I dont mind them lvl 1-10, but when im clearing a dungeon at lvl 40 and the final loot is a pipe gun *every* time it pisses me off and massively takes away from the enjoyment a game should give.
Like these gunners are using laser rifles and fatmans but safely lock away their .50 cal compensated plywood.
Because pipe guns were Pre War. There was an issue of Guns and Bullets with one on the front cover and it wouldn't surprise me if normal civilians made them en masse given the Pre War government's disposition towards individual liberty
Downtown might be nice now but there's still a large portion of Detroit that they wouldn't have to change much about to make into a fallout game. One wrong turn around town and you find some crazy shit.
As much as I can’t stand ICPs music, the Juggalo faction would be closer to the Followers of the Apocalypse. Those ghetto ass clowns are wholesome as fuck.
They'd be like the bastard lovechild of the Followers and the Khans. A generally wholesome community (at least toward their in-group), but also prone to throwing massive parties where it's accepted as the norm that some guests will end up leaving in a box, bag, or just being tossed into a shallow grave
Look at what weapons you find where. You never find assault weapons on pre war dead civilians. You find 10mm, .44, double barrel shotguns, and hunting rifles. This indicates a Pre-War America with a Second Amendment that is much more restrictive than we currently have.
Pipe weapons would have emerged from within the “Prepper” communities, and most likely some of the higher end Gangs and Organized Crime groups that existed in the few decades prior to when the bombs fell and several decades thereafter, because let’s face it: Criminals will ALWAYS have guns, even after society as we know it crumbles and falls.
This is why you see the raiders, super mutants, and low level Commonwealth citizens with so many pipe weapons. As ugly as they are, they are among the most realistic weapons in the game, all things considered.
That would make sense if there were a few skeletons with assault weapons, but there isn’t.
No skeleton has an AR, they all have small arms, which wouldn’t make sense as an AR doesn’t always beat out a pistol even in real life
But did you put enough points into Assault Rifles? Maybe your Pipe Guns has 5 different perks to increase its damage and ROF by 500%, and your pathetic Assault Rifle skill makes you have a -95% dmg penalty.
Not only that but inflation in the FO universe is insane, like $250 for a cup of coffee insane, so given how expensive guns and ammo can be, pipe guns are very logical, as for being in safes, you’re supposed to keep guns in safes.
You open a pre-war safe, one that shouldn't have been touched in 200 years because of the insane amount of effort you had to put in to dismantling the defenses and killing the security robots, and you find 200 bottlecaps and a modified pipe pistol. Just kinda sucks you right out of the immersion, cause loot drop tables are hard.
First thing I do, before starting a Skyrim or Fallout play-through, is installing mods that fix this. If I clear a dungeon I want a cool weapon with light bulbs n’ shit that shoots lasers. Maybe a small permanent stat increase.
It feels like Bethesda creates the skeleton of a good game, and modding adds the meat to the skeleton.
Hey if the pipgun actually looked good and maybe was a mix of actually real gun parts so they looked like salvaged wepaons then i would actually use it .
This. Metro 2033, Last Light, and Exodus home made weapons look excellent. Crazy unsafe, but looks like something I would expect to see people armed with in the apocalypse
Nah there's YouTube videos everywhere of folks making pipe guns, hell I made one when I was 19, not that I got to shoot it. But the pipe calibers in Fallout (.38 and .45) are very low pressure and 'play nice' from a gunsmithing standpoint. IRL .12 gauge is pretty popular in homemade guns for how strong it is despite having very low pressure (~23000 psi)
Rifle rounds are where it gets fucky, you'd have to be a master gunsmith to make something in .308 out of hardware store bits that doesn't kill you
yeah, it’s a missed opportunity imo.
give it more gameplay, like, level 3 gun nut to exchange the block of wood to a cut and shaved wood, gun more comfortable so now add additional accuracy or something. and exchange the rusty pipe with a scavenged barrel of a gun, better quality barrel = better gas sealing = more damage.
then maybe at level 4 gun nut, have mods like breech and barrels manufactured from scratch with genuine gun smith expertise, and basically make pipe guns comparable with professionally manufactured guns and useable at high level.
because i find the concept of scavenger, survival, wastelander makeshift weapons interesting. it’sa shame it is what it is now.
You don’t need to salvage “real” gun parts. Phillip Luty published manuals on how to make a 9mm submachine gun out of parts that you can get at your local hardware store. Really all you need is a sheet brake and some know how.
>Like these gunners are using laser rifles and fatmans but safely lock away their .50 cal compensated plywood.
you think when a guy in full power armor pulled up and started dropping their guys left and right, they went
" oh no, let me lock away my fatman, and my combat rifle, let me go at him with this pipe pistol that does +50% dmg on mutants"?
why would they lock their best guns away?
One thing that irks me is that there seems to be nothing new, or whatever is new is unreasonably shit.
It's been 299 years and you're telling me no one has thought it would be good to make some sten guns? Simple revolvers? All the pre-war guns should be broken.
One of the reasons I'm glad Starfield added legendaries to chests.
Seriously, dungeon final chests were almost always useless, unless you were doing a no-crafting run (and then, they were only occassionally useful, and oftentimes you were better off with vendor mods). It's a bizarre idea too, because Skyrim dungeon chests had enchanted gear in them, which were the equivalent of FO4 Legendary gear.
It's not a big deal to me, ultimately, because that's not what I play FO4 for. But for me FO4 Steamer Trunks were more useful as a designated "This is the end of the dungeon, you can turn around now" than for the actual loot inside them.
That early game mini-gun breaks the games melee weapon progression, even on Survival. Defeat the Deathclaw with anything else hiding in the clothes shop. Take the mini-gun and ammo to the Diner, and buy General Chao's Revenge, which is a really good weapon even for non-robots. Makes all the other melee weapons nothing more than gimmicks.
Exactly. It's REALLY easy to do, and a Serrated Chinese Officer Sword is a Blacksmith 2 weapon with competitive endgame damage. It will eventually fall off and just become your anti-robot weapon, but early on, it's MILES ahead of anything else you can get.
The Axe requires lock picking, and is in Boston. Drumlin Diner can be reached and shopped at with only one fight against two 'raiders'. And you can skip that too.
By the time you can get to Boston, you can also get the Rockville Slugger, which is the other really good and easy to get melee weapon. So the Axe is hardly the only competition at that stage of the game. But a melee build will be using a Machete or Tire Iron for a single dungeon before being able to trivially upgrade to a weapon that will always be useful, invalidating quite a few other melee weapon types that might as well not exist as player weapons. Were it not for the sword, then the improvised melee weapons might see use in the time you spend pre-boston.
What's more, Drumlin Diner is on the road, which the game encourages you to go down, and is the first non-caravan shop most players will come across. So it's not some hidden gem either. And players who want to explore around the NW corner of the map before moving into the city will still have access to it.
This is extra important on Survival mode, since waltzing into Boston and Hubris Comics is even trickier.
