Looking for Low AP cost / High Critical Damage weapon

[Intra]

I'm considering respeccing to a full critical strike build and I was wondering if anyone has encountered a gun that would work well. One that can shoot more than 5 shots in VATS with maxed AGI would be great, as well as one that either has a high damage or a critical strike bonus. Especially if you can put a critical strike frame on top of it.

Righteous Authority is a bit too expensive in VATS and the critical multiplier doesn't work; any help would be appreciated.

[Rawmeat]

this is late answer, but... FYI.
Righteous Authority is one of the best crit weapons, IF, you do good mods like this:
->Change it from rifle to pistol, by changing the grip - this almost doubles the shots with vats
->Use mods that speak about increasing critical damage, the lower tier one gives x2 crit damage and the best one gives x4 crit damage, thats insane.
-> do not use scopes, they increase AP cost, use iron sights mods
-> do not use long barrels, they increase AP cost.
-> for best acuracy in vats increase your weapon range with mods (so, dont use muzzles)

taking this into acount, plus, using a couple of AP cost reduction armor you will achive the maximum 16 shot VATs. not thats usefull because your AP will almost always be full considering the LUCK perks, even if you only have 5 AGI like I do.

about the damage:
Damage Critical = DamagePipBoy + DamageWeaponBase(with mods) x crit Multiplier(1 + ... + ...).
so...

damage Pip Boy = damage weapon base with mods + perks (Gunslinger perk in this example doubles damage at max rank) = Laser pistol base + mods + perk= 24 + Boosted photon agitator (7 dmg + 4x crit) + Sniper Barrel (20dmg worth it if you already capped at 16 shots in VATS) = 24+7+20 = 51dmg *2 (perk) = 102dmg

DamageWeaponBase = 51
critMultplier = 1 + 1.5 (perk) + 4 (mod) + 0.25 (energy weapon bobblehead) + 0.5 (magazines) +2 (lucky special from the legendary weapon) = 9,25

total damage on crit = 102 + 52*8,25 = 583 damage (this is ignoring enemy energy resistance ofc)

as an example, Mirelurk queen has something like 1000HP, and considering critical hits are 100% hit chance, you can unload critical hits always on the weak spot 100% of the time for even greater damage.

probly there is some mistake in the math... but should give you an idea
ps. The damage is similar or even better than sneaking damage with rifles, until you get the best rifle in the game, the Gauss Rifle (or actualy the Musket aswell) If you get rifle + instigating legendary mod + sneak, then sneak is always better lol :P

[Super-XIX]

A Laser Pistol with the best Photon capacitor, a short barrel, a reflex sight and the sharpshooter grip (with the VATS-enhanced legendary if you can get it) is pretty much a laser Deliverer with a much larger magazine and better sights, but no silencer.

[Rawmeat]

Originally posted by The Superjew:

A Laser Pistol with the best Photon capacitor, a short barrel, a reflex sight and the sharpshooter grip (with the VATS-enhanced legendary if you can get it) is pretty much a laser Deliverer with a much larger magazine and better sights, but no silencer.

thing is, for crit build photon agitator = 4 x more crit multiplier, thats why its better than photon capacitor, also, no balistic weapon has 4x crit multiplier, only 2x.
But considering laser weapons do less damage than balistic weapons due to the damage/resistance formula, I dont know if that gap is enough to keep laser weapons on top for crit builds