EDShipyard claims that the damage of the guardian weapons is split 50/50:
50% Absolute and 50% Anti-Xeno for the Plasma Charger and 50% Thermal and 50% Anti-Xeno for the Gauss Cannon.
Through testing, I and several others have determined the Plasma Charger and the Gauss Cannon to be severely underperforming with the expectations of damage provided by the in-game stats. The damage numbers produced by tests are seeming to be about
half of what they should be doing. This leads me to believe that the Anti-Xeno damage type does no or very little damage to human shields and hull.
This table compares the effective damages of the guardian weapons and their human analogues without engineering. The numbers do not account for damage falloff or other damage type resistances.
| Weapon | Effective Damage to Human Ships |
| 2B Guardian Gauss Cannon | 35 (Thermal) |
| 2B Railgun | 41.53 (67% Thermal, 33% Kinetic) |
| 2B Guardian Plasma Charger | 42.5 (Absolute) |
| 2C Plasma Accelerator | 54.3 (60% Absolute, 20% Thermal, 20% Kinetic) |
This makes it very clear why many are reporting damage that is worse than the standard weapons.
For the amount of sheer heat generation and power draw that is present on the Guardian Gauss Cannon, I would expect to do more than 35 damage to human ships. For anti-thargoid roles, this weapon is excellently done, but for human combat, it could use a bit of an increase in thermal damage. This wouldn't affect thargoid combat at all, since they are immune to all types except for Anti-Xeno. My suggestion is to buff the thermal damage portion up to about 1.1-1.2x the
total damage of the standard 2B Railgun. It would provide a small damage bonus at the cost of the ridiculous thermal load and power draw, in addition to not being engineerable at the current time.
With the Guardian Plasma Charger, the problem is not so much in that it lacks damage to human vessels but that it lacks damage
in general. Even against thargoids, this weapon underperforms. It not only doesn't do much damage to hearts, but it also does less damage to the hull of the thargoid than the Guardian Gauss Cannons do. What then, is the point of using it? Answer: currently, there is no point in using it over the Gauss Cannon. Moving on to humans, the standard Plasma Accelerator gains ~8 damage (a 27.7% increase) against human vessels. This is counterbalanced by the increased max fire rate, so that's fine. But, that's when damage falloff comes in to save the day. It is 1000m on the Guardian Plasma Charger, but 2000m on the standard. That is
huge. It means you have to be right up in someones grill to get... what? Less damage than a Plasma Accelerator? It also has the charge mechanic, which is a fancy way of saying that you need to wait 1.8 seconds after pulling the trigger for your shot to fire. Sure, you can get used to it, but if you're not already charged up, that means your reaction time starts at 1.8 seconds. Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if keeping it charged didn't require holding down a trigger or button for an indeterminate amount of time while being aurally assaulted by the demonic shrieks that can only be described by dragging a screaming cat's nails down a chalkboard. My suggestion, after the sound is changed or the volume lowered, is to increase the charge multiplier to 25x from 17x, adjust the damage proportions to 40% Absolute and 60% Anti-Xeno, and increase the falloff start distance to 2000m to match the standard Accelerators. This would not only ensure that the thargoids take more hull damage from Plasma Chargers, but also ensure that the Plasma Charger is on a level that can compete with the Plasma Accelerator in the area of human ship combat. Its new damage to humans would be 50, lower than the standard plasma accelerator, but with the increased fire rate, have a slightly higher DPS. I would consider this balanced due to the inability to be engineered, as well as the greatly increased power draw.
Disclaimer: This is just my two cents. I don't expect the staff to take my suggestions into account or even view this post at all (but I would greatly appreciate it if they did). Like I said, all of the numerical data is from EDShipyard and confirmed through many tests done by many people. I apologize if any of it is incorrect and would welcome any corrections that people would be willing to make (to the numbers).
