These are my regular companions (versatile in all playthroughs)

[leisuresuitberry]

If you are playing F04 without mods (or with as little mods as possible), I highly recommend Porter Gage, versatile in a fight and has very little dislikes and hates (drinking alcohol and helping settlers).

 

Usually, I like playing F04 with a lot of companions, I have 20 plus companions at one stage (to get their affinity perks and make sure my party totally outnumbers the raiders, it is quite funny in a weird way, imagine the raiders meeting an army of minutemen in their base).

 

Then I find that too many companions can be a chore.

I start to dwindle down to 10 and now to 4.

 

This are my companions (all mods WITHOUT any from the original game).

 

1. T0-R1 (makes sense "Father" send her to protect you and make sure you adapt to the wasteland) = super good in fighting and will not dislike or hate you for any actions.

 

2. F4-111 = sells junk, weapons and aid to you, will not dislike or hate you, not good in fighting but rarely seen needing my help.

 

3. Heather Casdin = sells aid to you, versatile in fighting, talks unique stuff at certain locations or events, will not dislike or hate you, gives you quests, has an interesting tale to tell you.

 

So I have a synth, a robot and a human as companions. Each serve a different purpose and a different role playing sense.

 

This party is very good, I just share with people my experience. Honestly, I will not go back to a GIANT party again. I want my party to be small, versatile and professional. No dislike BS, just a professional team of wasteland warriors with me (player) as the leader.

[Moraelin]

Just Ada, in one of the two following configurations:

 

- what I call the "reaper configuration": one of the bodies that can take a sentry head, twin miniguns, tesla coils, voltaic armor everywhere, reaper helm. The exploit there is that each piece of voltaic armour adds a separate 1 energy damage attack to each bullet that hits, with its own separate chance to proc the decapitation, which is an insta-kill. Doesn't matter how much HP the target has, doesn't matter how armoured it is, when that effect procs, anything non-essential and non-protected just instantly dies. And that's a LOT of proc chances per second. Really, heads explode everywhere.

 

If it's a sentry body, you can even add twin mininuke or cluster bomb launchers, BUT be sure to have the perk that makes you immune to companion damage. Otherwise in tight spaces she WILL murderize you to death by carpet bombing the room you're in.

 

Con: essential or protected NPC will remain alive, but headless, until YOU personally put them out of their misery. Which I find immersion breaking.

 

- If you want to be even more exploity, and don't fear mods that are a little bit OP, you can even do the above but put dual repeating shotguns on her. That's all those proc chances PER PELLET. Yeah, everything in front of her just instantly dies. On any difficulty level.

 

Con: collateral damage. It will explode all cars along the road, and murderize any passing by merchant or provisioner to death.

 

- what I fondly call "turbosquid configuration": Mr Handy body (which includes the same accuracy and range in the body itself as a robobrain head), assaultron arms, dual gatling lasers, 3 Handy arms with buzzsaws, tesla coils, voltaic armour everywhere. That configuration is the absolute maximum number of voltaic pieces you can put on a robot, so the maximum damage boost you can get to energy weapons. And anything getting too close gets one hell of melee attack. It really has a DPS comparable to 3 Knights with gatling lasers.

 

I call it the turbosquid because, well, it has 5 arms and a jet engine up the *ahem* rear end.

 

NB, never put lasers or whatnot on the Handy arms in this configuration. The AI will then either fire the gatlings or a laser off the Handy arms at a time, which actually REDUCES the DPS.

 

- either of the above with dual nuka quantum launchers. It's not the highest dps, actually, but it's fun to carpet bomb your way through everything. Again, be sure you're protected against companion damage.

[Moksha8088]

Right now I am being accompanied by Heather Casdin, Darlene (I'm Darlene), Roxy (Depravity) and Valkyrie (Project Valkyrie). Other favorite companions include R4-04 and Audrey (Tales from the Commonwealth) and Sarah Lyons (Project Valkyrie). They are all better than the vanilla companions,

 

BTW, why play without mods? That seems a bit like shooting a gun without bullets.

[Stronglav]

Cait for fighting and opening locks.

Curie for cutiness overload :P

MaccReady for funny comments.