Pulse Rifle vs Alien Blaster

[dwaynegand]

Both these weapons deal the most damage of any single shot weapon to Frank Horrigan due to his armor's weakness to electricity. The Pulse Rifle however lacks specific perks used by other rifles for increasing accuracy at long range, meaning that it would require a tremendous amount of skill points invested in Energy Weapons to inflict targeted shots to the eyes at maximum distance. The Alien Blaster on the other hand has a perk that increases its accuracy by 20%. It would also receive another accuracy bonus from One Hander. So I'm thinking that the Pulse Rifle would be better used by Fast Shot characters or Marcus while the Alien Blaster is more suited for targeted shots alongside the Gauss Rifle. What do you think?

[Johnny Casey]

Alien blaster has only 10 range, so the accuracy bonus comes along with it is marginal at best - you need to get close to the enemy anyway. The min/max damage falloff is also an issue; while 30 - 90 dmg looks impressive on paper, you rarely get to see it consistently scoring over 80 dmg. It also uses small energy cells, which means it receives no dmg or armor penetration bonus like the other end game ammo does. (2mm EC, 4.7mm caseless) The weapon itself is generally overrated simply by its "listed" damage, and you'd be much better off using gauss pistol instead if you're going with one hander trait.

Marcus doesn't really have high energy weapons skill to utilize pulse rifle. Having only about 100%-ish skill will make him miss quite frequent at medium range. He'll do just fine with turbo plasma rifle, which has the weapon perk that boosts its accuracy.

[babuk.fracal]

Pulse rifle has a good range and generally do good damage, the penetration effect is helpfull. (I can easily kill in one or two shot a soldier from an enclave patrol with that)

Alien pistol has a bad range and his damage is too random.

After that it depend how is your character, when I fight frank horrigan I used a pulse rifle and a pulse pistol ( i could do around 75 and 175 damage by myself)

And since i was doing everything to "optimise" this character, I free the toxic gaz (wich doesn't kill the vault 13 habitant and your village people and some npc and npc wearing power armor) to get rid of all weaker npc to not get overwhelmed in the oil rig and killed all the npc that give me karma when i killed them and use jet to make one fight easier.
(wich took some time since one part of the oil rig is filled with people in power armor and gauss rifle and more)

My character was level 31 (I had the gifted trait)
I had 9 action point and i had better critical and sniper. (i won't talk about all the perk i had since not too important for this fight)
And i can't deny the fact that i had tag energy weapon and manage to get to 196% at this point.

My companions were :
Marcus level max with a pulse rifle
Cassidy level max with gauss rilfe
Vic level 4 with gauss rifle
and also goris but he do nothing in this fight.
I convince granite and his friend to help me
I hack the turrets

But you don't need to worry, if i beat him easily with all that, that mean its totally possible to defeat him with less than that.

[dwaynegand]

okay, so if I used the Pulse Rifle for a sniper build as my two handed weapon of choice, what's the best pistol to go with it in terms of damage, range, and ammo conservation purposes? Should a sniper using targeted shots also carry a Gauss Rifle for extreme range combat?

[Johnny Casey]

You shouldn't be using Pulse Rifle for a sniper build in the first place. The weapon is inaccurate, has short range, and overall under-whelming compare to Turbo Plasma Rifle.

People like you often mistook that the electrical damage type is far superior than anything else, but in reality, plasma or normal damage type is just as strong as electrical if you actually look into the game's data and compare some of enemies' and armors' resistance. Only Frank Horrigan has vastly lower electrical resistance, but you're only gonna fight him once, so it wouldn't make sense to make a conclusion that the electrical weapons to be "the best" in that regard.

I've already explained the best pistol you should be using. You can read my previous post again for the reference if you haven't already.

Gauss Rifle is a good choice. You may want to choose between rifle and pistol, depending on your max action points.

But in the end, Big Guns rules all, cause they don't ever miss.

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

But in the end, Big Guns rules all, cause they don't ever miss.

Only issue being that you need to a lot of ammunition and that you need the fast shot trait if you want to only use big guns (and grenade since lower ap cost)

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

People like you often mistook that the electrical damage type is far superior than anything else, but in reality, plasma or normal damage type is just as strong as electrical if you actually look into the game's data and compare some of enemies' and armors' resistance.

Can't deny that normal damage is good with gauss rilfe but i don't really agree for plasma.
35-70 damage is quite a gap compared to 54-78 + penetration weapon perk.
I see it more like :

pulse rifle has the best damage for single shot weapon but isn't the best when fighting lower enemy in place that arn't close quarter or mid range combat and require high energy weapon skill.

turbo plasma rifle is good when not fighting thing such as enclave patrol and has really good range and accuracy even if you dont have the biggest energy weapon skill.
( it litterally helped me wipe the raiders working for bishop.)

