Fallout: New Vegas Weapons

Pistols

 * 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

Rifles

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

SMGs

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

Shotguns

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

Heavy weapons

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

Energy pistols

 * Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ May only be acquired if the player has chosen the Wild Wasteland trait.
 * ² Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥ 50.
 * ³ Frightens abominations.
 * ⁴ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Energy rifles

 * Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ May only be acquired if the player has not chosen the Wild Wasteland trait.
 * ² Scoped by Default.

Energy heavy weapons

 * Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Projectile

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

Thrown

 * 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.
 * ⁴ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Placed

 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥ 50
 * ² Custom-built weapon
 * ³ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Bladed

 * 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.
 * ⁴ Includes double normal weapon damage in V.A.T.S.
 * ⁵ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Blunt

 * Unique weapons are highlighted with a darker background
 * ¹ Improved holdout weapon: May be concealed if Sneak ≥ 50
 * ² Includes double normal weapon damage in V.A.T.S.
 * ³ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Thrown

 * ¹ Normal holdout weapon: May be concealed regardless of Sneak skill.
 * ² Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.

Unarmed

 * 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 Includes double normal weapon damage in V.A.T.S.
 * ⁴ Does bonus damage to robots and power armored foes.
 * ⁵ Ignores DR/DT.

Other

 * Quest items are highlighted with a darker background

Cut content

 * ¹ Available in all add-ons except Courier's Stash.

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.
 * 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. This can be fixed by opening the console, clicking the weapon, and typing the "setownership" command.
 * With heavy energy weapons that use a backpack as an ammunition supply as well as the katana with a sheath, 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. This can be corrected by equipping the weapon that caused this, then unequipping it.
 * Sometimes when using melee weapons, you get blood splatter on the weapon and the blood refuses to come off of the weapon. You can fix this by leaving the game and coming back.
 * Rarely the weapon models can become small.
 * Sometimes, when you fire until you have no ammo left, the gun will still shake like it is shooting. It won't make a sound or inflict any damage.