Feedback on Lasers and Plasma weapons

[Number766]

Lasers:
Lasers are probably a bit too good when compared to the conventional firearms. Here are the major advantages:

• Do unresisted heat damage (except for the XM34 EMP projector, electric damage for that one)
• Have essentially no recoil
• Have easily sourced ammo
• Are very quiet

And few minor advantages:

• Sets enemies on fire
• Can shoot through glass without terrain damage/damage reduction
• Have damage/range increasing weapon mods
• Never need any kind of maintenance

Doing unresisted heat damage means that low armor penetration doesn't matter. No recoil means that once you have finished aiming, there is no reaim delay between shots on the same target. The addition of self recharging plutonium batteries/UPS means that ammo is self replenishing. Alternately recharging high capacity heavy batteries isn't difficult.

All that said, the quality lasers are lab/military loot, so they should be good. But if you compare them to the Rivtech guns, the only real advantage Rivtech has is range, and the 25 - 45 range of lasers is fine for most purposes.

In DDA lasers have (or had, I'm not sure if lasers have been removed) an overheat mechanic. This would discourage using autotargeting vehicle mounted lasers to clear entire city blocks, and put more importance on the amount of damage per shot.
Another suggestion would be to give lasers a significant muzzle flash, enough to briefly light up the character. That would make firing them in the dark less free. My concern with this is enemy reaction time, if a feral militia or zapper zombie was able to return fire during the brief moment the player was lit up, that would feel cheap.

The goal is to give laser weapons a few quirks so that they are a sidegrade instead of an upgrade when comparing them to the Rivtech guns.

Plasma:
Plasma weapons, as they stand now, are expensive flamethrowers. While they do share a lot of the advantages that lasers have, it doesn't matter because the two disadvantages they have are too much to ignore.

The most obvious one is limited and uncraftable ammo. Labs and military locations can have solid hydrogen, but not always. At least there is only one other use for solid hydrogen, so you may as well fire most of it.
The real dealbreaker is the fire trail and fire explosion. The fire prevents you from exploring the area that was just cleared, lights you up and destroys loot and terrain.
Plasma weapons are great for late game characters to rampage through a few city blocks while reveling in all the fire and destruction, but don't have much practical use. I would expect to find that type of overkill item in same place as tank shells and aircraft bombs, not in lab finales next to RM13 armor, lasers, mutgen/CBM stockpiles and other rewards with practical use.

Alternately, the PPA-5 could be retooled to be closer to a grenade/rocket launcher and less of a flamethrower. Its description does mention 'designed to take down heavy vehicles'.

Just some food for thought from a player.