Gauss Rifle (Fallout: New Vegas)

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

Characteristics
It is almost identical in appearance to the Gauss rifle in Fallout 3, from the Operation: Anchorage (add-on) Downloadable Content, apart from the buttstock. It uses 5 rounds of microfusion cells per shot instead of 1.

Variants

 * YCS/186 Gauss rifle: over 33% more damage and use 20% less ammunition per shot (must not have the Wild Wasteland trait or it will be replaced by an alien blaster).

Locations

 * In the Hidden Valley bunker, can be purchased from Knight Torres after following the quest lines or taken from unnamed npc's around the bunker. Many of the Paladins in Brotherhood T-51b power armor wield it.
 * The Silver Rush in Freeside sometimes sells them when you reach higher levels (around 14 or so).
 * Carried by Father Elijah in the Dead Money add-on.
 * Can be found on Brewer's Beer bootlegging if you are a high-leveled player.

Bugs

 * The Gauss rifle in Fallout: New Vegas is identical to the one found in Fallout 3, and thus suffers from similar bugs, including the one that affects its damage output when used 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 DR, critical hits, or sneak attacks. This means, that with 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 headshots.
 * The above damage bug is related to the Gauss rifle's "explosion" visual effect, which affects its V.A.T.S. damage calculations. Removing the effect via user-created mods is currently the only known solution to the issue. Notably, the displacer glove, which applies a similar visual effect on impact, is not affected by this bug.
 * The Gauss rifle when scoped in shows an high contrast color computer interface as shown when activating a terminal meaning you cannot see where you are aiming when looking down the scope.
 * The V.A.T.S. will take more AP than said.
 * When standing still and aiming straight down, then firing the weapon, the character will sometimes go into third-person, and the weapon will then fly out of the players 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 unequiping the weapon completely (switch to another weapon) and re-equiping it again. This is also possible for it's unique variant, the YCS/186. Since both weapons have a small area-of-blast damage, this will also damage the player for about 1/10 of his/her health.