Fuck. Pipe. Weapons.
All of them. They're hideous. I'm fine with makeshift weapons. But the folks at Bethesda forgot how guns work when they designed those things. Here's a 4x4 piece of wood with a switch on it and a pipe crudely coming out the front- Bam!, it's a .45 caliber rifle!
And then you have the bolt action rifle which is clearly meant to be single shot but you somehow magically load in several bullets with every reload.
Oh and they are somehow also capable of shooting .50 BMG rounds (and those also suck because FO4s balancing is ass)
My biggest issue is a suspension of disbelief one. Irl “pipe” guns should be pistol caliber or shotgun shell. No rusty piece of iron and wood is handling the chamber pressure of a .308 or .50. They’d explode in your face
Also where are the welded sheet metal SMG’s? If people in fallout are handcrafting their own guns, why not make something like full auto Sten guns or grease guns instead of a shitty wooden bolt action .45
It'd be kinda cool if pipe guns were meant to be more disposable. More like the old condition system of NV and 3, but as the condition goes down the likelihood of a catastrophic failure goes up. Once it blows up you take damage and the gun becomes junk. Could even have a line of perks that helps mitigate this possibility.
I guess they wanted to, initially. Maintaining equipment is an important part of the survival crafting open world elements that F4 incorporated a lot. But they couldn't make it work satisfyingly, for one reason or another
Idk of course, but at least this version sounds plausible to me. Pipe shit is just too stupid and ugly lol, who would want to put that in their game?
> Maintaining equipment is an important part of the survival crafting open world elements
Don't agree at all. IMO, Fallout would be best if they never used the condition system again. It ultimately just becomes an unnecessary chore. You might call it immersive or something, but in reality it's just a time-waster where occasionally you have to go to a bench and use some scrap just to keep playing the game.
Maybe it could be some sort of challenge setting with no or very expensive repair, but the standard implementation as a core feature turns it into a chore, because it can't be hard enough to really matter without alienating most players.
I took hate condition systems, I played 76 recently and hunting rifles are breaking left and right. I think the reasoning behind it is having a consistent drain on your resources so you're constantly scavenging junk to maintain antique prewar weapons. But yeah it just isn't fun to have a gun break, and also doesn't make sense most of the time. The only way this would maybe work is if they make condition only apply to salvaged pipe weapons, or to have it not have a major effect like preventing you from using a weapon, I want to carry as few weapons as possible, I mean they are the cause of most of your weight and more so if you have ammunition causing weight, strict weight limits are also not fun.
They’re supposed to look hideous. Just look at the gun that killed Shinzo Abe, does that look good? No.
I’m not saying this to disagree, I’m just saying this to illustrate that their hideousness is a design choice, even if I don’t personally agree with it.
I would agree with you *if the makeshift weapons were the only ones that looked hideous*
The assault rifle, the combat rifle, the institute weapons, so many guns are just so freaking ugly. They have all the same problems as the pipe weapons. They're bulky, blocky, and look like they're made of plastic (while simultaneously looking like they'd weigh a ton). Just bleh.
I've heard arguments saying that it makes sense because the institute is a scientifically driven society instead of a militaristic society, so their weapons are designed from a statistical point of view instead of an actual comfortablity or usability point of view because of the lack of actual field data from use of equipment by humans that would care about how comfortable and user-friendly a weapon is.
This is a cool theory, but my God I refuse to believe that they're so dumb that they don't realize that blocks are not a good design for small arms.
To be fair they are written tk be really stupid, my real problem with the instuite guns isn't the fact that they take up so much screen space, it's the fact that they suck damage wise, statistically the threat everyone is scared of synths from the instuite carry the worst lazer guns in the game, and the synthetic themselves suck ass, all they needed to do was make an upgraded one for there special troops, but instead they have one gun type and it sucks
*cries in ludonarrative dissonance*
I'm with you 100%. A scary ultra-powerful underground society that cares so much about defense that they built a technological army and designed their own whole new type of weapon, and the guns are not any more powerful than any other weapon? Super annoying. "Game balance" as an excuse only goes so far.
They could've made them have lots of damage but with a rare ammo type, or have it fire slowly or do very little damage to synths (thar last one would've been a great move for the Institute because it would keep their weapons from being useful in the hands of enemies, but it would also give the Railroad a nice little defense boost against the Institute)
Even ignoring that, have the instuite have a kill switch in the guns if a synth isn't using it, which makes it way less effective, and when removed or set to your biometrics makes it incredibly effective, and just make less synths in encounters so it remains balanced and the instuite is still strong
The worse thing about this whole thing regarding institute weapons is that not only are they weaker then standard laser guns but they are also weaker then the home built laser muskets by random wastlanders. TOP SECRET SCIENCE SOCIETY GETS OUT SMARTED BUY DIY LOCALS.
I think they did that because of the power armor change. Since fo4 made power armor essentially a vehicle they made the weapons chunkier and bigger so it wouldn’t look ridiculously tiny in power armor.
That makes sense. I still disagree with it as a good idea though.
To me it's more ridiculous seeing a scrawny starving raider running around with a gun that looks like it weighs as much as a motorcycle than it is seeing a guy in power armor holding an undersized gun.
Honestly they could've just buffed "heavy" weapons like miniguns and stuff, while making them have a huge strength requirement if you're not in power armor. That way when you're in power armor you feel more inclined to use these bigger badder special weapons, whereas if you don't have power armor you're going to have to pump up your strength in order to carry a minigun.
Nah theyre hideous even for hideous guns. There's a mod called "Nina's proper pipe guns" that changes their appearance along with a whole assortment of stand-alone pipe gun mods, and they actually make pipe guns look good while still maintaining the homemade makeshift style without that disgusting rusted pipe look. Every fallout has some form of makeshift weapons, and there are dozens mods for each game out there that do it well too. Makeshift doesn't have to mean ugly.
They simply made a bad design with F4 pipe guns. Actually, most of the designs across many weapon types are ugly to me. Idk what they were thinking. Too many of them are so bulky and unwieldy or they don't make sense
The biggest difference between NV and 4 for me was how much worse the weapons looked. The difference between the assault rifles is probably the worst 🤢
They really needed a 'power armor weapons' class of weapon
Have them require certain str and/or endurance perks to wield
I love the idea of a retro futuristic liquid-cooled heavy machine gun that looks inspired by WWI, I just don't like a human with lv 1 str and endurance holding one like it's nothing
Something like this feels like it would improve the choice of game style as well. I want to use this giant weapon, so I either need to be extremely beefy, or work with power armor. Could even do it the other way wear small weapons aren't easily handled by power armor giant fingers.
The series did that correctly, suprisingly - we only see *PA soldiers* carrying ~~Maxim guns~~ assault rifles, and the one time a squire fires that gun it rests on the ground. IIRC.
The anti material rifle is so good. Fallout 4 junk as weapons with random perks are not it. I wish they would go back to specific legendary weapons in certain quests or locations. Like in new vegas. Instead you get random perks that make no sense.
