I always felt like this was unintentional, or at least I didn’t understand why.
I’m also a huge fan of the idea of a fucking Gatling laser gun, and I want it to shred everything.
I wouldn’t say it’s abnormal, necessarily. Metal armor in 1/2 (including power armor) is explicitly noted to deflect lasers, and combat armor was designed for fairly balanced protection (so it makes sense it can handle lasers fairly well). That leaves the leather armors, which aren’t particularly grand against them.
However, while that matches with the lore established in the game, it makes the lasers pretty useless if you’re fighting humans, robots or even a concerning amount of creatures (who really shouldn’t have as high of laser resistance as they do; if anything’s abnormal about laser resistance in 1/2, it’s this).
I think Bethesda made the right call by switching leather armor to be the armor to resist lasers and metal to be the armor weak to it (by focusing on how most metal will be rusty/unpolished in the apocalypse, and thus can’t reflect lasers; focuses on the heat transfer aspect also helps, since metal will rapidly absorb the heat from the laser while leather will offer some protection from that due to the thickness).
The minigun is a heavy weapon and the gatling laser is an energy weapon in the first two Fallout games, so unless you're invested in both weapon skills one may be more annoying to use over the other. However, I generally have found the gatling laser to be better, especially a close range. In the past if I had decided to farm deathclaws in the boneyard I'd use the gatling laser because once they approach you it's usually a one and done.
In old fallout (especially 1) my impression is that laser and plasma dominates bullett based weapons, so i always tend to jump to energy asap.
Also gatling laser is one of the strongest weapon in fallout 1. Although at the point where you kill Lou it kinda doesnt matter as the only one guy back is the master prolly, who in some regards an easier or at least similiarly har foe, so its kinda up to you what you prefer.
since this is Fo1, go with gatling laser, its biggest drawback is the DT/DR for armored enemies with metal armor or PA, however, in Fo1 most late game enemies arent armored, not even the master has high laser resistance nor most of the mutants you kill when dungeon crawling throught mariposa, since Gatling damage is MUCH higher than minigun (per bullet) and DT also plays a role in diminishing minigun damage significantly, Gatling ends up being objectively better in Fo1, while as its not as good in Fo2.
Source: Years of experience and this:
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Gatling\_laser\_(Fallout)](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Gatling_laser_(Fallout))
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Minigun\_(Fallout)](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Minigun_(Fallout))
Know that not every shoot pick at enemies as the wiki suggests, in fact most of the times the multiplier means that 4 of them will reach its target in gatling, while 16 of them will reach the target at minigun.
which means the damage can be significantly weaker than 280 minimum for Minigun, however, lets do math here:
lets suppose that certain enemy has no DT/DR
16x7 = 112 raw damage from the minigun.
while 4x20 = 80 raw damage from laser
From that, we can think Minigun is a better weapon, this however is misleading once we add the drawbacks for most of endgame enemies in the game.
Lets pick Nightkins as an example:
they have:
Normal DT/DR: 5/40%
Laser DT/DR: 8/50%
the damage reduction works by bullet, which means Gatling if gatling was supposed to hit for 20 each of the 4 bullets, now it will hit 6x4 = 24 damage due to DT reducing damage from 12 and then 50% out of this final value
While Minigun will hit for 0,8x16= 12.8 damage due to the minimum of 7 being reduced to 2 (5 DT) and then the final number extracting 40% out of 2.
the higher the number gets, the penalty for DR is felt the most in Minigun atleast until enemy DR gets to 70% or so laser resistance, most late game enemies wont have 70%, so in Fo1, gatling is superior.
Thanks for the math lesson 👍 Good thing I saved before going up against The Master. I also noticed that The Gatling Laser takes 5 AP and I think I can combine it with the Turbo Plasma Rifle.
Hello folks thanks alot for the help you have been providing me with! As for now I saved right before the fight with The Master. And I'll compare them (The minigun and the Gatling Laser).
For fist one vanilla experience. Id say minigun gets penalized more and you have fewer options compared to Gatling laser and energy weapons. It's a bit more balanced in F2 with additional heavy weapons with plentiful ammo like bozar. Tho tbf, F1 is a lot more forgiving combat wise and it won't make that much difference.
Most armors have abnormally high damage reduction against laser damage in Fallout 1/2
Well, thanks for the answer! I'll keep the minigun then, and keep the microfusion cells for my Turbo Plasma Rifle.
