Whats better for your troops lasers or plasma weapons... ?

[wowcoh56]

Seems plasma may be better but laser is a later tech??

[Timbermaw]

Laser is a later tech? What?

[wowcoh56]

I thought laser was later tech... is it not?

[asd]

Laser is not "later tech". You should be able to unlock laser weapons earlier. However, in one game I actually captured an alien before I unlocked laser weapons so I unlocked plasma weapons first. Maybe that happened to you as well?

[Traul]

Plasma are expensive in research, weapon fragments and build cost, so you might not afford them even if you can unlock them. On the other hand, up to Classic you don't need more than standard weapons for at least the first 2 months, so skipping lasers entirely is a feasible strategy. It allows you to unlock the higher tier armors faster instead.

[red255]

lasers is an earlier tech.

it requires less money to build. and less engineers.

Lasers do 4-6 damage, thin men/floaters have 4 HP on classic.

ergo lasers mean you can 100% kill thin men and floaters if you hit them.

With lasers and Carapace or skeleton I can manage the alien base assault. ideally in month 3 or 4. which prevents my campaign from 'going on too long and becoming tedious'

Before i forced myself to 'rush' the alien base in month 3 or 4 I wouldn't finish my campaigns because they dragged on too long.

[Baby_Cookie[WOLF]]

Originally posted by red255:

lasers is an earlier tech.

it requires less money to build. and less engineers.

Lasers do 4-6 damage, thin men/floaters have 4 HP on classic.

ergo lasers mean you can 100% kill thin men and floaters if you hit them.

With lasers and Carapace or skeleton I can manage the alien base assault. ideally in month 3 or 4. which prevents my campaign from 'going on too long and becoming tedious'

Before i forced myself to 'rush' the alien base in month 3 or 4 I wouldn't finish my campaigns because they dragged on too long.

now marathon is just utterly annoying for that
going into may

i have

scope ^^
vest
( and due to lucky invasion xeno )

laser is at best still 30 days away
and i won't even think about the sadness that armor is going to take in time :p

either you have carapace when exalt hits or you have lasers when exhalt hits
( you pretty much can't have both in marathon unless you completely sacrifice the satgame - cause you NEED to do engineer missions the first 1.5 months ( + 260$ worksthop to even be able to build uplinks... if you are really lucky you can avoid the workshop )

28 days per uplink ( so you have to preplan everything in the prior month ) and 133 per satelite

( luckily you can just freely sell intact flight coputers and power cells since they take 60-70 days to research, so you can just say ♥♥♥♥ it till way later :p )

going for scientists is a far away dream :p
----------------------------------
marathon....
where 8 day research is tripled to 24 day research
( not a hair on my head is thinking about interogating the outsider before i buld some stuff up, since that jsut triggers psy... and all i have is conventional ( not even reaper rounds - had to sacrifice that for xeno to get some boosts -.- )
-----------
and that's ofcourse assuming i get lucky and have invasions on south america so i can ignore it and launch over it in may to get the instant interrogation going ( cause 8-10 days just to autopsy/interrogate .... :'( )

[୨ಠ ͜つಠ୧]

i think u can unlock the light plasma rifle before u get the laser sniper rifle and the heavy laser ,anyway it's not really worth it unless u capture a lot of thin men (and it also has the same damage of the laser rifle)
im not sure about that anyway ,i don't remember exactly

edit: i just checked the wiki ,u only need weapon fragments (research) and a light plasma rifle to start the plasma weapons research tree ,then if u manage to capture an alien with a light plasma rifle you can easily get plasma weapons quickly

[red255]

you can capture mutons with plasma rifles in Slingshot, they can be used by your assaults.

not worth comparing to laser sniper rifles because snipers can't use plasma rifles. they need sniper rifles.

but yeah capturing plasma rifles from mutons for my assaults is valid especially if you are rushing the endgame.

[Baby_Cookie[WOLF]]

Originally posted by red255:

you can capture mutons with plasma rifles in Slingshot, they can be used by your assaults.

not worth comparing to laser sniper rifles because snipers can't use plasma rifles. they need sniper rifles.

but yeah capturing plasma rifles from mutons for my assaults is valid especially if you are rushing the endgame.

you still need the research done for it
capturing them mitigates the cost ( which is wonderous ) but you can't handle them without the research ( unless slingshot added that ( i don't have that dlc, so can't say :p ) )