Are energy weapons absolutely inferior to everything else?

[Nevasith]

It appears that even with robot multiplier the damage is simply inferior to assault weapons or snipers. Early game, shotguns, smg and even machine guns absolutely dominate energy weapons.
Late game skills and perks don't give energy any edge over conventional weapons and enemies with conductive armor seem rare (even some robotic enemies don't have conductive armor!)

[Whirl]

They're kinda weak in Arizona as a primary weapon, but it's worth having ONE person with a couple of points to use some of that ammo. Once you're moving on, you might actually reach enemies to use it on.

[Nevasith]

Thanks, I'll put it on my smg wielding leader - seems like smg won't be super good against enemies that would be more susceptible to energy weapons

[Crypto Gamer]

There is one unique energy weapon "found" in end of Arizona I think it is called gamma ray blaster with burst fire it has the best dmg/ap of all energy weapons,might be slightly better than tier 6 ARs againts conductive targets.
You can find depleted uranium in a toaster and trade it for the weapon back at HQ.
For me Ralphy was the guy with energy weapons just for this gun.Having more than 1e. weapon user is not recommended.

[Radiac]

Spoilers ahead. Fair warning.

First, I should say that California and Arizona are two different stories in terms of energy weapons. In both cases, I would ONLY use energy weapons versus robots, but in those fights against Slicer-Dicers, Scorpitrons, Meson Cannons, etc they're noticeably better than anything that shoots bullets. If you want to fire off all of your rockets at that kind of stuff, be my guest, but I used a pulse rifle, a gamma blaster (and in AZ, Vax) against most of them myself and didn't have much trouble. In Cali you want to upgrade the Pulse Rifles to Ion Beamers though. The nice thing about the Ion Beamer is, it's about the best energy gun you'll ever need, and you can get a ton of them from fighting random encounters against Matthias's goons. Sadly, they themselves aren't robots, so their own weapon drops, as good as they are, don't work so well against them. That said, the melee weapons those guys drop at random don't come all too frequently, but you can get Plasma Hammers and Proton Axes. At least the last time I played you could.

In AZ, The killers and octotrons etc do take more damage from energy weapons, but in that case the difference doesn't matter much because they're not as big and tough as the Slicer Dicers anyway. You can use Assaults and Snipers on the smaller bots and not notice a difference, I would say.

In Arizona, the best energy weapon, in my opinion, is Vax. Keeping him alive is not always easy though, because he charges into fights like he has a death wish, and he only has 50 hit points or something, but you can use Mechanics to repair him, I believe. He dies very quickly in Cali, or did on me.

The Gamma Blaster is really good too, but you need to do content in a certain (somewhat disjointed) order to get it early enough to use it where you want to. In order to make the most out of the Gamma Blaster, here's what I did and would recommend:

1. Get the radiation suit upgrades and go to Titan Canyon.

2. Do that map, get the monk, get to the end of the maze with as little fighting as possible (you'll need to kill some pests, like the big lizards, etc).

3. On the next part of the Titan Canyon map, a guy who is clearly a scorpion crack addict will ask you for one pint of your sludge. Give it to him while you still have a monk protecting you. Then go over the the right hand side of that map and get a replacement pint of sludge. Then proceed to the base in the endzone area of that map. Lose the monk, talk to all of the NPCs, the doctor (give him the contact lenses, if you still have them, you'll get a book), go down the hole and talk to the cyborg doctor underground, etc.

4. Before you can leave, the leader guy will ask you to do a mission, accept that.

5. Before you leave, go talk to the scorpion crack guy and he'll give you the code to enter the missile silo from the elevator that's near him. Use that, go in there, shoot however many roving guards you have to shoot in order to get to the silo room (the best path I can recommend is straight north from the elevators until you hit a wall and can't go any farther north, at that point, go west as possible, hugging the north wall as it curves around). Once you get to the silo room, open the toaster there and get the depleted unranium, loot the room, but don't click on any computers or people. Then retrace your steps and go back out of the silo the way you came in, then leave Titan Canyon, depleted uranium in hand.

6. On the world map, immediately go back to the Ranger Citadel and give the uranium to Mercaptain, she gives you the Gamma Blaster.

