Everything in Energy weapons except for the Pulse gun, Pew Pew, Gauss (unique variant, also), and Alien blaster.

Seriously, they're okay around level 10 but energy weapons quickly LOSE their edge on enemies around 15-20 where as guns take a dramatic turn in being much, much better around the same area.

Worst melee: Straight razor or rolling pin, useless.
Worst gun: Silenced .22 (don't bother sneaking it into casinos, spiked knuckles are MUCH better even without the skills in unarmed).
Worse Explosives: all of them, mediocre skill.
Worst Unarmed: bare fists (but still better than Energy weapons).

Not just a horde of people...a horde of Deathclaws. I wiped out multiple packs of them without ever having more than one alerted to me even shooting him, let alone get within any reasonable attacking distance from me.

For those who are interested, the Sniper Rifle and Gobi Campaign Rifle are coming down into the realm of mortal beings with the upcoming patch. They are still highly effective in their intended roles, but are not the solution to all the world's problems.

That is a good sign although I'll miss my 5X Critical rate :celebration:

Lol nooooooooo

And that would be when, exactly, he asks with little hope of you actually being able to give us a date?

Please direct all questions about when the patch is coming out to Bethesda.

i think maria looks rubbish so it's a 9mm with extended clips and no scope

The worst weapon is not always just the weakest, but the one with the slowest reload time/deterioration/irons/accuracy.

I was stoked when I ran across the Gauss. Perched atop some rocks and murdered the hell out of some scorps with it to see what it was capable of (got the one in FO3:AO, but a bug took it away ). Awesome damage, crappy reload. I woundn't try using this against a rushing group of enemies. It's more of an Energy SR to me.

The Laser RCW looked like a Thompson which was a big plus, but shot like crap... fast crap. The spread was just too much for me. Whenever I ran across 'em, I cashed 'em in. I even went hunting for 'em when I was getting funds for expensive firearms or ammo.

I would have to say the Fat Man. Very heavy, borderline non-existent ammo(I've found like 5), and they nerfed the [censored] out of it.

Also, the whole AMR vs. Sniper Rifle thing is getting really old.

Seriously i you are going to limit the amount of ammo available for a gun at least make it powerful :facepalm:
The alien blaster has limited ammo but it pretty much kills anything that gets close.
The fatman is heavy, limited ammo, and uber nerfed.

I don't see how you can nominate *any* of the shotguns as "worst weapon". The single shotgun is hampered by its constant reloading, true, but loaded with slugs it's also the most powerful gun you're going to see for at least 10 levels. While your 9mm pistol is doing 15 damage, single shotgun with slugs is doing 50 something. (Also: try the single shotgun with high agility and Rapid Reload; hilariously fast). Caravan shotgun, meh, doesn't really thrill me but it gets the job done (why does it do less damage?). Lever action shotgun is a serious piece of hardware especially for the Cowboys, and then we come to the Hunting Shotgun, which is one of the best weapons in the game in my opinion. It might give you problems with deathclaws, but this beast will handily kill anything else in the game, accompanied by the badass chachak! of the pump action.

I am going to try energy weapons on my next character and ONLY use the Tesla Cannon or whatever that big ass cannon thing was called.....I vendored it because it wasn't a gun.

Unless it is .22LR and only do a half damage crit, I think it is still safe to say it is the solution to all the Vegas' problems.

Weakening guns does not seem to be the best way to balance out the awful, awful other weapon choices.

We're talking about a very large bullet and a very powerful gun, they seem fine to me.

Energy weapons and explosives are the ones that leave me scratching my head going, "Kinda odd how he just shrugged off that molten plasma I hit him in the face with."

My 2 cents.

God bless you sir.

Can you speak about any changes to explosives in this upcoming patch? Aside from EW and my disapproval of the SR/Gobi (which you seem to be addressing), the explosives skill weapons are probably the only other big outliers in your weapons implementation that feel out of balance. I don't think many of us understand the incredibly poor effectiveness of weapons like the missile launcher or fat man given their very harsh requirements.

When it comes to usefulness, actually, yes. The .22 is great for slipping a weapon past security.

The AMR has absolutely zero practicality and is simply, a very heavy, skill dense, slow firing POS.

I must say even tho im formost an energy weapons guy I wouldnt mind if flamer and incinerators went over to explosives as they realy need those kinds of weaponry. and they just dont feel energy-y.

Please don't tell me you are taking away 5x crits :C

Pretty sure that's what JE is doing, but he may also lower their ROF and base damage.

I would think so, it is exactly the wrong weapon to have such a multiplier. They have an innate ability to score critical hits from sneak as it is because they're accurate at such a long range. They should be rather poor in open combat compared to other 2h rifle options in the Guns skill.

Don't. Care. Will my lever-actions and single-action revolvers finally reload without making me a sitting duck? :stare:

It's a pretty good way to take two demonstrably overpowered capital-G Guns and put them into their intended hierarchy relative to other capital-G Guns.


.308 Winchester bullets usually come in weights that are significantly lower than comparable handgun bullets. They have a lot of propellant flinging them around, but a typical .308 weighs about 170 gr compared to a typical .44 Magnum bullet in the high 200s to mid-300 gr weight range. In the real world, .308 is powerful because it moves fast and it's used for long-ish range shooting because of its ballistic coefficient. I.e. it cuts through air well and has a relatively flat trajectory. It also deals better with body armor than a large, fat handgun bullet because of its velocity and cross-sectional density.

In any case, the sniper rifles were never intended to be such a large jump up from the hunting rifle and certainly weren't intended to outshine the AMR in overall utility.


I stated a few days ago on the forums that I've added DT bypass to base/OC/MC Energy Weapon ammo types (other than flamer fuel) and tuned a lot of the DAM and ammo consumption values for individual Energy Weapons.

Tuning Explosives is difficult due to how the damage falloff works, but I've adjusted a few of the more problematic Explosives for the patch as well.

Epic changes, I might reconsider EW again.

Also, I assume you've thought of this seeing as how you, you know, invented the things in the first place, but I've found you can get around the damage falloff problem with explosives by creative use of explosion enchantment effects because those don't fall off with the square of distance.

Also, I'm not sure why people are saying the sniper rifle outshines the AMR I've found that's only true in limited circumstances. From stealth, with a heavy crit boosting build it's true, but engaging clusters of tough enemies at very long range, the AMR is still superior both numerically and in "feel" to me.

Any chance you could move Flamers to Explosives? I'm telling you, it's an entirely new game once you get something to defend yourself with from a charging enemy.