I got a plasma pistol fairly early on, and was never really satisfied with it. It didn't fire all that fast. It ate 2 ECs per shot. And it always seemed to not do as much damage as advertised, even when factoring in DT. Same goes with the plasma rifle.

Wanting to test, I resurrected Chupacabra, a nightkin that was killing Novac's brahmin, that I had just killed when I kinda noticed it didn't get hurt much at all by my plasma rifle and Veronika did all the heavy block-knocking. I GetAV Health'd him, and got a health level of 250. I shot him once in the chest. GetAV Health'd him again. 233.yaddayadda (don't remember decimal... >233 basically).

17 points of damage versus an advertised dmg/shot of 23. Checking the GECK, I find that Nightkin have a 15% DR. Okay... so 85% of the damage should have applied. I calculated 17/23... and got 73%. Where's the missing 12% damage?

Does anyone else get the feel from plasma weapons? I mean, for chomping 2 expensive MF cells per shot I expected some heavy hitting.

Is it possible that part of it's damage is considered radiation damage? If so, Nightkin are immune to (and/or healed by) radiation. That might account for the discrepency. Other than that, I can't really say. Since I'm not using VATS, I haven't really fiddled with plasma at all with FONV.

With the addition of the different ammo types, I think it becomes even less of a viable choice since it lacks the punch you can get from shotguns for short range, and some of the semi auto assault rfiles for mid range.

Perhaps a FOOK mod for New Vegas will fix that.