Gauss Rifle (Fallout: New Vegas)

The Gauss rifle is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
The scoped Gauss rifle is an advanced sniper rifle that uses a series of eleven electromagnetic coils to energize and magnetize a preloaded standard projectile round to a tremendous speed. In appearance, it is almost identical to the Gauss rifle acquired after finishing the Fallout 3 add-on, Operation: Anchorage, apart from the addition of an extra pad on the buttstock.

Like most other energy weapons in Fallout: New Vegas, this weapon is hard to maintain; identical Gauss rifles are rare in the Mojave, therefore making it more difficult to repair. Ammunition is also harder to come by than other weapons; this is coupled with its requirements of five microfusion cells per shot, as opposed to its Fallout 3 counterpart, which required only one. The Mojave Wasteland version of the Gauss rifle also lacks the guaranteed knock-down effect that the Fallout 3 version had, and in fact has no chance of knocking down enemies at all. It does still apply force to nearby enemies on projectile impact, though that force is largely negated unless the target is dead, in which case it will typically send the target's corpse flying.

The rifle has numerous advantages over its gun equivalent, the anti-materiel rifle. It has a lower Strength requirement of 5 compared to 8, does slightly more damage, has double the critical chance (a maximum of 76% compared to the 38% of the anti-materiel rifle), has more common ammunition, and weighs less. Finally, it has enough range to hit anything the Courier can see, whereas bullets may be unable to hit targets at the edge of their vision depending on their position and direction.

In Hardcore mode, if more than 260 microfusion cells, or 52 shots, are carried, the Gauss rifle becomes heavier than the anti-materiel rifle. With the Heavyweight perk, it comes down to 60 cells, equivalent to 12 shots.

Durability
The Gauss rifle can fire a total of about 395 times using standard cells, the equivalent of 395 reloads, from full condition before breaking.

Variants

 * YCS/186 - a unique variant which does over 16% more damage and uses four microfusion cells per shot instead of five. It can only be obtained without the Wild Wasteland trait, otherwise it will be replaced by an alien blaster.
 * Elijah wields a non-playable version of the Gauss rifle. It only differs from the regular Gauss rifle in damage, which scales to the Courier's level. The damage increases at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50, ranging from 50 to 208 damage per shot.


 * The Faderator - a cut content Gauss rifle from all add-ons except Courier's Stash. It is fully automatic and does 20,160 damage per second (DPS).

Locations

 * Hidden Valley bunker - can be purchased from Knight Torres after following the quest lines. Also, many of the paladins in Brotherhood T-51b power armor have this weapon.
 * Silver Rush, Freeside - sometimes sold at higher levels.
 * Carried by Father Elijah.
 * Big MT - can be found on Y-17 trauma override harnesses, most notably near the X-7a "Left Field" artillery launch.
 * Brewer's beer bootlegging - in the cellar, consistently found in a locked gun cabinet. There is a key underneath the Big Book of Science in the other room (75 lockpick level required).

Bugs

 * The Pip-Boy's displayed damage per second (DPS) for the gun doesn't account for the need to reload every shot, unlike other single shot weapon such as the missile launcher. This is due to the game mechanics not taking into consideration the weapon use of more than one ammunition per shot.
 * The Gauss rifle's shot will rarely completely pass through an opponent when shot outside of V.A.T.S..
 * The Gauss rifle in Fallout: New Vegas is almost identical to the one found in Fallout 3, and thus suffers from similar bugs, including the one that affects its damage output when fired via V.A.T.S. When used in V.A.T.S., any hit will do exactly 95.244% of the maximum damage, regardless of enemy damage threshold, critical hits, or sneak attack critical. This means, that with an energy weapons skill of 100, the Gauss rifle shot will do 114.29 points of damage with every V.A.T.S. shot. This is still lower than free aiming, and no bonuses are applied to head shots. The damage bug is related to the Gauss rifle's "explosive" visual effect, which affects its V.A.T.S. damage calculations: the Gauss rifle's projectile is the only projectile in Fallout: New Vegas which is both a hitscan projectile and one which has an explosive effect. Removing the effect from the projectile via user-created mods is currently the only known solution to the issue.
 * When scoped in, the rifle may show a high-contrast color computer interface as shown when activating a terminal, meaning the view will be completely impeded.
 * When standing still and aiming straight down, then firing the weapon, the Courier will sometimes go into third-person, and the weapon will then fly out of their hands. While in third-person, the weapon will now fire directly from where it lies on the ground, or sometimes, float in the air. If entering first-person, the weapon acts like normal. The bug can be fixed by unequipping the weapon completely and re-equipping it again. This is also possible for its unique variant, the YCS/186. Since both weapons have a small area-of-blast damage, this will also damage the Courier for about one-tenth of their health.