Minigun (Fallout 4)

The minigun is a weapon in Fallout 4.

Characteristics
The minigun is a motorized Gatling-style rapid-fire weapon commonly employed by the military, or other lesser factions that managed to acquire such a weapon. Miniguns can be found as mounted door guns on Vertibirds or as a hand-held heavy assault and support weapon.

It requires a moment to spin up before it actually starts firing, but makes up for the delay with an incredibly high rate of fire and large ammunition capacity. As can be expected from a motorized rotary cannon, it burns through ammo reserves at an alarming rate, even more so when equipped with Accelerated Barrels. This and the fact that only a select few enemies wield miniguns makes it difficult to keep the weapon supplied without spending a lot of caps at arms dealers. Investing points in the Scrounger perk and installing the Tri-Barrel modification helps to alleviate this issue to some extent. The latter significantly increases the minigun's per-shot damage, range and accuracy at the cost of a sharp drop in firing rate, all of which make the weapon a lot more cost-efficient and effective at mid to long range. The downside is that this mod requires heavy investment in the Gun Nut perk and won't be available until the player reaches a fairly high level, a point where the minigun will most likely find itself outclassed in most respects by the Gatling laser.

Due to the minigun dishing out huge volumes of low-damage shots with noticeable spread, it is best used for crowd-controlling large numbers of weak or lightly armored foes, like most types of animals or raiders. Deploying it against heavily armored adversaries like power armor-clad Brotherhood of Steel soldiers is ill-advised, as their level of protection will negate almost any damage the minigun is potentially capable of dealing, regardless of modifications and related perks.

When fired continuously, the minigun's barrel cluster glows ever hotter, eventually reaching a bright yellow color. While in real life the barrels would be close to melting at this point, rendering the weapon inoperable, in-game the minigun remains functional but suffers a serious drop in its already low accuracy unless upgraded with the Tri-Barrel mod.

If the Shredder modification is installed and the minigun has no ammo, "firing" it will cause the weapon to act like a much larger version of the Ripper, doing constant melee damage. This "Rippergun" is more damaging, but less effective at limb damage than the ripper. Also unlike the ripper using the minigun this way drains your AP at a constant rate. The AP drain can be stopped while wearing power armor.

A minigun can easily be obtained at low levels by completing the quest When Freedom Calls as the Sole Survivor must utilise it to defend the Museum of Freedom from Raiders (Fallout 4).

Variants

 * Ashmaker, a unique minigun, gained by completing The Big Dig quest.

Locations

 * Museum of Freedom, on the roof in a crash-landed Vertibird.
 * Ack-Ack located in the basement of the USAF Satellite Station Olivia carries one.
 * Fist, the leader of the Trinity Tower super mutants, carries one.
 * One of the crazed Gunners in the mainframe room of the HalluciGen, Inc. building carries one with upgrades depending on player level.
 * Can be bought from Proctor Teagan on the The Prydwen
 * Often carried by Brotherhood Knight's in power armor on board the Prydwen and guarding the nearby Boston Airport.