I feel like a lot of the lower end guns in fo4 just look and feel like garbage. I feel like the pipe guns could have been really good, but there was just very little care out into them.
Id be fine if the pipe weapons were scalable. Like they start lower than standard weapons but can be modded higher because of how DIY they are.
But nah, they're kinda shit no matter how much work you put into them.
>they're kinda shit no matter how much work you put into them.
*Gets GunNut lvl4*
"Wow, with my newfound gunsmithing knowledge, I'm gonna create the ULTIMATE WEAPON!" :
*Slightly stronger gun made out exclusively of rusty metals and a chunk of plywood*
10mm pistol is GOAT of the game. No mater how far into the game I get I always have a 10mm Pistol renamed "BackUp" because those damn guns are always useful.
I'm playing a rifle specd stealth archer in survival mode and still have a suppressed legendary 10mm on me because shotgun shells and 50 cal rounds are too expensive for easy targets (+100% damage if target health is full).
I kind of wish the “real” weapons were more rare. I like the aesthetic of the cobbled together weapons; it shows a whole “we couldn’t find guns so we made garbage work”
Probably the worst creative decision for a fallout game that I can remember. It recovers from it, but power armor should feel earned, and death claws should be terrifying until you're in the end game
I can assure you the majority of players were not taking death claws lightly because they got 5 minutes of power armour with an under powered car battery. Given the death claw is perfectly capable of killing you in the armour and any you find in the wastes will shit stomp you sideways without mods or great loot.
My main save hasn’t had issues with death claws since like level 15. But it strikes from a good distance with heavy hitting weapons and is perked accordingly.
Ah you see, you actually know how to use perks. You're already significantly outside the knowledge of most players that started Fallout 4 for the first time.
Metro gets home made weapons right, and it isn't even you can't have the pipe weapons but when every other legendary is a pipe weapons it's super annoying
Yeah I don't really get half these arguments. "They're ugly!" Yeah no shit? The fuck did yall expect, expertly crafted masterpieces? I should show these people some real life homemade weapons and see if they think they're aesthetically pleasing
I wish pipe weapons could be turned into anything. You want a shotgun, rifle, full auto, grenade launcher, syringe? They’d be so much better if there was only one type mashed together, you manually change what type of ammo it uses, the fire rate etc
So much of that game's art design drives me actually mad. Weapons are all bloated to work better in Power Armor meanwhile the Deliverer still looks dumb af in PA so it seems like a wasted sacrifice to me. The words slender, sleek, tactical etc cannot be used to describe more than 5% of the weaponry and that is an actual design sin when it comes to firearms and melee weaponry.
As such, the thinnest mod configuration is my favorite if you can call it that. I use it early game as a go to pee shooter because .38 is so common. Drum mag, finned barrel, marksman's pistol grip (the curved one), auto receiver and glow sights.
Some mods redesigned them and wouldn't you know they're thinner and have more curves. I really like the idea of a modular DIY weapon but the entire mod system in 4 is contrived as it is disappointing. Nothing intuitive about it imo except for rechamberings which is pretty low brow.
I tried to make a decent rifle out of one, but it was still monumentally shit. My 10mm pistol was firing faster, dealing more damage and easier on ammo conservation and reloading.
I don't know why they thought we needed these broken splinters but I wish they'd disappear.
Honestly, the only reason I don't play Fallout 4 more often is cause the guns feel like crap and look like shit, I'm a gunsmith, and it's bugged me for forever. That's why I'm waiting for F4NV, not even for a NV remaster, just to use the inevitable weapons replacer option.
It annoys me how prevalent they are. This is America. We have more than enough guns that you shouldn’t be resorting to make shitty pistols out of junk you found lying around.
But how much of that is the legendary effect, and how much if that is the weapon itself....
Id bet if it was the effect on another weapon, you would still not care for the pipe gun.
I’ll use them super early game in survival mode because if you take gun nut you can upgrade them really far early on, that being said you can get better stuff before level 10 so no reason to keep using them
I use them to save ammo for better weapons at early levels before I'm stocked up. A frequent issue I had in my first playthroughs was to run out of 10mm ammo in the beginning so now I only bring out the 10mm pistol for hard fights until ammo gets easier to find/buy.
I like pipe weapons tbh, they fit the aesthetics really well. But I wish the chances of getting a raider with a real gun were bigger, and that they had more varied designs.
I sort of love them, at least early/mid game. I know they aren't realistically designed, but this is franchise were radiation is magical so I'm willing to overlook it.
Maybe at the very start of my playthrough or if I'm really struggling for ammo as I always seem to have a lot for the pipe guns. But otherwise, I just give them to settlement members, until I can upgrade them with something I'm no longer using.
F4 lacked in the cool weapons department big time, felt like there was no reason even like going for better weapons cause they all looked the same, which was butt ugly
I mean.... they're supposed to look like crap, and they're supposed to mostly be crap, performance-wise, unless you mod them really well. My favourite game is New Vegas but after FO4 I find it jarring that every raider and his mother and her lover have pre-war guns. In fact, in FO4, I add even more makeshift weapons, like the Zap Gun, or a bunch of Degenerate Dak stuff. Among post-apoc settings, Fallout is the one that's silly enough for that stuff to actually work. The Fat Man is iconic, and it's a pipe gun on steroids, which are on other, smaller steroids. Or jet, idk.
I love the pipe guns but I drop them as soon as I can get something better and enough ammo for it. I had a dumb bolt pipe sniper with a bayonet and a poison effect on it I called Tetanus Shot.
They aren’t only hideous, but they fall off very early on in the game to the point where every other weapon is literally more viable to use than any pipe weapon ever hopes to be.
Not to mention, in classic Bethesda fashion of not having a clue how guns work, they would quite literally, blow up in your face if you tried firing it more than once.
I’m annoyed how big the damage difference is between a pipe weapon and a “proper” gun that uses the same type of ammunition. It’s not like a gun being low quality makes it less deadly when it fires and hits.
I quite liked them, at least the sniper rifle and fully automatic, but it's annoying how common they are.
When going for a commando build, finding enough ammo is a struggle, so having a decent weapon that runs on the most available, cheapest and otherwise useless ammo type is nice. I don't use it for stronger enemies, but it's excellent when mowing down hordes of weaker ones and a good saving on the better ammo.
I think they’re fine in 76, where they’re more of a grey color, but I haaate the orange color in Fo4.
[I use this mod.](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/54933)
Pipe rifle chambered in .308 works fine with mod that reduces ammo capacity to 1. Because you are loading 1 single cartridge in that gun, not all 4 (or 5, don't remember exact number) at the same time, as it implemented in the game. The other pipe variations just sucks. Revolver? Nah, better save .45 ammo for future when get a .45 carbine or .45 tommygun. Pipe pistol? I'd rather die than use it for self-defense. Why? Because it's side-loaded magazine makes me laugh as crazy every time I see it.
