Wiki says she has really high energy weapons skill, which makes sense since she's Brotherhood. But right now I have her with the Mysterious Magnum and she seems to be kicking some nice butt (I gave her only .44 SWC rounds for it). But I remember reading something about her EW skill being bugged or something, so should she be given Guns or EW for ranged combat? I know Unarmed is her best, but this character is an Explosives specialist and, well, punching and explosions don't really gel well.

If your not going to use veronica for melee then geting a ranged companion would be best but if you insist on using her then give her an automatic gun. Miniguns and LMGs work good.

Just let her jump at the enemy and punch them.......

First of all, you MUST install this if you want to use Veronica (use in a good way:-p): http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35124
Second, she gets her Unarmed skill to 103 as she hits level 20 - but only 75 in Energy Weapons. She's best in Power Armor with the Pushy or the Balistic Fist (it kicks harder than Gobi...). As far as energy goes, she's a typical spammer, she will burn through ammo at insane rate, using 5-6 shots at each enemy that charges her and typically missing half of them. So you want to give her something within her skill level and something that conserves ammo. When I don't want her to engage in melee but rather stay at range (deathclaws, cazadors), I switch her to Q-35 and gamble for crits on it. I would sometimes give her Gauss for insane rooms - but she will spend a lot of ammo very fast so it's not viable over the long run. At least not as viable as Raul, Cass or Boone who seem to be far more accurate for some reason.

I couldn't get her to use any energy weapon except for the gauss rifle or gattling laser. She seems to do fine with any gun I give her. She favours the hunting shotgun.

She's a liability for me though because she insists on switching back to her powerfist and getting in the way when I'm trying to shoot someone.

Give her plenty of ammo. And she's a bit (...lot) inaccurate....

I would suggest she's good for 'area denial' work...she blazes away with gay abandon...(pardon the pun)....

Companions won't equip broken weapons. "I can't give..." typically means you need to pump an extra repair kit into the thing.

Thanks for the tips! Right now I have her with the YCS/180 and she seems to be doing OK, though as soon as I procure a Gatling Laser, I'll install the +damage mod and give that to her instead. Funny story - I tried using her to store my Fat Man+nukes, but she always equipped it! I'm like, "NOW who needs their weapon taken away from them?" haha!

edit - oh, I had already grabbed that fix from the Nexus. When I levelled 5 times and she still had 215hp, I figured something was wrong. Sure enough, it was.

Laser RCW. At least she won't be a total embarrassment to the BoS against Cazadors.

Are chainsaws counted as unarmed weapons? Cuz when I gave her a chainsaw I found, she prefered that over her Power Fist :-O

You're kidding, right? Lol, chainsaw is a melee weapon. :facepalm:

She seems to be partial to the grenade rifle.

Had her on melee and gave it to her to hold along with the ammo and she proceeded to frag every enemy in sight.

Had to take it off her and tell her she wasn't allowed to play with the big peoples toys anymore.

I gave her Plasma Grenades once which I intended to sell later. Then I wondered how come Fiends now started throwing Plasma Grenades at me. Then I realized what happened. Costed me a few Ks there.

She's doing okay with a modded laser rifle for me. Not too accurate at range, but that's okay.

I had to take away her grenades, though, since she'd toss them when Rex was engaging in a melee fight.

So far, she's less annoying than Boone, who had a bizarre habit of stepping in front of me when he went aggro and placing his extremely expensive sniper rifle right across the barrel of my Gobi Scout Rifle.....resulting in me shooting it out of his hands and destroying it multiple times.

i was using veronica at first, but then i took her PA off and gave it to gannon... and also her various weapons. i noticed that all the energy weapons i tried, every last one that arcade would equip, were no match for his simple default pistol. his crits and accuracy with that little guy are insane.

edit: this is on vh/hc

Awesome companions always Awesome no matter, what you give them

(except for Boone, I love him, but can't deny that he svcks bad at melee.)

Boone and I both had Sniper rifles. Very rarely did anyone get close enough for melee (especially with Ed-E's perk).

Ninety percent of enemies died without ever knowing what killed them.

What I mean is don't give him melee weps, cause he will use it more often, but oh man, I love him, cazadores are babies to me.

I am not sure of the specific formula that companions use to equip weapons, it may be DPS, but they will all use explosives including the Fat Man if you give them any (don't). This was the same in FO3.

As mentioned already, Veronica's EW skill does not scale to 100 like other companions ranged skills so she burns through ammo with less return than other companions. My opinion is that the companions make the game too easy and that the extra firepower is not necessary. Setting Veronica to range, which essentially nerfs her compared to Unarmed, is certainly a playable option but one thing I would not give her is a plasma weapon. High fire rate with lots of visible misses (at least with bullets, the player is not as aware of the many misses the companions are capable of) makes for an annoying companion. All of the companions spam shoot even when odds of hitting are low, it is just more obvious with plasmas.

I would not give her the Gatling Laser as one poster mentioned. That gun is a shadow if its FO3 awesomeness and a poor choice vs hostiles with moderate to high DT. Personally, I would only equip the Gatling Laser on the Courier and only when stacked with the EW perks.

I find it great fun to give her a Heavy Incinerator. It warms the heart to see her setting things on fire before running in to wallop it.

When I first met Veronica and saw what she could do against an enemy I was floored. I never knew Unarmed could be so powerful. I gave her a nice powerful gun and after a couple of battles, took it away from her. Let her punch things, it makes her happy.

Now I only give my companions a weapon if the one they have requires frequent reloading (like Cassidy's shotgun).

Yes, Cyris is correct. It is a melee. I gave her the chainsaw too and she immediately switched to it. She was taking out Giant Radscorpions in 3 hits with it. I don't like to 'look behind the curtain' of games until many many hours (and playthoughs) so I have no idea what her melee is, but she is devestating with the chainsaw.

Veronica isn't "an embarrassment to the BoS", she just has a different skill set than "shooting stuff". I doubt the other brothers have anywhere near as much unarmed skill as she does. You're really better off letting her jump at stuff with her fist, she's amazingly good at it.

I'll be dumping her after I complete the first group of BoS quests, anyway.

I think I'll try to step back and let her fight Motor-Runner one-on-one if I can.

Give her Love and Hate. She's wicked with them...

I think she actually goes for the most advantageous weapon she can use....