The plasma gun got the lowest practical dps of every weapons and I can’t figure why. The on-paper dps is on par with the gauss and the beam cannon but those weapons got some serious advantages to make up for their low damage.
Let’s compare the fruits together.
The gauss got:
-very high projectile speed
“charge up” mechanic
-extremely low dispersion
The beam cannon got:
-hitscan
-extreme range
-no dispersion
The plasma gun:
-weirdass mechanic that make it inaccurate as hell on alpha strike
-best range of the inty weapons
If you take into account that the mediocre projectile speed cut down the range advantage and that EM resist is so damn high on hull then what exactly justify the craptacular dps?
OP: Do you know the Gauss is a Fighter’s weapon and the Beam Cannon is a Frigate’s weapon, right? You can’t compare cross-class weapons, they are obviously different for more than one reason (being the first one the ship in which they are put into).
It’s non-thermal damage attached to a fast/maneuverable ship. I have no problem going through the resist holes of most folks at tight orbit.
So yeah, their balance is the fact that they are bolted to fast movers with little tracking penalty and using a commonly un-stacked resist (from what I’ve seen anyway).
Is the long range gun for interceptors. You trade DPS for range and accuracy.
Because the alpha strike dispersion is xxxx, but after 1 sec you have the same dispersion than a laser, and it is quite easy to manage the heating to shot in zero spread all the time.
If you want an EM weapon with DPS you can try the blaster, although the dispersion is horrible.
as a note, unless you are using some buff that ends when you attack (cloak for example), or trying to be realy sneaky, there is no reason to let the plasma guns spread be wide, fire about three shots wait for the heat to disipate and repeat. The heat disapates WAY faster than the spread widens. you can keep it laser acurate all the time simply by firing at nothing every now and again.
esentialy your alpha strike should be SUPER acurate, because you should have tightened your cone before the target was even in range, hell before you even knew your target was there.
I used regular plasmas on my Stiletto (partly because they were my only purple T2 inty weapon) and they’re incredibly effective against fighters. The ability to sustain fire (and keep the spread small) also works well against other intys. Let’s also not forget that ECMs have reduced weapon heating.
just go shrapnel, though it takes skill and some luck to hit anything with it. its what i do
I’ll use that when I get my Kris AE (currently flying a Stiletto AE). I’m also in the process of getting used to beach balls.
You forgot the part where it’s strapped to a turbocharged mosquito.
lol I like this, and it pretty much answers the question.
Main advantage of plasma gun is the range. DPS is quite adequate for it. Only thing I would adjust is increase base projectile speed by about 10%, to make it more viable for faster targets (more dps would only make it too strong against drones and slow targets, needs a bit more utility).
It was the only feasible weapon for Black Swarm until it got the cpu upgrade. It is still the best choice because of your module range bonuses. Personally I would use R6 Jericho implant with it.