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They're not a poor choice. It's simply that quality energy ammo is rare, and mostly needs a high science skill to obtain.
they send some nobody to give it to you. I don't remember his name, but I think he only shows up if you will Vulpes.
Pretty much what I did in one play through when I ticked them off too early, with one exception:
I started toting around as many landmines as I could get my hands on, and when I'd encounter them I'd run away in a straight line dropping mines as I went. The mines certainly wont kill Legion Assasins in one go, but with luck you'll cripple their legs and slow them down enough that you can keep them at a distance while taking pot shots at them.
Mainly, guns are simpler for a beginner. they don't have to worry about finding ammo so much, keeping things repaired etc. Sure, I know tricks to help keep stuff repaired (get first EDE upgrade ASAP) and keep my ammo supplies up, but a lot of that involves stuff a beginner will have no clue about. Energy weapons are great, but without some of the knowledge a lot of us take for granted, it can be pretty tough.
Armor piercing rounds allow the user to negate some DT, preventing any major damage reductions. From that point forward, your damage is only subtracted by the damage reduction values that armor has. Other weapons I believe are able to negate some DT, like certain energy weapons.
Basically if the enemy's DT is higher than your weapon's damage per shot (example: the gatling laser doing 17 damage per laser) they take much less damage.
So if you shoot at a giant radscorpion, which has 18 DT, with a gatling laser (17 damage per shot) it'll do very little damage, perhaps five or so per shot. If you shoot a regular radscorpion, I think they have 10 DT, it'll deal the full 17 damage, because your damage per shot > their DT. You can use special ammunition like armor piercing rounds for guns or for energy weapons over/max charged ammunition to reduce enemy DT and thus deal full damage.
Almost everything in the game has DT of some sort, most of the time it's just too low to matter. As to knowing the exact DT of targets, there is a medicine skill perk, Living Anatomy, which will give your enemy's health and DT in numbers when you target them. Play a game with that and take note of the more common enemy info.
DT is a flat number minused from any incoming damage. If an enemy has 15 DT and you shoot him for 20 damage, he takes only 5 damage. If you shoot the same enemy for 10 damage, rather than fully negate all damage from your shot, 80% of the damage is nulified, and 20% still "Bleeds through". So, shooting a 15 DT enemy with 10 damage deals 2 damage still.
You will NOT see the broken shield icon simply by doing more damage than the enemy's DT. You see a broken shield if through weapon, ammo, or perk effects you negate ALL of their DT. You see a solid red shield their DT is higher than your damage.
If you use armor piercing 5.56mm ammo against a 20 DT enemy, they then only have an effective 5 DT against that hit.
Also, certain drugs can boost Damage Resistance, or DR for short. DR is a percentage that is taken off of incoming damage before DT takes effect.
For example, if you have 20DT, and inject med-ex gaining 25% DR, and an enemy shoots you for 20 damage, 25% gets taken away by DR, then 15 damage gets checked against your DT, your DT is higher, so 20% of that 15 damage gets through, and the rest is negated.
Weapons with higher damage per hit (like a high caliber rifle) work better against high DT enemies, even though they may have less DPS than an SMG for example as though the SMG has a higher potential DPS, it's low damage per shot will mean most of that DPS will get soaked up by high DT enemies. SMG's and their like are good for low or no DT enemies.
Also, if you see hollowpoint aka HP ammo, you will see it has an effect of 3X enemy DT along with it's high damage boost. This is so it works great on soft targets, but enemies with DT have effectively 3 times their normal DT versus a hollowpoint round making the damage boost from the bullet a moot point.
If you love lasers, go for the fast shot perk. They are so accurate that the accuracy penalty doesn't really matter, and the rate of fire boost is great. Also, gear your character for critical hits. I typically start with 9 luck, fast shot, and built to destroy. FYI, the critical bonus from built to destroy is multiplied by any weapon critical chance multiplier, just like the finesse perk, and crit boosting clothing. Light touch and lazer commander add a flat bonus that doesn't get multiplied FYI.
I would also suggest that you stick with the laser pistor to start with (go GRA when you can afford it), and buy all the normal energy cells you see, as well as bulk energy cells early on. Once more comfortable with your ammo supply, ditch the bulk ammo.
I advise NOT recycling your drained energy cells. Instead, pick up every fission battery you find (don't buy them, not cost efffective). at 45 science you can turn 1 fission battery and 5 drained energy cells into 25 energy cells. Even later on it is useful to make energy cells to then convert to microfusion cells.
Vigilant recycler is an awesome perk, and if you have GRA, you can make the best ammo imho, which is optimized ammo. 1.3 times damage, only 1.1 times damage to your gun per shot, -5 DT to target, and 0.6 times ammo weight in hardcore mode. It makes overcharged ammo pointless. Max charge is still nice for really tough spots, but with high crit chance and optmized ammo on a modded laser rifle I can mow down a legion hit squad by level 10 or so.
Another really helpful tip for energy weapons, or any playthrough in general, is to start the lonesome road DLC once you reach it. You can get the first EDE upgrade without facing any enemies, and then just leave the DLC and come back later. The first EDE upgrade allows EDE to repair 25% of your weapon's condition once a day. Don't use that feature until your weapon is below that bar on the health meter though, because there is a glitch where if you use his repair on a weapon with more than 75% health left your weapon loses health instead of gaining it lol.
As for better weaponry, in Nipton there is a very low health laser rifle in the trailer park on the south end of town, and one in the bathtub of the house with the crazy mr. gutsy. repair one with the other, then use EDE on it to get started. Also, there is a bright brotherhood ghoul corpse at the nipton road rest stop if you can handle a few radscorpions, one in good springs cave , and one under an overpass on your way to sloan. Try to avoid going to the one south of sloan or the one in goodsprings cave until you gain a few levels as you may get something good. Also, the grave by yangtze memorial tends to have a good energy weapon spawn, also wait a few levels to go near that too as going near it spawns the loot.
On a side note, if you ever want to truly destroy the powder gangers at the NCR prison, don't do ghost town gunfight right away like you are tempted to. I used to do that all the time, but to take out the powder gangers and have it recognized they got beat you need to go see their boss before making them hate you, start a quest doing a couple errands that are not evil or anything, and then you will get a third errand where you have the option to betray the powder ganger's boss and aid an NCR team in storming the prison.
hey this dude knows what he's talking about