YCS 186

The  is a unique weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
The YCS/186 is a unique variant of the Gauss rifle. Its appearance is that of a standard Gauss rifle with a sandy or rusted texture along the barrel and main body. Additionally, the lens of the scope is tinted red instead of the regular untinted lens found on the standard Gauss rifle's scope. It also has 4 more coils around the barrel, possibly explaining the greater damage, while still remaining the same length. This weapon uses 4 microfusion cells per shot, instead of the normal 5 of a standard Gauss rifle. Possibly due to the added coils, this weapon is 1 pound heavier than the standard version.

Like the standard Gauss rifle, it boasts several advantages over the anti-materiel rifle. In addition to its increased damage output, it also tends to cripple limbs on a direct hit, providing you do not kill the enemy immediately. When using max charge microfusion cells, this weapon can deal a devastating 210 base damage ,with all related perks this can be increased to 226.8 per shot. With damage boosting chems and a sneak-critical headshot this weapon is capable of killing even the legendary deathclaw in one hit.

Variants

 * Gauss rifle, the standard variant found through the Mojave Wasteland.


 * The Faderator, a cut content Gauss rifle from the Dead Money add-on that is fully automatic and does 20,160 damage per second (DPS).

Location
The YCS/186 Gauss rifle is found at the Mercenary camp east of Brooks Tumbleweed Ranch. A hostile mercenary with reinforced combat armor or reinforced combat armor mark 2 is carrying this weapon and may attack the player character on sight.

If the player has the Wild Wasteland trait, the mercenaries are replaced with aliens who have the alien blaster instead, making the YCS/186 unobtainable during gameplay.

Behind the scenes

 * The is a reference to the "Your Console Sucks" section of the The Something Awful Forums. Additionally, 186 is the forum ID number of YCS.

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 weapons such as the missile launcher. This is due to the game mechanics not taking into consideration the weapon use of more than 1 ammo per shot.
 * Sometimes a projectile is fired, but no hit is detected although the projectile can clearly be seen to travel through the target. On the Xbox 360, this occurs primarily at short range and most frequently against deathclaws
 * Sometimes the projectile will not fire at all, but still depletes the loaded ammunition. Possibly similar to the aforementioned bug.
 * An incorrect normal map texture is specified for this weapon when it is equipped by the player, resulting in highly irregular shading across the weapon. Additionally, the weapon uses lower-resolution textures than most other weapons found in the game.
 * The impact power of the gun is very high, resulting in the enemies being knocked through solid objects and into the terrain or through the game world (falling beneath it) making retrieval of their bodies and any goods impossible. Surprisingly Meltdown does not exacerbate this problem, but somewhat remedies it by changing the trajectory of the corpse or causing the impact force of the shot to dissipate when the energy explosion occurs.
 * Sometimes if given to a companion (ie: Arcade Gannon) it will disappear from their inventory and they will not have it equipped either, making the weapon unretrievable.
 * Sometimes the YCS/186 can be found on Paladin Sato while pick pocketing him. The only way to get it back is by looting his dead NPC corpse.
 * The weapon may become stuck at maximum condition. Even using max charge ammo won't reduce the weapon's condition.

Gallery
YCS/186