Err... the Q-35 fires more than twice as fast and reloads faster than the Cowboy Repeater. The bolt is ridiculously fast since it has the mod already incorporated, has almost twice as much crit chance and twice as much crit damage, while doing almost the exact same damage per shot. The only advantage the Cowboy Repeater has over the Q-35 is that it is one of the weapons that benefits from Cowboy, which I would argue is better than, say, Plasma Spaz. Not even close to making up the deficiency in crit rate and especially crit damage, though. The Q-35 blows it out of the water.

Edit - One thing I forgot about was the custom action for the Repeater. With that installed the Q-35 only fires 20% faster than it does.

Or.........pop it in the head once with an Anti Material Rifle and be on your way. :mohawk:

Except that unmodified Cowboy Repeater fires 2.15 shots per second while Q-35 fires 2.4 shots per second which is not twice as fast.

By adding custom action to Repeater it fires 3.22 shots per second if I understood GECKs information correctly and 4.3 if I didnt. Also the bolt is still not travelling as fast as bullet combined with greater spread on Q-35 makes it more inaccurate than Repeater especially vs moving targets.

Repeater also has cheaper vats attacks (20 ap vs 28 ap), lighter weight (5 or 3.5 with mod vs 7) and cheaper and lighter ammo.

Q-35s advantages vs Repeater are higher crit chance (2x vs 1.25x), higher crit damage (62 vs 32), higher health (250 vs 120), larger magazine (12 vs 7 or 11 with mod) and faster reload time

Im not saying Q-35 is rubbish vs Cowboy Repeater, I just had to correct that small bit of information.

Why should he? It's his 60 bucks.

I'd just like to add to Kroo's anolysis, that

1.) Crit multipliers really only matter if you tweak your character for critical hits. For an average character (5 luck), an x2 multiplier versus a x1.25 multiplier is only a 3.75% higher chance of scoring a critical hit. If you have 8 luck, Finesse, and a beret, it's a 13.5% higher chance of a crit. Guns do not require any such character planning to be effective.

2.) The Q-35 is a *unique* plasma rifle. It is substantially better than the normal one. The fact that a unique 3rd-tier weapon is comparable to a non-unique 2nd-tier weapon is a problem.

Crit multipliers matter regardless of your character build, because they modify your average DPS against all targets whether your are using VATS (+5% critical chance) or not. More importantly critical hit bonus damage is not mitigated by DT in any way, so they are important to consider as the DT of targets increases.

Also, I don't know where you are getting the term "tier" from. Weapons are not separated into tiers.

:shrug:


I said I misinterpreted his post later. :mellow:

My point is that the crit multiplier really does not change much in actual combat unless your basic critchance is already very high. You have to take several measures to boost that critchance if you want the higher critical multipliers on energy weapons to have a noticeable effect. Guns do not require high critchance to be effective (and benefit from it much less than energy weapons).

As far as weapon tier, it's a loose logical construction based on the level that the weapon becomes available. You can find a cowboy repeater as soon as Primm, and merchants/enemies will have them not much after. You won't get a plasma rifle until much later (you'll be getting a laser rifle around the time the cowboy repeater is available). I don't want to get into a huge semantics argument about this. Can't we just agree that plasma rifles are higher level, more valuable, and rarer than cowboy repeaters, making them logically of a higher category or ranking of weaponry?

I disagree about the crit multiplier. It is a powerful effect even at a relatively low critical chance. When it varies in power is when the crit multiplier on the gun is actually less than 1, or when the crit damage bonus is weak. Even assuming 5 LCK and no other outside modifiers, in VATS you'd still have a 20% chance to score a critical hit with a basic Plasma Rifle. Moving up from a 1x multiplier, you immediately go from a 1-in-10 to a 1-in-5 chance; I think that becomes noticeable pretty fast. It obviously becomes more profound as you stack crit, and I don't think that advantage should be downplayed because with the nature of how critical hit damage is calculated it is a pretty significant advantage.

I do agree that Cowboy Repeaters will generally be available to players earlier compared to Plasma Rifles (though there's at least a couple that are very easily acquired early). I don't agree that the Cowboy Repeater is really a comparable weapon to the Q-35, though. Maybe to a standard Plasma Rifle, but even then with the availability of MC ammo and the higher crit multiplier (especially considering .357 variants are quite poor outside of hand load JFP) I'm not sure I'd really favor the Repeater.