Without weapon degredation there really isn't much need to use them. You find a 10mm pistol in Vault 111, and ammunition isn't hard to come by.
As much as I hate weapon degredation, in FO3/NV you do find yourself having to use a bigger variety of guns in the early game because your more exotic guns were harder to repair.
Of course, I use them until I have a good supply of ammo for better weapons. You don’t run into anything in the northwest corner of the map that’s worth using better weapons on anyway.
There is exactly one long term use case
The suppressed pipe bolt action on a Gunslinger character is the only use for .50 cal ammunition and generally your best option as a non-VATS gunslinger sniper with a silencer
Its range stat goes past the hitscan boundary I think
I'm actuslly really fucking sick of this meme. The PIPE guns are shitty who woulda thought? They're not supposed to be pretty looking high powered rifles ffs
Occasionally i shoot someone with the deliverer and with the perk it makes them drop their gun. Psycho jet pick it up and shoot em with their own gun. Sometimes its a pipe gun. 😂
In terms of worldbuilding, they are good. Makes sense that weapons like these would be built in this kind of setting.
However in a game where far better weapons are far more abundant, they feel pointless for more than an hour. Only there for the short amount of time until you find something that can use the same ammo.
If the game had durability with weapons and these were the option that are easy to fix due to the low complexity and greater abundance of parts, then they'd have a place in the game. Especially if this was paired with other weapons being less frequent where it made sense.
They're so weak and you get so many much better guns early on. I don't know why anyone uses them.
I basically just break him down for parts and sell the bullets for cheap.
I personally do not use them, however I think they are fun to work with on a weapons bench. It's better for settlement defense if everybody has a powerful automatic rifle don't you think?
I just stockpile .38 until I find a never ending pipe gun, mod it to be full auto, and now I've got a bullet hose. Other than that, there's zero reason to use pipe weapons IMO.
I only really got a lot of use out of pipe guns on a crit build where the ability to put exotic calibers into a pistol form was really useful. I made a super low AP use .38 pipe pistol to build up crits and then either a .308 bolt action pipe pistol or a sawed off shotgun to spend them. .308 pipe pistols can blow off heads from absurd ranges by guaranteeing a hit with a crit while sawed off shotguns vaporize enemies with close range crits for the same reason. The synergy meant that I could build up crits on a radroach with the .38 and then use them to one shot a deathclaw or raider survivalist. Probably one of the most fun builds I ever made honestly
I know that with the right build and mods they can do respectable damage outside of low levels, but even still getting them as high level loot rewards hurts a lot.
There's people who will find the weakest weapon in the entire game and crank the difficulty all the way up then right out of Goodsprings head straight to Quarry Junction with it to fight deathclaws.
I dont mind them lvl 1-10, but when im clearing a dungeon at lvl 40 and the final loot is a pipe gun *every* time it pisses me off and massively takes away from the enjoyment a game should give. Like these gunners are using laser rifles and fatmans but safely lock away their .50 cal compensated plywood.
Why is there a pipegun in a safe in a prewar bunker that hasn’t been explored since?
Because pipe guns were Pre War. There was an issue of Guns and Bullets with one on the front cover and it wouldn't surprise me if normal civilians made them en masse given the Pre War government's disposition towards individual liberty
Street guns of Boston. That's the title of the magazine, which cements why they are very numerous in Boston compared to any other game in the series.
Na it’s Detroit… not joking
Of course it's fycking Detroit
Fallout Detroit, you get Faygo instead of Vim and remnants of Juggalo raiders!
Downtown might be nice now but there's still a large portion of Detroit that they wouldn't have to change much about to make into a fallout game. One wrong turn around town and you find some crazy shit.
Detroit is just simply freeside but instead of jet it’s fentanyl…fallout Detroit would just be a playable documentary
"Fucking Rad-X, how does it work?"
Miracles!!!!
Man, I would love to see this show up as a mod for the game. I'd honestly pay for that.
As much as I can’t stand ICPs music, the Juggalo faction would be closer to the Followers of the Apocalypse. Those ghetto ass clowns are wholesome as fuck.
They'd be like the bastard lovechild of the Followers and the Khans. A generally wholesome community (at least toward their in-group), but also prone to throwing massive parties where it's accepted as the norm that some guests will end up leaving in a box, bag, or just being tossed into a shallow grave
Fallout Detroit would be sick. DLC would have you cross the bridge into Canada a la "The Pitt" from FO3
[you wanna fyck?](https://media2.giphy.com/media/2wKbtCMHTVoOY/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952j3w6a1ibgpogpvzl7t8x1t4cnrwdbkp535trkdqw&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
# TAKE HIM TO DETRIOT
Look at what weapons you find where. You never find assault weapons on pre war dead civilians. You find 10mm, .44, double barrel shotguns, and hunting rifles. This indicates a Pre-War America with a Second Amendment that is much more restrictive than we currently have. Pipe weapons would have emerged from within the “Prepper” communities, and most likely some of the higher end Gangs and Organized Crime groups that existed in the few decades prior to when the bombs fell and several decades thereafter, because let’s face it: Criminals will ALWAYS have guns, even after society as we know it crumbles and falls. This is why you see the raiders, super mutants, and low level Commonwealth citizens with so many pipe weapons. As ugly as they are, they are among the most realistic weapons in the game, all things considered.
Or you can put 2 and 2 together to realize the people with assult rifles won there gunfights and didn't turn into environmental storytelling skeletons
That would make sense if there were a few skeletons with assault weapons, but there isn’t. No skeleton has an AR, they all have small arms, which wouldn’t make sense as an AR doesn’t always beat out a pistol even in real life
You lucky kill the guy with the AR, you are taking it. Drop the ol' pipe for weight management.
But did you put enough points into Assault Rifles? Maybe your Pipe Guns has 5 different perks to increase its damage and ROF by 500%, and your pathetic Assault Rifle skill makes you have a -95% dmg penalty.
People didn’t leave AR’s lying about. They would be a pretty high priority theft item.
In post war, sure. In pre war, nah they definitely would unless they wanted to risk the government crashing down onto them
Yeah but all the skeletons have been lying there a while.
It wasn’t because individual liberty, it was to turn citizens into Partisans in a hypothetical invasion
Also cuz inflation was INSANE just before the bombs fell so if you didn’t have a gun it was cheaper to make a pipe gun and buy bullets
Not only that but inflation in the FO universe is insane, like $250 for a cup of coffee insane, so given how expensive guns and ammo can be, pipe guns are very logical, as for being in safes, you’re supposed to keep guns in safes.
You open a pre-war safe, one that shouldn't have been touched in 200 years because of the insane amount of effort you had to put in to dismantling the defenses and killing the security robots, and you find 200 bottlecaps and a modified pipe pistol. Just kinda sucks you right out of the immersion, cause loot drop tables are hard.
