Legend

Damage: This information comes straight from the G.E.C.K. and shows the damage caused by a single click of the mouse/trigger. For most small guns, that's a single bullet, but for shotguns it's a single shell (containing several small pellets), and for the Gatling laser it's a single beam. This stat is most useful for comparing semi-automatic weapons like rifles, where you can see the full damage caused by a single shot, regardless of how long it takes to load and fire the next one.

Damage per second: The maximum cyclic damage dealt in one second, expressed as rate of fire times damage. Weapons that require a reload every shot have damage per second shown including reload times, all others show sustained rates without reloads.

Rate of fire: The maximum cyclic number of shots/attacks per second, without considering reloading.

Spread: This is the Min Spread stat from the G.E.C.K. (the Spread stat is not used). It refers to the accuracy of a ranged weapon. 0 means the weapon can potentially fire perfectly straight, if stance, weapon skill, and weapon condition are optimal. Anything above 0 means the shots may deviate from center by that many degrees regardless of stance, skill, or condition.

Critical chance multiplier: The multiplier applied to your character's critical hit chance. This modifier applies to each individual attack you make (e.g. each 5mm bullet fired from your minigun). For example, if your character has a critical hit chance of 5%, and the weapon you're using has a CRIT % MULT of x2, then each shot has a 5% x 2 =10% chance to critically hit. For automatic weapons (assault rifles, SMGs, miniguns, etc.) the Crit % Mult stat in the G.E.C.K. is divided by the G.E.C.K.'s Fire Rate stat, hence the very small multiplier for automatic weapons. This is done to compensate for the sheer number of bullets being fired. Note that single V.A.T.S. attack, with automatic weapons, only checks for critical hit once, applying damage bonus for all bullets in such attack if critical hit is done.

Critical hit Damage: The amount of damage that is added when you score a critical strike. The more specialized Sneak Attack Critical deals twice the damage of a common critical strike.

Action Point cost: The amount of Action Points used per shot in V.A.T.S.

Area of effect: The blast radius of the explosion in units of measurement displayed in the G.E.C.K.

Durability: This is the maximum number of times a weapon can attack/fire from full health before completely breaking.

Ammunition used: The type of ammunition the weapon uses.

Magazine capacity: The maximum ammunition capacity of the weapon. Shots per reload: The maximum number of shots possible from a full magazine.

Weapon weight: Weight value of the weapon that applies to encumbrance.

Weapon value in caps: Base value of the weapon in caps. Resale value is effected by Barter skill.