I've got one correction to one thing you said, followed by one thing that makes this challenge even worse than most people realize.
Correction: The "Optimized" ammo is a 3:2 conversion, not 3:1. You make 2 Optimized per 3 normal converted, just like with the Overcharged ammo. There are a few advantages to Optimized over Overcharged, but the ones relevant outside of Hardcore mode are the further increased damage multiplier (x1.3 vs x1.25) and lower condition damage multiplier (x1.1 vs x1.5). In Hardcore, Optimized also has only 60% of the weight of a standard unit of ammo.
What makes this run worse: The other upside of Vigilant Recycler is that it doubles the chance of recovering a "Drained" unit of Energy Weapon ammo upon firing your weapon. This includes Flamer Fuel, which goes from a 25% chance of recovery to a 50% chance. However, there's two little caveats: the recovery chance is per shot fired, not per unit of ammo expended, and no matter how much you expend per shot, you can only get one drained unit back. This means that with the Flare Gun you'll need to expend, on average, 60 units of Flamer Fuel to get back enough Drained Flamer Fuel Tanks to craft 1 unit of Flamer Fuel, or 180 units to craft 2 units of Optimized.

"This guy tried fighting us, ran out of ammo, disappeared for 2 months, and came back and still was just as annoyed at our existence while pelting us with just weird fireballs!"

Attempt #6 of: Can you beat Fallout 4 as Will Smith? Fists only and Fancy Tuxedo as clothing

I like to imagine that the courier picks up the steel bucket to deflect legate lanius's bullets and is completely dumbfounded when the strategy actually works.

That exasperated sigh at the beginning gave me so much joy (sorry nerbit)

16:49
That is the single most horrifying image I have ever seen in New Vegas.

Imagine you pick up a incinerator. Not a heavy incinerator, but it's smaller counterpart.

Now imagine you can fire it only once every 5 seconds.
Now imagine the ammo for it is consumed in stacks of 10 and is relatively rare.

This is the pain of the flare gun.

The flare gun is mainly used to scare monsters away. You would fight a deathclaw, pull out the flare gun, and shoot the deathclaw, so that it would run away allowing you to shoot it for a bit before it charges you again.

20:45 is the perfect synopsis of the flare gun.

Once you make contact with divide E-DE and get the ammo ability for him, Mojave E-DE can immediately do the same thing. It probably would've saved you a lot of time on trips to the divide.

That clip of Ringo just casually speaking to the courier as he's engulfed in flames could be an album cover

This man is the best. He manages to make something so interesting and fun to watch when many other couldn’t even make it fun for themselves none the less for hundreds of thousands. Keep up the amazing work Nerbit.

You know it's going to be an exercise in patience when Nerbit starts a video with a sigh...

In my first playthrough, I never used flamers and didn't use hardcore mode.
This meant that I had a little bit over 5 thousand rounds when I found the flare gun. And so I used it. All of it.

It was not enough.
Can you beat Lonesome Road with only the flare gun, though? Considering I never bought flamer ammo until getting the flare gun...Yes, actually. But you would need close to 7,000 units of flamer ammo to reach Ulysses.

Nerbit is always doing the almost impossible so we don’t have to, a true wasteland legend if you will

I live near Vegas and it's so weird hearing names of places nearby just being thrown around.

Can you beat Fallout: New Vegas as Obelix?
- Fists only. Use console commands to set your unarmed damage to 100. Set your max carry weight to however high you want.
- Always fight Caesar's Legion, and collect the helmets of all the legionaries you defeat.
- You're not allowed to use chems, stimpaks or drinkables (because he fell into the cauldron of magic potion as a child). You can only heal with food, water, doctor bags, or resting.
- You must do the independent Vegas ending (the indomitable village holding out against the invaders).

RINGO FROM HELL 6:57

I don’t know why I feel so endeared to Ed-E, it’s just a robot.

I love the little song he plays before he flies five miles to kill a bloatfly.

13:17 helldivers 2 gameplay