Random ammo consumption is rather annoying; in fact, we event have unique that is less efficient and weaker overall (ARE14).....

Basically the biggest problem with EW atm is the lack of equivalent of .44/.308; Plasma Caster is actually on par with .308JSP(i.e. half a tier higher) consider its moderate AP consumption and ROF.

Two words: Vigilant Recycler.

Also, "Max Charge" ammunition adds to the power of the energy guns. My laser rifle is one heck of a sniper weapon with the mods and the powerful MCs. :hubbahubba:

Pretty much, which is why I'm somewhat saddened by how they are in NV.

MC and OC shots doesn't help as much as people think because multipliers are done AFTER DT subtraction, not before.
Take for example the 9mm Pistol vs. the Laser Pistol. The former does 16 base damage, the latter does 12.
Against an enemy with 6 DT, a Laser Pistol with max charge shots does ~11 damage, the 9mm Pistol with BASIC ammunition does 10. The Laser Pistol is using 2.5 e.cells per shot to deal 1 more damage than the 9mm pistol.
Against an enemy with 10 DT, a Laser Pistol with MC shots does ~4 damage. The 9mm Pistol with basic ammo does 6.

I agree, but for some different reasons.

Energy weapons are not nearly versatile enough like Guns. Each one is a niche weapon, and an energy user has to get used to switching constantly. That's the only way to play the game.

Plasma Caster+ is probably the best weapon. If you mod it and use max charge ammo (still cheap, only 7.5 caps per shot), it's going to be doing close to 500dps. In a 5-second span, if there was such an enemy that just sat there for 5 seconds and and had tons of life, it would do more damage than Gobi with .308 JSP with the perfect gear to crit 100% of the time. That's a ridiculous situation since it never happens, but nonetheless, it's to be noted.

What would have made Plasma Caster is better is to have made it also work well in VATS, but it's bugged. Sometimes the damage is abysmal. It also has a bad ratio of damage per AP spent.

So this forces you to use Multiplas Rifle for VATS combat, which is an ammo hog. It costs 18 caps per shot. But at least it's good in VATS, and you can side-step it's horrible rate of fire. Yes, you have a weapon that is fantastic in VATS, but svcks at regular combat. So you are juggling between Plasma Caster and Multiplas Rifle constantly.

And of course, if you want to snipe (and you do), you'll have to use YCS/186.

These 3 weapons are the staples for the energy weapon user.

Pew-Pew is absolute garbage. It'll cost 12,000 caps for 400 shots. This is absurd. With regular ammo, each shot is 30 caps. With Max Charge ammo, it'll cost 75 caps per shot. This is so poorly balanced because with Gobi - the BEST weapon in the entire game - you only need to spend 6 caps per shot. Honestly, what the hell where the game designers thinking?

Also, having only 2 shots before a reload is horrible.

Contrasting this with Guns... there is no comparison. With Guns, Gobi is awesome at everything. If you don't want to use Gobi, you still have Sniper Rifle+, This Machine and Brush Gun, which are freaking fantastic weapons and are superior to their energy weapon counterparts. Ranger Sequoia is pretty damn awesome too.

Let's not to mention that all of these weapons are much cheaper to fire than their energy weapon counterparts. Sure, .45-70 Gov't SWC ammo is a pain to get at first, but you don't have to bother as the .308 JSP weapons are already godly anyway.

To make energy weapons interesting, they need several boosts

1) Plasma Caster needs to be better in VATS. It also needs to be fixed so it does the correct damage in VATS. It also needs to be fixed in 3rd person mode so the shots don't hit the ceiling.

2) Pew-Pew needs a bigger clip size. 6 or 8 sounds about right.

3) Pew-Pew needs a better damage/ap ratio.

4) Pew-Pew needs to use 3 or 4 Energy Cells per shot. None of this 15 energy cell crap. 6 or 8 caps per shot is plenty. By keeping it at 15, you're just encouraging people to use Gobi, which is already better than this Pew-Pew piece of crap. Boring!

5) Plasma Defender needs to use 1 energy cell. 3?! Are you serious?

6) Multiplas Rifle needs to cost 9 Caps per shot, not 18. To that end, it should only use 3 MF Cells, not 6.

7) Multiplas Rifle needs slightly better range and way less spread.

8) Overcharge Ammo is a huge rip off. You need to expend 3 Energy Cells -> 2 Overcharge cells that only give a 25% damage boost and degrade my weapon faster?! Sorry! It should be 5 Energy Cells -> 4 Overcharge Cells. An overcharge cell should cost 2.5 caps, not 3 caps.

9) Max Charge Ammo is also a huge rip off. Instead of 5 Energy Cells -> 2 Max Charge cells, it should be 5 Energy Cells -> 3 Max Charge Cells.

10) Increase the base damage on the Q-35 Modulator. It is an utter piece of trash. Sorry, I don't feel like gambling so that I have a 1 in 5 chance to do impressive damage, but otherwise I do almost damage at all. This is pathetic and is totally unusable except for when leveling up.

