Laser musket (Fallout 4)

The laser musket is a weapon in Fallout 4.

Characteristics
The laser musket is a homemade variety of laser rifle, used mainly by the Minuteman faction, appearing to be cobbled together from various mechanical and electronic parts strapped to a regular wooden rifle stock. The "barrel" consists of a standard laser rifle housing with two metal-ringed lenses atop a metal rod extending from the stock, through which the laser beam is presumably focused (although it can be fitted with a focusing array that looks the same as either the Laser pistol or Laser rifle). The beam itself is created inside a makeshift capacitor, which the player character charges via a hand-crank on the back. Like most laser weapons, it uses fusion cells as ammunition and fires a red laser beam.

What makes the Laser Musket unique from other laser weapons in the game is that even with ammo in the player character's inventory, it starts off "unloaded", and does not automatically reload after firing. The player character must manually load up each shot by pressing the "reload" key, causing the Sole Survivor to turn the hand-crank and charge the capacitor with one Fusion Cell. Each subsequent crank charges the capacitor even further with another fusion cell, to a maximum of two (mods can be added to increase energy capacity to a maximum of six cells worth). Once loaded, the Laser Musket can be fired, consuming all the cells stored in one powerful shot. This ability to manually "charge up" each shot makes the laser musket a powerful first-tier weapon and especially versatile when taking on enemies of varying levels, using weaker shots on weaker targets and more powerful shots on more powerful targets.

Once fully upgraded, the laser musket becomes one of the best sniping weapons in the game, capable of taking out Legendary foes with one shot to the head when coupled with the sneak attack bonus.

The Laser Musket's major drawback is its potentially high ammo consumption and slow reload speed, given that the player character has to manually reload each and every shot (although the Sole Survivor does reload between shots in VATS, albeit with only one-crank shots regardless of how powerful the first initial shot was). On top of which; the weapon is not automatically loaded when using the quick select menu making it a poor choice for rapidly responding to an unexpected threat.

Legendary variant "Automatic" features the Laser Musket as rapid-firing weapon, fired by cranking the capacitor like the original Gatling-guns.

Locations

 * Concord, just outside the Museum of Freedom.
 * The Super-Duper Mart in Lexington.
 * Carried by some members of the Commonwealth Minutemen.
 * There are two inside The Castle armory.

Behind the scenes
The laser musket is a crank-powered energy weapon; the 2002 Walt Disney film 'Treasure Planet' featured a weapon of the same name which used a similar system of powering the musket. However, in the film turning the crank constantly ensures a continuous beam with decreased potency.