[WEAPON] Terran Plasma Weapons

[Shadow]

TERRAN PLASMA PISTOL

Stat differences vs. alien variant:

• Damage: 60 Plasma (up from 52)
  
• Ammo: 18 (down from 26)

Manufacturing requirements:

• Weapon: $56,000 + 1x Alien Alloys, 3 workshop space, 600 engineer hours
  
• Clip: $2,000 + 1x Elerium-115, 2 workshop space, 60 engineer hours

TERRAN PLASMA RIFLE

Stat differences vs. alien variant:

• Accuracy: 60% auto, 94% snap, 110% aimed (up from 55% auto, 86% snap, 100% aimed)
  
• Damage: 72 Plasma (down from 80)

Manufacturing requirements:

• Weapon: $88,000 + 2x Alien Alloys, 4 workshop space, 820 engineer hours
  
• Clip: $4,500 + 1x Elerium-115, 3 workshop space, 80 engineer hours

TERRAN HEAVY PLASMA

Stat differences vs. alien variant:

• Speed: 33% auto, 28% snap, 57% aimed (up from 35% auto, 30% snap, 60% aimed)
  
• Damage: 105 Plasma (down from 115)

Manufacturing requirements:

• Weapon: $122,000 + 3x Alien Alloys, 4 workshop space, 1,000 engineer hours
  
• Clip: $9,000 + 2x Elerium-115, 3 workshop space, 100 engineer hours

ALIEN PLASMA WEAPONS: Unusable by X-COM operatives, sales price halved (not as useful to human buyers).


Localised for: English (UK), English (US), Español (AL), Español (ES)

During most of the game, X-COM operatives have their own unique equipment and weapons, save for the occasional alien gadget here and there. However, once plasma's researched, that battlescape diversity is lost, and everyone's largely using the same gear.

Not so much with this mod, which sets apart alien and human plasma weapons, creating a different late game experience. The design of the extraterrestrial firearms is not oriented towards human operators, which has led X-COM engineers to come up with their own variants. What's more, the replication process has produced particular differences in performance, compared to the alien counterparts. Not to mention Terran plasma bolts are blue!

The necessity to manufacture plasma weapons and ammo alone should present interesting economic challenges when otherwise you'd simply rely on the generous amounts of alien equipment you salvage from missions. Coupled with the statistical changes, it might even be enough to break the Heavy Plasma's hegemony and prod the player to at least consider keeping the highly precise Plasma Rifle in service as a primary weapon.

Kudos to Chiko for the original design of the new plasma technology, which I later modified to some extent.

Mod's attached to this message. Extract it to your OpenXcom's data folder and enable the TerranPlasmaWeapons ruleset in options.cfg. Enjoy!

[mercy]

THIS is really cool! I will try it out, once reaching plasma tech in future.

[moriarty]

Nice! Once fenyo's pull request ( https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1623.msg15821.html#new ) is in, I'd like to use these graphics to merge with my "longer research" mod which features the possibility to retrofit captured alien weapons - fenyo's work should allow us to use two seperate ways of manufacturing human plasma weapons you can either build them from scratch or use a captured alien plasma weapon.

[Shadow]

Nice! Once fenyo's pull request ( https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1623.msg15821.html#new ) is in, I'd like to use these graphics to merge with my "longer research" mod which features the possibility to retrofit captured alien weapons - fenyo's work should allow us to use two seperate ways of manufacturing human plasma weapons you can either build them from scratch or use a captured alien plasma weapon.

I pondered both avenues when I was making this mod, but eventually went for building from scratch. The repurposing path otherwise made the player dependent on alien stocks, which eventually would be only Heavy Plasmas, and rifles and pistols would disappear.

If a way to have multiple manufacturing projects produce the same item is implemented, I'll consider updating my mod to add an option to repurpose existing alien weaponry. I'm not entirely sure I will, however, since it'd diminish the scratch-building path considerably, dilute the economic challenge and possibly restore the Heavy Plasma's dominance.

We'll see!

[crisisdude]

Hey, so I've been playing with this for a little while now and I was wondering, Is the snap and auto supposed to take the same TU's with the Terran Plasma Pistol?  I just thought it was a little wierd   

[Shadow]

Hey, so I've been playing with this for a little while now and I was wondering, Is the snap and auto supposed to take the same TU's with the Terran Plasma Pistol?  I just thought it was a little wierd   

Those are actually the default TU costs of the Plasma Pistol. The only stats I've changed for that weapon, as I've mentioned on the main post, are the ammo and the damage (power).

