Opinions on which weapon mods to use

[Aintiarna]

Unfortunately, crits seem to trigger from vats only. Which is bad, because VATs are usually (until mid/late game) always worse than actually aiming with a scope yourself. So, modding sniper stuff for crits is a bit lacklustre to say the least.

 

You can use Overdrive which requires one perk in Chemist to make. It gives a +25% chance to crit which works outside of VATS and lasts for 8 minutes. Combined with Jet or PsychoJet and a good pistol of some sort, it's way more effective than VATs, any automatic mod, a gattling laser or a minigun. You'll be able to take down an alpha deathclaw on survival difficulty without breaking a sweat.

[Aintiarna]

 

Unfortunately, crits seem to trigger from vats only. Which is bad, because VATs are usually (until mid/late game) always worse than actually aiming with a scope yourself. So, modding sniper stuff for crits is a bit lacklustre to say the least.

 

You can use Overdrive which requires one perk in Chemist to make. It gives a +25% chance to crit which works outside of VATS and lasts for 8 minutes. Combined with Jet or PsychoJet and a good pistol of some sort, it's way more effective than VATs, any automatic mod, a gattling laser or a minigun. You'll be able to take down an alpha deathclaw on survival difficulty without breaking a sweat.

 

There's also a particular weapon that has an unlimited clip size that is godlike when combined with jet.

Edited December 22, 2015 by tirnoney

[SayinNuthin]

 

Seriously a rotary cannon with less damage than a pistol.. you'd be better off using it as a club.

Seriously, why would you think any automatic weaopn firing 5mm bullets would match a 10mm pistol bullet, per bullet used.

 

 

Put it down to some DoD promotional film I saw in the 1980s (?) where a helicopter mounted minigun sawed the top off a high rise building, in one circuit! I've had a quick look and cannot find the footage. It wasn't a Hollywood movie thing and while it may have been faked it was presented as being an advance in the development of the system. It was something along these lines:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLEGE7k9FD4

 

but that is is why.

[Moraelin]

Well, it depends on the minigun.

 

The ones pointing out the door are 7.62x51mm NATO, a.k.a., .308 in the game, which is actually a lot more powerful than the 7.62x39mm in an AK-47. In fact, it's closer in power to the 7.62mm rimmed used in Dragunov sniper rifles and medium machineguns by the soviets. I'm only giving those comparisons to give you some comparison to other weapons, as a perspective, not because it has anything to do with the soviets. It's basically a pretty powerful round.

 

The ones pointing forward on an Apache can be as big as the 30mm M230 chaingun. (Although that one is single barrel, revolver system.) Or if it's multi-barrel, it might actually be something like the M197 electric rotary cannon, which fires a very powerful 20mm round. In fact, it's the same round used in the M-61 Vulcan and which can actually mess up a tank. Well, from above, anyway.

 

What I'm saying is that you're not wrong that such chopper-mounted miniguns exist, that can cut right through concrete. But they're not a 5mm minigun, is all I'm saying. At the same bullet shape (which it probably isn't, but it will serve to illustrate a point anyway), volume and weight rise with the cube of the size. So a 20mm round will pack 4x4x4=64 times more weight. At the same muzzle velocity (which again, usually isn't the case,) it will pack not only 64 times more kinetic energy, but also 4 times the kinetic energy per square inch, which is a decent measure of penetration.

[SayinNuthin]

So a 20mm round will pack 4x4x4=64 times more weight.

 

Indeed, you'd want a suit of power armor to wield something like that :laugh:

[Athanasa]

 

Unfortunately, crits seem to trigger from vats only. Which is bad, because VATs are usually (until mid/late game) always worse than actually aiming with a scope yourself. So, modding sniper stuff for crits is a bit lacklustre to say the least.

 

You can use Overdrive which requires one perk in Chemist to make. It gives a +25% chance to crit which works outside of VATS and lasts for 8 minutes. Combined with Jet or PsychoJet and a good pistol of some sort, it's way more effective than VATs, any automatic mod, a gattling laser or a minigun. You'll be able to take down an alpha deathclaw on survival difficulty without breaking a sweat.

 

The fact that something so convoluted has to be done to crit without VATs is worrying enough. Especially as I'm playing a sniper run, so being in pistol range really isn't my thing... most of the time, I'm even out of VATs range. I don't feel I should need to invest in a Chemist perk and hop myself up on drugs in order to be able to crit outside of VATs. And, in this scenario, does Luck have any impact on your crit chance? I assume not. If this is the case, then while it DOES let you crit, this crit is entirely disconnected to actual 'crit stats' in the game, which are locked away behind VATs.