Ahh yes. The Skyrim problem. Bethesda doesn’t understand game design beyond “Make world big and pretty”
First thing I do, before starting a Skyrim or Fallout play-through, is installing mods that fix this. If I clear a dungeon I want a cool weapon with light bulbs n’ shit that shoots lasers. Maybe a small permanent stat increase. It feels like Bethesda creates the skeleton of a good game, and modding adds the meat to the skeleton.
Ocean in width, puddle in depth
Hey if the pipgun actually looked good and maybe was a mix of actually real gun parts so they looked like salvaged wepaons then i would actually use it .
This. Metro 2033, Last Light, and Exodus home made weapons look excellent. Crazy unsafe, but looks like something I would expect to see people armed with in the apocalypse
Literally the DIY weapons in metro are just what I’d expect post nuclear. Pipe guns would just explode instantly apon fire lets be honest
Nah there's YouTube videos everywhere of folks making pipe guns, hell I made one when I was 19, not that I got to shoot it. But the pipe calibers in Fallout (.38 and .45) are very low pressure and 'play nice' from a gunsmithing standpoint. IRL .12 gauge is pretty popular in homemade guns for how strong it is despite having very low pressure (~23000 psi) Rifle rounds are where it gets fucky, you'd have to be a master gunsmith to make something in .308 out of hardware store bits that doesn't kill you
I'm pretty sure you can chamber the pipe bolt action in 50BMG lol
you can lmfao, about shit myself when I was able to craft that for the first time
When the AK 50 has taken like 5 years to make safe using normal weapon parts, I can't imagine how dangerous that shit is
yeah, it’s a missed opportunity imo. give it more gameplay, like, level 3 gun nut to exchange the block of wood to a cut and shaved wood, gun more comfortable so now add additional accuracy or something. and exchange the rusty pipe with a scavenged barrel of a gun, better quality barrel = better gas sealing = more damage. then maybe at level 4 gun nut, have mods like breech and barrels manufactured from scratch with genuine gun smith expertise, and basically make pipe guns comparable with professionally manufactured guns and useable at high level. because i find the concept of scavenger, survival, wastelander makeshift weapons interesting. it’sa shame it is what it is now.
You don’t need to salvage “real” gun parts. Phillip Luty published manuals on how to make a 9mm submachine gun out of parts that you can get at your local hardware store. Really all you need is a sheet brake and some know how.
Improvised weapons usually look fairly normal. The Luty being a prime example.
>Like these gunners are using laser rifles and fatmans but safely lock away their .50 cal compensated plywood. you think when a guy in full power armor pulled up and started dropping their guys left and right, they went " oh no, let me lock away my fatman, and my combat rifle, let me go at him with this pipe pistol that does +50% dmg on mutants"? why would they lock their best guns away?
Why would they lock their worst guns away?
I wish we could ship of theseus our way from pipe to combat rifle
One thing that irks me is that there seems to be nothing new, or whatever is new is unreasonably shit. It's been 299 years and you're telling me no one has thought it would be good to make some sten guns? Simple revolvers? All the pre-war guns should be broken.
They are actually a great source of certain uncommon scrap it turns out.
One of the reasons I'm glad Starfield added legendaries to chests. Seriously, dungeon final chests were almost always useless, unless you were doing a no-crafting run (and then, they were only occassionally useful, and oftentimes you were better off with vendor mods). It's a bizarre idea too, because Skyrim dungeon chests had enchanted gear in them, which were the equivalent of FO4 Legendary gear. It's not a big deal to me, ultimately, because that's not what I play FO4 for. But for me FO4 Steamer Trunks were more useful as a designated "This is the end of the dungeon, you can turn around now" than for the actual loot inside them.
.38 becomes a second set of caps after a while.
5mm too (I don’t use miniguns)
That early game mini-gun breaks the games melee weapon progression, even on Survival. Defeat the Deathclaw with anything else hiding in the clothes shop. Take the mini-gun and ammo to the Diner, and buy General Chao's Revenge, which is a really good weapon even for non-robots. Makes all the other melee weapons nothing more than gimmicks.
I’m confused. Are you using the minigun as a melee weapon?
Sell the mini gun and buy General Chao’s Revenge right away with the profit
Ah, now I understand. Thank you for clarifying
Exactly. It's REALLY easy to do, and a Serrated Chinese Officer Sword is a Blacksmith 2 weapon with competitive endgame damage. It will eventually fall off and just become your anti-robot weapon, but early on, it's MILES ahead of anything else you can get.
Why wouldn't you just as easily take the axe from the 1st room of Comics and mega-spam attacks in VATS?
The Axe requires lock picking, and is in Boston. Drumlin Diner can be reached and shopped at with only one fight against two 'raiders'. And you can skip that too. By the time you can get to Boston, you can also get the Rockville Slugger, which is the other really good and easy to get melee weapon. So the Axe is hardly the only competition at that stage of the game. But a melee build will be using a Machete or Tire Iron for a single dungeon before being able to trivially upgrade to a weapon that will always be useful, invalidating quite a few other melee weapon types that might as well not exist as player weapons. Were it not for the sword, then the improvised melee weapons might see use in the time you spend pre-boston. What's more, Drumlin Diner is on the road, which the game encourages you to go down, and is the first non-caravan shop most players will come across. So it's not some hidden gem either. And players who want to explore around the NW corner of the map before moving into the city will still have access to it. This is extra important on Survival mode, since waltzing into Boston and Hubris Comics is even trickier.
I give miniguns to my settlers because it looks hilarious. They're worthless in my own hands.
The minigun is so trash that’s it’s literally better without ammo as a melee weapon
I wish this were true in 76. I can’t even sell ammo to NPC’s, probably because they knew you’d max out on caps really early
Dude I have 24,000 rounds of 5mm and I want to sell it so bad!
Fuck. Pipe. Weapons. All of them. They're hideous. I'm fine with makeshift weapons. But the folks at Bethesda forgot how guns work when they designed those things. Here's a 4x4 piece of wood with a switch on it and a pipe crudely coming out the front- Bam!, it's a .45 caliber rifle!
And then you have the bolt action rifle which is clearly meant to be single shot but you somehow magically load in several bullets with every reload. Oh and they are somehow also capable of shooting .50 BMG rounds (and those also suck because FO4s balancing is ass)
My biggest issue is a suspension of disbelief one. Irl “pipe” guns should be pistol caliber or shotgun shell. No rusty piece of iron and wood is handling the chamber pressure of a .308 or .50. They’d explode in your face Also where are the welded sheet metal SMG’s? If people in fallout are handcrafting their own guns, why not make something like full auto Sten guns or grease guns instead of a shitty wooden bolt action .45
It'd be kinda cool if pipe guns were meant to be more disposable. More like the old condition system of NV and 3, but as the condition goes down the likelihood of a catastrophic failure goes up. Once it blows up you take damage and the gun becomes junk. Could even have a line of perks that helps mitigate this possibility.
