Mystic... I'm not going to lie, I'm a little O.D., and I speed read through your wall of terror and I can only say that for one, I recycled and converted all my cell ammo and I have a sh** load of ammo for my Laser Pistol and I just barely started my new file. As far as I understand it the pistol is for accuracy and plasma is for deadly force. Although the plasma is slow and pistol is well....a laser fast weapon. Now on the damage part, that would depend on your skill bro, I'm sure there's an special energy gun that will do more damage for ya, I know I ran into Annabell (something like that up on *whistle* Mountain). idk, if you constantly hit your target with the laser rifle the critical hits are outrageous!! just give it some more thought....

Why, is there something wrong with the current system where you only need a workbench? :blink:



I do recharge my saved spent energy cells at a workbench. It works almost exactly like reloading brass at a reloading bench in-game, except all you need is science skill and spent cells. There's even a perk for it, http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vigilant_Recycler, which works exactly like http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hand_Loader does for guns users.

Further, with regard to all this "cost per shot" malarkey, it's cheaper than reloading brass: no extra costs for powder, primers, or bullets. Take spent cells to workbench, no extra parts needed, recharge at zero cost or component requirements.

I think EWs under-perform at base myself, and made a mod that happens to have incorporated almost all of the OP's suggested changes. One important difference is that instead of altering individual DMG or DPS (except in 2-3 select cases) I altered how Max Charge ammo works by adding a -DT component and lowering the damage multiplier. I also altered the Plasma Spaz perk since I do not use VATS, and made it more in-line with Laser Commander while accounting for Plasma weaponry's generally higher output.

I prefer using EW to Guns since I don't need to carry several types of ammo at once and can more readily recycle the recovered empties, and also because the Recharger weapons are very handy in the early game for conserving the little ammo I have since they don't use any. The damage of the Recharger weapons is fairly low in trade, and that combined with the aforementioned easier recycling got me to thinking that EWs might be paying a higher price than perhaps they ought to for those advantages. I cannot prove that, of course, but it does seem to me that the higher end EWs other than the Gauss Rifles are a bit too weak compared to the closest Guns equivalent. Thus the changes I made, which bring EWs more in-line with where I think they should be.

My EW only character are now lv26 (on normal) and things just turns out much better once I hit 80 in EW, got Vigilant Recycler and Meltdown , as well as free ammo from BoS, find out about the Khan's armoury and Nath(?) in Primm sell tons of cells and got YCS.

I just done Death Wind Carven with Lily (ED-E waiting outside). The Legendary DeathClaw took 4 shot from YCS(normal charge) in the head with Slasher and Psycho.....while back in PT1 with my gun character it only takes 10 shots from M1Grand with Psycho to take him down.

The old Gauss bug combine with sticky aim also take cripple my torso, left leg and right hand when I was fight the Mother DeathClaw and her Babies on the other side.

But on the bright side, Cazadors is no longer a threat to me: RCW with Meltdown DESTROY them.

Here, ALL the changes suggested by Mystic, except for the Plasma Caster fix which is beyond my modding skills: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hps9fp

Put it in Data/, enable as DLC, enjoy.

One thing I'd add from myself would be -DT bonus on MaxCharge and OverCharge. If .308s can have special ammo with +50%dmg, if .44 can have -DT ammo with no drawback to it, why can't energy have it too. What do you think? -5DT on OverCharge, -10DT on MaxCharge?

its easier to make energy weapon ammo than anything else, and what about the recharger rifle

1. Go hunt Deathclaws with it and see for yourself what's wrong with recharger rifle.
2. Energy ammo is many times more expensive than normal ammo, and on top of that most good energy weapons fire more than one round.

there are 5 different ammo types for energy weapons, there is 14 different types of ammo for guns, so yeh they are cheaper, but you have to get a lot more, with energy weapons the ammo is basicly the same between weapons.
and what about the gauss rifles they own. And technically Archimedes II is an energy weapon.

You are forgetting quite a few things:
- No AP in energy. Only crits.
- Guns ammos can be converted between types too reducing their effective number.
- Special Guns ammo often boosts damage considerably at no drawback at all.
- It's way cheaper to buy and fire Guns ammo. More places, lower price, less bullets per shot.
- Archimedes svcks and if you know the game a bit you will take Big Book of Science instead.
- There are at least 4-5 viable alternatives to Gauss among Guns.

gun ammo is extraordinarily hard to convert, it is only convenient if no one is selling that ammo. It is way easier to craft the energy weap ammo. And in order to get ammo for guns you have to buy a lot because of the different types, so it svcks in hardcoe. Archimedes is the most powerfull weapon in the game.

