Salvaged Assaultron head (Automatron)

The salvaged assaultron head is a weapon in the Fallout 4 add-on Automatron.

Characteristics
The salvaged assaultron head is a unique pistol-type energy weapon that, as the name suggests, consists of little more than the severed head of an Assaultron someone turned into a powerful hand-held laser gun. Due to its origin, the weapon lacks a proper grip, so the user has to make do with parts of the assaultron's spine and cabling instead.

Despite live assaultrons firing a continuous laser beam from their heads for a few seconds, the severed head only emits a single pulse per pull of the trigger, similar to any regular semi-automatic laser gun.

Similar to the laser musket, it must be charged before firing by manually reloading the weapon. This can be done up to five times for each shot, increasing the damage with each extra charge. Similarly, firing it in V.A.T.S. will default to one charge when used uncharged, but the head can be manually charged to the wanted level prior to VATS with no additional action point cost.

Unlike the laser musket, charging the assaultron head involves no visible action by the shooter. However, the head's face plates open up and the whole weapon gains a red glow of increasing brightness at the first, third and fifth charge level. Unsurprisingly, this optical effect is nearly identical to the one live assaultrons produce when they charge their eye laser weapon.

The salvaged assaultron head is unique in that it is the only energy weapon in the game that directly injures the shooter as well as their target. Every time the assaultron head is fired, it inflicts 45 points of radiation damage on its user regardless of charge level. If not monitored carefully in battle, using the assaultron head can kill the player even faster than it does their targets as the radiation adds up rapidly especially in VATS.

The salvaged assaultron head cannot be modified.

Location
Found in a large chest shortly before exiting Fort Hagen hangar, after the fight against Ivey.

Bugs

 * Throwing a grenade when armed with the salvaged assaultron head will sometimes irradiate the user as if they had fired it.