The whole deal with this is, a shutdown tank is as good as dead if he is currently engaged. It's not like you are going to field 5 APCs with PlasmaMGs. 1 good APC driver or a medium supporting tank can concentrate on shutting down 1 enemy at a time. The reason why tanks are so cost effective is that you can ESCAPE in them from almost any situation if you have the slightest bit of common sense. A decent tank will have a lifetime of over 1/3rd of the game usually. Now, if the PlasmaMG user can tackle 1 enemy tank per minute which grants your team an easy kill, you are bleeding the enemy team from more resources and tickets than you ever could on an open field. Tanks usually die in larger numbers when they absolutely cannot retreat, which will only happen if - - you don't care about your losses because you are already winning and currently dancing on top of a pile of enemy bodies inside their own base (you don't care if you run) - you are backed into a corner because you need to defend your base in a last ditch defence act (you lose anyway if you run) - someone disabled your tank with a sticky stun because you were really careless (can't run anymore) - someone overheats you (can't run anymore) - someone blocks you and shuts down your movement via walls (can't run to safety) In all cases it's about running. Tanks die if they are immobile, no matter the original cause. Now... everything up there is highly situational, including the sticky stun (you should never stand still if a soldier runs up to you anyway)... except the overheating part. Because the Plasma weapons allow for disabling OVER A DISTANCE. Also, the MG might be inaccurate, but it is a hitscan weapon.
It always brings a tear to my eye when one of the aussie vets pulls his LT from the first 3 minutes into the fray at the very end to kill the enemy comm. Despite having 20 minute obsolete armor.
I completely forgot about the original question o_O I think I wanted to ask why noone uses the PlasmaMG? Apart from obvious drawbacks, how can people get better if they never have the opportunity to train with it?
Your only chance to use PlasmaMG is to be commander by yourself. Explain how to use a PlasmaMG APC many times and lock the VF to build APCs by yourself. Explain again how to use these APCs (stay together, one gren on top of every APC). Result will be: - "f s space everybody. Noob com. Voteban!" - many abandon APCs in front of the VF - APCs shooting on infantry with plasma MG - Player drive with APC to enemy barracks. Step out of APC to get some kills with Scout Rifle. - All APCs are stucked at random walls - APCs drive arround alone and dies quickly - Whole team drives in one APC and dies Then it's time to ragequit :p
So stop researching it. If the team can't use the weapon, regardless of whether it's a deathlaser, they can't use it. Leave the poor bastards alone.
The problem is, anything that requires teamwork in Empires will not work. Good idea, but difficult to implement.
Well, with good sqauds it does seem to work and small teams. But there is often little teamwork in 32 vs 32 matches... My best games were on small teams.
Excuse me but i thought plasma was a "radiant matter" so, my belief is that plasma should be similar to bio, with higher damage to vehicles,also over time but for a shorter time, the "heat" eats away the armor, and negligible damage to infantry. so, let it all burn! buildings dont burn from plasma much tho. 1 dmg sound good ? lol.
any shaped-charge warhead (HESH, HEAT, etc) utilizes plasma to punch holes in armored targets; plasma weaponry is technically already commonly used by modern militaries (and in fact it has been commonly used for over 60 years). You don't see tanks struck by an RPG taking damage over time, do you? Well they've been hit by a plasma weapon.
theres a difference in plasma types, the one im referring too is the ICR type of plasma, i believe your thinking of manufacturing icp/ccp where its used as a conductor, but even there i havent herd of anything being used in a vehicle, or really as a weapon outside of tests, so what im really getting at is a Helicon Cannon. im somewhat of a fan of tesla lol, so after the patent in late 1800 i read up on them, maybe you could do more research and find something better though, its been a few years.
as I just said, any shaped charge utilizes a jet of plasma to punch a hole through armor plating. This is also known as the Munroe Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munroe_effect Most modern munitions (and munitions utilized 60+ years ago) utilize some form of shaped charge (HEAT, HESH, etc.) to penetrate armor. does this sound like deja vu or what?
Plasma is just a gas abused to the point that it is reduced to ions. The extreme conditions in a properly designed shaped charge can do this even to metal, but for tank shells the nature of plasma isn't important, since they're only interested in the heat and concussive force of the jet. Plasma doesn't stick around long enough to do damage over time. Anything that generates plasma specifically as a weapon would probably be more like a lightning gun than a bio missile.
i dont know about that theyve been working on helicron cannon in theory last few years, are you sure a hesh uses plasma? i thought that was ment to stick to the armor and just explode lol.. idk much about warheads but the radio frequency of the heli-cannon would make sense somewhat, its futuristic, and i mean, think about metal in the microwave, it heats, alot, the denser the material the more it would damage it (super vs the 20 pnd a plate armor and weak aginst composite) that kinda thing.
Wrong. It will work if your clan on one side. *empty remembers the 14v7 MAD practice sessions. We were the 7.*
Why not up the damage for the Plasma MG? Make it at least marginally useful. Or just realign its position on the tech tree, make it an incidental research?
Plasma MG is GOOD for defending bases, but the problem is defending is only good to eat tickets ... and ppl will just try to drive off and attack with plasma MG APCs on their own, however plasma MG became an uncommon late game reseach which could be very good in combination with nukes and adv. coolant, (pin the enemy down while reloading your nuke, fire, overheat the enemy and yourself and after cooling down stop again its movement immidietly) Also plasma needs more infantrydmg, since its useless against infantry anyway due to its capacity to overheating yourself ...
It currently does only 1 damage, correct? Would it be harmful to up that to 5? The firing rate is very low and you cannot fire much without overheating AND it's inaccurate. 5 damage is lower than a DU MG, but maybe it wouldn't feel SO bad. Or 4 or 3...