Not at all.
5,9&10mm are just there for powder and lead; then you break down the common rounds and turn them all into Handloaded rounds.

Over and Maxcharge is quite a shaft compare to Handloaded rounds; I would say on top of the AP, they should cost one less normal cell to make.

I commend you for your efforts but I haven't particularly noticed an advantage for guns.

My style of play is to attack from height and distance. My weapons of choice are the Gauss Rifle and the Sniper Rifle. I have all the shooting skills and perks, plus criticals and wear the beret. With the Meltdown Perk multiple attackers can be taken out with a single shot. For close range I used the Multiplas before the Meltdown Perk, but the Riot Shotgun avoids blowback damage and with the Shotgun Surgeon Perk... boy howdy!.

Guns are fine for the beginning game but by mid-game none of them could keep up with my energy weapons.

The Gatling Laser and the mini-guns are a joke, considering their high requirements. They are inaccurate at range (even the special named ones) and are difficult to wield. Neither seems as powerful as their FO3 counterparts Eugene and Vengeance (which was my favorite go to weapon.)

Try without Gauss/AMR for once.

Again you are proving you are lacking experience in this game. Gun ammo is very easy to convert once you know what you need. Archimedes can hardly be used as a toy, not even a real weapon. Energy ammo is what truly svcks on hardcoe, being very heavy and being burnt very fast by Gauss or Multiplas - much faster than cheaper and lighter .308s or anything else for that matter.

Hmm I think maybe they should not make Energy weapon ammo like bullets but as individual batteries. The guns themselves would determine the amount of shots each batter y would give you by how efficient they are.

as it turns out there is a bug of unusual size in the way ammo multipliers and dt work it seems all energy ammo is rather svcky vs armor. The mult ONLY applies to damage after dt...

Just read that one. Again, -5/-10 DT modding for over/maxcharge, what you think about it?

I think now sawyer realy needs to fix the bleep up already.

Basically you can not use Energy Weapons to kill High-DT targets.


Possible solution? Unique Weapons that have a higher Critical Multiplier.

Think about it - Ratslayer/Sniper Rifles/Gobi deal high damage because of their x5 CRIT %MULTIPLIER .

There is no Laser weapon or Plasma weapon that has more than x2 CRIT %MULT. Why? No one knows...
AER14 prototype = x2 (w/o Scope) / Gobi x5 (w Scope) - Really ?


I modded a "That Gun" to a "Bryar Blaster" that uses MFCells 25 Magazine/5 Rounds per Shot (35 Damage), but this energy weapon has a x5 CRIT %MULT. If you have a high crit character It can kill most everything in a few shots - sure it uses up more ammo then the laser pistol but you don't need to shot that often - and you can actually kill stuff with it!

Working on a modded Scoped Laser Rifle that does x5 CRIT %MULT (50 Magazine/5 Rounds per Shot) (35 Damage). It's a trade off -> ammo for damage - but it's a much better ration then the PewPew (x 2,5 crit) which only takes your money away. At least energy weapons can be used now...

Both do roughly the same Damage as the Gobi in Geck weapons info but you need more energy ammo. Not a perfect solution - but it feels much better then the 15+ Damage from a laser rifle


I'd have to rebalance the Damage a bit or the x? CRIT %MULT to x3 or x4- but that would be a working solution - I can't believe all vanilla Energy Weapon Uniques svck this much.


Still the normal Energy weapons svck against anything with a DT of more then 10

I saw somewhere someone modded Piercing Strike to affect Energy Weapons...

But, what motivation would I have to do that? :rolleyes:

Strange as it may seem, I try to play the best character build I can make paired with the best weapons I can obtain. The rest of them are relegated for display in my apartment at the Lucky 38.

Yea, so you come giving advice without even having used other weapons for extended period of time. And we are supposed to listen to it?

that would work for lazer, but plasma is a substance

They already do that. Many energy weapons use more than one cell per shot. Gauss uses 5. Plasma Rifle uses something like 2 or 3.