[Aintiarna]

 

 

The fact that something so convoluted has to be done to crit without VATs is worrying enough. Especially as I'm playing a sniper run, so being in pistol range really isn't my thing... most of the time, I'm even out of VATs range. I don't feel I should need to invest in a Chemist perk and hop myself up on drugs in order to be able to crit outside of VATs. And, in this scenario, does Luck have any impact on your crit chance? I assume not. If this is the case, then while it DOES let you crit, this crit is entirely disconnected to actual 'crit stats' in the game, which are locked away behind VATs.

 

Luck only affects the speed that your critical bar refills and it only refills if you hit enemies in VATs. I'm playing on survival difficulty and I find that VATS is basically useless due to low damage and general clunkiness, so I never use it. Luck is my dump stat for that reason and my last two characters have both had a luck of 1 and I've not noticed any difference. The only time I get crits is when I use Overdrive. It seems almost like a quirky throwback to the previous games with no connection to the new critical hit system. The critical damage seems to be comparable though. Overdrive also gives a flat damage boost as well, so it's worth it from that point of view alone.

 

As a sniper though you'll still get your sneak attack damage bonuses and the boosts from the relevant perks.

[oldspice2625]

I find that to be a bit troubling though, because there were weapons that were made to be highly designed around critical hits, like laser weapons. I really think that FNV was a superior game in many regards.

 

I don't know why they decided to do this. That's going to be one of my first mods, when the CK comes out, is to find something that reverts the critical system back to the way it was before this garbage system came out. Luck should determine the frequency that critical hits occur, not fill up some bar that you can only use in VATS.

 

But back on topic: I think that the minigun is kind of "meh", and I guess it's like the 10mm pistol equivalent in the big guns category, but since there are SO FEW weapons in this game, I really think that a big guns character can't really be done effectively. I think that in FNV, that system was superior, because it placed the big guns in specific weapon categories (explosive, EW, Guns) and was done with it, it was easy to combine a big gun with a weapon type.

 

That's why I want to know if there are any mods that make weapons better, so I focus on those, and avoid the crappy ones that don't really do anything meaningful.

 

I think the Sniper Barrel is pretty good on longer range energy weapons. I have my laser musket outfitted to be like a sniper rifle and it seems to be good, with the bracketed long barrel, a long recon scope, and the max capacitor with the beam focuser.

 

I have Righteous Authority outfitted like a longer range all purpose rifle, with the boosted gamma capacitor (Will do overcharge when I can get it), beam focuser, reflex sight, improved long barrel, recoil compensating stock.

 

Does anyone know if the laser rifle beam splitter cuts the damage up with the different beams, or if it has full damage per beam?

 

And what is your verdict on putting suppressors/silencers on sniper rifles, for when I do a guns run?

[Aintiarna]

If you're doing a sneaky small guns sniper run, then silencers make a huge difference. They are less useful on rifles because they reduce the range and often only suppress, rather than silence the weapon. That's been my experience anyway. Far away head-shots with no silencer for rifles, up close and silent for pistols.

 

I think the beam splitter just reduces the accuracy rather than the damage, not sure by how much though.

[Moraelin]

Spice:

 

1. For multi-projectile weapons, the damage it shows, just like in NV or FO3 is the TOTAL damage. Like, if you have a shotgun that shoots 7 pellets per shot, and it says that it does 210 damage, then it's 30 per pellet. The same applies for Two-Shot weapons: the shown damage is if both projectiles hit. And the same applies to beam splitters.

 

2. Suppressors are obviously more useful if you're sneaky. And not just for the obvious reason. With the Sandman perk, suppressors also increase the stealth damage of the weapon. With all the ranks of Sandman and Ninja (both of which work a bit other than in NV,) currently the same weapon does about 50% more TOTAL damage from stealth (that is, actual damage of the attack: base plus bonus damage) if I put a suppressor on it. Which can be quite a lot for a .50 sniper rifle, or a metric buttload of extra damage for a Gauss Rifle. Or you find a legendary Instigating gun that can take a suppressor, yeah, that +50% damage gets doubled too.

 

So, yeah, if you can afford the relevant perks, suppressors become quite the upgrade.

 

3. Well, the critical system wouldn't be too hard to change even with FO4 edit, if you're not afraid of doing the modding equivalent of Tony Stark: build it IN A CAVE! WITH SCRAP! ;) Essentially you just need an equivalent enchant to Overdrive, with a bunch of conditions (if your luck is 1, +1%, if your luck is 2, +2%, etc,) and just add it to the base weapons.

 

Hmm, come to think of it, I might do just that myself, since I kinda miss the old crits too. Dang, at this rate I'll never get back to doing meshes :p

 

4. The minigun is kinda situational. Actually it can pump out a lot of damage, if the target is not particularly armoured, but doesn't really do much against heavily armoured targets.

 

It really shines in VATS, though, because it is a long burst weapon. It always shoots 10 rounds in VATS, even with the low speed tri-barrel. And on a VATS crit, yeah, all 10 hit and all 10 crit. Nail someone in the head, and yeah, it won't be pretty.