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 handheld heavy assault and support weapon. It uses 5mm rounds as ammo.

It requires a moment to spin up before it actually starts firing, but makes up for the delay with a high rate of fire and large ammunition capacity. As can be expected from a motorized rotary gun, it burns through ammo reserves at a high 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 makes 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.

The minigun fires large volumes of low-damage shots with a high spread, rendering it difficult to take down enemies with larger defensive stats, even with investment in the Heavy Gunner perk. When fired continuously, the minigun's barrel cluster glows ever hotter, eventually reaching a bright yellow color.

A minigun can easily be obtained at low levels by completing the quest When Freedom Calls, as the Sole Survivor is given one to defend the Museum of Freedom from raiders and a deathclaw.

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 board the Prydwen. At higher levels, it is already modified with the accelerated barrel and a shredder. It respawns in Teagan's list after some time.
 * Often carried by Brotherhood Knights in power armor on board the Prydwen and guarding the nearby Boston Airport.
 * A random super mutant can always be found with this weapon inside Trinity Church.
 * With Contraptions Workshop installed, the minigun in the heavy weapon forge can be crafted.
 * Big Mack carries one at the Wilson Atomatoys factory.
 * A stock variant is sold by Arturo Rodriguez in Diamond City. It will always reappear as the same variant first found.
 * KL-E-0 occasionally sells one in Goodneighbor.
 * Regi Blattaria to the west of Corvega assembly plant carries one depending on one's level.
 * Can be found on a dead Gunner at HalluciGen, Inc. in the basement where one obtains the HalluciGen master password.

Behind the scenes
With Fallout 4, Bethesda designers moved away from using the "backpack ammo" design for heavy weapons, such as the minigun and flamer. Although a backpack of ammunition would be more realistic, considering the amount of ammunition that would be lugged around for heavy weapons, they found that the backpacks limited them in their costume and armor design.

The real-world equivalent of this weapon (i.e. a scaled down 5.56mm Minigun) is the XM214 Microgun.