Plasma CIWS any good? & Charge Plasma Cannon Effective? - From the Depths Empirical Testing

[@BorderWise12]

I was building plasma guns while watching/listening to this video, and now I have plasma firing sounds on an endless loop in my head. XD My findings are pretty consistent with yours: plasma has very clear pros and cons. On the topic of plasma as CIWS though, bear in mind that even a destabilizer plasma cannon can double as an armor-shredding AA gun, whereas DIF flak (or even regular APS flak) cannot. So plasma can't outdo APS as a specialized CIWS, but as a compact secondary weapon CIWS combo it's still viable. All in all, plasma seems like a weapon system that you shouldn't overdo when you have better options available. 👍 Also they defy gravity! Good to know that. XD

[@chronoatog5650]

A good thing I've also noticed is it's recharge cost is how much it costs to recharge all cells at once (aka if you ever hit 0.) If you ever get to the point you're only recharging 2 cells the cost is different per shot. So lets say it costs 1k per second but only have 2 of the 10 charges are ever used it's more 2/10 or 1/5 aka 200 per second.

[@GMODISM]

Hahaha the plasma sound is... well.... not great after a while I think that the plasma is too expensive so that APS ciws doubling as saws (like on the ragnarök) is much more worth it in that case. But yes can work as machinegun / ciws, cool but not efficient I'd say. This is however the real starwars lasers so there is that! XD

[@O1O1OOO1tip]

Saying “in any case” isn’t a bad thing at all. Everyone speaks with their own preferences for phrases, it makes you unique

[@GMODISM]

Thanks mate haha

[@YEAHKINDA]

Plasma is a direct counter for dense armor, like your testing brick. The way it deals damage is such that: -Sloped armor spam, like the ground "Tank"s of Lightning Hood within the Ashes campaign, considers all slops as connected full blocks -Spaced armor, like the interior room of the land marauder, is all but immune to plasma. It will only propagate through blocks and not through air. Slopes are registered the same as full blocks in this calculation to enable it to do its job - Countering wedge/slope armor. The magnetic destabilizer only fires 0.5 charges per shot, rather than allowing you to change the charges.

[@drkreuzer670]

So like robocraft's old plasma mechanic! .o.

[@GMODISM]

Yes indeed I found that in this very testing session, very interresting that air gaps don't matter if the blocks are connected, with this all previous beamslope gaps are outdated. Indeed robocraft is back lol

[@velleitious]

You can use plasma & CIWS to (sort of) snipe CRAM and missile turrets. The shotgun cap is pretty good at hitting things near and around its target, and a newly-fired shell tends to be near and around its turret. If you set a CIWS controller to ignore > 0 shots, ignore outside a tight angle of incidence, and use a breadboard to set the LWC range to your target's distance +/- 30, then 99% of the time it will use the LWC and fire like normal, but if a CRAM cannon fires it will take a pot shot at the turret. It pretty reliably hits something somewhere near the turret. Not sure it's any good, but it does work

[@GMODISM]

Daym thats sounds really cool and advanced, I still know nothing about the bread, but that would be pretty darn useful! I have no idea how to make it but sounds amazing!

[@velleitious]

@@GMODISM I can show you how, it only takes 4 components so it's super simple

[@GMODISM]

Yeah that would be cool @@velleitious

[@maudelauf1885]

I have no clue about anything in this game so bear that in mind. My take from all this is that you'd want to adjust the damage of each shot to be to penetrate and destroy the toughest available armour. That way it will definitely damage and destroy most things, and probably also conserve quite a bit of your ammo/charge/whatever so there isn't too much wastage.

[@GMODISM]

What yous say makes common sense, HOWEVER that is true for APS, the way plasma deals damage will not penetrate after an airgap so damage must be considerable it seems ;)

[@comet.x]

plasma gets more efficient the more charges you give it, and the more blocks it destroys. also while on paper destroying single blocks of armor at max efficiency sounds good, in practice it is awful. The only reason to destroy armor is to make a path to the insides that you do want to destroy to kill the vehicle. Vehicles tend to move, meaning that even with perfect accuracy, you won't hit the same place over and over, which results in that type of weapon damaging just the outside layers of armor and not boring any holes to the insides also you generally want to kill things quickly. Because the longer you take the more time they have to kill you

[@featurevisuals1787]

Plasma bomber? ALSO YES ANOTHER WAY TO DESTROYYYY CHAOS WITH THE POWER OF THE SUN ON OUR SIDE

[@GMODISM]

AOG INVICTUS!

[@Firesgone]

Plasma may be ineffective as a CIWS like this, but whole charges both do more damage and get a damage boost for being grouped. Dropping the fire rate to instead fire 5 charges together makes it do far more damage per shot than rapid fire could ever do. If I had my PC atm I'd bring up the stat differences, though just tweaking your turret config and using a plasma stabilizer instead will demonstrate what I mean.

