[quote=WastelandOverlord]
The Winchester P94 is the industrial model, the one from the first two games. The rifle shown in Fallout 3 onward was the military-commissioned Plasma Rifle and was designed to be a weapon from the get-go. The Wattz laser rifle was in use by marines according to Future Weapons Today, and the newer laser models (AER_) were in the process of production and implementation when the Great War was ongoing, so there's sufficient enough evidence that the US military had planned to, if not replace conventional guns, install energy weapons as a staple part of their manpower.
That and energy weapons are just cooler :P
[/quote]
So just like I said, they were just being manufactured before the bombs fell, they weren't very "polished" yet. Guns have been improved and upgraded for centuries, the energy weapons were just in their infancy, so it makes sense they were still not superior or better than normal guns. Maybe on par, otherwise there was no point in the USA still have 95% of it's weapons being ballistic guns and having so many prototype energy weapons being made (AER14 prototype laser rifle, Tesla-Beaton prototype, MPLX Novasurge, Q-35 matter modulator, Pulse Gun, etc), because if Energy Weapons were already as good as ballistic ones, then there would be no reason to push so much research and prototypes for energy weapons (the great war was about resources being scarce, so why waste them into trying to improve energy weapons?), they would be mass manufactured and most of the troops equipped with them, which every game shows us (I don't know about Fallout 4 though, although that game lore contradicts itself sometimes) that didn't seem to happen (military guns are common, while military energy weapons are quite uncommon, for example, go into any pre-war military armory/fort/base that wasn't looted yet, and rarely we see even one energy weapon while we see many guns).
