The Lore of Laser Weapons

[LonesomeCoyote]

Hey everyone, I have a question that has bothered me for a while. While most firearms are fairly fleshed out in Fallout lore, Laser Weapons have very little information about their background.

I know Watts produced two weapons, the Watts 1000 and 2000. Big MT had some of their own lasers they designed. H&K produced the L30 Gatling Laser (though this is not the Gatling Laser in FO3/F:NV/FO4) It is said the AEP and AER were designed for and used by the U.S. Military, but by who (what does AE even stand for?) The Recharger Laser weapons seem to have no lore to them at all.

Essentially, what I am asking is if anyone knows who produced these all these different lasers that we seem to find everywhere? I've dug around but can't find anything other than what I have stated.

Edit: Even plausible theories are welcome.

Edited March 29, 2018 by LonesomeCoyote

[LonesomeCoyote]

I'm thinking now that perhaps it was West Tek that could have developed the AER and AEP. They worked rather closely with the US Government and it seems that power armor and laser weapons go hand in hand as far as NPCs go.

[SirDanest]

The Enclave gave laser weapon production technology to a "mafia-esque" family in New Reno as part of an alliance.

The Shi in San-Fransisco can produce Vertibirds, advanced combat armor, and other advanced technologies... wouldn't surprise me if energy weapons are on the list.

General Atomics made at least some of the mods or parts of the lasers pre-war.

Edited April 3, 2018 by SirDanest

[LonesomeCoyote]

I am thinking Pre-War, which leads me to question about General Atomics. What source are you using that GA produced AEP/AER parts? I'm guessing that it may be Fallout 4, since they have a factory in Boston. I looked up the wiki about the factory and it didn't mention anything. To be honest, I really never played too far into FO4, I didn't care much for it and came back to NV.

[SirDanest]

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Laser_gun

This mentions GA as making at least part of the laser.

[LonesomeCoyote]

Ah, I didn't think of looking at FO4 weapons! Thank you!

Still, Recharger Lasers remain at large. It might be safe to assume that either Watts produced them or they were created Post-War. Whoever did figure out recharging radioactive isotopes seems like they would be rather advanced. I have never seen Brotherhood of Steel or Enclave with them.

Actually, the only group I have actually consistently seen with them is the Bright Brotherhood. Perhaps it was a REPCONN experiment, since I doubt the ghouls were the ones to create it? RECPONN dealt mostly in plasma tech but I can't think of anything else at the moment.

Edited April 5, 2018 by LonesomeCoyote

[Radioactivelad]

I don't think the Bright Ghouls were at a Repconn facility until the one near Novac, which wouldn't explain the corpses that can spawn with them in various spots around the desert.

 

The designs are very Poseidon-esque though. Toy-Like.

[madmongo]

Some conversations in Novac indicate that a lot of folks there used to scavenge stuff from Repconn until the ghouls showed up, which indicates that Bright and his followers only recently arrived there. I haven't come across anything in-game that indicates where Bright and his followers came from or where they got their weapons from. The weapons may have been somewhere in the Repconn facility, but there's nothing in the game that indicates whether the weapons were there or whether the Brights brought them there from somewhere else. Repconn did work with energy weapons, but they mostly worked with plasma weapons, as was already noted.

 

The Repconn test site appears to be only for rockets. There isn't anything there that indicates weapons research or weapons production. The Q-35 was not made at the Repconn HQ, since one of the terminal entries indicates that the Q-35 was stopping by HQ on its way to be delivered to the Department of Defense. If the Q-35 wasn't made at HQ and wasn't made at the rocket test site, then there must be another Repconn site where weapons are manufactured. The Brights could have armed themselves there, and Jason Bright may have received his "vision" of the Great Beyond once he learned from this third site that the rocket test site near Novac existed, prompting Jason to lead his followers to it.

 

Repconn is known for plasma weapons, but maybe they had a small side business making lasers. It's not really explained in the game, so all we can do is guess.

 

I always wondered if the original intent of the Bright follower corpses was that they were supposed to only spawn after the rockets launched, indicating that one (or more) of the rockets broke up in flight and scattered corpses all over the place. One of the rockets does go a bit off-course during launch, but it doesn't crash, at least not while it is visible from where you launch them. Maybe the rocket breaks up after it goes out of sight. Or maybe the corpses were only supposed to spawn if you reprogrammed the rockets to crash, but in that case the rockets don't really go up high enough to scatter corpses all over the Mojave. It might be a bug that the corpses spawn before the rockets launch, or maybe it was something that they changed during development so that you could have a happy ending to Come Fly With Me.

[LonesomeCoyote]

Do the corpses random spawn or more do after Come Fly With Me? If so, I never noticed. I thought they were set spawns when the game started. Thinking of the one under the railroad tracks by Sloan specifically. It's always there. I always figured that the Bright corpses were sent out to scavenge for the parts they needed for the rockets. But if new ones spawn after the quest I really don't know.

Poseidon is an interesting theory. I'll give that some thought. The reason I'm asking all this is because of a mod I am creating. While I want it to be as consistent with the lore, I'm not afraid of some fan fiction if it makes sense.

[Radioactivelad]

It's equally possible the dead Bright Members were just killed during the journey to the Test Facility. You don't find any of their bodies Northward of the Facility, and one or two of them are found in Caves and under bridges.

 

JSawyer's Mod also adds a group of "Deranged Bright Followers" at Wolf Horn Ranch, indicating not all of the Followers stuck with Jason, whether out of Feralization or Radicalization.

Obviously whether that encounter is canonical is debatable.

Edited April 11, 2018 by Radioactivelad