I guess they wanted to, initially. Maintaining equipment is an important part of the survival crafting open world elements that F4 incorporated a lot. But they couldn't make it work satisfyingly, for one reason or another Idk of course, but at least this version sounds plausible to me. Pipe shit is just too stupid and ugly lol, who would want to put that in their game?
> Maintaining equipment is an important part of the survival crafting open world elements Don't agree at all. IMO, Fallout would be best if they never used the condition system again. It ultimately just becomes an unnecessary chore. You might call it immersive or something, but in reality it's just a time-waster where occasionally you have to go to a bench and use some scrap just to keep playing the game. Maybe it could be some sort of challenge setting with no or very expensive repair, but the standard implementation as a core feature turns it into a chore, because it can't be hard enough to really matter without alienating most players.
I took hate condition systems, I played 76 recently and hunting rifles are breaking left and right. I think the reasoning behind it is having a consistent drain on your resources so you're constantly scavenging junk to maintain antique prewar weapons. But yeah it just isn't fun to have a gun break, and also doesn't make sense most of the time. The only way this would maybe work is if they make condition only apply to salvaged pipe weapons, or to have it not have a major effect like preventing you from using a weapon, I want to carry as few weapons as possible, I mean they are the cause of most of your weight and more so if you have ammunition causing weight, strict weight limits are also not fun.
I'd love a Luty SMG, ngl. That's the kind of homebuilt weapon I think of when someone says 'homemade guns'.
Especially given their penchant for welding armor Why tf do no raider bosses have a mortar welded to their back?
.308 in a combat beats .50 for nearly every use case, including sniping, and that's sad
For sure. The idea behind handmade weapons is realistic and fantastic as fuck, their execution of the idea is fucked.
They’re supposed to look hideous. Just look at the gun that killed Shinzo Abe, does that look good? No. I’m not saying this to disagree, I’m just saying this to illustrate that their hideousness is a design choice, even if I don’t personally agree with it.
I would agree with you *if the makeshift weapons were the only ones that looked hideous* The assault rifle, the combat rifle, the institute weapons, so many guns are just so freaking ugly. They have all the same problems as the pipe weapons. They're bulky, blocky, and look like they're made of plastic (while simultaneously looking like they'd weigh a ton). Just bleh.
The institute weapons that literally cover half your screen pissed me off so much
I've heard arguments saying that it makes sense because the institute is a scientifically driven society instead of a militaristic society, so their weapons are designed from a statistical point of view instead of an actual comfortablity or usability point of view because of the lack of actual field data from use of equipment by humans that would care about how comfortable and user-friendly a weapon is. This is a cool theory, but my God I refuse to believe that they're so dumb that they don't realize that blocks are not a good design for small arms.
To be fair they are written tk be really stupid, my real problem with the instuite guns isn't the fact that they take up so much screen space, it's the fact that they suck damage wise, statistically the threat everyone is scared of synths from the instuite carry the worst lazer guns in the game, and the synthetic themselves suck ass, all they needed to do was make an upgraded one for there special troops, but instead they have one gun type and it sucks
*cries in ludonarrative dissonance* I'm with you 100%. A scary ultra-powerful underground society that cares so much about defense that they built a technological army and designed their own whole new type of weapon, and the guns are not any more powerful than any other weapon? Super annoying. "Game balance" as an excuse only goes so far. They could've made them have lots of damage but with a rare ammo type, or have it fire slowly or do very little damage to synths (thar last one would've been a great move for the Institute because it would keep their weapons from being useful in the hands of enemies, but it would also give the Railroad a nice little defense boost against the Institute)
Even ignoring that, have the instuite have a kill switch in the guns if a synth isn't using it, which makes it way less effective, and when removed or set to your biometrics makes it incredibly effective, and just make less synths in encounters so it remains balanced and the instuite is still strong
The worse thing about this whole thing regarding institute weapons is that not only are they weaker then standard laser guns but they are also weaker then the home built laser muskets by random wastlanders. TOP SECRET SCIENCE SOCIETY GETS OUT SMARTED BUY DIY LOCALS.
I think they did that because of the power armor change. Since fo4 made power armor essentially a vehicle they made the weapons chunkier and bigger so it wouldn’t look ridiculously tiny in power armor.
That makes sense. I still disagree with it as a good idea though. To me it's more ridiculous seeing a scrawny starving raider running around with a gun that looks like it weighs as much as a motorcycle than it is seeing a guy in power armor holding an undersized gun. Honestly they could've just buffed "heavy" weapons like miniguns and stuff, while making them have a huge strength requirement if you're not in power armor. That way when you're in power armor you feel more inclined to use these bigger badder special weapons, whereas if you don't have power armor you're going to have to pump up your strength in order to carry a minigun.
I think you nailed it. The funny thing is that realistically, how are you firing *any* of these guns when you have giant gloves on?
Nah theyre hideous even for hideous guns. There's a mod called "Nina's proper pipe guns" that changes their appearance along with a whole assortment of stand-alone pipe gun mods, and they actually make pipe guns look good while still maintaining the homemade makeshift style without that disgusting rusted pipe look. Every fallout has some form of makeshift weapons, and there are dozens mods for each game out there that do it well too. Makeshift doesn't have to mean ugly. They simply made a bad design with F4 pipe guns. Actually, most of the designs across many weapon types are ugly to me. Idk what they were thinking. Too many of them are so bulky and unwieldy or they don't make sense
I find the pipeguns pretty good looking in my opinion, I like most of the guns in F4, minus the syringer
The biggest difference between NV and 4 for me was how much worse the weapons looked. The difference between the assault rifles is probably the worst 🤢
They really needed a 'power armor weapons' class of weapon Have them require certain str and/or endurance perks to wield I love the idea of a retro futuristic liquid-cooled heavy machine gun that looks inspired by WWI, I just don't like a human with lv 1 str and endurance holding one like it's nothing
Something like this feels like it would improve the choice of game style as well. I want to use this giant weapon, so I either need to be extremely beefy, or work with power armor. Could even do it the other way wear small weapons aren't easily handled by power armor giant fingers.
Power Armor with the Deliverer is ridiculous to look at lol.
The series did that correctly, suprisingly - we only see *PA soldiers* carrying ~~Maxim guns~~ assault rifles, and the one time a squire fires that gun it rests on the ground. IIRC.
The first time I saw it was about exactly the moment in time when I first asked myself “is this really a fallout game?”
If you don’t like the Atom-punk style that’s fine ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah I quite like the assault rifle even with its maxim barrel
The anti material rifle is so good. Fallout 4 junk as weapons with random perks are not it. I wish they would go back to specific legendary weapons in certain quests or locations. Like in new vegas. Instead you get random perks that make no sense.
I mod them out every time I play fo4
I feel like a lot of the lower end guns in fo4 just look and feel like garbage. I feel like the pipe guns could have been really good, but there was just very little care out into them.
Id be fine if the pipe weapons were scalable. Like they start lower than standard weapons but can be modded higher because of how DIY they are. But nah, they're kinda shit no matter how much work you put into them.
