I'm certain that the BOS still has tesla cannons, however Elder Maxson simply did not see fit to deploy them in the Commonwealth. By Fallout 4, the BOS (Gunners notwithstanding) is the only organization on the east coast known to employ a significant amount of vertibirds, and therefore have no need for anti-armor weaponry, which the tesla cannon is. Third and most importantly, the tesla cannon was developed specifically as a counter to the Enclave's vertibirds. The gatling laser on the other hand excels at this role and the BOS already has access to a large stockpile of these. Second, the tesla cannon - while capable of dealing out immense damage in a single shot - is rather unwieldy in that it can only fire once before it needs to be reloaded and therefore doesn't provide a significant enough DPS to merit use as an anti-infantry weapon. Each one requires a tesla coil which is not a common item in the Capital Wasteland, and we see in the Fallout 3 quest Shock Value that it can be quite difficult to obtain one. If I had to guess as to why we haven't seen tesla cannons in Fallout 4, I would pinpoint several reasons.įirst, the tesla cannon is not easy to build, much less mass produce. I've wondered this exact same thing myself, thanks for actually asking the question.
