“The Energy Weapons skill determines your effectiveness with weapons such as the Laser Pistol, Laser Rifle, Plasma Rifle, and Plasma Pistol.”

Energy Weapons … well, they’ve got pros and cons. As a general rule, in the main game, they aren’t very good. They’re rare, they cost tons of caps to maintain (and since they’re rare, you won’t be repairing them with other Energy Weapons until near the end of the main game) and worst of all, they’re out-damaged by Small Guns . For example, the Plasma Rifle can deal up to 58 damage and is worth 1799 caps at max condition (also a useful metric for repair costs). By comparision, the Combat Shotgun deals up to 68 damage and is worth a mere 200 caps at max condition. If you only have vanilla Fallout 3, Energy Weapons are just not worth bothering with. In the expansions, however (especially Mothership Zeta) they get more interesting… mainly because of the fact that you can get much more ammo for weapons like the Alien Blaster, and a few unique Energy Weapons , such as the stand-out MPLX Novasurge. Still, they measure up poorly against Small Guns , so if anything *Energy

Weapons* are a late-game conceit, if you have a few skill points to spare.