Energy weapons. Their drawbacks are that they're rather expensive to acquire and maintain, and their ammo tends to be expensive too. Their perks... increased crit chance, insta-hit (in the case of lazors), and heavy damage.

Whoa... wait, what? Heavy damage? What game is this? Certainly not FONV.

In FONV, the basic laser pistol, once no slouch against midrange longarm small guns in FO1 and 2, now barely compares to the measly 9mm pistol. It's pathetic against anything with armor. The plasma pistol? Eats up 2 small E-cells per shot and has a slow traveling bolt, and doesn't really have as much oomph as you'd think. The plasma rifle has the added bonus of being too slow to fire to really get any decent damage, and it also eats up 2 even more expensive MF cells.

The only real way for energy weapons to overcome DT is rote damage. They don't get any special DT-reducing ammo alts.... which is what this mod aims to fix. Rather than fiddle with damages on all weapons, this mod simply adds DT reduction effects to all but the bulk versions of Microfusion Cells, and Small Energy Cells. Standard, Overcharge, and Maxcharge all get progressively heavier DT-reducing effects. For SECs, it's tiered 2/3/4. For MF cells, it's 3/5/7. Electron Charge Packs won't get this, since they're either meant to be rapid fire, or already hit super-hard (in the case of the Tesla Cannon).

These haven't really been playtested, so if you do use this, please give me feedback: Too much/too little?

Also... how bad is the Gauss Rifle OP'd now that I've added these? I haven't found one yet, and I don't wanna spoil the first awe of it on just testing...

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35240

This sounds right up my alley, as I just made a thread yesterday concerning the nerfing of Energy Weapons in the General section.

I'll give this a try right away and post my results.

EDIT: Oh. You might want to change this little number under the installation section in your readme.

3) Activate "ImmaSightinMahLazor.esp".

EDIT 2: Ok. I did a sort of a comparison between my plasma weapons (rifle and pistol) against some the gun variants I have on me at my current time, the 10mm Pistol and Cowboy Repeater.

My test involved initiating god mode (so I wouldn't die naturally ) and firing upon a mostly stationary target, in this case Victor (I'm sorry. :sadvaultboy:) I recorded the number of shots it took to take him down with each weapon, and here are my results.

Pistol Test (10mm vs. Plasma)
10mm - 31 shots
Plasma - 41 shots

Rifle Test (Cowboy Repeater [.357] vs. Plasma)
Cowboy Repeater - 20
Plasma - 31

(Note that factors such as critical hits and weapon condition were not taken into consideration for this test, as I can't prevent critical hits and I don't have the caps to repair some of the weapons in question.)

Anyways, as you can see, the gun variant that I imagine is closest to the Plasma variant still beats it by a matter of 10 shots. Not too bad, but I think I would amp it up a bit more, in my opinion.

Though really, I'd wait till some more and better test results come in before making that decision.

The change is good enough to where I can already feel a difference though. And that's very good. I'm looking forward to how this mod proceeds.
(These results were not fully valid)

P.S. Do you think you can make a "ImaSightinMahPlasma" or something like that for the Plasma Pistols? The vanilla Plasma Pistols have a pseudo iron sight aiming animation, but no iron sights. Because of that, it makes you use the crosshair with that animation, which is all kinds of confusing at times. If you need a pic of what I'm talking about, I can provide one.

Well... uh, does Victor have DT on him?

Click on him in the console, and enter "getAV DamageThreshold". If it's 0, then the DT reduction that my ammo causes does nothing.

Also... Plasma Pistol and 10mm have the same base damage of 22, so your results seem anomalous. Were you sure to control for hit location, weapon condition, and weapon skill? Focus tests like that have to be done in a scientific manner (so buff your real-life Science skill ). Make him stand still by turning off the Radiant and Combat AI (console commands TAI and TCAI, both toggles). It's best just to do one shot at a time, and GetAV Health your test target with the console before and after each shot, disregarding any critical hit shots.

Just running and gunning and getting a feel doesn't require such involved setups, though.

Whenever I shot at Victor, the red shield icon indicating DT popped up next to his health bar, so I'm pretty sure he has DT.

Yep. As I said, weapon condition was not counted as a factor (Ima poor sonofa[censored], sorry.), but all the other factors were taken into account. I made sure to always hit him in his "head" and my Energy Weapon skill is 52 while my Guns skill is 54.

I guess I'll look around for the reference Ids for the weapons that need repair and spawn them (I don't feel like running around looking for a repair man) and try again after that. Will post results of 2nd test here in a sec.

Use "setweaponhealthperc 100" on the player to alter condition levels.

Also, shoot at the torso. Head has damage multipliers.

Like I said... experiment factor control is key for accurate and legitimate results.

Alright, after going by your exact guidelines, here are the results for Test 2.

Pistol Test 2 (10mm vs. Plasma Pistol)
10mm - 27
Plasma - 26

Rifle Test 2 (Cowboy Repeater vs. Plasma Rifle)
Cowboy Repeater - 20
Plasma - 19

(All weapons were at 100 condition and aimed at the torso. Radiant and Combat AI were toggled off in order to ensure the target did not move. Rounds used in Guns were standard rounds, as were the rounds in the Energy Weapons)

As you can see, the results are much better and a lot more representative of what they probably should be. The weapons compared in each category have the same base damage, so these results make much more sense.

All in all the energy weapons in question are about as equal as their gun counterparts, so I think this mod is definitely a success unless your goal was to make the energy weapons stronger than their counterparts.

If you need me to test any more weapons, just ask. I'm happy to oblige. :foodndrink:

I always found plasma projectiles to be rather slow too for some reason, I dunno, maybe they're supposed to be, I always played with a little personal mod to up their speed to make them less sluggish, really did a lot for how they felt.

Ooh, lovely! I'll try this when I get home.

I was pretty excited about the revamped Energy weapons in this, but I was ultimately pretty disappointed, mainly because the damage output of them was insignificant compared to that of easier-to-get guns. And they barely had any resell value, either. I remember my plasma rifle (Albeit a bit damaged) sold for about 30 caps.

Plasma rifle selling for 30 caps? It must have been on the verge of falling apart! I could probably get a bit over a thousand caps for mine (which I won't, becuase now it doesn't svck )

After shooting some people with That Gun loaded with AP ammo, I'm considering upping the damage a bit.

My ironsighted lazor pistol hoses the powder gangers really good now though. It was wonderful to see little broken shield icons every time I shot one with armor.