The Gobi is a unique however and the multiplas is a run of the mill plasma shotgun.

Which brings me to my next point, why is what is effectively an energy shotgun being compared against rifles?
Shouldn't you be comparing the Gauss against the sniper rifles and the YCS against Gobi, energy weapons don't seem so crap then.
The Multiplas then completely outstrips almost all the shotguns with accuracy, crit and armour penetration values.
The lower end energy weapons are still pretty mediocre though and the guns still get a better deal, I think energy only gets interesting in the upper echelon of the selection excluding the fire based weapons.
The energy weapons are more expensive to maintain and for ammo but this would be the case in RL anyway where single bullets would be far easier to produce than any form of power cell, although both are pretty similar being metal cases with chemical compounds contained within.

I started off as a guns character and ended up making a last minute change of plan and trying to get my energy up to scratch once some careless BoS left a Gauss lying at their shooting range, this gave me surprise at how decent it was (never used them in FO3) and decided I should get geared up for it as I was effectively just a sniper character by this point anyway.

Starting off as an energy based character build would be difficult I would imagine, especially hardcoe as I am doing just now.

just wanted to add something here,


i busated silverrush with boone and i was 14 on my first runtrough i just eat severals items of food nd water to not get killed.
after i killed em easly with grenades ( my favour trowing item) anyway after killing them they lost 50% off what really was in the shop so ended up with the caster and severals plasma rifles totall income was 10k from it not hard either. but also about the opinion about the energy weps and guns is that in new vegas,

energy weapons isnt that good and slow rate of fire woow guns 90 skills and a snippa rifle you can HS everyone.
My apinion is that use tactical sulotions to kill someone like u do when u going to try kill a deathclaw in lvl 14 idd its hard but with some mins and a snippa u can do it

If you are not aware, which I think you are, Gauss is in direct competition with Anti-Materiel Rifle and there is no Unique for it, so YCS is kinda out of bound by all means.

Multiplas has been bring to comparison to Gobi because:

A) it seems to be the most popular weapon of respective skill

B) IIRC, there is only 3 Multiplas you can grap in Mojave, and Van Graff wouldn't sell another one until you "stole" the one on display and low chances that Terrace would have one.

C) They have similar base damage, 58 vs 61.

The basic problem is simple.

By putting the laser and plasma pistol as starter weapons they basicaly took the 44 magnum and 50 cal desert eagle and made them starter weapons.. but kept the silly ammo costs...

And the laser rifle and plasma rifle? like making the bar and m60 into kiddie rifles and keeping the insane ammos....

The wrong guns for those slots END OF STORY.

They should have filled the low end with some ecp powered pistols and rifles as well as the recharger rifle and a recharger shotgun and recharger based plasma guns.

Maybe even a low end recharger based guass varmint rifle.

And what they did to the gatling laser .... When someone opens up on you with that you should go GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!! Not whos that idiot with the 12000 cap flashlight/disco light machine?

Alright, so where the hell are the unique plasma shotguns then? Even still, Sniper Rifle has the same stats and it is NOT unique. It does even more damage than Gobi!

And Brush Gun is not a unique, and it's still clearly better too!



Who cares? I'm comparing the #1 and #2 vats weapons for Guns against the #1 vats weapon for energy users. This is entirely fair. It doesn't matter if it's shotgun or a rifle or a pistol. Who cares. The only thing that matters is stats.



There is massive problems with the lower-end energy weapons. Most of them have to rely on investing a sick amount of caps to make them better, otherwise they can't cut through the enemy's DT. Compare this with the Weather 10mm Pistol. This thing does a whopping 40 damage per hit with just 17 AP per shot when you craft JHP ammo. Each shot is just 1.5 caps! What low-end energy weapon compares to this level of effectiveness and efficiency? NONE. You can even add a silencer to this weapon to make it even better. Man, energy weapons really do svck.

Then I'm reminded of the Plasma Defender. This weapon uses 3 Energy Cells per shot (6 caps) for a whopping... wait for it... 36 damage. Are you Flipping kidding me?!

In order to get the Plasma Defender doing decent damage, you need to use Max Charge cells. This will give you 63 damage and would cost you 15 caps per shot.

But that's right... you suffer 2.5x multiplier to your weapon condition. And if I'm not mistaken, this weapon already degrades dreadfully fast on normal ammo. Contrast this with Weathered 10mm... and that weapon hardly ever needs to be repaired.

Seriously, could the game developers not screw energy weapon users any more than they already have?