I think all of these changes would be a pretty good start to fixing energy weapons.

i agree on pretty much everything you said, but i'd rather like to see the rate of fire for the plasma rifles increased, than the base damage. not to say it wouldn't be bad to see an increase here too, but the low firing speed bothers me more.

looks like we are in the same boat. haha

One of the most confusing things about EW is that the laser RCW is basically a far better gun than the gatling laser. The gatling laser's higher DPS doesn't mean much since there aren't really many high health unarmored enemies in new vegas and it's energy consumption is extremely high. With the laser RCW's better DAM it kills soft targets almost as fast and is significantly better against armor which IMO makes no sense.

I wonder if it would be cool if all energy weapons naturally ignored most of a target's DT but had a naturally lower DAM than their gun counterparts, making them effective against armored opponents but not so good against soft targets. After all, having a cauterised hole burnt through you with the laser wouldn't be as bad as a spinning bullet mushing up the surrounding tissue and causing internal haemmoraging.

I am a guns guy, i like to roll with this setup. Also i do think most of the energy weapons svck, but they have use to them in certain situations. Or if you just want a change of pace?

yo ladys if we keep hammering while the steel is hot they might fix the explosives/energy weapons/Sawyer ur the one who can make it happen use your voodoo lol

Well I did not suggest that New Vegas handles energy weapons right, just wanted to say that logic behind "more powerful guns use more energy" is not fundamentally flawed.


Well that is what I mean by "design of gun". Yes, that of course also plays role.




Lets do -as I see it problem is this:
In original Fallout, energy weapons were sort of more powerful, more advanced weapons, parallel to big guns and superior to small guns. They were largely unavailable first half of the game so player usually used small guns and/or melee/HtH skills. Later with more resources player could take either big guns or energy weapons to take on big bad guys of later game. So energy weapons and big guns were in fact extension of small guns. Remember that energy weapons not only did lots of damage, armour had different resistances against laser, plasma, gunfire and melee attacks. With some exceptions, most of the armours had significantly less resistance to energy weapons than to normal guns. So energy weapons were sort of advanced superweapons.

With Fallout 3 this changed to large extend. Armour was striped of different properties and got single resistance value against all attacks. Energy weapons and big guns became also available much earlier in game. Their effectiveness went down. I was really surprised first time I found laser rifle how little damage it does compared to Fallout 1-2.

With New Vegas trend went even further. Big guns were drooped altogether and guns and energy weapons became in fact parallel skills. This inevitably led in to rebalancing all weapons but energy weapons in particular. What developers did was to create group of weapons which boosts both low and high level weapons. Parallel tech tree to guns. While in general I agree with this concept I think they went too far in rebalancing energy weapons as group. In doing so they in fact made advanced technology (energy weapons) inferior to ancient technology (guns) which of course makes no sense. You do not develop technology if it is not better than existing one. I think Momaw nicely summed all disadvantages. Energy weapons do more or less equal damage to guns while having no armour penetration, are less reliable, more expensive and more difficult to obtain, more difficult to maintain and more expensive and difficult to operate due to ammo consumption and its higher price.

I think that energy weapons as advanced technology SHOULD reward player for investing in to the skill, difficulty in obtaining, maintaining and operating them. In current state of affairs, player is penalized for using them which makes no sense. Something should change. Either we should return to 3 skills concept of smallguns, energy and big guns or rebalance current dual system again. I would vote for second one.

I believe that you are right. A random fiend should not have an energy weapon unless it is a pistol. I would also like to add that the energy skill should also affect the recycling of ammo or the creation of OC cells and the like.

Obsidian is trying too lighten the role of Enclave and BoS as they believe the Fallout world doesn't revolve around them.

So who should be energy weapon cattle?

An independent group of merc like Talon company? doesn't make sense if they aren't absorbed by NCR between give some pay or facing the Legion.

Van Graff is kinda like that (even complete with black armour) but they are mainly vendor and also heavily tie to NCR.

One of the gang in the Strip? which you can only openly oppose once you've take House out?

A rebel group that seek to overthrow House and take over the Strip? seems like newbie mission scape goat.

Another vault tribe similar to Boomers? well, that's effectively what the Fiends are except they also drop drugs.

The only real alternative is Legion suddenly fill their ranks with energy weapon....which make even less sense.......

Yeah, they can improve that too. Not too much, because it's probably better suited as a VATS weapon anyway, but yeah, Brush Gun can fire from the hip and be used in VATS, I don't see any reason for Multiplas to fire so slow and not be able to fire from the hip well either.

Still, if they want plasma to fire slow to make it different and restrict its usage to being a VATS weapon only, then they better damn well make it THE weapon to use for VATS. Because right now, Brush Gun and This Machine are still better.

If they want us to take Multiplas Rifle seriously, it should svck at regular combat but blow the living crap out of Brush Gun and This Machine in VATS. Really, they need to make it have a clear advantage to give us a real CHOICE. At least that would be a good trade off. Right now, there is no choice at all. The answer is simple: Use Brush Gun, 100% of the time, without fail.

The multiplas does the highest amount of critical damage outside of VATS out of any weapon in the game. That is a clear-cut advantage.
Does that advantage make up for its piss-poor RoF, lousy spread, and ridiculous ammo consumption? In terms of balance, probably not. :shrug: But, atleast it has something going for it, unlike the majority of other EWs.

