Big guns only shoot in bursts (with a few exceptions), no aimed shots or single fire, and they shoot in varying burst sizes from 10 to 40 rounds. Here's a list of each big gun, it's damage and burst size for a little overview of each weapon. Also, all of the non-burst big guns work differently and depend on their ammo and other factors.

For your build, to get all the relevant perks, you're probably going to want something like this:

6 Strength
8 Perception
5 Endurance
1 Charisma
8 Intelligence
8 Agility
6 Luck

I am aware that it's 2 over the points you get to allot at the character creator screen, You just gotta get somewhere around there through raising your special points through mid-game means, whether it's perks, memory modules, or other means, unless you want to miss out on some of the great Big Guns perks.

Contrary to what many think, the most strength you're gonna need is 7, which is only for Miniguns, every other Big Gun requires 6 strength to use. Typically, what I do is just start with 6 strength and stick to the Bozar and Light Support Weapon, and once I get Power Armor I'll start using the weapons that require 7 Strength.

Now let's talk about perks and Traits.



First up is the trait Fast Shot, this is absolutely essential for Big Guns / Bursts builds, as the card says, it takes away the ability to aim at certain parts of the body, which you can't do with Big Guns anyway, and in exchange it reduces the Action Point cost of shooting down 1 AP. With this trait, shooting bursts goes from 6 AP to 5 AP, allowing you to cram in 2 bursts in one turn, provided you have 10 AP.



First perk is Bonus Ranged Damage, as the perk card says, it just slaps +2 damage to each bullet that hits the enemy. It requires 6 Agility and Luck at level 6, it also has a second level that upgrades its to +4, which might not seem like much, but that's +4 per shot, so if you're using a Bozar, that's an extra 60 damage, as you'd imagine this works best with Miniguns, if all rounds hit with level 2 of this perk, that's +160 damage. I wouldn't say it's necessary if you're going the route of using the Bozar and Light Support Weapon, as massive amounts of damage can still be done without this perk, but it certainly helps even if you do end up only using .223 weapons.



Next perk is Bonus Rate of Fire. It requires 7 Agility, 6 Intelligence, and 6 Perception at level 15. On top of Fast Shot, this perk reduces the AP cost of a burst down to 4. You might think you don't need this perk because 5 AP is enough for 2 bursts, but depending on what weapon you're using, you're going to have to reload often. For example, if you fire 2 bursts per turn, you're going to have to reload every other turn with the Light Support Weapon and Avenger Minigun, or once every turn if you use the Bozar. With this perk, you can fit in two bursts and a reload all in the same turn.



Now we move on to the Magnum Opus of Big Guns perks. Sniper requires 80% Small Guns, 8 Perception, and 8 Agility at level 24. Sniper jacks up the chance of scoring a critical hit way up, it works well with single-shot weapons, but turns any burst weapon into a point-and-click death beam. Each shot in a burst has an individual chance to score a critical hit, and with this perk, it's more likely that at least a few shots will crit rather then none at all. This perk is essential if you want to become a god that can dispatch anything the game throws at you easily.



Now, I'll talk about Better Criticals, although you don't have to have it, it pairs very well with sniper, considering you're going to score a critical hit most of the time. Whenever you land a critical hit, there's a second roll to determine how effective the crit was, All this perk does is add +20 to your roll number which is going to do more damage in almost all situations. It requires 6 Perception, 6 Luck, and 4 Agility at level 9.

The Bozar and Light Support Weapon are very similar and are probably the most pratical Big Guns when it comes to ammo consumption. Most of the time when I use Big Guns, I usually stick to these weapons for most of the game because they both have their own respective niches along with the same ammo, .223 FMJ, which has a very nice armor-piercing effect that allows these weapons to take down enemies wearing any kind of armor, along with being very cheap and common.




The LSW has a longer range then the Bozar, but less damage and a smaller burst size of 10 instead of the Bozar's 15, which makes the LSW good and more economical for normal enemies, which the Bozar would would overkill.




The Bozar on the other hand is one of the heaviest-hitting weapons in the game and is able to take care of any kind of enemy, Enclave patrollers, Deathclaws, or Aliens. Using the Bozar with the Sniper and Better Criticals perks makes you feel like a god and gives you the abillity to kill anything provided you have the skill to aim it.

Both guns have a magazine capacity of 30 and burn through .223 pretty quickly if you're not carrying a ton of ammo with you though, however as long as you buy more .223 whenever you stop in a town, you shouldn't have any problems with running out of ammo while using these weapons.

The places you can pick up a LSW or Bozar are actually pretty similar.

You can pick up a Bozar in the toxic caves near Klamath, in a locker on the third level that you need a Electronic Lockpick to get into, you can buy one from Eldridge's special stock if you're a made man of one of the New Reno families, buy one from the Red 888 Gun Store in San Francisco, or you can steal a total of 3 from the guards at Buster's Fine Emporium of Armament in the NCR Bazaar, although stealing them may not be possible if you have the Restoration Project installed outside of just killing them.

You can get a LSW from buying it from Buster's Fine Emporium of Armament, one of his guards carries one that can be stolen as well, but he's above and a bit to the left of the actual store, once again stealing it might be impossible if you have the Restoration Project installed. You can also buy a LSW from the Red 888 Gun Store, and finally, if you finish the string of quests Redding's sheriff tasks you with, there's a chance you can get a random encounter with Newt Morton, who carries a LSW.

Miniguns shoot 5mm, with the exception of the Vindicator Minigun. It's extremely important to mention that in the base, unmodded Fallout 2, AP rounds, including 5mm AP are extremely broken and have no actual armor piercing effect, do significantly less damage, and are inferior in every way to JHP, This makes it difficult to fight heavily-armored enemies with the stock and Avenger miniguns, however it's also pretty easy to get a mod that solves this, or the Restoration Project also fixes this.

This armor penetration problem can be side-stepped by doing a crit-minigun build. Simply get the Sniper perk, and maybe consider More criticals, a perk that increases the critical chance by 5%, if you want to go this route.

Now let's talk about each gun individually.


There's not much to say about the normal Minigun, it's inferior in every way to the Avenger Minigun and arguably harder to find so there's not much of a point, as you would suspect, it does massive amounts of damage to soft targets but has trouble piercing thick armor, that is unless you land a crit or are using the restoration project, and also will burn through massive amounts of 5mm ammo.

If for some reason you still want a normal minigun over a Avenger Minigun, you can find one in New Reno Arm's special stock after becoming a made man of one of the New Reno families, being used by caravan guards, and being used by super mutants in random encounters and level 2 of Mariposa Military Base.


The Avenger Minigun as previously said, is better in every way to the normal minigun, it's functionally the same just with some boosts to it's stats and being easier to find. It has the same strength against soft targets and the same weakness against thick armor that the normal mingun has.

You can pick one up at Buster's Fine Emporium of Armament in NCR, Red 888 Guns in San Francisco, ammunition boxes in the Enclave Oil Rig, and sometimes in random encounters being used by varying enemies and NPCs.


The Vindicator minigun's description describes it as the magnum opus of big guns, however this isn't the case, the Avenger minigun trumps the Vindicator in damage per burst and isn't that practical considering it uses the very hard to find 5.7 caseless ammo, although this does give the Vindicator minigun a small armor piercing effect. However, if you have the carrying capacity to spare it doesn't hurt to carry one around to use the 5.7 caseless you pick up late game if you don't already have a good use for it.

You can find one at the Red 888 shop for in San Francisco or the Enclave Oil Rig.