Fallout 4 weapons

Weapons in Fallout 4 fall under three classifications, including normal, legendary, and unique.

Overview
Normal weapons have no special bonuses. Legendary weapons come with random bonuses applied to them and are only dropped by legendary enemies. Unique weapons are weapons that are already named and will always retain the same special bonuses. Uniques are typically either bought from merchants or are quest rewards. Normal and legendary weapons will change their name when mods are applied, unique weapons will not.

All stats are given with standard weapon modifications.

Other
All these weapons count as non automatic weapons and thus work with either Gunslinger, Rifleman, or Sniper, except the Cryolator, which is counted as a heavy gun and thus works with Heavy Gunner.

Radiation weapons
These weapons produce radiation damage, including both direct damage from explosions and damage over time from exposure and poisoning. There is some variance in how damage is dealt within this class of weapon; please consult each weapon's page for specific details. Also, the radiation page explains the unique ways that this kind of damage is handled by the game. These are affected by the perk Nuclear Physicist in terms of radiation damage.

Poison weapons
Poison weapons utilize the poison damage type to deal ongoing damage to targets.

Explosives
Explosives have a maximum range of 93. They seem to hit an invisible wall at their maximum range. Explosives benefit from the Bloody Mess, Demolition Expert and SCAV! - Cautionary Crafts perks, but only for their "primary" damage effects (which always includes the "Explosive" legendary prefix); this is why the pulse grenade and pulse mine are not affected by any of the three.

Melee weapons
Damage found in the table is base damage, every point of Strength adds 10% to it. Several perks can further increase the damage displayed for a melee weapon.

Bladed
Bladed weapons can dismember limbs of humanoid opponents, permanently damaging the limb and disarming the target. Like all melee weapons, bladed weapons benefit from Big Leagues and Strength.

Blunt
Blunt weapons tend to stagger opponents more frequently than bladed weapons. Like all melee weapons, blunt weapons benefit from Big Leagues and Strength.

Unarmed weapons
Unarmed weapons benefit from the Iron Fist perk as well as from Strength. Note that unarmed weapons cannot be equipped while wearing power armor.

Renaming weapons
In Fallout 4 the player is able to rename any weapon, including unique weapons, at any weapons workbench. However, the Silver submachine gun, the Survivor's Special, Ashmaker and Grognak's axe cannot be renamed, nor will they pick up any prefixes from modding. Renaming weapons does not affect any weapon stats. This primarily adds a level of personalization to weapons and can help avoid accidentally disassembling a favored weapon.
 * Special and accented characters (i.e. alt-codes) can be used when renaming a weapon, but some of those will be replaced with "?".
 * Since patch 1.3, HTML tags (e.g. &lt;u&gt;, &lt;i&gt;) can no longer be used to change the appearance of the weapon's name.

Mods
Weapons may be modified in Fallout 4. Each weapon has modification "slots" (e.g. barrel, grip, magazine, sights) that may be modified with increasingly powerful or useful mods by the player character based on their perks. However, the player character may salvage useful mods that are not yet available via the player character's perk level by simply modifying any weapon that already has the mod of interest. By replacing the mod of interest with any available mod the original mod goes into inventory and may then be used to alter the player character's chosen weapon without regard for their perk level. Unique weapons do not offer this capability; their special mods are 'reserved' and since they are unique, no other examples are available to be salvaged. However it is possible to do the reverse, that is, to transfer standard mods from standard weapons onto unique and legendary weapons.

Bugs

 * Sometimes, when starting the game, gunfire cannot be heard on certain weapons. This can be fixed by re-starting the game or re-loading to a previous save file.
 * Sometimes, when using a night vision scope, the night vision effect will stick around after going out of the scope.