>they're kinda shit no matter how much work you put into them. *Gets GunNut lvl4* "Wow, with my newfound gunsmithing knowledge, I'm gonna create the ULTIMATE WEAPON!" : *Slightly stronger gun made out exclusively of rusty metals and a chunk of plywood*
Ain't pipe guns in New Vegas, you're in the wrong neighborhood.
But OP is shitting on FO4, so it’s perfectly okay /s
Yeah I was very confused because I’ve only played new Vegas
Ain't Todd Howard in New Vegas, either.
Technically the Hunting Rifle, Single Shotgun, and varmint rifle are all handmade “pipe” weapons in NV.
They make sense and would be functional irl though.
I use one for about ten minutes until I find enough 10mm ammo to use the pistol until I find real guns.
10mm pistol is GOAT of the game. No mater how far into the game I get I always have a 10mm Pistol renamed "BackUp" because those damn guns are always useful.
Got so lucky with one that fires 2 bullets for 1 round
I'm playing a rifle specd stealth archer in survival mode and still have a suppressed legendary 10mm on me because shotgun shells and 50 cal rounds are too expensive for easy targets (+100% damage if target health is full).
Ain't this *new vegas* memes
I kind of wish the “real” weapons were more rare. I like the aesthetic of the cobbled together weapons; it shows a whole “we couldn’t find guns so we made garbage work”
Bethesda doesn't trust your patience that's why they have you in power armor fighting a deathclaw 15 minutes into gameplay
Probably the worst creative decision for a fallout game that I can remember. It recovers from it, but power armor should feel earned, and death claws should be terrifying until you're in the end game
I can assure you the majority of players were not taking death claws lightly because they got 5 minutes of power armour with an under powered car battery. Given the death claw is perfectly capable of killing you in the armour and any you find in the wastes will shit stomp you sideways without mods or great loot.
Yep. That first suit DOES NOT last long. It gets damaged really quick and the fusion core drains fast.
My main save hasn’t had issues with death claws since like level 15. But it strikes from a good distance with heavy hitting weapons and is perked accordingly.
Ah you see, you actually know how to use perks. You're already significantly outside the knowledge of most players that started Fallout 4 for the first time.
That particular deathclaw is underpowered
On one playthrough I got one with Explosive rounds and turned it into a poor man's spray and pray. And I called it Mr. derp.
I fucking love craft firearms, I want more and I want a greater variety.
Metro gets home made weapons right, and it isn't even you can't have the pipe weapons but when every other legendary is a pipe weapons it's super annoying
It’s made out of fucking pipes. I don’t care what the stats are, it’s not as good as an old world industry forged death machine.
Yeah I don't really get half these arguments. "They're ugly!" Yeah no shit? The fuck did yall expect, expertly crafted masterpieces? I should show these people some real life homemade weapons and see if they think they're aesthetically pleasing
I really like the Pipe Revolver but that's it. Wish it used different ammo tho.
I wish pipe weapons could be turned into anything. You want a shotgun, rifle, full auto, grenade launcher, syringe? They’d be so much better if there was only one type mashed together, you manually change what type of ammo it uses, the fire rate etc
So much of that game's art design drives me actually mad. Weapons are all bloated to work better in Power Armor meanwhile the Deliverer still looks dumb af in PA so it seems like a wasted sacrifice to me. The words slender, sleek, tactical etc cannot be used to describe more than 5% of the weaponry and that is an actual design sin when it comes to firearms and melee weaponry. As such, the thinnest mod configuration is my favorite if you can call it that. I use it early game as a go to pee shooter because .38 is so common. Drum mag, finned barrel, marksman's pistol grip (the curved one), auto receiver and glow sights. Some mods redesigned them and wouldn't you know they're thinner and have more curves. I really like the idea of a modular DIY weapon but the entire mod system in 4 is contrived as it is disappointing. Nothing intuitive about it imo except for rechamberings which is pretty low brow.
I just despise how they look, fallout 3 and FNV having more real weapons feels so much better imo.
An early suppressed bolt action pipe rifle is a must for all my survival playthrough’s Drumlin diner always coming in clutch with an early suppressor
I tried to make a decent rifle out of one, but it was still monumentally shit. My 10mm pistol was firing faster, dealing more damage and easier on ammo conservation and reloading. I don't know why they thought we needed these broken splinters but I wish they'd disappear.
Only if I’m early game and desperate or I find one with a really good legendary effect
I have got some broken pipe weapons. They are pretty fun and powerful when modded and built correctly
Honestly, the only reason I don't play Fallout 4 more often is cause the guns feel like crap and look like shit, I'm a gunsmith, and it's bugged me for forever. That's why I'm waiting for F4NV, not even for a NV remaster, just to use the inevitable weapons replacer option.
It annoys me how prevalent they are. This is America. We have more than enough guns that you shouldn’t be resorting to make shitty pistols out of junk you found lying around.
If I can switch it over to .45 or 5.56 and make it automatic and semi automatic then I’d use them a bit more until reaching a higher level
I used them until I had better weapons and now I just scrap every pipe gun I find. I don't like them but I like the parts
I just miss like the super iconic named loot from the older games. The all American. The Gobi sniper, that kinda stuff.
I hate them but they fit the lore. I just collect them to sell to vendors
Until I got a explosive/wounding/kneecapper/other op legendary effect pipe smg, that really changed my mind.
But how much of that is the legendary effect, and how much if that is the weapon itself.... Id bet if it was the effect on another weapon, you would still not care for the pipe gun.
I'd still take the pipe gun. Cheap/plentiful ammo Low recoil High capacity with drum Good fire rate
I got an explosive one, and used that. Beyond that, I don’t use them
I only use the real guns. Those pipes make for good material
So what does this have to do with New Vegas?
70% of FNV stan's personality is how much they don't like non-FNV Fallouts/Bethesda, the other 30 is Joshie Graham's idle animation. ^partial ^/s
Only if they have a good legendary effect. I turned a wounding pipe pistol into an automatic beast that would take out anything within seconds.
Maybe I'll try using them in my next playthrough.
My last play through was all pipe pistols. I used a lot of stims and moltovs.
I’ll use them super early game in survival mode because if you take gun nut you can upgrade them really far early on, that being said you can get better stuff before level 10 so no reason to keep using them
Why bother with pipe weapons when 10mm pistol beat them all in dps.
I will say this pipe weapons are great to scrap with all ranks in scrapper cause they often have more material than wood and metal
I love the fallout 2 pipe rifle,bro carried me through early game, and it doesnt look half bad either.
I use them to save ammo for better weapons at early levels before I'm stocked up. A frequent issue I had in my first playthroughs was to run out of 10mm ammo in the beginning so now I only bring out the 10mm pistol for hard fights until ammo gets easier to find/buy.
I like pipe weapons tbh, they fit the aesthetics really well. But I wish the chances of getting a raider with a real gun were bigger, and that they had more varied designs.
