Minigun is Relentlessly Bad

[Aluminum Elite Master]

I know it's been said before, but here's my own rant/two cents:

1) Without any perks in Big Guns, I can accept that damage per shot is very low. But what I can't accept is that, even with 2 points in Big Guns (mostly for missile launcher and fatman usage), when I do pick up a mini-gun to use all my saved-up 5mm ammo, the damage is still only around 10-12 damage per shot. The problem to me, here, is obvious: a 20%, 40%, 60% buff system is great for stuff that has a decent base-line for damage... but when the starting damage per shot (meaning prior to perks or chems) is 9, then even with Big Guns maxed out for double damage, I'm still only doing 18 damage. Which is pathetic.

2) There are so few mods for the mini-gun... if I could upgrade the gun to a base-line of 20 damage per shot, then with the points in Big Guns, it would be okay. But, there's so little to mod on it, that it's basically doomed to do fairly low damage unless you take every combat chem on earth and have all points of Big Guns taken. Which would make it okay, except that I can do way better damage with the Combat Rifle and points in Commando, even prior to taking chems.

3) The piercing value for the mini-gun is low, too. As if bad damage wasn't enough, the piercing for it is also pathetic. Nothing like fighting a Gunner Private on Very Hard or Survival, and spraying him or her with literally 100 decent hits, and seeing that they only are at half health thanks to their combat armor.

4) 5mm ammo is hardly common... if the gun is going to do such low damage and have such lousy armor penetration, then at least make the ammo plentiful.

5) Other than using up my 5mm ammo, why use the mini-gun at all? So many other guns do better damage. An automatic combat shotgun can do 100+ damage per hit with a point or two in Commando, and to do the same damage amount with a mini-gun, I'd need to unload 10x as many accurate hits. Which is harder to do since inevitably you're going to miss a few as the mini-gun sprays wildly.

6) It's been months now... I could forgive the poor balancing of weapons in the first month or two, but it's the beginning of March, now. The mini-gun should have been balanced in December... same with the Flamer, which is equally garbage in most ways. And the combat shotgun is still OP... get an Explosive Combat Shotgun and it's basically GG,WP to anything you meet. And even without a single point in Gun Slinger, I can walk around with a .44 like I'm the second coming of Dirty Harry, doing solid damage so long as I'm making sure to get head shots... and, again, this without a single point in Gun Slinger. And the Rail Rifle has the cheapest ammo in the game yet I'm doing something like 200 damage per shot with it thanks to Commando and making the Rail Rifle an auto (which, hilariously, barely improves the RoF).

TL;DR - The weapon balancing is strangely poor for how popular the game is and how much time has passed. I was willing to over-look it for the first month or two, but it's now a pretty good ways in, and there's still glaring balance issues. Shouldn't require mods or editing game files just to make sure the weapon balancing is decent.

[Gordon Freeman]

The mini gun is awesome when used against me , but when I use it , it sucks . I scrap them and sell the ammo .

[Suicide_King12]

Yes this has been known FOR EVER they broke the mini gun, either mod it or scrap them for parts,and i mean mod it as in change it's stats to what you want not use the poopy workbench options,or change how much damage 5mm amo does.

[Claybot]

Give them to the settlers they never run out of 5mm.

[The Changeling]

Originally posted by Claybot:

Give them to the settlers they never run out of 5mm.

This. Dole them out to settlers and watch any invasion fall flat on its ass as 25 minigun wielding badasses shred the opposition to tiny little pieces.

[pike]

as long as it's not terminally bad , or maternally . a mini gun that's a bad parent would be worse
relentlessly ? ehhh, who cares

[White Knight]

I agree, the mini-guns are underwhelming but I'm pretty sure I've seen some that do 19-20 dam and I never take Big Guns or any perks that deal with heavy weapons, explosives or full-auto anything.

It comes down to rate of fire. That is the advantage of the mini-gun. They will never be on par with a rifle. Even with a rifle, as you modify the rate of fire, the damage is reduced. When you can put hundreds of rounds downrange, those little plinks add up to a brutalizing hail of bullets.

The laser gattling gun is pretty decent though. I can't imagine how that couldn't be a show-stopper with the right perks, etc. Then there is the explosive rounds option...if that isn't OP, I don't know what is.

[Thanatos]

spawn yourself a minigun with explosive bullets. with Big Guns 5 and Explosive 5 you get dmg per bullet at 88. And afaik only robots have a descent Exp Defense so you cut anything else like paper. I've recently killed a BoS patrol with 3 T60B's with 30-40 bullets, mainly becuse of the AoE of Explosive bullets and NPC PA has no EXP defence.

As OP said, Combat shotgun with exp is overpowered, but the truth is, almost every auto/spread gun with EXP is owerpowred becuse of the insane AoE damage of explosions.

[FauxFurry]

This isn't a new problem for the Fallout series. Mini-guns are always given low damage which is meant to be compensated for with high damage per second potential which never really is useful except for a handful of monsters whose skin (or a portion of it,anyway) has no form of damage resistance (such as Feral Ghouls and Deathclaw's bellies in Fallout 4).
Fallout 3 and New Vegas have some decent user mods which either make the basic minigun properly powerful or they add in new miniguns that rip even the most heavily armed targets apart in seconds at the cost of accuracy and high ammo cost.

[Count Smashula]

Hey, psst.

try the Gatling laser

But yeah, minigun is terrible, its the "unarmed badass" version from skyrim: Only works on the lowest difficulties.

[Yanof]

Give the miniguns to your settlers. You might like the show.

[Rokk]

Put the thing on it that makes it do melee damage at point-blank, then make sure you don't have any ammo.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

@FauxFurry: Mini-gun in FO3 was low on damage, but not *this* low, IIRC. That, or FO3 had fewer enemies with natural armor (I agree with you, that firing a mini-gun into the shell of a mirelurk or whatever is pretty much pointless... and there seem to be a lot of enemies with natural armor now, from Mirelurks, to Radscorpions, to robots and combat-armor clad or power-armor clad humans).

@ Thanatos: I'm trying to play without giving myself stuff via console commands. I've been hoping for a legendary drop that would be an Explosive Mini-gun, but no such luck yet.

@ Several people saying give it to settlers: Smart thinking, and probably the best use for it, but seems like a slight cheese to give it to friendly NPCs since the game doesn't seem to care if friendly NPCs have ammo or not.

@ People saying to try the Gatling Laser: I know about it already, though I appreciate the advice. It's a good weapon, and hence why I'm not mentioning it. My rant is primarily about the brokenly imbalanced weapons in the game, for good or bad. And there's a lot of imbalanced weapons, yet. Hopefully it all gets sorted out when the inevitable 'Gun-Runner-esque' DLC gets made and they finally give us a grenade launcher, 9mm weapons, and proper 10mm SMG...

[Kasane Randell MFer]

I'm not so sure. any mini gun with a legendary effect, except instigating, works wonders.

[Aries the Grim Fool]

Originally posted by lewislemitar2:

I'm not so sure. any mini gun with a legendary effect, except instigating, works wonders.

Bloody hell... just imagined a furious one... guess I need to test something tomorrow

[Kasane Randell MFer]

Originally posted by Aries the Everdying:

Originally posted by lewislemitar2:

I'm not so sure. any mini gun with a legendary effect, except instigating, works wonders.

Bloody hell... just imagined a furious one... guess I need to test something tomorrow

I personally believe that the crippling weapon is more OP, over that. But yes that would just be crazy.

Don't forget the addition shot effect.