Not sure if this is the best place to ask this, but I noticed that when I look at various weapons in the vending machines of the wasteland mod, a lot of them have effects like "dummy knife effect" or something like that. I also noticed that some weapons that had innate effects in Fallout 3 don't seem to have them anymore. For instance, the Deathclaw Gauntlet doesn't mention anything about ignoring armor like it did in Fallout 3. Does it still do that and just not show up as an effect or does it just do raw damage now?
As a test, I bought a Deathclaw Gauntlet from one of the vending machines of the wasteland (I assume it doesn't actually change the weapon, just adds it to the sell list). I went to the tunnels leading to Meresti and tried out the gauntlet on the Mirelurks down there and it took several hits to kill one. I seem to remember 1 hit kills with it from Fallout 3 but I could be mistaken.
I was level 3 with Tribal (+5 melee/unarmed damage) being my only damage increasing perk or trait and had ~ 30 unarmed skill.
I'm wondering if some of the equipment in DC might have issues due to Fallout 3 being based on DR while NV uses DT. Deathclaw Gauntlets that ignore DR won't do much good if all the monsters have DT for instance.
Another potential example for the DR vs DT issue, I fought one of the abominable mutants (not sure if I got the name right but it's the one that just punches you) from MMM. I used up over 100 rounds of 10mm pistol ammo on it and did zero damage. I killed it with a chinese officer sword but it took about 60 seconds of nonstop hacking to do it. I'm also using PN with the FWE preset which probably tweaks damage.
I typically start off using a varmint rifle in the early game since it's cheap and uses readily available assault rifle ammo but from what I've noticed it's fairly inept except when used as a sniper rifle for head shots. If I upgrade to a .223 pistol then I can start killing things without requiring a head shot.