The Battle Rifle is a semi-automatic rifle firing .308 rounds.  While it share similarities with the Combat Rifle, it is heavier and parts are not interchangeable with the exception of sights and scopes.  It retains great accuracy and damage for the round, but many will find the recoil excessive without certain accessories to minimize this.  Though the weapon was built with automatic fire settings, the idea was scrapped early in production as the recoil from the ammunition made controllability unfavorable, so modifications were made to all rifles to make them permanently semi-automatic.  However, a handful of wasteland tinkerers have been known to successfully reverse this change in a small number of rifles.  These have been come to known simply as Automatic Rifles.

The weapon will start appearing at level 24, though specialty gun stores can offer the weapon as early as level 18.  Gunners like to employ the weapon, while some Raider bosses have been known to carry them on occasions.  Even a few Minutemen and Railroad Agents have pick these up for use along the way.

While I wanted to keep the weapon as "vanilla" as much as possible, I couldn't help but add a few additions myself.  In addition to all the modules you'd expect on a ballistic weapon, I expanded the types of receivers on the weapon, allowed a true muzzle silencer, and added "Ultra Receivers" for late game viability.

In the vanilla game, many ballistic guns had a basic set of receivers that are heavier, lighter, faster firing or more critically damaging.  With the Battle Rifle, you can find and craft more damaging variants of these receivers to keep up with late game action as well as diversify your crafting choices.

Ultra receivers are also available for crafting.  They feature even more damage than the Advanced receivers to help defend yourself against late-game enemies, but can only be crafted on weapons with legendary modules on them.

A guaranteed legendary battle rifle (also known as a unique weapon by some) is known to be possessed by a drug dealer typically found around Goodneighbor, but was last seen headed northwest towards Concord on a "business trip".

Technical:
Gameplay-wise, the battle rifle is a higher-level semi-automatic hunting rifle.  It offers the best damage with .308 ammunition in the base game (not by a lot though) while retaining the same accuracy with extended range and higher capacity magazines.  Crafting recipes for the mods are towards the heavy side as far as material costs goes, but it's worth it. 

The weapon uses the Hunting Rifles sounds, both loud and silenced.  While its meshes are unique, it still relies on textures from the Combat Rifle.  So any new textures for the Combat Rifle will affect the Battle Rifle as well.  The compensator derives from the Pipe Gun, so you can use retexture mods like this one to help the compensator look natural on the rifle.  The Aim model is based on the Hunting Rifle.  So any mods that change the Hunting Rifle's Aim model will affect this weapon too.  The weapon is distributed in leveled lists by a script, so compatibility is high and should show up in the legendary loot drops.

Issues:
I've only had an issue with trying to place the Unique weapon in a certain place.  You're welcome to read the spoiler if you have technical know-how with the Creation Kit.



This is a mod I whipped up as a product of my overhaul that I've been working on for a long while now.  While that means I don't want to spend a lot of time on this mod as I continue work on my overhaul, I will refine it when I can and I enjoy reading feedback.  So please enjoy.

My other mods that stems from my overhaul:
Fusion Cells are Batteries
Disable Quick Loot Menu
Waiting Saves
Better Combat Shotgun - Mesh Replacer
Better Double Barrel Shotgun - Mesh Replacer