Who cares about real life. Balanced Game mechanics are first and foremost way more important than real-life considerations. This is a game, not real-life. And if you're going to try and model real-life and make these weapons cost a lot more to maintain and supply... then they better well deal a sick load of damage to compensate for their increased cost. That is true gameplay balance. There needs to be meaningful choices and tradeoffs. That plasma defender should really be doing 75 damage per shot for 6 caps AT LEAST. And for 15 caps, it better well do 110-120 damage per shot. Instead, it does a laughable 63 damage. Like WTF?



Gobi is still better. Gobi deals 226 damage, and has a far superior rate of fire. In 2 seconds, Gobi can dish out 1296 damage. It is also the best VATS weapon in the game.

F the Gun Runners, the BoS armory sells the same guns for less. Just have a weapon repair kit and viola, you saved 2k caps

I honestly don't know why anyone would even buy an Anti-Materiel rifle anyway. What a poor investment.

Hmm, I bought one, have Jury Rigging, Hand Loader, Weapon Handling, and 100 Guns, I killed a Deathclaw Alpha Male in three hits from extreme range. Its a cannon, and if you raid the Fort and kill the respawned Legionarries with the 12.7mm SMGs, it brings in a lot of caps. HC makes the ammo heavy... I dont care I have Strong Back, T51b, and the Strength implant.

Okay, I'm going to teach you the mechanics of how this game works.

Anti-Materiel Rifle with .50 MG Match Load deals 259 damage on a successful sneak attack.
Gobi with .308 JSP deals 226 damage

You might think that means Anti-Materiel wins, but Gobi's rate of fire is 1.77, which means in about ~1.5 seconds, Gobi will deal 678 damage.

In contrast, The Anti-Materiel Rifle is still loading for it's 2nd shot and has still only achieved 259 in these ~1.5 seconds.

Furthermore, The Anti-Materiel will not do 259 damage on subsequent attacks if the target is not dead, because it's sneak attack critical advantage is now lost. Gobi doesn't have this problem, because it has a 5x critical multiplier. It'll crit 100% of the time whether you are sneaking or not.

If you ask anyone, 678 > 259. Gobi wins decisively.

Again, why anyone would actually PAY for an Anti-Materiel Rifle is beyond me.

Hows the Armor Penetration? *Off to find the Gobi*
EDIT: Waitasec, why compare a Unique to the AMR? Its obviously better, but compare a Non-Unique Sniper rifle to the AMR

Because I have too many caps.......

Bullets do it better ^_~

Ok, don't use gobi. Use a regular, non-unique Sniper Rifle. The argument still applies.

Besides, who cares if a weapon is unique or not? I use Brush Gun A LOT in my games, and it's not unique at all. That doesn't stop it from being a fantastic weapon (as a side note, it's also better than the anti-materiel rifle too!)

As for armor penetration, it doesn't matter. Gobi is doing so much damage that even if the target had 20 or 30 DT, it's still dealing 190 damage every shot.

I'm forwarding you to my faq:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1139708-best-weaponslocations-faq-11/page__st__20__gopid__16665657&#entry16665657

You'll learn a ton about this game if you read all of that. This is why I wrote it.

Still not shotguns though, compare the energy rifles and they are even worse that their gun equivalent until you get to the upper weapons.




Last I checked this was a topic on Energy weapons and not exclusive to VATS.




True in the majority of cases I agree.



Hold on, do you want balance or not?
One minute you do, then you want power at a price. So what is it to be?

The YCS does deal out decent damage at a price, for me free ammo as I am friendly with the BoS but repairs are required. I have Jury Rigging so I just buy a defunct Plasma rifle or waste a few Fiends and get my parts.



So, with 100 energy and Max Charge cells I deal out almost 1400 damage in 2 seconds.
The Gobi is good I grant you, it was my most used weapon before I got my paws on the YCS but it can't compete with the raw power of the YCS.
The big clincher is the ammo weight, for hardcoe it becomes an intelligent choice over the gun equivalent once money isn't so tight and you are only limited by what you can carry. I only carry the YCS and Pushy for some dungeon sneak attacks or weak enemies.
In all though, energy weapons are nothing more than an interesting folly or a break from run of the mill conventional weapons.

Er. Let us consider.

