So, I was looking at the Plasma Devastator & Mega Positron Blaster on the wiki's weapons table ( http://www.vo-gate.com/mediawiki/index.php/Weapons:Table ), and I'm thinking the MegaPosi basically obsoletes the Plasma Devastator in almost every way. There's really no reason anyone would use a Plasma Devastator, when they can get the MegaPosi (and 10 Queen Kills is fairly easy to get).

The biggest thing about the Plasma Devastator that rubs me wrong, is how much energy it uses. At 50 & 60 energy per blast, they have the worst energy efficiency of all energy weapons in the game. The way I see it, weapons use energy for two things, providing the velocity of the projectile, and creating the destructive force that causes damage. The Plasma Devs do cause a fair amount damage, but not significantly more than other weapons, and the velocity is decent, but by no means spectactular. So what is it using 60 units of energy for?

What I'd suggest, is improving the Plasma Devastator's Damage per Energy ratio, by both raising the damage & decreasing the energy use, and maybe also drop the velocity a bit. This should make the Plasma Devastator a very heavy hitting weapon, but not very effective against small, fast ships that can dodge it easily. Something like:

Plasma Devastator
Damage: 1600
Velocity: 180m/s
Energy per blast: 40
Delay: 0.4s
Mass: 1200kg

Plasma Devastator MkII
Damage: 1800
Velocity: 190m/s
Energy per blast: 35
Delay: 0.4s
Mass: 1200kg

well, some of the energy goes to the FOOMPF sound.
also i believe it has a 'radius' of damage to it,
unlike megaposi. but i like ur idea

I guess if we drop the energy to around 40, we'll just have to settle for a foompf sound instead. ;-)

On the plus side, the Plasma Devastator does have a much better autoaim than the Megaposi. And the Megaposi only obsoletes the Plas Dev if the pilot in question has actually killed 10 queens. Otherwise the Plas Dev remains a decent weapon for the more royaly challanged among us.

True, but I'd usually take higher velocity over auto-aim, unless I'm going against something big & slow, or I can get up close enough I'm fairly confident I can hit it easily.

And how much better is the auto-aim? /me wishes the auto-aim angles were shown on weapon stats.

And anyway, even with these stats, I would personally still consider the MegaPosi to be a better weapon, because it masses less than half as much, and would still have a better DPE ratio, but not as far better as it is now.

the autoaim difference between the plasma dev and the mega posi is staggering. try them both for a while and see. also, the bolt from the plasma dev is a good bit larger, which helps a good deal.

the weapon might want a bit more damage, but that's about it. it's a good weapon when used well.

For botting at least plasma dev is a lot better.

Not in my experience. I can kill bots a lot faster with MegaPosi. I don't have to wait half a second to over a second between shots, and the extra velocity makes it hard for the bots to dodge my shots.

From my personal experiences the PlaDev is more effective at close range heavy/heavy ship combat (*sigh*), while the Megaposi hits better at long range. Both suck against light ships. :P

For botting I prefer the megaposi. I did even before the tweaks, becasue it's lighter and autoaim doesn't matter much against bots.

And IIRC A1k0n once said that every shot is just dot anyway .. so its size doesn't matter.

yea... the dot thing is what also makes flechettes so hard to hit with. They'd be absolutely awesome if they spread and did proportional damage like a shotgun. But nope. I've seen shots pass through the other ship because the shot "dot" didn't actually hit. If you zoom in, it's a little brighter than the other dots.

Why nerf it at all, the only people that get the mega posi are those that kill queens. So what if it's almost like the devestator, is someone did not kill queens they never would know that the mega posi was only slightly better then the plasma devestator. Leave it be.

The wiki was WRONG. The Mega Posi does not have "good" auto-aim. This is very significant and makes the Plasma Devs better at close range (as a number of people noted before).

OK, after a little bit of time in a Tunguska Aggresso, I think auto-aim is more important for the heavier ships than I had previously thought, so the MegaPosi doesn't outclass the Plasma Dev as much as I thought. But, I do still think that at least for me, the MegaPosi is the better weapon, and the Plasma Devastator could still use an improvement to its damage per energy, although maybe not as big an improvement as I originally suggested.

This is like saying the Ultra Charge battery is better than the Fast Charge, so let's change something to give the FC a reason to exist. You made two claims: 1) you compared the stats of the MegiPos and the PlasmaDev, and 2) you said "10 Queen Kills is fairly easy to get." You're trying to solve #1. If #2 is true, should this be addressed instead?

Heh, it's a LOT easier in my experience to get the Queen gun than it is to get the UltraCharge battery. But that's beside the point.

Basically, the problem I see is that it really doesn't make sense why the Plasma Devastator is by far the least energy efficient weapon in the game. I think it would make sense if it did a significantly more damage than other weapons, but it doesn't, the MegaPosi is right behind it in damage. What is it using 60 energy units to do?

WHOOSH!

but really im with beo, the plasdev absolutely destroys energy for no apparent reason.

It's not beside the point. It IS my point. Comparing the PlasDev to the MegiPos could be a similar argument to comparing the UC to the FC, but it's not because killing 10 queens is easier.

But we don't need to get into that discussion if the real question is "why does the Plasma Devastator use so much energy?" And I think that's a valid question when comparing it to any weapon, not just the MegiPos.