Gauss Rifle (Fallout 3)

The Gauss rifle is an advanced sniper rifle included in the Fallout 3 add-on Operation: Anchorage.

Characteristics
The Gauss rifle has the ability to knock down enemies on critical hits, and the buggy V.A.T.S. performance and low magazine size limits its usefulness in close-quarters combat.

Durability
The Gauss rifle can fire a total of about 375 shots from full condition before breaking.

Variants

 * Sim version - A sim-only version of the weapon which has non-degrading health.
 * Test cell - There is a Gauss rifle in the test cell TestPhil that does 25% of the damage of the final version but has a 100% knockdown chance.

Locations
In the Capital Wasteland: In the Anchorage Reclamation simulation:
 * One is located in the VSS Armory after completing the Anchorage Reclamation simulation, along with 300 microfusion cells.
 * During The Guns of Anchorage quest, a paratrooper gets shot down by Chinese soldiers and leaves behind a Gauss rifle. However, the gun will be removed from the inventory upon completing the quest.
 * One can be obtained from the quartermaster at the U.S. Army field headquarters after successfully passing a Speech check (requires at least 50 Speech).
 * One can also be found on an American power armored soldier during the fight with General Jingwei.

Developer Statements
In a Bethesda Game Studios forum, Emil Pagliarulo explained that, "The gun energizes and magnetizes a standard projectile round; those are already preloaded into the weapon, and are in that giant clip attached to the side of the weapon... We did it this way because we knew we wanted to have an energy weapon equivalent of the sniper rifle."

Bugs

 * The scope on the Gauss rifle, like on the sniper rifle, is not perfectly zeroed. The shot will travel up and to the right of the target at extreme distances.
 * Occasionally, shots dealt from the Gauss rifle will not do damage, regardless of the type of hit it was (crippling hit, critical strike, sneak attack critical). However, it can still knock down enemies and cripple them.
 * This weapon does not deal proper damage when in V.A.T.S. Any hit will do exactly 95.244% of the maximum damage, regardless of enemy DR, critical hits, or sneak attacks. This means that, with 100 Energy Weapons, a Gauss rifle shot will do 95.244 points of damage with every V.A.T.S. shot. This is still lower than free aiming, and no bonuses are applied to headshots.
 * Being knocked down, either by a gas explosion or a frag grenade, the Gauss rifle may go flying. It will stay wherever it lands, and pulling the trigger will cause the rifle to fire from wherever it landed. This can also be achieved if the impact of the rifle's shots are too close and knock the weapon out of the character's hands. Holstering the weapon has no effect. Equipping another weapon will fix the issue.
 * Having any type of power armor equipped at the same time the rifle is equipped, the air tanks and valve on the armor will disappear. This is because it has the "hide backpack" flag marked, despite not having a backpack component like other weapons with this flag (minigun, Gatling laser, etc.).
 * Critical shots to the target's weapon will still knock them down.
 * Critical shots that do not kill will occasionally cause the target to fall through the map.
 * Sometimes in V.A.T.S when firing there will be a slight delay for firing but the firing sound will be normal, like when reloading and the sound for it is already done.
 * Sometimes if the Gauss rifle is fired straight down when standing, the view will switch to third person and the rifle will be knocked out of one's hands until the reload animation finishes. It usually takes more than one shot since it does not always do damage.