Why the heck are C2 plasma accelerators so awful?

[Vasious]

Since it looks like people in this thread have some good numbers to back them up, has someone filed a bug? Now with the beta going on is probably the best time to get this looked at, especially if the fix is just changing a couple numbers in a table.

They are Thermal-Kinetic in the Beta so that has fixed the problem,.... I think....as below

It appears that the C2 plasma does about ~57 MJ shield damage per shot, costing ~9.5 MJ wep capacitor each. That's about 6 damage per energy, which puts its efficiency right between the C4 and C3 plasma. This seems perfectly reasonable. I am quite pleased with this change.

EDIT: This is in the 1.5 beta, for clarification.

 

[Julio Montega]

They are Thermal-Kinetic in the Beta so that has fixed the problem,.... I think....as below

Thanks for this headup!
In previous releases the C2 plasma feeled like a dud.
Are there any numbers on shield performance against special kinds of damage(thermal/kinetic/explosive),
as i suspect a specialized resistance percentage in shields against everything but thermal.

 

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

Well the problem is that it "worked", it's just the damage was wrong. Since the data provided in-game is pretty limited, it's a little hard to pick up on these things- especially when the numbers are on a weapon that's not terribly popular to begin with.

Also, just going to point out that with the C2 plasma fixed, vipers, cobras, and diamondback scouts are capable of doing (at the cost of over half their capacitor) ~114 damage in a singe shot- that's only 12 or so off from a huge plasma accelerator. Sounds like a pretty sick dive bombing setup.

That is awesome news - thank you for doing the test!

Looking forward to this change going into the main game

 

[tawittle]

that chart is from 1.2, it is anybody's guess as to what the DPE for every weapon is today. Also only shield damage values were tested, never hull damage.

The medium plasma is good IMO, seems like the projectile travels faster than the large or huge.

I think the medium plasma just seems weak because we have multi-cannons and railguns for medium slots, and those two weapons are very strong.

 

[aRtFuL]

Why do 'mericans love DPM graphs so much ?

Because science is built on the foundation of using statistics and numbers to assist in reasoning, and Americans were good at that

 

[jack23011]

Er, you've been a bit selective by putting up just that chart. That chart is for damage per energy, and only considers damage vs shields (which to be fair is the only thing the excellent people who did those tests could properly measure) - i.e. how energy efficient the weapon is, not really how damaging. It doesn't really tell you anything about how much damage it'll put out, just how quickly it drains your WEP capacitor when you fire it.

The Plasma Accelerator is for single-shot alpha-strike damage. Even DPS isn't a very good way of measuring its capability. That's before you even go into how good it is at melting subsystems to slag.

But let's take DPS:

View attachment 70888

And then damage per shot:

View attachment 70889

Doesn't really look that awful, hm. In fact, it looks the opposite.

In actuality of course, you have to be able to aim a PA, because they only come on fixed mounts, so it's more complicated than a simple graph.

But uh, since I assume you'd seen the rest of that thread that analysed weapon capability vs shields, and that's where you got your picture from, you already knew all this?

Are you just trolling? Or is this an Eve-style meta-gaming in the forum thing, trying to drum up outrage so the devs buff a weapon for your benefit and at the expense of the game?

For those who are interested, the original thread:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=140240

Was considering adding PA to my DBS for BH and caught this thread. A bit late for the rep but I appreciate your 'fact checking.' In fact, I wish FD had someone full time to provide this king of balanced discussion vs those that may have ulterior motives/reasons for posting such questions in a rather provocative manner. Thanks to your more fully developed argument I will stick with my PLs and MCs. Thanks, again.