Should the Gauss Rifle really be an energy weapon?

[Aurum10000]

12 hours ago, madmongo said:

A real world gauss rifle (yes, they exist, see the video above) uses energy to fire a metal projectile. It requires the same skills as a gunpowder-based weapon to aim and shoot it, and requires the same skills as a theoretical energy weapon like a laser to load the "batteries" and operate the electrical parts.

FNV's weapons system can't really handle that. It doesn't know what to do with weapons that require more than one thing for "ammo", so it can't handle a weapon that has a projectile but also requires a battery source. So the game just fudges it and makes the gauss rifle use microfusion cells.

Anyone who can handle a laser rifle should be able to figure out the electronic aspects of a gauss rifle. Someone who only has experience with gunpowder-based weapons wouldn't know how to operate the electronics of a gauss rifle or a laser rifle. So I can see why the devs made the gauss rifle require the energy weapon skill. Note that in the real world version in the video, they have to be "trained" on how to operate the electronics in order to use the weapon. It doesn't take much training in real life, but using the weapon isn't intuitively obvious to anyone who hasn't ever fired it.

Personally I think it would be better if the ammo was just steel slugs and the rifle required fission batteries or some special battery pack (maybe you could craft the battery pack out of fission cells), but the game engine can't handle that. FNV doesn't even have fusion cores or anything else along those lines.

Good points, heard the crappy engine is why we can't have SEC in certain melee weapons either.