I have a Carbine 5mm and a Sniper Rifle, 13th level, 100 Gun Skill and all the perks up to this level having to do with Guns (Commando, Sniper etc)

My problem is this:

I am fine sniping at a distance. But when I use the Carbine at short/medium range against armored opponents (Legion for example) their armor seems to resist quite a bit???

I am wearing Reinforced Combat Armor Mk II (DT is around 25) and yet they seem to damage me a fair bit.....

What weapon is a decent gun for moderate range combat?!?!?! I have been to the gun runners and the Carbine had the best DMG ratings overall.... but it doesn't seem that effective.

12.7 ??? I've seen a few of these but ammo seems scarce. I found a Hunter Pistol 40-70 (?) but no ammo anywhere.

Help!

J

Umm, did you try changing Hollow and AP ammo?

Use AP ammo.


Also the carbine has a great DPS, but low damage. Damage is more important for taking out armor.


Perhaps get the Cowboy perk and use a cowboy repeater, trail carbine, brush gun (if you can find the ammo), or revolver on them at medium range. If you like automatic guns this won't help obviously. You would have to put points in melee to pick cowboy so you might not find it worthwhile, but the extra damage is pretty sweet.

Small caliber rounds need to be of the AP variety when shooting armored targets. Switch over to 5.56mm AP rounds and the gun will preform much better.

AP ammo seems exceedingly rare.... hard to gather stores of it.

An example of why I posted: I went to free some slaves, came to the Legion Camp and started sniping them .... killed 3-4 easily and then another 4-5 were on top of my position.... wouldn't common sense dictate switching to a fast firing gun? Yet they all seem poor and I don't have enough AP ammo to use.... if I go with a rifle (repeater) I furiously backpedal and have to constantly reload.... seems strange there isn't more AP ammo if they knew there would be so many close quarter fights....

It's REALLY helpful to use the highest DMG (NOT DPS!) weapon against armored targets. Armor (or DT) subtracts from the damage each hit does, which means that hitting once for 60 damage is a LOT better than hitting 4 times for 15. Against something with 10 DT, you're talking about 50 damage vs 20.

EDIT:

My own current weapon preferences follow, spoiler-heavy:


I also carry some less-awesome arms for when I'd rather not waste the GOOD weapons' durability or ammo.

I didn't get these until well after level 13, and you might have trouble getting the first one, but the second, anti-armor one is easy enough.

Suppressed Varmint Rifle using AP to the head. A miss won't draw enemies strait to you and a hit will only draw one that was hit, while you take him down with a few more rounds.

Personally I would opt for extreme range and use the hunting rifle. The .308 round on a sneak attack hits for 225 base damage (450 on a head shot) with 100 skill and better criticals.

don't forget you can make your own bullets

Each individual bullet does low damage with an automatic weapon, and each bullet suffers the DT penalty.
At close range you might want to use a high powered pistol.

another tactic is to disarm the bad guys -- instead of trying to kill them shoot them in the arms, with guns and other tricks maxed out youll be able to cripple one of their arms, so they will drop their weapons and try to punch you to death...

Has anyone been able to make AP or HP bullets ? i have like 80 repair and i can't make anything but standard ammo.

Hunting shotgun with slugs chews through giant rad scorpions/those robots with rockets and should shred legion.

Since you are low lvl still, get the hand loading perk. .308 hand loads ignore 3.00 DT. I could 1 shot/head shot deathclaws at lvl 15

Well, if you're cheating, why go right for the Alien Blaster?

dunno ive been using the 10mm smg to slay giant radscorps and legion assassins, it seems to do way better than any other gun i have

You cannot bleed heavy armored foes to death with a thousand paper cuts. You need either a hammer (heavy dmg/shot) or a scalpel (AP ammo).

And yeah, the 10mm SMG is a beast. Far better than the paltry peashooter it was in FO3. The 10mm pistol is nothing to scoff at this time around either.

My current weapons:

Hunting Shotgun--- DAM 70 DPS 119 / 12 ga slug

Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle ---DAM 90 DPS 229 / .308 jsp hand load: Damage x 1.50

Cowboy Repeater / Custom action mod---DAM 40 DPS 133 / 357 magnum Jfp hand load:effects Dam x 1.25,Target DT -3.00, Spread x0.80

Super Slam has been the best close combat perk I've found... I know it's not gun, but my build is using melee (60) and gun (60) as a mixed combat bag... Shoot limbs and heads till they close range, switch to my machete and hack away till they get knocked down.... At that point combat is pretty much over, just have to stand over them spamming the attack key, and even the biggest toughest individual (mob combat is a different story) has trouble regaining their feet.