[@GMODISM]

Thing is, not in this case! The destabilizer doubles the DPS actually, if ap is not an issue, like this case, you would be crazy to not choose it. While multiple charges increased damage, it's not 2X, perhaps 7 would be 1,2X increase :)

[@NerunUC153xELL8mUR]

These would work well as pinpoint turret destroyers, like most people build thick armoured turret caps and necks

[@GMODISM]

Yes, that is the beauty!

[@maudelauf1885]

Call the Turret: The Thumper, it does have a thumping kind of sound to it imo

[@GMODISM]

Haha well all plasma does no? XD

[@doktork3406]

You may call it not OP, but that little turret you've got is 77Firepower bro... (Not as CIWS, but with normal, 100Ap config) APS is nowhere near that compact, lasers are even worse, and Particle Cannons are not even close. In my testing, Plasma was the most efficient weapon for cost, BY FAR. Material per Material destroyed and Energy per Material destroyed were the best among all, it's size was the most compact and it's easy to build Plasma gun for 600 material/firepower. It's power requirements are considerable, but it's easier to build deep and protected engines rather than turrets with spinner constraints. Yeah it might use 10K engine power for the duration of the fight, but it's going to be a short fight if a puny little frigate of yours mounts a 77Firepower gun like that...

[@GMODISM]

Is that so now really!? Interesting for sure, they are compact yes, but expensive. Are you sure they would be more efficient than 3D cram tetris doom guns? I don't think it is, but we shall learn from experience how it all really is! Doo however remember they have changed the damage it deals a few times now already, so depends when you did those testss.

[@doktork3406]

@@GMODISM I did not test against CRAM guns, you're correct. Also, the stats may have change in the meantime. I just had a platform with APS, APS Rail, PAC ad Plasma of ~ the same firepower rating, fire against the Tyr and record their performance in an Armor piercing configuration (APS and PAC too). Plasma came out on top immediately. Stats aside, it bored into the Tyr's guns with good damage, in good time. The PAC penetrated on the first shot, but a PAC of that size was just not feasible.

[@GMODISM]

@@doktork3406 Got it, in my tests its about as effective as rail asssited, but outclassed by crams XD

[@chronoatog5650]

Useful fact to know it's recharge per second isn't 100% accurate, that recharge cost per second is if you spend all cells recharging

[@PoweredByGreed_]

Plasma deal twice the damage to missile and cram projectile, like most form of damage. So 1610 instead of 805 for the destabilizer head. A bit better but still garbage. A charge plasma CIWS with multiple barrel would be far better as you can save up lots of charge between cram volley and empty them quickly.

[@GMODISM]

Oh is that so?! So it counts as kinetic then... Yeah against crams there seem to be no alternatives to just dif flak honestly

[@shawnreed343]

Evidence to show that plasma CIWS is likely not worth it. On the flip side, what about using a lot of charges and not using a destabilizer, in order to get a lot more damage on a shot? Just curiosity on my part. Probably not efficient by cost, but it might compare more closely to dif flak on damage...

[@GMODISM]

I do also believe it would be better with charge plasma for ciws, BUT since we can safely say it will not compair to dif flak it's not very efficient probably...

[@doubt3430]

so bouta recreate a baste ion discharger

[@RMMinc]

I don't understand plasma at all. Maybe it's good for tournaments, but in campaign most crafts have way too many decorations for it. You get damage llike 5k... 10k...999k... 7k... 15k... And if you try to use less charges to optimise the damage it becomes very costly acceleration power wise. I feel like for the price it should be a little bit more reliable

[@GMODISM]

Well the destabilizer cannon should be good against the DWG, as for tournaments they might be too expensive IDK

[@DrakoMT]

I'm working on Tetris that stores plasma then bursts the plasma shots with a breadboard 😅 with the cheapest cost.

[@GMODISM]

Damn sounds very complicated

[@DrakoMT]

@@GMODISM Not really just a couple of math evaluators.

[@GMODISM]

@@DrakoMT hmm

[@comet.x]

​@DrakoMT yeah but you can cram an entire aircraft ai into a math evaluator if you know what you're doing

[@DrakoMT]

@@comet.x Problem is you gonna get 30 fps when you open the breadboard 😂

[@Mister-Toaster]

Can you pin me By the why can you make an only plasma based boat?

[@GMODISM]

Why should I pin this lol? perhaps if you make a comment with timestamps I'll pit it lol Anyways I wanna build a plasma boat yes, so my answer is: a strong probably!

[@Mister-Toaster]

@@GMODISMI hope so