1.) Does the multilplas rifle do more damage than a shotgun? Yes, its total damage is just under 100 damage per shot while the Hunting Shotgun is only 70.
2.) Does it have a higher critical hit ratio? No, actually it doesn't, they are both x1.0.
3.) Is it more accurate? No; both the Hunting Shotgun and the Multiplas Rifle have a spread of 1.5, except the hunting shotgun can also accept a mod that increases its accuracy significantly.
4.) Does it penetrate armor better? Depends if you have Shotgun Surgeon or not, and how much armor we're dealing with here. For an enemy with an DT of 10, Shotgun Surgeon completely negates the enemy's armor and lets 70 damage go through. The Multiplas Rifle will have each of its 32 damage projectiles reduced by 10, meaning only 66 actually gets through. The multiplas rifle holds a slight advantage in armor penetration against DT higher than ten, until you consider that:
5.) Can you use alternate ammo? For the shotgun, yes. You can turn your scattergun into a cannon, that in conjunction with Shotgun Surgeon will penetrate any armor known to man. The Multiplas Rifle is completely ineffective against a DT of 30, while the hunting shotgun with slugs is only moderately discouraged.
And, as I keep trying to point out:
6.) How much does it cost to use the weapon. A Multiplas rifle consumes 6 microfusion cells per shot. If your barter skill is outstandingly high, that will cost 18 caps; for most typical players they will probably spend 30 caps due to markup. 12 gauge buckshot? 1 cap. Period. For the price of one shot from the multiplas rifle, you can hit the target 18 to 30 times with 12 gauge buckshot. Which I guarantee you will do a LOT more damage. Heavy armor? Use slugs. 2-3 caps. 1 shot with the multiplas equals 9 to 10 shots with a 12 gauge slug (which, again, is going to hurt a hell of a lot more).

I'm comparing the hunting shotgun, by the way, because it has only a moderate rate of fire. Try this stunt with the Riot Shotgun, and you can empty the entire magazine by the time the multiplas is thinking about its second shot, though of course the riot shotgun loses a bit on accuracy.

The mere fact that you can even have this kind of pro-and-con discussion between a cutting edge sci-fi weapon that shoots globs of high energy plasma versus a firearm technology that existed a century earlier blows my mind. It's literally comparing the M-16 to the smoothbore muskets used a hundred years earlier in the US Civil War. Energy weapons should be *scary*. And rare and expensive and fragile (which they are), but also *scary*. The Brotherhood of Steel is paranoid about other factions having usable energy weapons and it's like, why?

Man, I am on your side of argument but if you will start each reply with "who cares" then people will stop care about your arguments. Don't you realise how offensive it is? If somebody made some point than he clearly cares. I feel your anger about energy weapons, they were my favourite in previous Fallouts, but try to reply with reason not anger.

It doesn't matter. Stats are stats. Every weapon has a niche in what it's good at. Is it not fair to compare weapons that are supposed to excel at the same niches? It totally is. Comparing shotgun to shotgun is pointless.



I agree, but one usage of combat in this game is VATS. Is it not fair to compare and contrast how energy weapons compare to guns with respect to vats? Seriously, I don't understand your point. The way I'm breaking it down is totally relevant to actual gameplay.



That would be one way to balance it.

For the Plasma Defender, you can either change it so that it only uses a single MF Cell, or you can bump it's damage considerably. Either way it would be balanced. If it only uses 1 MF Cell, then it has to be comparable to an equivalent Gun, like a Weathered 10mm for example. If it's going to use 3 MF Cells, then it better start comparing to something like Ranger Sequoia. Right now, in it's current state... it is totally unbalanced and pitiful.

Proper game balance means balancing the strengths and weaknesses so they are exactly the same as Guns. Think of it more like Starcraft. In Starcraft, Terran and Protoss are totally different, yet, the sum of how it all works should be balanced. The more two things differ in how they work, the harder it is to balance it. Energy weapons can be different than guns, but you need to balance it so that if you pick guns or energy weapons, you don't get hosed either way.

Of course, there many paths to achieve this goal. I'm just listing many alternatives. The important point is give the player a meaningful choice. Do they want to spend more caps but do more damage, or do less damage but get more versatility? That'd be a real choice. As it is now, Guns are cheaper, deal more damage and are more versatile. The only choice is great vs awful. Any knowledgable player who wants to do well at this game will pick guns 100% of the time. There is no reason to pick energy weapons as the choice is not meaningful.

Does that make sense?



Gobi is more versatile though. Unlike the YCS, it's not bugged in VATS. Try it - Gobi will actually do MORE damage in VATS than the YCS/186. Gobi also uses less AP, which lends itself to Grim Reaper's Spirit abuse. Granted it can't abuse it as well as a Brush Gun (which is why I think Brush Gun is a better VATS weapon in many situations), but nonetheless, it is way more effective in VATS compared to the YCS/186.

