Cruiser Plasma vs Heavy Plasma

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Space Battles
1

Which is better for long range plasma fights? Cruiser Plasma seems more accurate (0.6 vs 0.4) and has 50 extra units of range (50 pixels perhaps?), but Heavy Plasma penetrates shields somewhat better. Of course both weapons are strong enough to penetrate even Reflective Shields, so perhaps shield penetration is less important than accuracy. Perhaps Heavy Plasma offers more DPS before shields are down and Cruiser Plasma offers better DPS afterwards? I’m wondering what test results people have had though and how adding targeting boosters affects the equation.

By the way, does adding more than one targeting booster increase performance? My initial tests with Cruiser Plasma suggest that my hit ratio against slow cruisers is around 50-70% with little additional benefit gained from a second targeting booster.

Edit: After a bit more testing, I’ve found that Heavy Plasma is giving me 50-60% hit percentages against the same batch of slow cruisers. Adding or removing the targeting module doesn’t seem to change this much.

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I was using heavy plasma exclusively for my plasma fleet. I read your post a day or two back and switched to cruiser plasma when I noticed that the two are rather similar but cruiser plasma is cheaper. I had forgotten why I ever used heavy plasma, but now I remember.

Sometimes, you’ll come across a “Ha Ha, I made a stationary stack of empire ships with mega shields, bet you cant take it down since you’ll need engines!”. For this, heavy plasma is the correct punishment. A tracking speed of 0.0001 is sufficient to hit something that can’t move. I load up the fed cruiser with 7-8 hardpoints with all heavy plasma, give them a guidance scrambler, some engines and a keep moving order and watch that stationary blob go DOWN.

Otherwise, plasma is just kind of a fun but not terribly practical weapon.