I would have to agree with the OP on energy weapons. In FO3 I would estimate my usage at a 50/50 split between slug throwers and energy weapons. In NV I have tried every energy weapon I have come across to date (level 27 so far), and they make for a nice caps payout only in my opinion, though I have not found or bought a gatling laser yet. I do agree that perks will improve them to but with perks only on even level advancements and my preference for the comprehension and intense training perks, there are precious few left to be spending on beefing them up. I have also noticed that unlike FO3 I rarely if ever use V.A.T.S for anything, when I do it's only to identify just where the baddies are when entering a hot area.

How? It lacks a scope and it's critical damage is only ~125. gobi deals 226 damage per shot 100% of time. There is a no gamble.

Q-35 really is terrible.

Perks aside, assuming 100 skills you'd expect the Gobi to crit for 120 and the Q-35 to crit for 94. Your numbers don't sound right even after perks.

Either way, both the standard SR and the Gobi are pretty overpowered and I don't think it's really a good idea to compare weapons to them if you're looking for "balance". Whoever thought giving them a x5 crit multiplier was a good idea was a moron.

Plasma Rifle should have been, somewhere on bar with .44.

But a .357 Cowboy Rifle is just as good as a Unique version of it while non-crit before modification, before Handloaded round, even before perk which boost it another 25%

Atleast not with a Plasma Rifle. It'll take a while. :frog:

I have no problems with specing a character to take 10 luck, finesse and use the 1st recon baret. Almost all characters can benefit from this setup. It's not just a crit-build setup.

The problem with the Q-35 is that even if you spec for it perfectly, you'll only get 125 damage 40% of the time. The other 60% of the time, you'll only deal 32 damage. On Average, you'll deal 69 damage to a target with no DT.

However, if the target has 20 DT, you'll only deal an average of 49 damage... but 60% of your attacks will only deal 12 damage, which is pitiful. Basically, you must get "lucky" to do any real damage with the Q-35. Otherwise, each shot is kind of a waste.

Take a weapon like This Machine for example. you'll deal 65 damage with regular ammo all the time. Whether you are lucky or not, you'll always deal 45 damage to a target with 20 DT.

On average, you'll crit 20% of the time, dealing 162.5 on that attack, which is higher than Q-35's critical attack, On average, you'll deal 84.5 damage per shot with this machine. Not only is the average damage much higher than Q-35's average damage, it's more reliable. With the Q-35, it may take 3 or 4 hits to finally score that critical to finally take that enemy down. With This Machine, you'll know in advance that it's only going to take 2 shots every time at most.

Let's not mention that This Machine's bullets fire faster, and is better in VATS by a long shot. If a character had 125 AP, This Machine will get 6 attacks and will critical 1.25 times during that VATS sequence. This Machine will deal a total of 511.875 damage.

Q-35 will only get 5 attacks with 125 AP and will critical an average of 2 times in the VATS sequence. Q-35 will deal a total of 355 damage.

This Machine > Q-35 by a long shot in VATS. It's advantage is even more superior when comparing regular combat, firing from the hip. It's almost twice as good.

If you do the same anolysis and compare Q-35 with a weapon like Brush Gun, the differences are even more striking.

Q-35 is really, really terrible. This is why I think Q-35 is poorly balanced. It really needs major buffs. If you want to use plasma rifles, you are forced to use Multiplas Rifle. It is really far superior.

This line doesn't make any sense. The Q-35 cannot deal less than 68 damage on a critical hit, because critical hit damage is not affected by DT (62), and DT cannot block more than 80% of a single strike's damage (which in the case of the Q-35 would put it at 6.4, not sure whether it rounds down in that case).

Edit - That is my understanding of how critical damage is applied, anyway.

Oh, my bad, I didn't know that. The point is, 60% of the time, you're going to be doing terrible attacks that do 12 damage. And then you're going to get an attack that does stellar damage 40% of the time. This statement is accurate, no? This is confirmed in the game by firing the weapon. I did a lot of playtesting - this isn't just theory.

I will admit, q-35's critical damage is fairly impressive. I just think it's base damage of 32 is terrible. I needs a major buff. If the Q-35 did 50 or 55 damage per shot, I'd say, "Wow, what a good weapon." I'd give it 2 thumbs up. Hell, even if it took 2 energy cells instead of 1 at that point it'd still be worth using finally.

The rest of my VATS anolysis doesn't factor in DT at all, so it's still accurate and valid.