7. Gamma Blaster in hand, take that and a Pulse Rifle or two and go to the Abandoned Railway Yard and fight the small robots in the south area, loot it. Hug the west side as you travel north and free Vax (he's standing inside a derailed container car near the north west edge of the map, the area around it is mined). With Vax, the Gamma Blaster, and 1-2 pulse rifles, you should be ok against the Slicer Dicers, so set up that fight and try to get the first shot in, and make it a good one. Be careful though, Vax is fragile and the Slicer-Dicers explode when they die. They also have a leap attack where they jump up in the air and land on people, which causes them to get right up close and deal explosion damage when you kill them. Best to keep Vax as far away as possible when you snipe or rocket the first Slicer-Dicer, because Vax is pretty fast and will move up in round one. I also recommend spreading the team out a lot so the S-D's can't land in your group center of mass and wail on you as such.

8. Go back through Titan Canyon. I believe you don't have to go through it the long hard way a second time, you can just click past it or click on it and choose "enter from the west" or something. Then head to Damonta, which is overrun with bots, and use your energy weapons there too.

[Whirl]

I'd say have one main skill, use an Energy weapon is somebody's second weapon. No rush in levelling, but that's fine because the enemies you need it for won't turn up for a while anyway.

As for those Slicer Dicers, apart from firing up Vax, you have explosives; you might as well use them here as anywhere.

[Radiac]

Originally posted by Whirl:

I'd say have one main skill, use an Energy weapon is somebody's second weapon. No rush in levelling, but that's fine because the enemies you need it for won't turn up for a while anyway.

As for those Slicer Dicers, apart from firing up Vax, you have explosives; you might as well use them here as anywhere.

If you have explosives that deal more damage to a Slicer-Dicer than your Pulse Rifle or Gamma Blaster, or Sniper Rifle will do in one round, sure. I wouldn't waste an attack using a stick of dynamite or pipe bomb though, certainly. LAW rocket or RPG-7, maybe, especially if I can hit 2 Slicer-Dicers in the blast without hurting my own guys, but remember, they will jump into melee with you.

You just need to reduce them to zero HP fast, that's the main thing. You can do called shots with the Sniper rifles at the S-D's various target body parts, like the CPU or whatever, that can be helpful, I find. They're susceptible to that particular attack because they're so big that they're actually easier to hit that way (which is the advantage you get that pays for them being totally unhackable).

[mrp8196]

Works great against scorpion to get great armor. Also if you kill a human with it a cool death. Some have low Ap useage. Ion Beamers for everyone except main who get heavy. when thinks get hard through frags at crowds. Rockets are heavy, 1 shot only\, and are not cheap. use energy weapons on robots. It freaking murderers them fast

[Radiac]

You will have enough leftover skill points on most guys in the late game that you can give 3-4 people enough ranks in Energy Weapons that they can shoot Ion Beamers for effect in Cali. In AZ you might have to pick one or two people to be the "oh no, robots, quick draw my Energy weapon!" guys.

[persocom01]

energy weapons have several interesting properties:

1. work regardless of armor value.
granted, it is terrible against anything with light armor, and only passable with all the perks.

2. no crits.
for additional damage, aim for the head. In addition, this works well with certain traits that make it impossible for you to crit, like the double damage if an enemy crits you trait and the no crits while not drunk trait.

3. same ammo throughout the game.
you use the same ammo in arizona and california. I don't remember how much it costs, but you don't use energy weapons very often, so you normally have a surplus.

4. work at any range.
what I mean by this is that most weapons work only at certain ranges. Melee of course, is melee, but smg, shotguns and sniper rifles all have a preferred range, and are either unable to hit targets at long range or incur penalties for engaging at close range. Energy weapons, however, have no such problem. There's an energy weapon for every range, even if you have to carry more than one of them. This makes it possible for a character to specialize in energy weapons only if you lack skill points.

in practice, energy weapons are terribad at the start of the game and gradually get better as the game progresses. The later in the game, the more robots you encounter. In addition, the later in the game, the higher your skill, which allows you to use your energy weapons guy for targeted shots to disable enemies even if his damage is sh!t and for them to be passable with perks if that character only uses energy weapons.

there is only one gamma ray blaster in the game, so I would recommend at most 2 energy weapon users per team, leaning towards 1.