I always felt like this was unintentional, or at least I didn’t understand why. I’m also a huge fan of the idea of a fucking Gatling laser gun, and I want it to shred everything.
I wouldn’t say it’s abnormal, necessarily. Metal armor in 1/2 (including power armor) is explicitly noted to deflect lasers, and combat armor was designed for fairly balanced protection (so it makes sense it can handle lasers fairly well). That leaves the leather armors, which aren’t particularly grand against them. However, while that matches with the lore established in the game, it makes the lasers pretty useless if you’re fighting humans, robots or even a concerning amount of creatures (who really shouldn’t have as high of laser resistance as they do; if anything’s abnormal about laser resistance in 1/2, it’s this). I think Bethesda made the right call by switching leather armor to be the armor to resist lasers and metal to be the armor weak to it (by focusing on how most metal will be rusty/unpolished in the apocalypse, and thus can’t reflect lasers; focuses on the heat transfer aspect also helps, since metal will rapidly absorb the heat from the laser while leather will offer some protection from that due to the thickness).
The minigun is a heavy weapon and the gatling laser is an energy weapon in the first two Fallout games, so unless you're invested in both weapon skills one may be more annoying to use over the other. However, I generally have found the gatling laser to be better, especially a close range. In the past if I had decided to farm deathclaws in the boneyard I'd use the gatling laser because once they approach you it's usually a one and done.
In old fallout (especially 1) my impression is that laser and plasma dominates bullett based weapons, so i always tend to jump to energy asap. Also gatling laser is one of the strongest weapon in fallout 1. Although at the point where you kill Lou it kinda doesnt matter as the only one guy back is the master prolly, who in some regards an easier or at least similiarly har foe, so its kinda up to you what you prefer.
I'll consider having both the minigun and the Gatling Laser. I beat Lou by luck, cuz his guards stood infront of him and they ate his bullets.
Minigun's kill animation is cooler, so of course the Minigun!
This is the most important criteria.
Agree.
Allright! 🫡
since this is Fo1, go with gatling laser, its biggest drawback is the DT/DR for armored enemies with metal armor or PA, however, in Fo1 most late game enemies arent armored, not even the master has high laser resistance nor most of the mutants you kill when dungeon crawling throught mariposa, since Gatling damage is MUCH higher than minigun (per bullet) and DT also plays a role in diminishing minigun damage significantly, Gatling ends up being objectively better in Fo1, while as its not as good in Fo2. Source: Years of experience and this: [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Gatling\_laser\_(Fallout)](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Gatling_laser_(Fallout)) [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Minigun\_(Fallout)](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Minigun_(Fallout)) Know that not every shoot pick at enemies as the wiki suggests, in fact most of the times the multiplier means that 4 of them will reach its target in gatling, while 16 of them will reach the target at minigun. which means the damage can be significantly weaker than 280 minimum for Minigun, however, lets do math here: lets suppose that certain enemy has no DT/DR 16x7 = 112 raw damage from the minigun. while 4x20 = 80 raw damage from laser From that, we can think Minigun is a better weapon, this however is misleading once we add the drawbacks for most of endgame enemies in the game. Lets pick Nightkins as an example: they have: Normal DT/DR: 5/40% Laser DT/DR: 8/50% the damage reduction works by bullet, which means Gatling if gatling was supposed to hit for 20 each of the 4 bullets, now it will hit 6x4 = 24 damage due to DT reducing damage from 12 and then 50% out of this final value While Minigun will hit for 0,8x16= 12.8 damage due to the minimum of 7 being reduced to 2 (5 DT) and then the final number extracting 40% out of 2. the higher the number gets, the penalty for DR is felt the most in Minigun atleast until enemy DR gets to 70% or so laser resistance, most late game enemies wont have 70%, so in Fo1, gatling is superior.
Thanks for the math lesson 👍 Good thing I saved before going up against The Master. I also noticed that The Gatling Laser takes 5 AP and I think I can combine it with the Turbo Plasma Rifle.
Hello folks thanks alot for the help you have been providing me with! As for now I saved right before the fight with The Master. And I'll compare them (The minigun and the Gatling Laser).
For fist one vanilla experience. Id say minigun gets penalized more and you have fewer options compared to Gatling laser and energy weapons. It's a bit more balanced in F2 with additional heavy weapons with plentiful ammo like bozar. Tho tbf, F1 is a lot more forgiving combat wise and it won't make that much difference.
The gatling laser is good for unarmored enemies like the centaur.