"Plasma Slug" effect.
- Thread starter KG_Jedi
- Start date
It's that eye-watering 20% damage penalty that keeps me from using the plasma slug effect, especially as you can synthesis new ammo if you run out. Same for rail guns.
plasma slug is absolutely brilliat as a fuel dump on exploration ships.
the damage penalty is too high imho, especially after PAs and railguns got an ammo buff some patches back.
a plasma slug PA will have less DPS than a MC... PVE you won't fight (m)any targets where the absolute damgae of PA helps.
plasma slug railguns are great for learning to use railguns (as you'll miss a lot in the beginning). my plasma slug railguns are now on my gunship, as my NPC crewmate is good with those, and i switched to superpenetrator railguns on my DBS.
the damage penalty is too high imho, especially after PAs and railguns got an ammo buff some patches back.
a plasma slug PA will have less DPS than a MC... PVE you won't fight (m)any targets where the absolute damgae of PA helps.
plasma slug railguns are great for learning to use railguns (as you'll miss a lot in the beginning). my plasma slug railguns are now on my gunship, as my NPC crewmate is good with those, and i switched to superpenetrator railguns on my DBS.
This. Plasma slug is one of the most useless effects in the game and one of them whic hreduces damage. Almost any effect that reduces damage like phasing sequence, thermal vent, plasma slug, etc. is ignored since the only thing you need for a weapon is damage (surprise!). By reducing the damage it simply becomes not viable compared to other weapons that either have no damage reduction or even have increased damage.
It would be fine if it would not reduce damage because, after all, you are potentionally wasting the effect slot on a weapon where you could have added a TLB or dispersial field instead. If it would be possible to combine plasma slug with other special effects then there would be some use for it but as it stands now, useless. Just as overlad munitions, which doesn't decrease damage but ammo capacity where inciendiary rounds increase damage at no cost besides heat addition, which is, for a multicannon, non-existant.
Thanks! The damage penalty is significant indeed... Though for a burst damage weapon which ignores resists it makes sense
I use Plasma Slug on Pa's with efficient weapon to offset the damage loss reduce heat etc. Combined with premium ammo to gain back the loss +, they're self reloading so premium ammo continues indefinitely until you use 'Re-Stock All'.
If you load Premium ammo on the Plasma Slug/Rail Slug modded weapon, you'll have an infinite re-arm with Premium. No trickery involved; that's the way the system works.
So, -20% damage reduction with Plasma Slug, +30% damage increase with Premium ammo on top of the now 80% base, and you still end up with a slight damage increase and infinite ammo (so long as you have fuel). I'd buy that for a dollar!
That sounds like yet another premium ammo exploit.
How is the player exploiting it?
I use Plasma Slug on PA's and railgun on my corvette which is built for PvE Res or conflict zone harvesting, I use to have beams or multi-cannons but found either the beams use to empty the capacitor to quickly or with multi-cannons I was returning the station to often if I didn't have enough materials to reload, which could be a pain especially if you have a good RNG of ships in the RES. So I changed the ship about and replaced the two small and medium mounts with grade 5 rapid fire pulse lasers turrets. I then placed fixed PA's in the huge hard points and a fixed railgun in the large hard point under the ship, the railgun is modded to long range at G5 with Plasma and has a 20% drop and now has a damage of 33.2 down from 41.5. (DPS 40\sec down from 50\sec). The PA I have G5 efficient mods and now they have the following stats
Damage 125.2 now down to 115.1 which is a 8% drop the other has a 13% drop so the damage is now down to 108.5 from 125.2 the same percentages apply to the damage per second as well 8% for one and 13% for the other. I can live with this for PvE as I have a 140 ton fuel tank on the ship and can now spend many hours ship blasting when I want to in the RES or conflict zone without having to restock also having fixed weapons on the corvette adds a bit of fun
Damage 125.2 now down to 115.1 which is a 8% drop the other has a 13% drop so the damage is now down to 108.5 from 125.2 the same percentages apply to the damage per second as well 8% for one and 13% for the other. I can live with this for PvE as I have a 140 ton fuel tank on the ship and can now spend many hours ship blasting when I want to in the RES or conflict zone without having to restock also having fixed weapons on the corvette adds a bit of fun
It isn't an exploit. If anything more of an oversight on FDs part. If they want to do something about it they will have to change it to xxx amount of shots instead of on reloading.
Thanks. But I'd rather not use something that might be fixed in future.
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Thermal Vent doesn't have a damage penalty. It just increases your thermal load on miss, lowers it on hit.
In that case, thermal vent makes zero sense in terms of physics (but it makes sense in terms of simple videogame 'logic' I suppose
)that's not an exploit! It's a creative use of in game mechanics
In that case, thermal vent makes zero sense in terms of physics (but it makes sense in terms of simple videogame 'logic' I suppose
I think given the realities of the physics on laser weapons as a whole, it's kinda splitting hairs to complain about that bit.
But yeah, in video game logic it makes perfect sense. The laser is trying to build a conduit with the target and takes extra energy in order to form the conduit. If it can't form the conduit (ie, you miss) then the extra energy consumption of trying to form the conduit heats up the ship. Obviously if a successful conduit is formed then you lose more heat than the gain. The problem is that you don't heat up the other ship at all doing this, because that's a different special effect! Yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense, but again, lasers as a weapon don't make a lot of sense, so let's just go with it.