With regards to the laser weapons, the pistol is pointless except as a suicide weapon. The laser rifle would make a fantastic sniper weapon and the heavy would be ideally suited to an air to air weapon or as a short range heavy weapon. The heavies range is to long, if it requires someone with great strength to wield it, I doubt they would be able to hold it for very long.
I think the lasers have great potential, yet they are out gunned, due to the the aliens better weapons. No sooner have you researched lasers and beginning production and they have moved from plasma to particle.
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Basically I think your always out gunned and out armoured.
Having played the original UFO games, I agree with the last statement. A big part of the game, and its challenge, was in coping with the fact that the aliens almost always had you outgunned.
But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. From the alien's point of view, humans are a primitive people with only primitive technology, and as such make for easy prey. That would be why they chose to invade Earth in the first place.
That puts the Earth, and the player, in the position of trying to defend the planet against their superior technology. This is true right up until the end-game, when we finally achieve tech parity with the aliens.
In the case of the laser weapons, this is certainly a case of mismatched firepower. That was true in the original game too. The pistol was fast, but did little more that let the aliens know where you were. The rifle was little better. The only way I found to use the rifle effectively, was by positioning laser snipers to catch an alien in a crossfire. One rifle was nearly useless, but two or three working together could bring down most aliens quickly.
That means its all about the tactics you use, not the firepower, most of the time. The aliens rarely bothered with tactics. (The game couldnt support good AI at the time anyway.) But then why should they? From their point of view, we are little better than cavemen, so they should be able to beat us without bothering much with tactics.
Still, the lasers were never more than a temporary weapon, used until plasma weapons were gotten into service. A bridge if you will, between useless bullet-spitters and weapons with real power.