NCR should have plenty of energy weapons. They already had access to energy weapons in FO2. They should be able to make their own by now, especially with all the salvaged tech they got from the BoS and Navarro.

Another option would be to have the Shi be a supplier. They had the best and most powerful weapons and armors in FO2. They even sold Power Armors, which suggest that they're even more advanced than the BoS since the BoS can't make Power Armors.

Here's an anolysis on VATS damage between multiplas and several other competitors.

Multiplas /w Overcharge
Damage: 131.25
AP: 35
Ratio: 3.75
Caps per shot: 27

Multiplas /w Max Charge
Damage: 183.75
AP: 35
Ratio: 5.25
Caps per shot: 45

This Machine /w .308 JSP
Damage: 98
AP: 22
Ratio: 4.45
Caps per shot: 6

Brush Gun /w .45-70 SWC Gov't /w Cowboy
Damage: 114
AP: 23
Ratio: 4.96
Caps per shot: ~8-20 (depends on how you want to price the little bit of work involved to get SWC ammo)

Gobi /w .308 JSP and proper 100% crit gear
Damage: 226
AP: 33
Ratio: 6.85
Caps per shot: 6

Conclusion

As you can see, you MUST use Max Charge ammo to get any real gains on Brush Gun. Let's not forget, the Brush gun is actually useful outside of vats, has way better range, a much better rate of fire, it can be shot from the hip with insane accuracy and is generally a superior weapon all around. So the slightly less vats damage here is easily compensated by the quality of the weapon.

Oh, and I forgot that SWC has -6 DT, which could very well make up for that last .29 difference!

And of course, you can see that Gobi is still best, not to mention Gobi can be used for sniping, long-range shooting from the hip, and other things. Gobi >>>>>>>> everything.

Honestly, like I said in my earlier post, if they just fix the mulitplas rifle so that it uses only 3 MF cells, and then lower the cost of making a max charge cell so that you spend 5 MF Cell to make 3 Max Charge cells, it would fix this problem and then I would declare it balanced.

True, but it's not going crit every time. It only has a 1x crit modifier, so it's not a certainty that your plasma rounds are going to crit. Of course, if 2 or 3 crit, the damage is going to be insane. I don't deny this, but it's a gamble. With Gobi, there is no gamble.

Ain't Shi in Chicago (check Wiki) wait, San Francisco....either way, they are Chinese Pirates which I cannot image them near Mojave.

As for NCR having EWs.....seems Obsidian doesn't like that idea, or at least for now as Vegas is still a boarder......while the war against BoS can threaten the foundation of the Republic itself.

I don't see why expense is a big complaint. This isn't an MMO where others are competing for your loot. Caps are easy to come by especially with 2 followers and gambling. If you keep your eyes peeled you'll come across a lot of energy weapons on the way to the strip for the first time. There are Bright followers laying everywhere for some reason lol. Some energy weapons in caves. That being said I tagged explosives too so all the dynamite you get from defending good springs and fighting powder gangers helped me to sustain any lulz I had in EW ammo.

Don't you feel wrong that the traditional cap-hog explosive spend LESS caps then EW to feed and maintain their weapon?

It does matter. The caps you get from the casinos basically pays for your implants, so that doesn't count.

Sure, you have a lot of caps, but still, why is it that we can use Gobi, do more damage for 6 caps while multiplas does less damage for 45 caps?

You see, I'm not complaining about caps usage. I am just pointing out an imbalance.

And of course, when you play the game from the start, and you get thing called Multiplas Rifle, there is no way in hell you can use it at 45 caps per shot. Hell, there's no way you can use at 18 caps per shot. You have what... 3000 caps total to your name for the first many levels? Imagine a new player not knowing all the ways to get caps easily. They cannot afford to fire this weapon.

In contrast, even if you don't want to use hand load ammo, .308 is still only 4 caps - much cheaper. Even a really bad player who knows nothing about about the economics in the game and how to maximize their caps can afford this and use it and do well. This is not balanced at all.

Besides, it's not just a caps problem - the Multiplas rifle needs to be buffed in it's rate of fire and have its spread reduced. All of these changes - not just a few - are required to balance it.

And I'm not talking about balancing it with respect to Gobi, I am talking about balancing it with respect to Brush Gun. If Multiplas Rifle wasn't supposed to be the mirror to Brush Gun... then what the hell was?

Great post OP.

You have to wonder why the brotherhood is bothered by everyone else using energy weapons, they should give out energy weapons like candy and keep the precious guns for themselves!

Also, Pew-Pew is another example of a caps hog. Who in their right mind would bother paying 12,000 caps for 400 shots with Pew-Pew when they can pay around 2,400 caps and get better damage, a bigger clip, a scope, better vats damage, and everything else with Gobi?

You see, there's just no incentive to use energy weapons. None.

Even if you take away Gobi and Sniper Rifle+, Guns are still better due to their versatility.

Even that part doesn't really matter for me since the damn weapon never register the hits.