Minigun is so under powered.

[-{AU}-Piracy]

I made a power armour character specialised in heavy weapons. I wanted to do a brotherhood play though so I wanted to use power armour and the mini gun 5mm. It just feels so under powered and it chews through the ammo. I am using the incendiary mini gun with all the mods and still seem to take ages to burn through a single contact. I take out my explosive shotgun and well contacts die.

[Hugh G. Rection]

Yeah, the default minigun ROF/DPS are garbage.

[id795078477]

Wait till you get an explosive one and up your demo expert to level 4.

[DouglasGrave]

It's true that the minigun is relatively weak, but comparing it to an Explosive shotgun does it no favours since that's one of the most powerful weapon/effects combinations for Explosive.

Ironically, the minigun itself is one of the best options for Explosive since its combination of being a ballistic heavy weapon with a high firing rate suits the effect incredibly well. In particular, it can gain a boost to the added explosive damage from both the Demolitions Expert perk and the Heavy Gunner perk, since Heavy Gunner actually has two separate damage bonuses, one to base heavy weapons damage and an equal one to explosive damage (designed to support explosive heavy weapons like the missile launcher, since explosive damage and regular damage are treated separately).

[Krash Megiddo]

I set aside my minigun to save the ammo for boss fights. But then I get through the battle and don't need it. Finding 5mm in the wild is rare so I only have about 2k rounds.

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Yeah, needs modded to make them worthwhile :(
You should NOT have to rely on an extremely rare legendary to make them worth using!

And as usual the Devs put "balance" before common sense, sigh
And miniguns spin up almost instantly

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by id795078477:

Wait till you get an explosive one and up your demo expert to level 4.

This. I have did a Heavy Gunner/Power Armor build run before. If you gear and Perk for it, it can be a very effective and fun way to play. The Explosive mini gun is a very rare drop however. I have only had it drop once and it was in a run I was not doing the type of build for it. :P But I have watched videos of it just shredding enemies like fire in a toilet paper warehouse.

The Ashmaker, a mini gun which does +15 fire damage to enemies, is a decent Mini-gun you can get from doing the "Big Dig quest" from Bobby No Nose.

But once you get the Aeternus, the only true "Never Ending " range weapon in the game, Heavy Gunner begins to really shine. It's not a ballistic mini-gun, rather a energy weapon like the mini-gun. But Load a Fusion core in it and you never have to add ammo again. It is also obtainable from doing the Nuka World Quest "Amoral Combat" by defeating the one npc which will drop it.

And you don't have to do the Raider gang quests there to get it if you are ok using a console command. Which does not give you the weapon, but starts the quest to get it.

[Bored Peon]

Use the minigun in VATS with a high perception. Hip firing does not have nearly half the accuracy that VATS does.

Originally posted by Krash Megiddo:

I set aside my minigun to save the ammo for boss fights. But then I get through the battle and don't need it. Finding 5mm in the wild is rare so I only have about 2k rounds.

Ammo scrounging perk returns 5mm quite often as the additional ammo result in corpses. Other than that you have to go play with super mutants in certain areas.

[George W. Kush]

mods: power armor heavy impact, hollywood bullets & tracers, vapor trails & tracers, live dismemberment, the deadly commonwealth & minigun improvements then go into xedit and change the minigun speed(fire rate) from 3.0 to 6.0 and enjoy the show :p

[socialmediaaddress3]

The Minigun has been nerfed on Fallout 4.
Here are a couple of mods I use to un-nerf it, nothing crazy but closer where it ought to be so heavy weapons perk is not a red headed stepchild:

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/69767

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/63172

As for ammo use the workshop DLC to make yourself an ammo factory. :)

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by Terrifying Turnip:

They overcompensated for how broken bleed miniguns were at release. My 1.0 bleed minigun could melt a deathclaw in half a second.

Well, they did not nerf the damage potential of the Explosive Mini-Gun if you have 4 ranks also of the Demolition Perk. It sheds any enemy pretty fast. Maybe not a half second for a Death Claw. Like 1 or 2 secs. lol.

[Lord Nighthawk]

The release build was 1.1.30 :P
And yes, the miniguns from fallout 4 upwards where problematic as most stuff that deals small single shot damage. The problem is a mixture out of the small damage, no penetration available on the small caliber as well as bethesda that keep stuck on using DR as armor defense calculation instead of fallout typical DT. That means that, with increasing levels, enemies get pretty fast enough DR to simply reduce the already tiny amount of minigun-damage to nearly nothing forcing the player to pump hundrets if not thousands of rounds into even medium enemies.

Bethesda tried to balance this forward and backward, extensive in fallout 76, but in the end they seem to have surrendered and give everyone now a free explosive minigun in an event that´s pretty easy to do in FO76.

Explosive is powerful as well as wounding. Problematic is that there is - apart from a power armor modification - nothing that shields you from explosive damage in fallout 4 so it can be difficult to be used inside smaller corridors as you will often also damage yourself with this setup.

If i want to play minigun in fallout 4 i mostly look out for a wounding one, that´s failsave and wounding is a more believeable result of using a weapon compared to explosive that would be an ammo type effect but as bethesda does not care about fallouts typical ammo types available explosive is not that immersive.
I also use Degenerate Daks attachment pack:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/76924?tab=description
as well as a spinup remover (finally a bugfree one) as miniguns simply have no spinup
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/43350/?tab=description