Energy Weapons?

[arkmay64]

Are energy weapons even worth it anymore? Would I need to go like energy weapon/pistol to avoid being useless half the time?

[Chester Rico]

They were good in the second half of the original version, but in the DC I found them extremely useless. Even when hitting enemies with "conductive" armor, they just do less damage than ARs and sniper rifles.

[Revolucas]

Yes on robots, definitely. Just with certain weapons though. Some EW weapons are crap. Pizipi comes with a nice EW (3xburst) and it does pretty good when you mod it for increased range. But honestly I wouldn't take it on a main Ranger.

[|$m0k!n|-Mr. 4HyDe-]

If you pick the two most useless guns in the game, then you shouldn't be surprised that you'll be more than useless all the time, especially in the end game and vs. Bots/CotC encounters.

The only time when EW operates at it's peak is vs. robots, but even then it just isn't good enough.. The rest of the time you'll be wondering why you wasted three points on the most useless perks in the game (overcharge, overload and atomize).

And handguns.. They are limited by their Armor Penetration. They'll do fine vs. low-armored foes, but that's really kind of a rare breed now.

[Revolucas]

Originally posted by |$m0k!n|-4HUD-DK:

If you pick the two most useless guns in the game, then you shouldn't be surprised that you'll be more than useless all the time, especially in the end game and vs. Bots/CotC encounters.

The only time when EW operates at it's peak is vs. robots, but even then it just isn't good enough.. The rest of the time you'll be wondering why you wasted three points on the most useless perks in the game (overcharge, overload and atomize).

And handguns.. They are limited by their Armor Penetration. They'll do fine vs. low-armored foes, but that's really kind of a rare breed now.

I disagree. Let's do some comparisons of Hand Gun with other weapons, like AR:

Tier 3-2

• FFS Benetto (AP 4; 9mm; Cap 12; Crit 1.5x; Dmg 36-42; Jam 4%; Armor Pen 3; Range 14m; 9.8 damage/AP)
  
• M16 (AP 5 / 7; 5.56mm; Cap 30; Crit 1.6x; Dmg 45-59 or 45-59 x2; Jam 2%; Armor Pen 4; Range 20m; 10.2 damage/AP)
  
• M24 (AP 7; .30-06 Cal; Cap 8; Crit 1.8x; Dmg 68-83; Jam 4%; Armor Pen 5; Range 30m; 10.8 damage/AP)

Tier 5-2

• Click 19 (AP 4; 9mm; Cap 15; Crit 1.5x; Dmg 76-86; Jam 2%; Pen 5; Range 13m; 20.3 damage/AP)
  
• AK-97 (AP 5 / 7; 7.62mm; Cap 30; Crit 1.5x; Dmg 100-125 or 100-125 x2; Jam 2%; Pen 6; Range 20m; 22.5 damage/AP)
  
• SVD (AP 7; 7.62mm; Cap 10; Crit 1.7x; Dmg 155-185; Jam 2%; Pen 9; Range 25m; 24.3 damage/AP)

Okay, so from this you can see that Hand Guns only do a couple less damage per AP compared to AR and Sniper Rifles, in every teir. Hand Guns have always, one less Armor Pen then AR and 2 less Armor Pen then Sniper Rifles.

But, here is why Hand Gun is superior then both: It's cheap AP cost. You can fire more shots in a turn then you can AR or Sniper Rifle. Say you have 12 AP, you can only fire 1 shot from the Sniper Rifle, 1xSingle-Shot and 1x2-Shot Burst from AR but with a Hand Gun you can fire 3 shots at full accuracy. AR will only be a superior option if you have 14 AP and high enough accuracy to overcome the penalties. All three of these weapon types have a cheaper AP variant that does less damage/AP. With the same 12 AP example, you can fire 4 shots with AR and pistol with these weapons but the pistol will be more accurate and more likely to crit.

Hand Guns have superior damage spread, the min and max are very tight and it has a high crit. rate. Since the inclusion of Precision Strikes the slightly less Armor Pen is not that big of an issue since you can do body shots to permanantly remove Armor Rating on enemies.

All three of these weapon types have a cheaper AP variant that does less damage/AP.

Someone did some simulation with the damage formula and it even shows that Hand Guns have superior damage output on a target with 10 armor rating: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14351&sid=ccf466bc180a00db39aebcd440def5c4

Hand Guns are definitely not among the most useless weapons in the game.

[|$m0k!n|-Mr. 4HyDe-]

You confirm my post, how is that an argument?

"And handguns.. They are limited by their Armor Penetration. They'll do fine vs. low-armored foes, but that's really kind of a rare breed now."

Take your numbers and put them vs. a foe with Armor rating 8 and 10, which is pretty much all of CA (except the Leatherjerks and a few stragglers) and you'll see the difference.

[arkmay64]

Originally posted by |$m0k!n|-4HUD-DK:

If you pick the two most useless guns in the game, then you shouldn't be surprised that you'll be more than useless all the time, especially in the end game and vs. Bots/CotC encounters.

The only time when EW operates at it's peak is vs. robots, but even then it just isn't good enough.. The rest of the time you'll be wondering why you wasted three points on the most useless perks in the game (overcharge, overload and atomize).

And handguns.. They are limited by their Armor Penetration. They'll do fine vs. low-armored foes, but that's really kind of a rare breed now.

Yeah, but don't most foes with really high armor have conductive? So wouldn't energy weapons be good against them? Or does late game have lots of enemies with high armor but not conductive?

Wouldn't know since I haven't there yet in the DC.

