Euclid's C-Finder

Euclid's C-Finder is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
The raw power of the sun, contained in an easy-to-carry package! Just point this weapon at the bad guys, and push the button. The Archimedes II orbital laser will strike down at the speed of light and reduce your foes to bones, beaks, and toenails. Once you use it, you will have to wait 24 hours for the laser to recharge. Many locals appear to flee from the Tracking laser. You must choose to route power to the Archimedes II ONLY during the quest That Lucky Old Sun, and does not work if you activate it after the quest is completed.

This item has a weight of 15 and a value of only 1 making it only worth finding if you route power to the Archimedes II.

If you have Veronica Santangelo as your companion it starts the I Could Make You Care quest.

Locations
Found at the Freeside's east gate. A boy named Max carries it. He is chasing a girl named Stacey. You may either buy it for 1000 caps, or it can be pickpocketed from Max while he is sleeping. Max sleeps on the second floor of the building on the right if you enter Freeside from the East Gate. You can also barter Max (barter 45 required) to sell it to you for 20 caps. However, the gun will not work unless you choose to route power to Archimedes II during the quest That Lucky Old Sun. The gun might also be found sold at the junkyard north of Helios, though it only seems to appear occasionally after enabling Archimedes II. You can obtain this gun more than once.

Appearances
Euclid's C-Finder appears only in Fallout: New Vegas.

Behind the scenes
Or, more sensibly, a right triangle between the target, Archimedes II and the C-finder itself.
 * Euclid was a famous Greek mathematician. Among other things, he discovered basic geometric principles such as conic sections.
 * The name of the C-Finder, and the graphics it shows the player while it is operating, are a reference to the Pythagorean theorem. If there were a right triangle between Helios 1, the target, and the Archimedes II, side A would be the distance from Helios 1 to target (Opposite leg), side B would be the link from Helios 1 to Archimedes II (Adjacent leg), and side C would be the laser's path from Archimedes II to the target (Hypotenuse).

Bugs

 * It is possible to obtain infinite ammo for this weapon. Normally you can only get 1 charge at a time but it is possible to stock up an endless supply of ammo by using the storage glitch. Note: If you have used the endless supply glitch and have your weapons taking from you, you lose all of your ammo.


 * When set to hot key, shows the symbol for Guns based weapons, rather than Energy Weapons.


 * When attempting to fire at any location, the game will freeze. (After activating Archimedes-II at Helios One)(Usually related to having the perk 'Heave Ho!')


 * When trying to fire, the targeting laser will repeatedly play it's animation without the laser firing. This will prevent the player from both using the weapon and from getting a new charge. the animation will continue to play indefinitely unless an earlier save is loaded. A tried and tested fix is to save and quit the game. Restart the game and load in the save, however be warned, the animation will start straight away on loading but this time it will fire breaking the glitch. (confirmed for PS3)
 * Another possible fix might be opening the console (`) and typing "StartQuest 16aeff", this should cause the laser to fire and reset the targeting script.
 * Also happens in 1.2 version on PC. Fix works, too.
 * Fix does not work for the 360 though
 * you can disable the repeated animation in the console by left clicking on the targeting laser and writing disable.
 * If you completed That Lucky Old Sun before obtaining Euclid's C-Finder from Max, you will not be able to activate it or use it. It will always show that you have no charge and just makes a clicking sound when trying to use it.
 * This does not seem to happen in the current patch.
 * If Obtaining the weapon from Max waiting for a few days he will have it again and you can buy it off him. It doesn't give you a extra charge just another weapon.


 * For some unknown reason sometimes Max would be unarmed and running about and the Euclid's C-Finder would be in his inventory but if you pickpocket it out and talk to max(if you have not bought it) and buy it you would get 2


 * Sometimes, when shooting from a ledge, the endless targeting laser appears, an when you get a new charge, Archimedes will strike you..


 * On some systems using turbo during any part of the targeting or explosion sequence will cause a crash


 * Sometimes if the player removes the gun from their inventory you can buy it again from Max

Enabling using the console
If you don't mind using the console, you can manually enable the c-finder no matter what option you chose at the end of the That Lucky Old Sun quest: Enables the satellite, and will give you the normal behavior, e.g. one shot per day. If you want to use it more often, the ammo code is  so   will give you ammunition for 100 shots.

Note: The C-Finder seems rather buggy (well, buggier than the rest of the game, anyways), so save before using it.