Gamma gun (Fallout 4)

The gamma gun is a weapon in Fallout 4.

Characteristics
The gamma gun is a very crude weapon overall and appears to have been built from scavenged junk found throughout the wasteland. The "dish" of the weapon is a small metal bowl with some metal wiring running towards the center and the central housing is a steel hexagonal structure with holes of varying size and shape. Assorted wiring, piping, and other junk protrudes out of the rear of this structure, along with the three gamma round cells arranged in a triangular shape on top. The grip appears to be a handle-less spatula, welded onto a rectangular piece of metal pipe and stuck onto a piece of solid steel to unite it with the rest of the weapon.

Even in their most basic form, gamma guns boast considerable radiation damage. This rare feature means most gamma guns have little effect on robots, ghouls, super mutants and the majority of wild creatures that plague the Commonwealth. However, most human enemies have limited radiation resistance. Even the most robust humans can often be defeated with several blasts from a properly modified gamma gun.

The gamma gun launches a small blast of radiation damage that explodes on impact. Upon a direct hit, the target takes a significant dose of radiation poisoning (100, or a 10% loss in maximum health).

The radiation-immunity-penetrating damage also means that the gamma gun will still do damage against radiation-immune enemies due to how radiation works in Fallout 4, it will even do more damage against radiation-immune enemies than radiation-resistant.

Due to the potentially high amount of radiation poisoning the gamma gun can do (upwards of 400 rads with a combination of Nuclear Physicist, mods and irradiated legendary prefix), this gun can be highly effective against tough enemies especially on high difficulties (since radiation poisoning is unaffected by difficulty-based damage bonus/penalties), even with radiation resistance. In particular, extremely high level human foes may have close to or more than a thousand health. As an extreme example, a shot from a deep dish-modded and Nuclear Physicist-powered gamma gun (300 rads or 30% health) against a Gunner colonel (1070 health) on Very Hard will be equivalent to 642 listed damage (and equivalent to up to 428 on Survival mode).

With the electric signal carrier antennae, the damage of the gamma gun changes dramatically; it still does radiation poisoning on a direct hit, but now does a high amount of other damage that can be charged to do further energy damage. This essentially means that while the gun is still very effective against enemies with high health or relatively low radiation resistance, it also now does a significant amount of other damage to be useful in virtually all other cases.

The downside to the weapon's power is the relative scarcity of its ammunition. While the Children of Atom - the primary faction that uses the gun - can be found in quite a few locations across the Commonwealth, they are formidable enemies and carry only small amounts of ammo. Purchasing gamma rounds from arms dealers may be necessary in order to use the weapon regularly.

Weapon modifications


Footnote: The electric signal carrier antennae significantly changes how the gamma gun and the Lorenzo's Artifact version functions. The base damage changes to:
 * Gamma gun: (direct hit) 54 + 7.5!  + 7.5!  + 100
 * Lorenzo's Artifact: (direct hit) 7! ; (area of effect) 7! + 44  + 40

In addition, if one holds down the fire button long enough for the gun to start making a "clicking" noise from the arcing electricity, it will do an additional +45 on a direct hit.

Variants

 * Lorenzo's Artifact gun - Unique variant (actually a standard gamma gun with a unique Lorenzo's Artifact weapon mod) that deals 25 points explosion and 10 points radiation damage per hit and can cause significant knockback on human targets.
 * Zeta gun - Similar to Lorenzo's Artifact, the Zeta gun is a standard gamma gun with a unique "Zeta Wave Barrel" weapon mod. It fires a smaller red projectile, causes 10 points of radiation damage, and can cause knockback.

Locations
Owned by Child of Atom cultists.
 * Decayed reactor site
 * Dartmouth Professional Building
 * Kingsport Lighthouse

Bugs

 * Due to a possible bug related to Fallout 4 area of effect damage, the secondary damage on a gamma gun without the electric signal carrier antennae mod is applied twice on a direct hit.
 * If you have the electric signal carrier antennae installed and charge up the gamma gun then switch weapons, the sound of the charged up gamma gun will still be playing, as well as the controller vibration.
 * To fix this simply switch back to the gamma gun while your current weapon is still drawn.