I was discussing the enemy plasmagun changes with my friends and that got me thinking about how the plasmagun in Darktide is probably more analogous to a Tau railgun or rail-rifle due to it’s ludicrous cleave and infinite-range straight-line projection. Plasma should splash on impact because it’s barely held together by a rapidly dissipating magnetic field.
To replicate the effect of a plasma gun a bit better, significantly reduce its cleave, but shots instead have a narrow cone AoE 5-8m in length, radiating away from the shooter at the point of first impact. That way you still get the damage through thin walls and bulwark shields and some light enemy penetration, but not the infinite range straight line cleave. Charging the shot would increase damage, and the cone length.
In terms of modern ammo, instead of an AP round you’re firing off a HEAT round.
I feel like that would capture the feel of a plasmagun a bit better while keeping it useful. It won’t stop it from blapping an entire squad of shotgunners when they spawn stacked together, but that’s more of a spawn behaviour issue.
You aren’t alone with these expectations, a gaming buddy of mine and myself have had similar discussions.
Personally when plasma was introduced in the game I was expecting it to be a good single target anti-armour weapon, which when it hits an armour target also produces a small AoE explosion. Not this unbalanced cleaving nonsense we are seeing now.
In table top terms, plasma is a bit all over the place.
Normal Plasma guns used to be able to shoot in single fire mode, or rapid fire at the risk of overheating. So the overcharge applied towards increasing the fire rate.
Heavier plasma cannons were always single shot but produced an explosion radius at their point of impact. Depending on edition, overcharging the weapon increased this radius and/or strength of the attack.
I don’t know what either of this should mean for Darktide, but cleaving through a ton of targets was never the way it was depicted.
