Starting a heavy weapons character.

[Reprusu]

Just wondering how I should set up a character for use with stuff like flamers and mingus, grenade rifles, and power armour. Any reomended specials, perk grabs? I'm running Project Nevada and More Perks for New Vegas mods.

[talgaby]

Get 10 ST by starting with 8 and doing OWB, or by 7 + OWB + implant. Forget weapon handling, you need carry capacity for all the heavy weapons and their heavy ammo. Of which you need metric tons, because the minigun and the laser minigun go through ammo like there is no tomorrow.
Other stats are up to you. LU will be pointless since you either will use guns with 0.001 crit chance modifiers or ones where the most damage comes from the contact, not crits. You may try to get everything into EN and IN, but even they won't be that important.

The best heavy weapon in practical use is more than likely the gattling laser. You can also get tons of cells to convert them to its ammo. Not to mention there are laser-specific perks to boost dps even further.
The next is Mercy with explosive perks, but good luck getting enough ammo for it to last more than five fights. Rocket launchers may work too, except the Red Glare. I haven't met any people who managed to kill anything with it without using up half their healing stockpiles.
If you invest in all flame-y perks, the flamethrower isn't that bad, but it's still not that good. Same goes for the arc welder.
The miniguns… well, there aren't really any perks for good synergy with it. Same goes for the K9000, although FIDO's large caliber ammunition can pack a punch.
Fat Man… just forget it and sell it for some nice cash to buy more ammo with. Fat man is a joke weapon you use once or twice because it will kill you more than any enemy.

For armour, do the BoS quest line fast to learn how to wear power armour, and grab a stealth boy to get the enclave power armour from the deathclaw nesting ground at the other bank of the Colorado.
Alternatively, wear a combat armour or the desert ranger one from HH.

Edit: Forgot the plasma caster (slow and not strong enough; forget it), tesla cannon (great penetration and damage, slow-moving projectile that just never hits anything smaller than the legendary bloatfly), and the shoulder-mounted machine gun, which may be your best friend if you don't go energy weapons but stay with guns.
Still, the best option is gattling laser with optimised cells. It would probably tear even Gojira to pieces.

[red255]

Originally posted by Reprusu:

Just wondering how I should set up a character for use with stuff like flamers and mingus, grenade rifles, and power armour. Any reomended specials, perk grabs? I'm running Project Nevada and More Perks for New Vegas mods.

Define heavy weapons? Weapons with a weight of over 15lbs or weapons that make a big boom.

there are several ballistic 'heavy weapons' not counting the light machine gun/Bozar.

theres the Cyberdog guns (both variants)
the minigun
and the shoulder mounted minigun

most are DLC guns.

you also got the gatling laser, plasma caster and Tesla cannons.

the explosives have...issues as some targets are randomly immune. I also have trouble hitting with the heavy incinerator and flamer blocks my vision.

We got annabelle, red Glare, Grenade machineguns and fat men.

None of this guns function particularly BETTER than lighter guns

If explosives worked well, I'd go with the explode damage +20% perk and well mad bomber because its fun. the various carry weight perks.

Hand Load and vigilant recycler for the ammo types with certain guns sure.

and maybe jury rigging but that might not be super useful with this build.

unfortunately the only heavy weapons you can get 'early' are flamers and incinerators. and they kinda suck.