[|$m0k!n|-Mr. 4HyDe-]

Pretty much only Robots use conducive armor and a few stragglers of a few specific and scarce enemy types.

In the beginning I thought that anyone in CA with Armor Rating 8 or 10 would qualify, but they rarely do. None of the CotC do despite having both AC 8 and 10.. I don't quite understand how the hell anyone in this game could have AC 10 without it being conducive, but they do. There are some specific enemy types that do use conducive armor, but it's quite limited, like Robots, but I think it could be likely that the Red Scorpions Heavies in LA might use it too, but they all died too fast for me to notice, but the list of qualified targets in LA is also really short.

Bear in mind that Energy Weapons have pretty low base damage, they don't do critical hits and they have two damage modifiers vs. conducive 2.3 - 2.5 and non-conducive 0.5 - 0.7. With the End Perk: Atomize which add 30% damage vs. non-conducive you still get a damage modifier less than 1 at best. 0.7 + 30% = 0.91. 0.91 for gun that already has a pretty low base damage, that's really quite underwhelming in general use. And a multiplier of 2.5 applied to a pretty low base damage is not going to be awesome in any way. The best EW's in CA (Death Ray and Ion Beamer) do around 120-150 damage to the intended targets.. and about a third of that to anyone else, which just happens to be the majority.

At the time I replaced Pizepi with Pistol Pete she hadn't gotten any kills yet.. At all. Pistol Pete also totally failed to make a lasting impression of being more than just as big a loser as Pizepi.. Even though I gave him a Glock 19 with fulls mods before going to Rodia.. And leather Jerks are actually just the type of foes that really suits Handguns..

I guess, if you really want to make combat more challenging you should probably stick with Energy Weapons and Handguns and pray that the enemy will miss at every turn or use lots of Medic Packs if you hope to survive..

[Revolucas]

Oh I get it, you complain about weapons being sub-par because you are using them on companions with unoptimized combat stats.

[|$m0k!n|-Mr. 4HyDe-]

Sorry for the wall of text, you clearly missed something.

[Optimate]

Originally posted by arkmay64:

Are energy weapons even worth it anymore? Would I need to go like energy weapon/pistol to avoid being useless half the time?

I had an energy weapon specialist when I played the vanilla game and found her pretty useful, particularly when reaching the more robot infested locations. So I did the same in the DC and haven't noticed any particular difference. EW users are underpowered at the start - particulary when you're stuck with the laser pistol - compared to the AR/sniper rangers who'll start pulling ahead in the kill stats as soon as you get hold of the deadlier weapons that can be looted from dead raiders. But my EW users (I've now recruited Pizepi as well) are still doing solid work and now my ranger has got her hands on the meson cannon she's racking up one shot kills quite satisfactorily. I did give her a couple of points with SMGs for close range pest control but with careful positioning have rarely had much occasion to use it.

[Erei]

I'll be honest, pre-DC energy weapons were powerful for 1 reason only : gamma ray blaster. Other than that, even in endgame, they were not that great.
The gamma ray blaster was nerfed to oblivion, and in some way, EW were to. Maybe they are still somewhat useful endgame, but according to a lot of people they aren't.

[Flyboy Connor]

I used two energy weapon wielders for the whole game, and they never got any good. Assault rifles always were better -- much better. The good weapons now are assault rifles and sniper rifles -- especially sniper rifles got much improved in the DC as it is easier to get extra AP, so you can fire them twice per round. SMGs are okay, energy weapons and shotguns you can more or less skip. I intend to take one energy weapon in a new playthrough, just for the gamma ray blaster, which is "reasonable" though not great. But perhaps they will "unnerf" it a bit.

[arkmay64]

Originally posted by Flyboy Connor:

I used two energy weapon wielders for the whole game, and they never got any good. Assault rifles always were better -- much better. The good weapons now are assault rifles and sniper rifles -- especially sniper rifles got much improved in the DC as it is easier to get extra AP, so you can fire them twice per round. SMGs are okay, energy weapons and shotguns you can more or less skip. I intend to take one energy weapon in a new playthrough, just for the gamma ray blaster, which is "reasonable" though not great. But perhaps they will "unnerf" it a bit.

Are pistols good? Seem like a nice option for a low AP option for kill a lot of low HP enemies. And shotguns seems nice for destroying cover, just with enough points for the "always destroy cover" perk.

And how much AP do you need to fire sniper rifles twice a turn? 10? 12?

[Stuurminator]

Energy weapons can both be very useful to a squad, but you have to play to their strengths. Specifically, precision strikes.

Energy weapons in particular are very useful for precision strikes because of their decent inherent accuracy, lack of penalties at any range, and ability to accept scopes and underbarrel mods. These give them the accuracy chops they need to consistently pull off precision strikes. I consistently open my battles by having Pizepi Joren shoot enemies in their arms, dishing out -35%s and -50%s to the enemy's hit chance, and maybe following it up with some torso shots to knock down their armour.

Now, do energy weapons get a lot of kills? No, there aren't a lot of conductive enemies in the game, and even at their best they just don't hand out that much damage. But I nonetheless find them invaluable for turning enemy heavy hitters into ♥♥♥♥♥cats.

On higher difficulties, you WILL need those precision strikes to prevent enemies from hitting you, because enemies now do enough damage to wreck your day and you don't do enough damage to put them down before they can attack you.

[Gozer]

does the game show the armor threshold for energy weapons? Can't find it anywhere ... weapon info, description, ... nothing.

Also, is there any way to know what armor counts as "conductive", or if enemy is wearing it? Well, other than shooting at target and looking at what number pops up ...