Elite Dangerous: Plasma vs Advanced Plasma Accelerator

Weapons

Introduction

Tests were done against Imperial Cutter shields and plasma fired from Anaconda with best power coupling.

Plasma is one of the most powerful weapons but with low projectile speed and high power requirement as well as energy draw from WEaPon capacitor it has very limited use, mostly in wing vs wing PvP or against large and slow targets.

If you want to know more about weapons, damage done over the distance or against different bulkheads check other my posts or videos but for now Plasma deal exactly same damage up to 2km, i.e., Railguns will deal 3x less damage 500m vs 2,5km, Lasers even 4x less damage.

Test

	Plasma Accelerator	Advanced Plasma Accelerator
Clip Size	5	20
Total Ammo	105	320
Round Velocity	Very roughly: around 700-950 meters per second
Time to empty all clip	under 14 seconds	under 10 seconds
Damage up to 2 km per clip	22 %	30 %
WEP capacitor with 4 pips	Full after 5 shots	Empty after 20 shots

As you can see from test then Advanced plasma has exactly same projectile velocity as Plasma Accelerator but instead of 105 rounds (5 per clip) Advanced Plasma has 320 rounds (20 per clip) and fire rate is greatly increased: 1 shot under 3 seconds for Plasma vs 2 shots per second for Advanced Plasma.

Full clip can be shot - Advanced plasma 20 rounds under 10 seconds, Plasma 5 rounds under 14 seconds, but biggest difference is in energy requirements to cool weapons, one clip of advanced plasma will drain your Anacondas WEP capacitor completely while Plasma Accelerator will leave WEP capacitor almost completely full, so you can fire 2 or more Large Plasma Accelerators from Anaconda but can't fire more than one Advanced Plasma. With Advanced plasma it is easier to hit smaller targets because you are shooting with 2 shots per second, so if you only need one Plasma weapon Advanced might be usefull, but you will be forced to keep 4 pips to WEP at least while you are shooting.

As for damage then in 10 seconds and 20 shots Advanced Plasma will deal almost 30% more damage than Plasma Accelerator in 14 seconds with 5 shots, so it's up to you to go for speed and damage at expense of your WEP capacitor or have more Large Plasma Accelerators.

Video