plasma weapons damage

[Mikkedin]

I don't understand how plasma weapons deal damage: I have a plasma sniper rifle that deals 97 ballistic\energy damage. Does it mean, it deals 97+97=194 damage OR 97 of ballistic or energy damage?

[casualsailor]

When you examine the weapon there will be a breakdown. The Shield represents ballistic damage, the lightning bolt represents energy damage. So if there is a 97 next to the shield and a 97 next to the lightning bolt then it does 194 damage. Weapons can also do raidation damage as indicated by a circular radiation symbol.

The standard Plasma rifle does 24 balistic and 24 energy.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_gun

Edit: Also Legendaries that fire "an extra bullet" do not typically do double the stated damage. Rather the damage of that extra bullet is baked into the gun's numbers.

[Doombringer]

Plasma does both types of damage at the same time.
Enemies get to use damage resist vs the ballistic part and energy resist vs the energy part, so overall damage is a little lower than expected vs enemies with high armor.
(mainly higher end deathclaws and power armor BoS)

[Mikkedin]

Originally posted by ⎛The Crimson ♥♥♥♥♥♥⎞ ✞:

Originally posted by Mikkedn:

Does it mean, it deals 97+97=194 damage

pretty much yes
assuming target has no energy resist / armor

ok but if it has resistance, does it deal the damage resulting from the difference with both resistances? let's say my weapon deals 100 en \100 ballistic damage, the enemy has 50\50 resistance, my plasma rifle deals 100 damage total? hypothetically

[Casper]

I basically never use plasma for exactly that reason. Not only is the ammo a nuisance to find, and just a little more expensive than it deserves to be, it's engaging two forms of resistance rather than one.

The only leg they can stand on is that they're more adaptive in that regard. So for the record I don't think they're a complete waste of time. I use the sentinel's plasma caster often actually. Does 130 of each before adrenaline boosts.. and it's instigating so that's useful.. doing close to the damage of a modded Gauss rifle while being more adaptable to resistance and only weighing 7 pounds.. I can get like 8 shots off with it in vats at heightened accuracy too.

I guess it's a double edge'd sword.

[Chronolord]

Plasma is a nice weapon, but can be useless as your primary long range sniper weapon. The projectile is larger, and can make it impossible to sneak through the tiny cracks that a .50 cal can. It's why I put the 2 shot legendary mod on my .50 whenever I can.

[Dick Caught In Fan]

Originally posted by casualsailor:

When you examine the weapon there will be a breakdown. The Shield represents ballistic damage, the lightning bolt represents energy damage. So if there is a 97 next to the shield and a 97 next to the lightning bolt then it does 194 damage. Weapons can also do raidation damage as indicated by a circular radiation symbol.

The standard Plasma rifle does 24 balistic and 24 energy.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_gun

Edit: Also Legendaries that fire "an extra bullet" do not typically do double the stated damage. Rather the damage of that extra bullet is baked into the gun's numbers.

The double shot, actually does shoot double when it comes to launchers and shotguns

[Urizen]

It also depends on the weapon and perks. Rifleman perk and a legendary effect allow a weapon to ignore a percent of the target's armor. I think it applies only to ballistic portion of the damage score.

[Dick Caught In Fan]

rifleman applies to all types of damage aslong as it comes from a rifle type weapon including plasma and laser rifles

[Charon]

Originally posted by The Milkman of Human Kindness:

rifleman applies to all types of damage aslong as it comes from a rifle type weapon including plasma and laser rifles

As far as general damage goes yes, but the armor reduction only reduces ballistic damage resistance and won't affect energy resistance.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Automatic Two-Shot Plasma Rifle is among the top 3 Practical DPS options in the game. I say practical because by spreadsheets there's a lot stronger, but they come with serious caveats.

Originally posted by Charon:

Originally posted by The Milkman of Human Kindness:

rifleman applies to all types of damage aslong as it comes from a rifle type weapon including plasma and laser rifles

As far as general damage goes yes, but the armor reduction only reduces ballistic damage resistance and won't affect energy resistance.

Is this specific to the Plasma guns because 2 damage sources (and by extension any freezing/plasma infused ballistic weapons)? Or does that hold true for Laser Rifles as well.

[Charon]

It affects all energy weapons, since the perk only reduces ballistic resistance. Since the laser rifle only does energy damage it completely ignores the armor reduction.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Rifleman

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by Charon:

It affects all energy weapons, since the perk only reduces ballistic resistance. Since the laser rifle only does energy damage it completely ignores the armor reduction.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Rifleman

Interesting, but I guess not surprising. Laser Rifles compensate for this effect because their semi-auto fire rate is extremely high, and their recoil (Although anyone who knows anything would say it shouldn't have any at all) is very low, almost non-existent with a RCS and Gyro Lens.

[Charon]

That's one way to look at it. But since there are no energy weapon perks - in contrast to FO3 / FNV - imho the developer / programmer / whatever who designed the perk simply didn't know what he was doing and Bethesda was too lazy to fix it since then :) But that is just my opinion, and who am i to judge ...

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by Charon:

That's one way to look at it. But since there are no energy weapon perks - in contrast to FO3 / FNV imho the developer simply didn't know what he was doing and Bethesda was to lazy to fix it since then :) But that is just my opinion, and who am i to judge ...

I actually think they thought about it more than you want to admit. Prolly some harbored anger and bias if I am pulling my pscyhology chops out. A lazy developer would have just made laser rifles objectively superior. A smart developer would have created what is called "Incomperable Balance" where each class has trade-offs for different situations. Laser Rifles are Lightweight, with high fire rates and ammo of such abundance that only the lowest quality .38 is found in greater quantities.

But they don't benefit from armor penetration (Unless you have a penetrating legendary) cannot be suppressed and the automatic variants have no hip-fire accuracy to speak of.

As an even better example, the Plasma Rifle was supposed to just be pure energy damage (As indicated by the loading screen info) but in order to make them actually powerful, the rifle's damage was split into ballistic and energy to take advantage of rifleman and elevate plasma to its top-quality class. (And make no mistake, Plasma guns are the strongest class) But of course, even this power comes with the price of having a non hitscan projectile.

[Alexander_Welker]

Another bonus for using plasma weapons is most enemies only have high defense to one type of damage, this makes it useful against enemies that have super high defense in one area but little to none in another, like a few crawler types from far harbor. Instead of carrying a combo of energy and ballistic weapons you can run with a plasma as a generalist weapon. Use penetrating to further boost its effectiveness.