Laser Rifle (Fallout: New Vegas)

The AER9 laser rifle is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
The laser rifle has no iron sights, but compensates with excellent zoom. It can be upgraded with a scope, making it less effective in close quarters but thanks to its good accuracy, it can be used as a medium and long-range weapon. The laser rifle makes a decent starting weapon but with all mods, it is extremely powerful, even at high level. Also, due to the fact that it can fire 2 beams at once by adding a beam splitter, it can score a critical hit for each beam outside of V.A.T.S. This effect allows it to sometimes (with a critical hit for each beam) cause a huge amount of damage (72.6) per shot.

Durability
The laser rifle can fire a total of about 620 times using standard cells, the equivalent of 26 reloads, from full condition before breaking.

Modifications

 * Laser rifle focus optics - Adds +3 damage
 * Laser rifle scope - Adds a long range scope with 3.5x magnification
 * Laser rifle beam splitter - Causes to fire two grouped beams per shot, with greater total power than a single beam

Variants

 * Van Graff laser rifle - A special version of laser rifle given by the Van Graffs.
 * AER14 prototype - The unique version of the laser rifle in Fallout: New Vegas.
 * Tri-beam laser rifle - A high-output triple beam laser rifle.
 * The Disintegrator (cut content)

Locations

 * Fiends often carry them.
 * Hidden Valley bunker - Torres may sell laser rifles.
 * Found on the dead Brotherhood patrols during the Still in the Dark Quest.
 * Nipton - Another can be found lying beside a dead wastelander by the small trailer park.
 * Nipton houses - One can be found inside in the bathtub.
 * Silver Rush - Gloria may sell laser rifles and numerous can be stolen.
 * They can be randomly found on dead Bright followers.
 * They can often be purchased from Quartermaster Bardon.

Bugs

 * After entering or exiting a area it is possible for the Laser Rifle to glitch, making it so that when you shoot it uses ammo but no laser comes out and it doesn't inflict damage. A way to fix this is by simply unequipping and re-equipping the weapon.

Behind the scenes
The markings on theses rifles as well as their descriptions hint at the types of lasing mediums used in each variant. The 1064 nm wavelength (frequency converted to green, 532 nm) of the AER14 prototype strongly indicates that it is a Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet) laser while the ~650 nm wavelength of the AER9 laser rifle indicates that it is likely a Ruby, InGaAs or HeNe laser.