LATE GAME LASER WEAPON AI DAMAGE

[Muscalay]

I have installed countless mods to make laser weapons more powerful in the late game. all of them have worked, now I can one shot AI with any laser gun if i want to. BUT FOR SOME REASON THE AI DAMAGE NEVER CHANGES! no matter how many mods or damage boosters I try, laser weapons do basically NO DAMAGE TO THE PLAYER. Meanwhile all of the ballistic weapons shred me, and MY laser bolts I SHOOT destroy the enemy because of my realism mods. but whenever I go against gunners or brotherhood of steel, its just a cakewalk. someone pls help I know there's gotta be some way to fix this. even better I'm playing PREV GEN so that ain't the issue.

[The Inept European]

Interesting.

Assuming your DR and ER are roughly equal?
I guess this would get to the specifics of how those mods work.

For example they may work by adding Perks to the PC that the NPCs don't get.

[The Inept European]

To be honest you are facing an uphill battle because the game is deeply biased in favour of ballistic weapons and specifically biased against energy weapons.

Probably the simplest modding methods would be the most effective for your objective of having NPC laser weapons be dangerous.

Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to change the damage type of lasers under the hood to be ballistic (you would also need to change the weapon mods). Leave the red and blue lights and just forget about ER.

Another simple fix would be to bump up the base DMG of the laser gun (and laser musket, gatling and turrets). This would not have quite as big an effect as changing them to ballistic but it would be even easier to implement.

Anyway OP I applaud your efforts to MEWGA (Make Energy Weapons Great Again) and sympathise.

[Muscalay]

Yeah the mods I have right now boost laser damage but it has no effect on npc weapons. Idk why this would be because every time I pick up an npc weapon it has about the same damage if not higher than a fully upgraded combat rifle. It’s not perk based unless they’re hidden perks. All I want I realistic damage for things :(

[The Inept European]

You may not be seeing the same stats as when an NPC uses it. The stats you see include all your own perks. NPCs have few if any perks.

The problem of increasing the base damage actually is that then you will still do way more damage than they do.

[The Inept European]

Maybe the best solution is to remove your weapon perks (including energy weapon magazine perks) to create a more "level playing field"?

[The Inept European]

You could dial down all the damage perks so they are only +5% per rank instead of +20% per rank.

But - still doesn't explain why the NPCs can harm you with ballistic weapons but hardly at all with energy weapons.

The biases in the game against laser weapons mainly apply to the player, because they relate to perks and criticals and other multipliers, which the player uses but which NPCs rarely get to use.

[The Inept European]

@ghpstage is the expert on this. Here's an old thread I was able to find.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/1836811737971545934/

The root problem basically is that energy weapons don't get any penetration benefit from criticals, stealth, perks and other DMG multipliers. They get the buff to DMG but not to penetration. Ballistics get the buffs to both. That gives them geometrically better penetrating damage.

That's going to be really hard to fix.

Maybe give multiple levels of armour piercing to NPC lasers? You could add an "if not player" conditional on the receiver mod attribute.

Or as I mentioned before just convert all lasers or all energy weapons under the hood to ballistic. That's more work, a big overhaul, but it's probably the most certain way to equalise energy weapons re ballistic weapons.

[The Inept European]

The more I think about it the less I am inclined to believe that the game's bias against energy weapons explains your observed issues. NPCs just don't take much advantage of these multipliers (that are broken for ER).

What are the laser mods you are using? Maybe they are the problem.