You are doing wrong. In a ceptor, you should always attack an enemy who is NOT aware that you are closing in. If the LRF is looking at your direction, then look for another target.
Concerning the plasma gun. The problem with this weapon has been the several recent buffs to spread, damage AND projectile speed, which have made possible the use of supernova ammo on it without any drawback (you have almost 2500 projectile speed in a bonused cov ops…)
So in the end, you are able to dish a lot of damage, from a respectable distance. Mix it with orion, pinpoint accuracy and the new aimbot module from open world, and you will find it quite good.
At least with RFB supernova you need to be close to avoid spread, but with plasma gun, you can snipe from outside pulsar / facetorp range and deliver 2000 em damage ticks under orion each .5 seconds.
Most of us thought that the gun shall be reverted to its previous “long range, low dps” model
I won’t say you are wrong. I will say they had to do something more because vs hull the old design was useless.
I don’t understand why plasma at millions of degrees is bad vs hull. I don’t know a metal that wouldn’t melt in a star.
I will admit that increasing the damage output by 40% may have been a bit much. Though maybe they just didn’t see everyone switching to supernova…
While I still want my extra range back, as it stands it is still on balance with the other ships. Every ship type has strengths. Covert Opts is doing continuous high damage at short range, with maneuverability.