Fallout: New Vegas weapons

Legend

 * DMG: This information comes from the G.E.C.K. and shows the damage caused by a single click of the mouse/trigger. For most guns, this is a single bullet, but for shotguns it is a single shell (containing several small pellets), for the Gatling laser it is a single beam, and for melee weapons it is a single hit. This stat is most useful for comparing semi-automatic weapons such as rifles, where you can see the full damage caused by a single shot, regardless of how long it takes to load and fire the next one. Some weapons deal additional bonus damage, either as AoE (see below), over time, or as EMP, affecting Robots and/or Power armor ("EMP (R)" and "EMP (PA)" in the tables).
 * DPS: This stands for damage per second. E.G. a gun has a DMG of 10 and fires 3 bullets per second. Therefore the gun's DPS is 30. For guns emptying their magazine (clip) within this second, the reload time is considered.
 * AoE DMG/Radius: Bonus damage in a certain "Area of Effect". 64 units is equal to 1 yard, 70 units equal to 1 meter.
 * Crit % Mult: The multiplier applied to your character's critical hit chance. This modifier applies to each individual attack you make (e.g. each 5mm bullet fired from your minigun). For example, if your character has a critical hit chance of 5%, and the weapon you're using has a Crit % Mult of 2, then each shot has a 5% × 2 = 10% chance to critically hit. For automatic weapons (assault rifles, SMGs, miniguns, etc.) the Crit % Mult stat in the G.E.C.K. is divided by the G.E.C.K.'s Fire Rate stat, hence the very small multiplier for automatic weapons. This is done to compensate for the sheer number of bullets being fired. Note that a single V.A.T.S. attack with automatic weapons only checks for critical hit once and then applies the damage bonus for all bullets in such an attack if a critical hit occurs. Some weapons have a multiplier of 0; mathematically correct, these weapons don't cause any critical hits, not even with sneak attacks.
 * Crit DMG: The amount of damage that is added when you score a critical strike. The more specialized Sneak Attack Critical deals twice the damage of a common critical strike.
 * AP: The amount of Action Points used per shot/burst in V.A.T.S.
 * DMG/AP: Damage per single Action point.
 * Spread: This is the Min Spread stat from the G.E.C.K. (the Spread stat is not used). It refers to the accuracy of a ranged weapon. 0 means the weapon can potentially fire perfectly straight, if stance, weapon skill, and weapon condition are optimal. Anything above 0 means the shots may deviate from center by that many degrees regardless of stance, skill, or condition.
 * Ammo: The type of ammunition used by the weapon. Some weapons use more than 1 round per shot (numbers in brackets).
 * Clip: The magazine capacity of the firearm. Basically, how many shots you can fire before having to reload.
 * WG: The weight of the weapon.
 * V: The value of the weapon.
 * V/WG: Value to Weight ratio.
 * HP: Health points or condition is the amount of health a weapon has. The lower the condition of the weapon, the lower the damage and the more chance the weapon has to jam. Also this determines how many times a weapon can be fired.
 * Att Req: Attributes required to wield the weapon optimally: to gain full attack speed for melee weapons, or full aiming stability for ranged weapons. Note that further increases in weapon skill beyond the requirements will continue to increase the weapon's damage (and DPS). Strength is a requirement for all weapons, while every single type has its own skill: Guns; Energy Weapons, in the tables named only "Energy"; Explosives; Melee Weapons, in the tables named only "Melee"; Unarmed.

Pistols

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ Holdout weapon.
 * ² Improved holdout weapon.
 * ³ Scoped by default.

Rifles

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ Scoped by default.

Submachine guns

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon.

Shotguns

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon.

Heavy weapons

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ Scoped by default.

Energy pistols

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon.
 * ² Frightens abominations. See Abominable for a list of affected creatures.
 * ³ May only be acquired if the player has chosen the Wild Wasteland trait.

Energy rifles

 * Note: Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background.
 * ¹ May not be acquired if the player has chosen the Wild Wasteland trait.

Energy heavy weapons

 * Note: unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background

Projectile

 * Note: unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background

Thrown

 * Note: unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ Normal holdout weapon: May be concealed regardless of Sneak skill.
 * ² Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥50
 * ³ May only be acquired if the player has chosen the Wild Wasteland trait.

Placed

 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥50
 * ² Custom-built weapon

Bladed

 * Note: unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ Normal holdout weapon: May be concealed regardless of Sneak skill.
 * ² Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥50.
 * ³ Ignores DR/DT.

Blunt

 * Note: unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥50

Thrown

 * ¹ Normal holdout weapon: May be concealed regardless of Sneak skill.

Unarmed

 * Note: unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ Normal holdout weapon: May be concealed regardless of Sneak skill.
 * ² Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥50.

Other

 * Note: quest items are highlighted with a darker background

Cut content

 * ¹ Available in all add-ons.

General implementation
"I didn’t think of making the F:NV guns differ from F3 as much as I tried to return to what I believed was the spirit of Fallout 1 & 2 guns: a mix of common real-world guns, some real-world niche guns, and some completely fictional guns.

