So, I was wondering, because it's hard coded into the game's engine to use the best weapon available..... would it be possible to script the stats of weapons to change so the npc or companion will switch? Such as scripting it so that when they get into a close range, the stats lower so they switch to a pistol or knife? Or, say that a npc had several weapons and you wanted them to cycle through them, would that also be possible?

maybe you could script it so that the npc/companion skill associated with say a long range weapon goes down so that it changes to a close range weapon

That would work in that scenario. But, there is only a guns skill in Fallout New Vegas. Guns and energy weapons. Oh, and melee. What I'm trying to figure out is how to make it so that they will cycle weapons, and since they will only use the strongest one they have, I was wondering how to bypass this.

if you can't do that you could script it to add the npc/companions weapon to a hidden container then they would change to the other guns or for them to have no guns and that when they start fighting they get a weapon from that container or maybe you could completely rewrite how the companion/npcs use their weapons so that they do swap weapons also if yo do want them to change when close range fighting then you might need to script the enemies as well or have some sort of script to sense how close the enemy is

I really like that first suggestion. The container sounds like a very good idea.