the rate of fire and dam is a joke even if the weapon is fully repaired and has both its mods.. an the brown looks ugly on the rifle they should have gone with all black and 3 round burst with a min of 28 damage id use it alllllott more if they did that

I found one really good thing about the Service Rifle. It has a pretty large clip, and fast reload. So if you're running low on ammo for heavier guns, you can feel free to real-time unload with it. It's crap in VATS though. In fact, I did better with the 9mm in VATS, just because I could fire more rounds for my AP.

But yeah, its damage is far too weak to be truly useful. I put some AP in it, and shot a radscorpion. Had the DT symbol come up and switched immediately to my lever-action shotgun. Shotgun Surgeon let that thing blow clean through. I'm still trying to figure out something other than the Incinerator that handles Giant Radscorpions readily and doesn't involve bombs.

Maybe an explosives/grenade rifle character is a good idea...

I guess I am in the minority here. I use the service rifle as my main weapon because it conserves ammo and easy to find ammo for, is cheap to have repaired and easy to find replacements for, and I like to have a bit of a challenge. I save my marksman carbine and heavier weapons for bigger foes, but the legion and raiders die by service rifle. XD

Service rifle is terrible. not only is it weak and slow firing, It's got a weight of 8!

Service Rifle visual looks is partially give this a bad impression, I'm seeing M16A1 in my hand, I at least expected them to burst (I know, it not actually burst)

If it looked like M14, they would have gave us different impression

Hihg DPS Low-dmg-per-shot weapons = unarmored target killers

Low DPS High-dmg-per-shot weapons like sniper or AMR = heavy armored target killers

yeah , "that gun" is pretty useless too.

The crappyness of the service rifle also ensures that the legion wins almost every random encounter with the NCR, at least in my game. Legion patrols always seem to have at least one person with a 10mm SMG that can just mow down the NCR troops while they are taking useless potshots.

I'll have to disagree with That Gun though, it's got a great rate of fire, I think it's quite good for a low level gun.

For what it weighs and it's RoF, I can find better weapons to allocate my 5.56 ammo.

Odd, NCR have been cleaning up in my game, but it's usually 4 NCR vs 2-3 Legion.

(Weapons need a serious balancing adjustment in a patch.)

I used it for maybe 30minutes then ditched it.

Rifles other than "The Machine" kinda stink, or atleast TM is considerably better than the rest. I'd say BrushGun was better but the reload glitch plagues it.

service rifle is a piece of junk at later levels.
it's alright at low levels, tho

I just use This Machine and a silenced Sniper Rifle, with Maria for the easy enemies.

Without Armor Piercing rounds, most of the weapons in this game are useless. Just takes to long to destroy the enemy armor on top of their XP. By then, they are usually in your face, beating you down, which unfortuantely causes your character to stumble around, unable to reload, fire or even open the Pip-Boy, which further compounds the issue.