On top of this, Gobi is more responsive than the YCS due to its superior rate of fire and the fact that it's clip size is 6. This cannot be overstated.

Overall, Gobi is way more versatile.

Sorry. It's just that I'm trying to get the core of the argument and actual the debate the things that are relevant and would actually make a real difference. I don't think comparing shotguns to shotguns and the like makes any logical sense. It's about as logical as trying to give a zealot a gun, a zergling more armor and a ranged attack, and a marine some swords (a really bad way to balance starcraft).

And I think the developers completely messed this up. They couldn't possibly have done a worse job. It's almost as if the got 1 guy to do up all the stats on guns, and then got another guy to design the energy weapons... and they were isolated into different bunkers and never spoke to each other throughout the entire design process.

I agree with Mystic to an extent, there has to be some balance or at least semblance so that you are neither gimped or overpowered depending on what weapon route you take from the beginning. Choosing energy will make things tough at the start.
But on the other hand, this is an SP RPG and not an online MP game. Balance has no place here and everything can be unique instead of deciding whether you want the 60 DMG/120 DPS death you are dealing out to go "pew pew" or "bang". It would get helluva boring with everything the same.
You have to decide what avenue you are going down and then deal with the consequences, kind of like how the ending works.

The standard energy weapons did get the shaft, no doubt about it.
I think this is more down to the damage threshold more than anything else though. Lasers should pierce armour while Plasma damages, and finally destroys it to get to the fleshy target underneath. Then they would make sense.
The Gauss is really just an energy fired projectile and should remain as it is, like a big gun.

I agree with a lot that you said, but I disagree with the statement that because it's a single player game that choices should not be balanced.

Take for example in a strategy game, you have 400 gold and 200 wood. I would expect that regardless on what I buy, the general gameplay value will be the same. Of course, you can make a superior purchase because the situation calls for it, but no option is better or worse when the context is unknown.

New Vegas's weapon design doesn't have this design principle. You literally can screw yourself

1) Energy weapons degrade much faster, especially with max charge ammo which is arguably required for many of the energy weapons because of their crappy damage.
2) Besides the plasma caster, Energy weapon ammo costs are through the roof compared to their gun counterparts. Even pathetic weapons like the plasma defender are expensive to use. Pew-Pew is just too expensive. Plasma Caster is also too expensive.
3) Energy weapons are nowhere near as versatile as guns, and offer nothing to counter-balance this
4) Energy weapons lack features like silencers. To my knowledge, energy weapon users have nothing even remotely close to Sniper Rifle+. On the other hand you can add silences to numerous types of guns, from rifles to pistols and even smgs!
5) Hand Loader recipes are fair and offer excellent trades in terms of value. In contrast, Overcharge and Max Charge cells are a rip off as they offer less benefit for more cost.
6) The "best" energy weapon for a given situation is worse than the gun counterpart that tackles the same problem. The gun counterpart typically is also more versatile and is a superior weapon. The ONLY exception is the YCS/186, which is better than the Anti-Materiel Rifle. Even then, Gobi and Sniper Rifle+ have the YCS/186 covered anyway.

In a nutshell, you are screwed for taking energy weapons. This is not meaningful choice because most players just getting into the game have no idea they are hosing themselves by making an energy weapons character. They do it blindly... and then they are hosed.

Objectivity, it's not balanced. I offered several suggestions in previous posts that would go a long way to fixing the problems. Just fixing the costs of the ammo, and reducing the amount of ammo consumed would go a long way to fixing things (but please, don't stop there... lots of other stuff needs to be fixed).

I agree though, keep the YCS/186 as is, in every respect. If the costs of ammo changes, I would re-balance it so that in practice, the YCS/186 would play like it does now. The YCS/186 is not the problem - it's everything else.

I have to disagree with the OP on the Q-35, which is my favorite weapon so far. I found it fairly early on (level 10), and it opened the doorway to deathclaw zapping delight. I've been wiping them out left and right with finesse and boone's recon beret, and the gun's x2 critical chance and 63 crit damage is nothing to sneeze at. Maybe it doesn't compare too well to the Trail Carbine, which I haven't found, but it's far from mediocre imo.

Slower trigger, Slower bolt and Slower reload really left Q-35 dry compare to Cowboy Rifle prior 1.1.1.285......

Exactly.

I prefer to keep it simple:

I don't use energy weapons because they make me feel like a Star Wars dork..........oh and I hate them (the guns, not dorks).

Its like the Devs were intentionally screwing with people who use EW for one or all of their builds. They are terrible. All the good ones take way too much ammo to be efficient.

I just use both... 0_o