[crisisdude]

K, sorry I haven't used plasma pistols lol.  Great mod tho, i love it soo much

[Shadow]

K, sorry I haven't used plasma pistols lol.  Great mod tho, i love it soo much

Thanks!

[Hythlodaeus]

Visually speaking, why does the Heavy Plasma has a scope if it has such poor accuracy? Also, I'd spice up its auto-fire accuracy a little. It's might weak now. You seriously nerfed one of the best weapons in the game to a nigh-useless status. Remember that in higher difficulties, the heavy plasma is one of the few guns that can successfully pierce sectopod armor. So either make the Heavy Laser a little more accurate, or keep the Heavy Plasma damage the same with a little better accuracy or maybe no auto-fire mode, like TFTD did with sonic weapons.

[Shadow]

Visually speaking, why does the Heavy Plasma has a scope if it has such poor accuracy? Also, I'd spice up its auto-fire accuracy a little. It's might weak now. You seriously nerfed one of the best weapons in the game to a nigh-useless status. Remember that in higher difficulties, the heavy plasma is one of the few guns that can successfully pierce sectopod armor. So either make the Heavy Laser a little more accurate, or keep the Heavy Plasma damage the same with a little better accuracy or maybe no auto-fire mode, like TFTD did with sonic weapons.

By default, the Heavy Plasma's accuracy is second only to the Plasma Rifle's except in aimed shots, in which it's the clear best. For the Terran variants, I only broadened that accuracy gap a bit by making the Plasma Rifle a tad (+10%) more accurate. The Heavy Plasma is unchanged on the precision front, and remains the second-most accurate weapon in the game. Aimed shots, which are the ones that benefit the most from a scope, still have the best accuracy, only now matched by the Plasma Rifle's.

And while it's 0-20 points weaker, it's faster to use and in optimal conditions provides the opportunity to fire a devastating 9-round burst (3 auto shots) in a single turn. It isn't as overpowered as it sounds, and it's a good option to have in some cases. Not to mention allowing troopers to be a bit more mobile and still be able to get shots off.

Going back to the damage front, I'd assume the inability to destroy inner UFO walls is a larger disadvantage than having to fire more shots to kill a Sectopod, an alien unit particularly resistant to plasma weaponry: by default, the Laser Rifle is virtually just as powerful as a Heavy Plasma against Sectopods (90 vs. 92, respectively, which is 90 vs. 84 with this mod). Heavy Lasers are still the best option against them (120)*.


*While Heavy Lasers are otherwise rather underpowered in the vanilla game, they're not made more so by this mod. And modding them is outside the scope of this project.

[Hythlodaeus]

Ah, I'm sorry. I thought I was reading accuracy values, when I was actually reading speed ones.

As for the damage values, it's really a darn shame you're unable to blow up UFO walls, as it was really useful on tight UFO rooms/corridors.

[Yankes]

Shadow what do you think about to produce human plasma weapon you need use alien weapon as base?
Logic behind this would be that we cant recreate alien weapon exactly and we need some parts form original to create human version.
It could be more than one alien gun to create new one.

[moriarty]

Shadow what do you think about to produce human plasma weapon you need use alien weapon as base?
Logic behind this would be that we cant recreate alien weapon exactly and we need some parts form original to create human version.
It could be more than one alien gun to create new one.

yankes, I just posted the new version of my "slow technological progression" ruleset, take a look at the ruleset... you could modify it to make the manufactures need two or three alien guns, and you could disallow the research that allows for later from-scratch production.

[Hobbit Lord]

Nice! Once fenyo's pull request ( https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1623.msg15821.html#new ) is in, I'd like to use these graphics to merge with my "longer research" mod which features the possibility to retrofit captured alien weapons - fenyo's work should allow us to use two seperate ways of manufacturing human plasma weapons you can either build them from scratch or use a captured alien plasma weapon.

Yeah I would love for the mods to work together. Additional human weapons is the perfect counter balance to Moriarty's changes

Also another possibility to boost humans is the Mass Accelerator Technology/'Railgun' by Tyran_nick

Thanks guys

[Shadow]

Shadow what do you think about to produce human plasma weapon you need use alien weapon as base?
Logic behind this would be that we cant recreate alien weapon exactly and we need some parts form original to create human version.
It could be more than one alien gun to create new one.

As I said earlier, that makes sense in theory, but in practice eventually you'll only be able to build Heavy Plasmas, because that's all the aliens field after a certain point. I don't like to take that choice away from the player, and besides it dilutes the economic challenge and clashes with my intent to dethrone the Heavy Plasma as the be-all-and-end-all infantry weapon.