I just want actual unique weapons, not some Rageful Radioactive Unlimited Caloric Pipe Pistol dropped by the 56th Legendary Radroach I've killed.
I sort of love them, at least early/mid game. I know they aren't realistically designed, but this is franchise were radiation is magical so I'm willing to overlook it.
I use them a lot, I’m thinking about doing a pure pipe rifle survival challenge run, but I might have to seriously farm to find decent legendaries
Maybe at the very start of my playthrough or if I'm really struggling for ammo as I always seem to have a lot for the pipe guns. But otherwise, I just give them to settlement members, until I can upgrade them with something I'm no longer using.
I like em. Ugly but they have a cool vibe. Makes more sense raiders would be using improvised weapons.
After a few mods? Sure I’ll use them.
I use what is essentially a Tommy gun for a pipe gun by late game, primarily because of it’s plentiful ammo.
F4 lacked in the cool weapons department big time, felt like there was no reason even like going for better weapons cause they all looked the same, which was butt ugly
I mean.... they're supposed to look like crap, and they're supposed to mostly be crap, performance-wise, unless you mod them really well. My favourite game is New Vegas but after FO4 I find it jarring that every raider and his mother and her lover have pre-war guns. In fact, in FO4, I add even more makeshift weapons, like the Zap Gun, or a bunch of Degenerate Dak stuff. Among post-apoc settings, Fallout is the one that's silly enough for that stuff to actually work. The Fat Man is iconic, and it's a pipe gun on steroids, which are on other, smaller steroids. Or jet, idk.
I love the pipe guns but I drop them as soon as I can get something better and enough ammo for it. I had a dumb bolt pipe sniper with a bayonet and a poison effect on it I called Tetanus Shot.
They aren’t only hideous, but they fall off very early on in the game to the point where every other weapon is literally more viable to use than any pipe weapon ever hopes to be. Not to mention, in classic Bethesda fashion of not having a clue how guns work, they would quite literally, blow up in your face if you tried firing it more than once.
They supposed to be ugly stupid
The pipe guns are one of my main problems with fo4
I’m annoyed how big the damage difference is between a pipe weapon and a “proper” gun that uses the same type of ammunition. It’s not like a gun being low quality makes it less deadly when it fires and hits.
I like them depending on the character. Especially for enemy raiders they look nice
I quite liked them, at least the sniper rifle and fully automatic, but it's annoying how common they are. When going for a commando build, finding enough ammo is a struggle, so having a decent weapon that runs on the most available, cheapest and otherwise useless ammo type is nice. I don't use it for stronger enemies, but it's excellent when mowing down hordes of weaker ones and a good saving on the better ammo.
I think they’re fine in 76, where they’re more of a grey color, but I haaate the orange color in Fo4. [I use this mod.](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/54933)
I fucken love pipe guns* *They should be super comman and shitty but love the idea that people with no resources are making guns
Pipe rifle chambered in .308 works fine with mod that reduces ammo capacity to 1. Because you are loading 1 single cartridge in that gun, not all 4 (or 5, don't remember exact number) at the same time, as it implemented in the game. The other pipe variations just sucks. Revolver? Nah, better save .45 ammo for future when get a .45 carbine or .45 tommygun. Pipe pistol? I'd rather die than use it for self-defense. Why? Because it's side-loaded magazine makes me laugh as crazy every time I see it.
Without weapon degredation there really isn't much need to use them. You find a 10mm pistol in Vault 111, and ammunition isn't hard to come by. As much as I hate weapon degredation, in FO3/NV you do find yourself having to use a bigger variety of guns in the early game because your more exotic guns were harder to repair.
Wrong sub
Oh I use them...as scrap material. Plus with all the .38 ammo lying around, they make for perfect bartering material
This sub talks more about fallout 4 than fallout new vegas
Of course, I use them until I have a good supply of ammo for better weapons. You don’t run into anything in the northwest corner of the map that’s worth using better weapons on anyway.
There is exactly one long term use case The suppressed pipe bolt action on a Gunslinger character is the only use for .50 cal ammunition and generally your best option as a non-VATS gunslinger sniper with a silencer Its range stat goes past the hitscan boundary I think
Hi
If you don’t mod a CoD games worth of guns in you’re playing it wrong.
I'm actuslly really fucking sick of this meme. The PIPE guns are shitty who woulda thought? They're not supposed to be pretty looking high powered rifles ffs
Occasionally i shoot someone with the deliverer and with the perk it makes them drop their gun. Psycho jet pick it up and shoot em with their own gun. Sometimes its a pipe gun. 😂
I don't think I've ever used them in all my play time (1000+ hrs).
In terms of worldbuilding, they are good. Makes sense that weapons like these would be built in this kind of setting. However in a game where far better weapons are far more abundant, they feel pointless for more than an hour. Only there for the short amount of time until you find something that can use the same ammo. If the game had durability with weapons and these were the option that are easy to fix due to the low complexity and greater abundance of parts, then they'd have a place in the game. Especially if this was paired with other weapons being less frequent where it made sense.
They're so weak and you get so many much better guns early on. I don't know why anyone uses them. I basically just break him down for parts and sell the bullets for cheap.
I love them for the early game purely out of the role-playing side, although they're too weak to use them after level 10 or so.
It’s not that they’re ugly that drives me away, it’s that they’re both ugly AND useless. I’d rather use a melee weapon tbh.
I personally do not use them, however I think they are fun to work with on a weapons bench. It's better for settlement defense if everybody has a powerful automatic rifle don't you think?
They're like iron armor in Skyrim - basically immdeiately useless - but at least the iron armour looked *cool.*
I do use them because there isn't enough ammo to continuously use every other gun
Is there a mod to improve the pipe guns aesthetic? Might solve a lot of the community complaints.
The first mod I installed on fallout 4 was getting rid of those POS and replaced them with real guns
I fucking hate the ugly pipe guns.
I just stockpile .38 until I find a never ending pipe gun, mod it to be full auto, and now I've got a bullet hose. Other than that, there's zero reason to use pipe weapons IMO.
I only really got a lot of use out of pipe guns on a crit build where the ability to put exotic calibers into a pistol form was really useful. I made a super low AP use .38 pipe pistol to build up crits and then either a .308 bolt action pipe pistol or a sawed off shotgun to spend them. .308 pipe pistols can blow off heads from absurd ranges by guaranteeing a hit with a crit while sawed off shotguns vaporize enemies with close range crits for the same reason. The synergy meant that I could build up crits on a radroach with the .38 and then use them to one shot a deathclaw or raider survivalist. Probably one of the most fun builds I ever made honestly
Same goes for the assault rifle that looks like a trash can in 3
I know that with the right build and mods they can do respectable damage outside of low levels, but even still getting them as high level loot rewards hurts a lot.
There's people who will find the weakest weapon in the entire game and crank the difficulty all the way up then right out of Goodsprings head straight to Quarry Junction with it to fight deathclaws.