[dwaynegand]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

I've already explained the best pistol you should be using. You can read my previous post again for the reference if you haven't already.

You're referring to the Gauss Pistol, which is the pistol of choice for long range sniping if you choose One Hander. What's the best pistol if you do not take One Hander? The Alien Blaster does more damage than the Pulse Pistol even if it lacks the Weapon Penetrate perk, and it's electrical damage can easily bypass Horrigan's armor. It's max damage is higher than the Pulse Rifle.

But if not the Alien Blaster, what pistol would work well in a Sniper build alongside the Gauss Rifle and Turbo Plasma Rifle?

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

But if not the Alien Blaster, what pistol would work well in a Sniper build alongside the Gauss Rifle and Turbo Plasma Rifle?

As he say gauss pistol, it has 50 range wich is huge, it has good ap cost wich make it good as a weapon and has a finishing weapon, 22-32 damage doesnt seem much but with the right perk it has good damage and it has one of the best ammunition in the game.
I like to call it the noob killer because of how much efficient it is against low enemy.

[dwaynegand]

but both Gauss weapons have a 50 hex range, the longest in the game. Is there a point to using two weapons with that enormous range?

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

but both Gauss weapons have a 50 hex range, the longest in the game. Is there a point to using two weapons with that enormous range?

The thing is that usually people mainly use one weapon and sometime use a secondary weapon, in this case the best pistol would be the gauss pistol.
The alien blaster and the solar scorcher are still good but they doesn't work in every single situation while there is no situation where the gauss pistol is bad.

[Johnny Casey]

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Can't deny that normal damage is good with gauss rilfe but i don't really agree for plasma.
35-70 damage is quite a gap compared to 54-78 + penetration weapon perk.

Critical in this game bypasses armor, and the perk that Turbo Plasma Rifle has makes it easier to score critical by going for the eyeshots. Not so much with Pulse Rifle, because of its inaccuracy.

Weapon Penetrate perk only bypasses the targets damage threshold (DT), and doesn't do anything against the damage resistance (DR), and since many of the enemies who are highly resistant to electrical damage have high DR instead of DT, the weapon perk for Pulse Rifle is almost useless.

Plasma Rifle is more reliable - just like how you described the Alien Blaster and Solar Schorcher, there are lots of situation where Pulse Rifle shows its limit, where Plasma Rifle always shine and never fail you. The listed damage on Pulse Rifle looks impressive, but in practice, the potential damage that Plasma Rifle can inflict is the same, or higher.

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

You're referring to the Gauss Pistol, which is the pistol of choice for long range sniping if you choose One Hander. What's the best pistol if you do not take One Hander?

The trait affects all pistols in the game, so not having the trait in the first place wouldn't have much difference in terms of 'What is the best pistol to have in Fallout 2'.

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

The Alien Blaster does more damage than the Pulse Pistol even if it lacks the Weapon Penetrate perk, and it's electrical damage can easily bypass Horrigan's armor. It's max damage is higher than the Pulse Rifle.

Alien Blaster has short range, huge damage fall-off, near useless weapon perk, and it lacks any kinds of good ammo modifier.

I've stated this; the weapon certainly looks good on paper, but in practice, it's not really reliable to use it all the time, even as your backup. Gauss Pistol, or even Pulse Pistol performs way better.

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

but both Gauss weapons have a 50 hex range, the longest in the game. Is there a point to using two weapons with that enormous range?

I need to bring this up; the way how you're addressing these questions giving me the impression that you've already set what answer the people are going to give you before posting this, and you're constantly throwing out questions that will eventually lead the discussion towards the answer you have set in the first place.

It feels like you just want to see people saying "Yeah, Alien Blaster is good. Your theory crafting is correct, and you should go for it" in this discussion and keep asking things that will eventually lead the topic towards that, because otherwise, I don't really get why you're doing this.

[dwaynegand]

well I tend to have in my endgame arsenal at least one practical weapon that can deal good damage to Frank Horrigan because I don't want to depend primarily on the turrets to take him down.

If the Turbo Plasma Rifle deals more damage than the Gauss Rifle, should you just use it instead of the Gauss Rifle?

[EASY PETE]

pulse

[dwaynegand]

Originally posted by KIM JONG FATASS FARTGAS:

pulse

pistol or rifle?