What weapon has the best damage for the least amount of weight?

[sick duck]

The weight is important in hardcore when the weight limit can range between 110-200. In my modded game, I am favoring a weapon similar to the mysterious magnum: old scratch, a .357 revolver from the new vegas bounties 3 mod. Weighs a little over 6.00 if I carry it with around 80 standard rounds, 80 JFP, and about 30 hollow point. I use the pack rat perk to get the weight that low.

The parts I don't understand are how DT and DR are a factor (is there a reason for such a complex equation other than Obsidian been huge math nerds?) when it comes to subtracting or multiplying that damage of my attacks and the various ammo types.

[talgaby]

Blood-Nap, Gehenna, Nephi's golf club, Love & Hate, Graham's unique M1911, Winchester 1886 (called Brush gun), tarantula Sonic emitter with optimised cells.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Joseph:

The parts I don't understand are how DT and DR are a factor (is there a reason for such a complex equation other than Obsidian been huge math nerds?) when it comes to subtracting or multiplying that damage of my attacks and the various ammo types.

Damage Resistance lowers attack damage by a set percentage. For example, a DR of 60 reduces all attack damage by 60%. This caps at an 85% reduction. Think of it as a target's "toughness" rating - regardless of armour, punching a "tough" opponent will do less damage than hitting one with a weak frame.

After DR is applied, DT comes in, and is straight-up subtracted from the damage total. For example, if you have a DT of 10, and would take 60 damage after DR is applied, you'll take 50 instead. Think of it as a target's protection from damage: DT is actual armour.

Whatever happens, though, at least 20% of damage gets through, so there does come a point where additional DR/DT becomes ineffective.

Hollow point ammo gifts your target extra DT, but has a higher base damage than regular ammo - so it's good against unarmoured targets with low DT scores.

Armour piercing bullets have lower base damage than regular ammo, but ignore some amount of a target's DT - so it's good against armoured targets with high DT scores.

[Elikir]

For low weight weapon depend of your weapon preferences:

the .45 auto pistol is available as soon you enter the honest hearts DLC (1.5 weight and with pack rat it go to 0.75 !!!) while its unique variant can rival 44 magnum and 12.7mm pistols (the unique is available when you finish the DLC)

Love and hate is a unique spiked knuckles (30-50 damage per hit) with great durability (around 1500 hits before broke and weight only 1 and with pack rat it can go down to 0.5 weight) found in bonnie springs at the north of goodsprings, be prepared because some of the viper bandits have good weapon like hunter rifle and trail carabine (30-45 damage per shot in your ass)

the Anti-Materiel Rifle and the chainsaw can be both solid choice if you can spend a perk for heavyweight, once modded those weapons have 12-13 weight and the perk reduce further
to 6-6.5 weight and they do high damage ( chainsaw is 60 per "tick", the AMR 110)

The MF hyperbreeder alpha is also a good choice : while the weapon is heavy
(7 weight for a pistol) it use "infinite recharger ammo" which weight nothing, the damage is good (25-30 per shot) since its a SMG energy gun (better than most firearms SMG) and its durability is around 4000 shots

when you get enough level (at lvl 16-20 you can purchase it at mike and ralph, hoover dam vendor, great khan armorer) the shishkebab have 3 weight and can hit 2500 times before broke, with pyromaniac perk, this weapon can reach 75 damage per hit

[cap'n]

The Ratslayer for Hardcore is pretty good. It uses 5.56, which is easy to come by and doesn't weigh much. Also the Ratslayer has one of the most highest critical chance and critical damage stats out of all of the guns in the game.

[Elikir]

Originally posted by Phantom:

The Ratslayer for Hardcore is pretty good. It uses 5.56, which is easy to come by and doesn't weigh much. Also the Ratslayer has one of the most highest critical chance and critical damage stats out of all of the guns in the game.

Also keep in mind the ratslayer is a varmint rifle unique variant, which mean you can repair the ratslayer with varmint rifle which are fairly common

About the critical stats : i dont know where you heard about "best critical damage" thing, for most weapons the critical damage are just the same as the weapon damage (mean that a critical hit/shot is like a double damage), also every weapon have a "hidden" (you cant know them in game so much check them on wiki) critical chance multiplier

The ratslayer have X5 critical chance (having 10 luck is like 50% of your shots criticals and with finesse and the 1st recon beret you can reach the 100%) but only have 23 as critical damage but since its frequent its not a bad thing

[Valden21]

If not for the extremely limited ammo, I would say that it's the Alien Blaster. Really high damage for its size, really high crit chance. Suffice to say, if you have a high Energy Weapon skill, you'll leave ash piles every time an enemy drops.