Fallout Weapons Guide: Energy Weapons
by Mazca

Note: You can easily discern Plasma bolts from Laser bolts when enemies use them - Plasma is green, Laser is pink. As the Plasma bolts are more dangerous, kill those enemies first.

Plasma Pistol
This will probably be the first energy weapon you encounter, in Necropolis sewers. It's good, but not great. It does 25-40 damage per shot using Small Power Cells, resulting in an efficient use of ammunition. It's good to keep as a backup weapon in case your combat shotgun or plasma rifle runs out of ammunition at a key moment.

Laser Pistol
Like the Plasma Pistol except does about 40% less damage. Not recommended - use a submachine gun or Assault Rifle instead if you can't find the plasma pistol.

Laser Rifle
A nice gun, doing 30-50 damage usually. It uses the somewhat scarce microfusion cells though, so it might be an idea not to use the laser rifle and instead wait to get a plasma rifle.

Plasma Rifle
This starts out as a very good gun, and once you have freed Adytum in the Boneyard, Smitty will upgrade this to a Turbo Plasma Rifle for you. The Turbo Plasma rifle is truly excellent - shots from it only use 3 action points, meaning that if you have good agility you can shoot 3 times per round. This should be your main weapon as soon as you get it.

Laser Gatling
This is a very powerful energy weapon, more powerful even than the Plasma Rifle. However, it totally guzzles scarce ammunition (Microfusion cells) as it can only fire on 10 shot burst mode. If you have space to carry it, bring it along when you head to the two final locations (the Military Base and the Cathedral). As you may have plenty of microfusion cells, it can be used in place of the plasma rifle for ripping up large numbers of mutants at once.