I think there is an important typo in the original game data..

[Quixote]

Hello everyone, first of all a BIG THANKS to the project coders for making me relive my happy memories of this excellent game.

While playing it again last night, I suddenly realised something:

Heavy Plasma has a weight of 8 units.

Comparing to the other "heavy" weapons, Heavy Laser weighs 18. Heavy Cannon weighs 18. Auto-cannon weighs 19.

It seems to me like the Heavy Plasma was also supposed to weigh 18, but a typo in data entry meant it ended up weighing only 8. So it became the "super weapon" we all know.

Now, thanks to OpenXcom, we can mod this data easily, I think. Maybe we should make it a toggle in the advanced options?

What do you think about this? Should it really be 18?

[Danny]

Makes Plasma rifles more useful ^^

[Shoes]

If you would like to give it a try to see how it would affect your soldiers, you can change the weight in the ruleset. I would surprised if it were to be changed in the official game, despite it maybe being unintentional.

In a mod, I would always welcome a reason not to simply equip everyone with the "best gun".

[yrizoud]

Not sure if this was a typo, since the rifle has a weight of 6... It's super high-tech, meant to be used even by the wimpy sectoids with their strength as low as 30 sometimes - and they carry additional mags and grenades.

I don't know if the weight change would matter much... Maybe for rookies when playing hardcore, because otherwise you'd rather give them rifles/pistols for training.

For testing the change you can use a partial .rul file like this one:
items:
  - type: STR_HEAVY_PLASMA
    weight: 18

[Warboy1982]

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Item_Weight

plasma weapons are light weight. compare a pistol and a plasma pistol. it's almost half the weight. also, you're not including the weight of a clip. a LOADED heavy plasma weighs 11, the same as a standard rifle. i don't think this is a mistake or an oversight, this is alien technology, made using lightweight alien alloys. remember, sectoids have to be able to carry these things.

i mean, heck, just look at the data in this format:

conventional pistol: 8
laser pistol: 7
plasma pistol: 6

standard rifle: 11
laser rifle: 8
plasma rifle: 8

heavy cannon: 24
heavy laser: 18
heavy plasma: 11

doesn't look like a mistake of any kind to me, in fact if anything it looks like the laser rifle weighs too little.

[Quixote]

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Item_Weight

plasma weapons are light weight. compare a pistol and a plasma pistol. it's almost half the weight. also, you're not including the weight of a clip. a LOADED heavy plasma weighs 11, the same as a standard rifle. i don't think this is a mistake or an oversight, this is alien technology, made using lightweight alien alloys. i see no problem here.

i mean, heck, just look at the data in this format:

conventional pistol: 8
laser pistol: 7
plasma pistol: 6

standard rifle: 11
laser rifle: 8
plasma rifle: 8

heavy cannon: 24
heavy laser: 18
heavy plasma: 11

Going by these numbers for loaded weapons, a plasma pistol is 25% lighter than a standard pistol, a plasma rifle is 25% lighter than a standard rifle (rounded up)... if a loaded heavy plasma followed this pattern, it would weigh 18 units.

Now I'm not arguing for "realism" here, who knows what an alien weapon would weigh. It just seems curious to me.

If the heavy plasma was intended to weigh 18 without clip, then that would have balanced it out in the early game, when your rookies are still too weak to carry it.

I find heavy plasmas on some of the very first UFOs, and can research them straight away, so why bother with plasma pistols and rifles?

Well, as was said, thanks to openxcom, I can mod this out myself, so I'm good. Just wanted to raise the issue here and hear what all of you thought about it

[Danny]

Well it has the word heavy in the name...

And Sectoids maybe shouldn't be wielding them. Seeing they are pretty much the beginner level aliens and get boosts in the form of Psionics later on.
And are accompanied by the deadly Cyberdisc... XD

One of the few things the new Xcom did right was not giving heavy plasma's to Sectoids ^^

[Quixote]

Well it has the word heavy in the name...

And Sectoids maybe shouldn't be wielding them. Seeing they are pretty much the beginner level aliens and get boosts in the form of Psionics later on.
And are accompanied by the deadly Cyberdisc... XD

One of the few things the new Xcom did right was not giving heavy plasma's to Sectoids ^^

I agree with that, it always looked silly too, a tiny sectoid wielding a gun as big as itself

Makes sense too that the sectoids bring the cyberdiscs to add the firepower they are not able to carry themselves. Ethereals also bring big death machines, maybe they were also originally intended to be too weak to carry the heavy plasma?

I think through all this we can glimpse some earlier stage of gameplay design, that was scrapped in order to simply give every alien a heavy plasma towards the end game.

Maybe it was due to the original idea about adaptive difficulty not being implemented in the game after all. The easiest "fix" to get the game shipped was simply to give aliens better and better weapons based on the number of the month. Leading eventually to heavyplasmania.

[Danny]

Well Ethereals have strong Psionic powers so they can use telekinesis to lift it... ^^
Ethereals are end-game enemies and thus are strong and have the strongest terror unit too

I also think the Blaster launcher should be a heavy but mobile weapons platform that an alien or soldier would first need to set down before firing after moving.

[yrizoud]

Danny: For the Blaster launcher, you can simulate it by setting the tuAimed to 100%, this way you can only shoot if you were already in the right position at the beginning of turn; though I don't know how good the AI will handle it.

[kharille]

Its a good suggestion.  If there were less heavy plasmas and more plasma rifles, they would be gems that players would look after.

"Don't use explosives!  He just dropped a HEAVY plasma!!!"