I started pure energy weapon build. Got it going nicely (Plasma Defender + YCS) until I hit the wall: I cannot get enough ammo. All energy weapons eat ammo like popcorn and it does not help that it is much, much less common than ammo for normal guns. Even Silver Rush had only very little ammo available (And yes, it is not about money. I have like 50k from gambling).

Thus I have to ask if Obsidian added those energy weapons to the game just for the show?

You'll just have to farm the shops I think. Though I personally think that one should be able to make their own energy ammo, kinda like the reloading bench, by using Fusion Batteries.

Energy weapons svcking is a known issue with the game, one that is supposedly to be addressed by the patch.

It's not just ammo scarcity/commodity either. The damage svcks. The durability svcks. The RoF svcks. Half the weapons are paltry compared to contemporary Guns weapons, and none of the low-tier ones can compare to their contemps. The only way they can compare is if you minmax out the wazoo for crit chance.

Hopefully you're on a PC build where you can either correct this nerfing or install someone else's publicly available mod to do so.

use one of the denerf mods and dont use the RWC or gatling laser cause they chew through ammo like crazy.

Actually Plasma Defender is almost ok for damage wise, but as you said it breaks really fast. YCS durability is good imho compared to sniper rifle which would be its gun side counterpart.

But yes, most energy weapons are hopeless junk. Pretty much all laser based weapons are useless if enemy has any armor on even when fully modded. And all energy weapons eat too much ammo making for example Tesla-Beaton totally useless (45 ammo per shot).

Laser weapons are pathetically weak, Plasma and Lasers burn through ammo too fast, Plasma doesn't fire quick enough and the shots move too slow, ammo is extremely hard to find...

In FO3 I loved energy weapons, I still used Laser Rifles long after Plasma Rifles were available too because I liked them far better, in FONV the Lasers are so pathetically weak they can't punch through the DT of anything, and they break far too easily.

Ive played through the game twice. First time I went guns/energy, second time I went melee/unarmed/explosives (Explosives could REALLY use some lovin btw). My guns/energy play through I had ammo out the wazoo, for both. I actually had enough ammo for my named gauss riffle that I fully charged 6k shots. My second play through, I couldn't find ammo for my energy weapons or 12.7 mm almost at all, and I needed it even though I personally didnt use it, for my npcs. I just figured it was based off my weapon skills.

Really, both energy weapons and their ammo are much too common. To make sense, they should be super rare, super-weapons. It would take literally billions of dollars and some major scientific and engineering breakthroughs to create a viable laser rifle, and no-one is going to go through all that to create a weapon that is less effective than a "cowboy repeater".

Problem being that you do not need super rare super weapon anywhere in this game.

Everything has a downside. Energy weapons are actually pretty powerful I think, but the scarce ammo and how easy they break are merely downsides. Make your own ammo and get jury rigging for your most used weapons, problem solved. To be honest though, energy weapon cells aren't too hard to find. I buy them anytime a merchant as them, I got all the ammo from the Repconn facility, and the BOS gives you ammo in that box every time you come in, all my MFcells and Ecells are in the thousands. As well as the ECP ammo.

I am a pure Energy weapons person too. When you finish the BOS questline, you get free energy weapon ammo every time you enter Hidden Valley!

You playin' a different game, Parabola? Almost all the low-tier E-weapons are outclassed by their Guns counterparts. I've looked at the numbers directly in the NVGECK. Pretty much the only thing that low-end E-weaps have up on their Guns counterparts are a crit chance multiplier, and even then sometimes low-end Guns have >1x in that regard too.

I never had much problem keeping a supply of ammo... but I took a hard hit every time because it's so freakin' expensive.

Yup, I kept going in and out of the door and getting ammo lol

me to

'Sploit much?

If exploiting a bug like that is the only way to make E-weaps viable... there's something wrong.

Same goes with beelining straight outta Goodsprings towards where the few good E-weaps are stashed.

I was forced to do so though. The Silver Rush never respawns for me, and they never have microfusion cells.

But that reqiures you to complete the BoS Questline, which takes time, some people might not want to spend that time on the BoS and just simply kill them all.

My Guns skill and Energy Weapon skill are both 100 and finding Energy Weapon ammo is still a rarity, Fiends often have some, but taking the time to go kill people who run at you with Pool Cues most of the time isn't worth it, the Van Graff's always have a small amount of it, but not enough, especially with them being one of the few who sell Energy Weapons.

And Energy Weapons are still pathetically weak, especially compared to weapons as simple as Marksman Carbines, possibly my favourite weapon, aside from This Machine.

Get a combat armor (which is not even closely best armor in the game) and you can laugh at pretty much all energy weapons. Thus I totally disagree with them being powerful.

I didn't exploit anything at all and had a TON of ammo for my energy weapons. And the YCS named gauss is the nastiest weapon in the game. Granted, overall energy weapons sorta svck, but explosive weapons svck more.

Killing Fiends can be a good source of EW ammo, and the Vigilant Recycler perk is good to have too.

Fiends are not really an option for pure energy build. Since energy weapons are so pathetic for damage part you need usually more than 1 shot per Fiend and since only about half of them drop that ammo, so it is slow way to get more. Besides you get new Fiends only every 3 days or so.

The energy weapons should be giving back 100% in drained energy cells, not 35%. They don't eject the cells, and you're unlikely to drop them or damage them when reloading.

That would make energy weapons more viable without having absurd amounts of the ammo in the wasteland.

Killing Fiends can get boring, and they never have much ammo on them anyway.

They helped keep me pretty well stocked, and I was playing a pure EW character. Plus the rest of their loot netted me 1500-2000 caps every time I made a run on them. I didn't JUST kill fiends, but they were a help. Not to mention the weapons they dropped helped keep my weapons in good repair.

As far as using up too much ammo to kill them, sneak critical was killing them in one shot with a laser rifle.

Caps do not do any good if you can not buy anything useful with them. If you play normal gun user, you never need to worry about ammo. You have plenty of it available everywhere. It is really lame if you need to farm some loser mobs for your ammo if you want to play energy weapon user. Game is really stingy with energy ammo.