I also felt like Fallout 1 (especially) had great gun progression. I really liked how even though the Desert Eagle .44 did more damage than the 10mm pistol, it had a lower ammo cap. Also, because the .44 Magnum ammo is relatively rare (IIRC) when you get the first DE from Garl, it promotes more deliberate, considered use of the weapon and suggests keeping the 10mm pistol around as backup. That sort of overlapping/orthogonal progression is great and I tried to achieve it in F:NV. I always tried to make the “upgrade” of a weapon have one thing that was obviously inferior to / different from the previous version. With the .357 Magnum Revolver and .44 Magnum Revolver, the .357 is slightly more accurate and can never suffer a malfunction/jam.

F3 did some things with ammo types that I understand and appreciate from a game design perspective but I felt contrasted too much from real-world weapon/ammo design. The fact that a handgun and a rifle shared an ammo type is nice for gameplay, but .32 is an odd caliber to use for a number of reasons. One of the things that bothered me most was the use of a similar ammo type in a revolver (typically using rimmed cartridges) and a bolt-action rifle (typically using rimless cartridges and headspacing at the front of the cartridge). Because I liked a more (American) western aesthetic for F:NV, I decided to use rimmed “cowboy cartridges” for revolvers and lever-action rifles. This was extremely common back in the day and can still be done with modern revolvers and lever-actions in the same caliber. The hunting rifle (.32 in F3) went to .308, which we reserved for high-powered rifles and didn’t use in handguns.

In general, when we used real-world weapons and ammo types, I tried to go with ones ordinary people (well, Americans, anyway) were familiar with: .22 LR 9mm, 10mm, .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, 5.56mm, .308, .50 MG. The ones that were made up (12.7mm) or less familiar (.45-70 Gov’t) were generally reserved for later weapons.

The real-world weapons were also sort of a “greatest hits” list: the 9mm based on the Browning Hi-Power, the .357 based on the Colt SAA, etc. - classic designs for people familiar with them that looked great for players who weren’t familiar with them. At times we had to adjust the design for animation/gameplay purposes, e.g. the Automatic Rifle in Dead Money is recognizable as some kind of BAR knockoff, but it differs in some significant ways.

I based the anti-materiel rifle on the Hécate II because honestly I was/am sick of seeing Barretts in games and I think the Hécate II looks better."

- J.E. Sawyer, Frog Helms Fan Club

Unique weapons
"I decided very early on that unique weapons should at least have unique textures and sometimes have unique models. By accounting for this early in development, production was able to incorporate it into the schedule. Most unique variants were textured/modeled around the same time as the base weapon, IIRC.

Deciding what weapons would get unique variants was a little more difficult. The first consideration was to make sure the uniques weren’t all bunched up in one type of weapon, so there should be unique weapons more or less equally spread across different categories.

After that, it was more arbitrary and based on feeling/inspiration than anything practical. I always figured people would want to see the return of the .223 pistol, a unique 9mm pistol and sniper rifle seemed obvious, and when we made Honest Hearts, not including a unique .45 would have been a high crime.

Over time, there were also gaps I saw that became opportunities for new uniques. The Survivalist’s Rifle was created to fill a gap between the sniper rifle and the service rifle and to get more use out of the 12.7mm round.

When I started as a game designer at Black Isle, I worked on the original Icewind Dale. We used (a lot of) words to tell the story of a unique item. Fallout: New Vegas didn’t have text descriptions for items, so the story had to be told through the appearance of the weapon or armor itself. Details like the writing on A Light Shining in Darkness and the Survivalist’s Rifle or the bits and pieces of info that can be gleaned from the Desert Ranger Armor are all part of that. Many players never notice them, or if they do notice them, it’s just part of the aesthetic of the item, but for some players, those details tell the story of the item and fill in details about the world and its history."

- J.E. Sawyer, Frog Helms Fan Club

Bugs

 * Scoped guns will occasionally display a blank "computer terminal" screen instead of the scope. This bug completely blocks the weapon's view when using the "scope". Fix for this bug for the Xbox360 is clearing your systems cache and reloading the game. It eventually "goes away" on its own, or by restarting the console, but the cause for start/end is not yet determined. This also makes it hard to use a terminal since no screen or text appears unless you have the weapon out. This can also be similar when Lockpicking as the tumbler may disappear, although it is not impossible to still attempt to pick the lock, depending on the difficulty.
 * Can be fixed by making a new save and restarting the console.
 * Combining any scoped rifle and the regulator duster (Or sheriff's duster) can cause a purple line to obscure your zooming, when the rifle is holstered. The line goes from the left to right and only takes up a thin stretch of the screen, but there is no known solution, besides unequiping either the rifle or apparel.
 * Occasionally weapons dropped by the player will have the red "Press A to steal x" marking as if the weapon was previously owned, regardless of whether or not it ever was owned by an npc.
 * With heavy energy weapons that use a backpack as an ammunition supply, removing a weapon that has one will cause it to remain on your back. This happens with multiple backpacks, so they clip through each other.