Laser weapon, they are Shi.... Poo-Poo.

[VMVXMK2]

As title.
Modded or non-modded.
Somehow they are weaker than bullet with similar damage.
Somehow they have more recoil than a bullet gun.
laser effect block your line of sight and feckup your aim.
Usually less ammo per magazine.
Usually more expensive ammo.
Fusion cell are not even that much lighter than a 5.56.
Even laser weapon made by modder follow the vanilla laser balance and made them too weak.

[ＭａｎｇｏＭａｎ でら]

Laser weapons are supposed to be weaker in damage but have better accuracy and ammo is more common to find because of plasma weapons which deal more damage but are rather slow and more expensive.

[ＭａｎｇｏＭａｎ でら]

But I agree. Energy weapons are ♥♥♥♥.
They used to be powerful in Fallout 3 but got nerfed in New vegas and Fallout 4 suffers from this aswell.

[unweptbuzzard16]

The gatling laser is good

[Zotliatlicor]

As is the mighty Gauss. And the 6-crank Musket. Powerful weapons exist, but Ballistic is the way to go.

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

It's because leather armor and resistances against lazers became a thing + bethesda grouping any non melee unarmed explosive radiation or ballistic bullet/shell type damage as energy meaning fire, cryo, electric like emp or the lightning, plasma, and lazer all into 1 category.

In a way it was sorta easier to balance out but it destroyed a ton of weapons.
The 6 crank lazer musket and gauss rifle are the only hard hitting lazer energy weapons. Plasma and cryo are the only energy type weappns worth a ♥♥♥♥ tbh (in general). Even then only plasma because cryo weapons can break your game npcs.

[VMVXMK2]

Pretty sure gauss count as ballistic. plasma is half ballistic too, but plasma are still difficult to use because slow projectile, also, plasma cell are not exactly cheap. Cyro are too expensive to reliably field, and while nothing resist cryo, cryo gun are hard to use.

So the problem for Energy weapon as a whole are they are quirky weapon that have a high running cost, but don't have enough reward to justify to investment.

[ghpstage]

Lasers suffer from a bad combination of mechanical goofs,

The games basic damage math including crits and DoTs looks something like this
[Parts Damage x Regular Multipliers] + [Parts Damage x Crit Multiplier] + [DoT]
For starters DoTs not getting buffed adds to burns not stacking in making some of lasers specialty (beta/gamma) parts pointless.
Second is that 'Regular Multipliers' stack by multiplying each other while 'Crit Multiplier' are additive, causing crit damage not to scale as well as non crit damage hobbling the other of lasers special parts (photon agitators).

Those are relatively minor, but it gets a lot worse

Suppressors in FO4 remove the cooldown for sneak attacks completely allowing for the outright spamming of them, and so any gun that can't mount one proves relatively pathetic at sneak attacking.


The worst part is that the DR checks for them are different to those for ballistics.
For ballistics it looks at [Parts Damage x Regular Multipliers] + [Parts Damage x Crit Multiplier],
For energy it is only ever [Parts Damage]
Its broken in a way that gimps energy from the start, and only gets worse as you level. If you assume that everything is weaker to ballistic then you will almost always be correct, the values shown by awareness don't mean a lot.

[lukandroll]

Two shot automatic plasma rifle melts enemies, the only drawbacks are the recoil and the high ammo cost

[The Nameless]

Laser weapons in FO4 are better than they would be in real life. No, I don't mean we can't make them. A decent electrician with a couple of old movie projectors and a working knowledge of optics could cobble together a weapon-grade laser in his garage.

The real reason people don't make and use laser rifles is that they'll blind you from their backscatter. Oh, a set of laser goggles can keep you safe from the 200-watt lasers you see people kludge up on Youtube, but when you get into the kilowatt range...

Yeah, sorry, lasers as a personal weapon will never, ever be a thing. Ships, planes, spacecraft, sure. But if you ever hold a true laser rifle in your hands you're an idiot, and if you fire it you'll be a blind idiot.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by ghpstage:

The worst part is that the DR checks for them are different to those for ballistics.
For ballistics it looks at [Parts Damage x Regular Multipliers] + [Crit Damage x Multiplier],
For energy it is only ever [Parts Damage]

I suspect that the problem there is that energy damage is treated as an extra damage type, while physical "ballistic" damage is the game's basic damage type. So effects multiply a gun's basic damage properly, but mostly overlook its energy damage.

Even the basic laser gun is designed as a regular gun with its physical damage set to 0, and the appropriate amount of energy damage added as a secondary damage type.

[Foxyboy471]

alien blaster pistol, aturnes, Authority.
three of my favourite over powered energy weapons ever.

[carl]

Originally posted by Luk:

Two shot automatic plasma rifle melts enemies, the only drawbacks are the recoil and the high ammo cost

I mean man every two shot legendary weapon is good
not sayin much yknow

[Njorl]

My lucky gunslinger build liked the laser pistol rigged up for minimum VATS cost and maximum crit multiplier. The instigating laser sold in DC is good for lower levels.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Njorl:

My lucky gunslinger build liked the laser pistol rigged up for minimum VATS cost and maximum crit multiplier. The instigating laser sold in DC is good for lower levels.

As a guaranteed Lucky laser pistol, wouldn't Righteous Authority (from helping Danse clear ArcJet Systems) be the go-to weapon for that?

[Zim]

Originally posted by Luk:

Two shot automatic plasma rifle melts enemies, the only drawbacks are the recoil and the high ammo cost

I found the two shot plasmarifle to be the best weapon in the game to be honest. Not using the automatic type though because of the ammo depletion. I use the rilfe/sniper variant of it and it is melting everything that crosses my path. Playing on H/VH difficulty