
x Amount of MF ammo + Pressure cooker + Powder Charge = Plasma Charge/Mine/Heavy grenade.

Purified water x50 + Pressure cooker + Frag Grenade + Egg timer (set to 5 3) = Holy Hand Grenade....

homemade missle?

um no.

Home made ROCKET would be better.....

Homemade explosiveprojectivethatfitsintotheMISSILElauncher doesn't really fit though?

I mean it wouldn't be ass accurate (as not aerodynamic) but it would be a nice use for all those tin cans?

Also you get swords on fire crafted and a leaf blower filled with junk, homemade missiles are less of a stretch.

Or rockets, terminology. *shrug*

Aerodynamic is the easy part, the hard thing is target locking

So the home made rocket actually makes the Missile launcher more usable because it removed the crappy target locking....