Frag Maniac

For me, the problems with combat come down more to issues with AI and other scripting than weapons. Stealth kills are so broken they're practically non existent. The companions are hard to keep from getting downed or killed in tough battles, and the enemies, though relatively easy to sneak past, are bee lining toward you with rage until you've got the last one down to near death (especially Cascadia). Aside from that, the TTD system is nowhere NEAR as effective as VATS. I'm only in far enough to not have used anywhere near all the weapons, yet this sticks out like a sore thumb. Because of these problems, the game comes off as schizophrenic. At one moment you're enjoying the conversations and game world in what seems like a less fleshed out FO themed game (cartoon color palette, lengthy dialog, no workshop building, etc), and then suddenly it turns to a chaotic mess in combat. And this is just on Normal mode. As a result, I quickly grew tired of the gameplay, despite taking interest in where the story was going, and it caused me to go back to Gears of War 4 for now to try to finish where I left off trying to beat it on Inconceivable. Now I know it may seem odd that such an attempt wouldn't be just as hard if not harder, but the challenges in GoW 4 are equally balanced with ways you can use the Fabricator, environment, and even squad AI, despite some claiming the latter to be useless. What I'm saying is, this game seems rushed, and/or it's design assumed to succeed on story/dialog merits alone. I'm not a huge RPG fan, there's only certain ones I'll play, but any shooter, RPG or not, HAS to have good combat that has not just a variety of ways to use it, but also enough balance to be effective and fun to engage in. As far as combat not being expected to be good in "these types of games", I still feel despite being different in key ways in design from FO, it still shares enough similarities to expect good combat.

Set companion AI to Ranged and Defense. This way they will fight with ranged weapons and retreat when rushed. Also, buff their armor whenever you can. There are no saves on Super Nova, but a workaround is to fast travel to your ship before tough encounters, as it will create an autosave you can reload if things go bad, such as losing a companion.