I saw somebody complaining that the gauss rifle "consistently does half the damage it's supposed to" or words to that effect. Does anybody know what this was supposed to mean? I never noticed any problem with the gauss rifle's damage output, it hits like a freight train...

I've never heard anyone say that before. When I use my Gauss Rifle on my energy weapon character, the thing murders. Maybe the half damage thing is just a DT issue although I'm not exactly sure how DT works with the Gauss Rifle.

It's a generalised comment in relation to how things happened or performed in other games.

It's a bit like saying "Yesterday the sun came up at 6.15, today it came up at 6.20".

They use it in VATS, and the projectile travel too fast for VATS camera, so the projectile hit but only the explosion doing damage....

If that's true it explains why I found it lacklustre on my energy weapons character. :sadvaultboy:

Another possibility is they have been looking at Pip-boy DPS of 465......

If they made that mistake, though, they'd likely complain that other weapons are like that too, since unless the weapon is so slow that it can't make more than one attack per second, the damage per second is generally considerably higher than the damage for one shot. I'd say the most likely cause is that they were using th Gauss rifle in VATS, though. I don't know the details, but I understand that the weapon is bugged in VATS, and does not do the damage it should. Alternately, they mean to say that the Gauss rifle is not as powerful as it should be, which I'd say is true for most energy weapons.

I never noticed anything wrong with it, But then again my EW is less then 30.

I've found that energy weapons period are complete rubbish in VATS. The damage is never the same as what it tells me while I'm lining up shots.

And before anyone decides to set me straight on the matter, I have run through with them as my exclusive weapons.

The DPS on the Gauss Rifle is accurate...
...assuming you ignore reload time. Which the DPS calculator does.

Grand Cookie: Ammo multipliers to damage (for over/max charge) are applied after DT. That's why it doesn't match up- your 70 damage MC plasma rifle against a 10 DT enemy is doing (40 - 10)*1.75, rather than (40*1.75)-10.

Yeah, I know. It's still annoying for me though.

All fire EW is awesome.
Laser RCW is awesome, even more awesome when you can repair all high tier EW with it.
Gauss makes awesome slow motion kills when you see body fly 20' or so.

But all (except Laser RCW) weight like bricks fill with lead.