I could be wrong, but my understanding of critical damage is that it is applied after DT.

But yes, I don't disagree that the Q-35 is a volatile weapon in terms of damage output. I think that is probably intended; with a higher crit rate, you can definitely get into the 50%+ crit chance in VATS, and since the ammo modifiers are actually applied to the entire damage (including crit damage), you wind up fluctuating between "plinks" and "BOOMS", especially using MC ammo. Kind of fitting for an experimental plasma weapon I guess, but I would not really call it weak at all.

Also remember to consider that the Q-35 is eligible for an extra -10% AP cost through Plasma Spaz.

Really though, if you want impressive VATS damage from Energy Weapons you should probably consider the Plasma Caster over anything else. It is quite powerful in VATS.

I tried out the Gobi, I like it, but it doesnt replace my AMR or Sniper+, it's taken the place of my 10mm SMG+ on my hotkeys, never used that anyway, the Gobi fills a niche all its own.

Sorry, I accidently used the damage value for .308 JSP, which wasn't very fair of me. That was a mistake. Even so, Gobi's critical damage is on par with the Q-35, but Gobi will deal a critical hit 100% of the time, which is far superior to Q-35's regular damage of 32. It's miles ahead.

Nonetheless, it's totally fair to compare Q-35 against a weapon that has a x5 crit modifier. Are we going to pretend that sniper rifles don't exist in this game, hrm? To do a proper anolysis between guns and energy weapons, one must look at everything.

It doesn't replace AMR? It should, because AMR is actually a really poor weapon. It's not that good at all. Brush Gun, Sniper Rifle and Gobi can all be used to replace it. This is completely verifiable in the game as well as doing the math.

If the Q-35 wants to find a place in the end game - because right now it has no place in the end game - it needs a buff in both it's regular damage and possible even it's critical damage or its critical multiplier. I just don't see any reason to use it over This Machine... and This Machine isn't even 'that' good. I just picked it out of the blue. When you consider Gobi, Sniper Rifle+, Brush Gun, etc., the comparison is even more striking.

I guess if you load up on all the perks - Math Wrath and Plasma Spaz... but why bother being forced to take up more perk slots when you already get good AP usage with Guns?

You see, it's actually even more imbalanced that you can get a +1 perk advantage when using Guns, because the game forces you to use up 1 more perk to make your weapons better. This is ridiculous.

Guns are always looking to be better than energy weapons in every possible way.

What I meant by that is simply that the SR/Gobi is pretty much the best weapon in the game for the Guns skill by the numbers, and the Q-35 is definitely not the EW anologue to that. You can do that comparison and the SR/Gobi will win easily. It also wins easily in comparison to nearly everything else in the Guns skill.

If you want my honest opinion, if you're looking for the "best" weapons in the game, there's a handful of choices:

SR/Gobi
Riot Shotgun
YCS/186
Plasma Caster

These are probably what I'd consider the top 4 overall. If This Machine didn't use the same ammo as the SR/Gobi I'd put it up there too.

I'd disagree, only because I spend a huge chunk of my life answering this question. lol.

• The best overall weapon for versatility, damage, dps, etc. is gobi/sniper rifle+
  
• The best sniping weapon is sniper rifle+
  
• The best vats weapon is brush gun if you want to abuse Grim Repeat's Spirit, or Gobi if you don't care/don't need to abuse GRS. Multiplas Rifle is also very close in the running here with max charge ammo, but it'll cost 45 caps per shot for an extremely minor +4.8% boost in damage over Brush Gun. Multiplas Rifle still loses to Gobi. It's only the 3rd best VATS weapon in the game IMO.
  
• The best 1HKO weapon is YCS/186
  
• The best ammo conservation weapon is Weathered 10mm Pistol
  
• The best pistols are pew-pew and ranger sequoia

Notice that guns pretty much dominate this list.

Plasma Caster does do slightly more DPS than Gobi in a 5 second span, but it still loses to it because most targets die in less than 5 seconds

My Gobi does not crit 100% of the time, I have 5 luck and finesse, it's a great rifle, and it 3-shots deathclaws (body shot), but my AMR will 1-shot them (body shot). I prefer my Sniper+ to be my stealth weapon, my Gobi to be my basic long range rifle, my AMR to be my hard-hitter, and i also carry a Trail Carbine+, Hunting Rifle+, Marksman Carbine, Varmint Rifle+, Dinner Bell, and a Thermic Lance.