Is There Any Reason to Develop Plasma?

[Doctor Sticks]

Since Coil weapons penetrate armor, and Plasma do not, plasma only does a little more damage in comparison. Given just how expensive these weapons are, I find myself just sticking to Coil and never moving on. Since Shredstorm cannon is better than Blaster Launcher, I literally cannot think of any reason to even research plasma.

Should Plasma weapons have some additional ability to justify the cost?

Thoughts?

[stefan3iii]

They have additional bonuses, most notably Sniper Rifle has +20% crit, Cannon does + 1 extra damage in addition to the normal +1.5 per tier, and shotgun gets +2 crit damage. Also shooting at enemies with no armor happens frequently, especially if you're using shredders.

I think they're a nice upgrade, but if you can afford them then you probably should've already just beaten the game.

[Tuhalu]

Plasma weapons are clearly superior against unarmored targets where armor penetration does nothing and still strictly superior against armored targets.

Hidden behind the scenes, each plasma weapon has some or increased environment damage, giving them a chance to reduce cover that a target is hiding behind (full > light or light > none). Additionally, each of the main plasma weapons has a quirk that works with their speciality.

• Rifle: +1 weapon mod slot
• Cannon: +2 min damage
• Shotgun: +2 more crit
• Sniper Rifle: +1 min damage, +10% crit chance

[chrisb]

In 1.2 I think plasma is never even worth considering. This may change in 1.3 if the late game becomes more relevant. As it currently stands, there are many more options available that are all better options to spend resources on. If your actually trying to win the game and not simply playing "The Sims" with your soldiers, then you will likely win long before plasma is even close to worth the investment. Better off making sure you've got good grenades/bombs, ammo and armor. Coil is easily good enough for all the end game content. You simply don't get enough resources, especially cores, for them to be even remotely realistic.

[stefan3iii]

In 1.2 I think plasma is never even worth considering. This may change in 1.3 if the late game becomes more relevant. As it currently stands, there are many more options available that are all better options to spend resources on. If your actually trying to win the game and not simply playing "The Sims" with your soldiers, then you will likely win long before plasma is even close to worth the investment. Better off making sure you've got good grenades/bombs, ammo and armor. Coil is easily good enough for all the end game content. You simply don't get enough resources, especially cores, for them to be even remotely realistic.

Just as a counter-point, I had way too many cores and no elerium in my campaign. I ended up melting like ~20 cores to get enough elerium for stuff. It might be because I ignored a lot of proving ground stuff.
edit: Also spent a lot of elerium on shredders.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Plasma is nice in combination with AP ammo. Ignoring 3 armor is often overkill but the bonus damage comes through. It is also nice for burning through relays and the few naturally unarmored targets that show up.

[Doctor Sticks]

An additional point against Plasma is the need to develop each weapon separately, unlike the other tiers, which just have "regular" and "heavy".

[LordYanaek]

In 1.2 I think plasma is never even worth considering. This may change in 1.3 if the late game becomes more relevant. As it currently stands, there are many more options available that are all better options to spend resources on. If your actually trying to win the game and not simply playing "The Sims" with your soldiers, then you will likely win long before plasma is even close to worth the investment. Better off making sure you've got good grenades/bombs, ammo and armor. Coil is easily good enough for all the end game content. You simply don't get enough resources, especially cores, for them to be even remotely realistic.

Plasma is only not worth considering when you're trying to rush the storyline missions.
It might be different on Legend but up to Commander you can "try to win" by doing a lot of missions to slow down the Avatar project without rushing through the GP missions. In such a situation you can actually get plasma available reasonably before the end unlike some other stuff like any kind of bomb since you're talking about those.

Plasma give a nice boost to damage so the real consideration is did you win the game before you have researched it. If you've already won (i mean actually finished the campaign), obviously it's not worth nor possible to research it. If you haven't finished the game then why not research it, it's not like your lab have a lot of other late game options anyway.
Even if you build only a couple of each and don't have enough for all squads or even the entire squad for Waterworld, a few Plasma Rifles do add some power.

[Jacke]

I think part of the problem is Long War is long in number of missions and the player starts suffering from campaign fatigue. Coil weapons are good enough and Plasma is several techs and a lot of materiel required, while stuff like armours still needs to be procured.

Xwynns really showed that towards the end of his recently completed LW2 1.0-1.2 Legendary campaign. Many key characters had died and he was also playtesting 1.3 at the same time. He just wanted the older campaign to end. He came close to losing it a few times with Avatar progress, but always managed to pull off a delay. Finally pushed back Avatar progress several points and got set up to do the Golden Path missions. At that point, he decided to shut down his rebels and GOps and just push to end it all. Only non-Golden Path mission he did was an Avenger Defence he had to do.