Plasma gun

This article is about the original Doom games weapon. For the weapon in Doom 3 see Plasma gun (Doom 3). For the weapon in Doom 4 see Plasma gun (Doom 4).

The Plasma Gun (also known as the Plasma Rifle in the game manuals and help screen) is a futuristic weapon with a barrel that roughly resembles an accordion, which fires blue and white bursts of plasma. It shares the player's stock of cells with the BFG9000 as a source of ammo.

The Plasma Gun first appears in a secret area of the very first level of the second episode, E2M1: Deimos Anomaly, and happens to appear in every level of The Shores of Hell, with the exception of the Tower of Babel level. It first appears in a non-secret area in the fifth level, E2M5: Command Center. When picked up, it contains the equivalent ammo of 2 cells (totalling 40 units of energy, or 80 on the "I'm too young to die" and "Nightmare!" skill levels).

Combat characteristics

When the trigger is pulled, it'll fire like a machine gun but shoots small blue and white balls of plasma. Each plasma burst inflicts 5-40 points of damage. Although the rate of continuous fire is one burst every 3 tics (about 0.086 seconds), there is a further pause of 21 tics (0.6 seconds) when the trigger is released.

Tactical analysis

Due to its high damage rate (three times that of the chaingun), the plasma gun is devastating against nearly any single opponent. A continuous barrage will stop an arachnotron in its tracks, and even reduce a baron of Hell to about half its normal movement speed and attack frequency. The Plasma Gun is also effective against large groups of weaker enemies (charging enemies like Demon), it can stop them all before they reach the player. Attacking monsters from long ranges can be inefficient, however, as enemies tend to move too much for the bursts to be accurate; it is also difficult to use against flying monsters in open areas, as the first few hits push the enemy rapidly backward and often to one side of the stream. A good tactic to counter this weakness is to fire the Plasma Gun in bursts as in opposed to full-automatic. Otherwise, it is a very powerful weapon that can be considered the jack-of-all trades.

Although the plasma gun does not inflict blast damage, firing it in close quarters demands a certain amount of concentration owing to horizontal auto-aim, which may steer its projectiles right into a wall if the nearest monster is not directly in front of the player. For example, using the plasma gun on the cyberdemon in E4M2: Perfect Hatred, without placing the player in its line of sight, requires aiming at a point slightly to the monster's left. The plasma gun can also be used to light up dark places.

Notes

• In the Doom press release beta, the plasma gun fires green-white and orange-red bursts, alternating between the two colors. This is similar to that version's BFG9000, which fires 40 of the same projectiles per shot. For the release of Doom, these plasma bursts were made blue-white, and the gun sprite was changed slightly.

• Like the shotgun, the plasma gun was created from an existing toy gun. [1] [2] [3] [4] The links show a dart-shooting, M60-like toy that was popular in the early 1990s (back then, it was tan). The area in front of the bipod could be detached to use as a separate weapon. The designers simply turned the detachment around so that it was shown backwards. The resemblance is most apparent when the player lifts the weapon at the end of a volley.

• The rapid fire of the plasma gun often requires many sprites to be rendered simultaneously. This has been known to cause lag during multiplayer games or on older machines (see also the notes on the early BFG).

• The Plasma gun will sometimes gib zombiemen and shotgun guys due to their rather low health (20 and 30 hit points respectively, while each plasma burst can do as much as 40).

Data

Plasma gun data
Weapon number	6
Damage	5-40
Included ammo	40 (80 on skill 1 & 5)
Max ammo	300 (600 with backpack)
Ammo type	Plasma cells
Shot type	Projectile
Velocity	25 map units per tic (875 map units per second)
Shots per minute	700.0
Sound	DSPLASMA (firing) DSFIRXPL (impact)
Appears in	Registered Doom The Ultimate Doom Doom II/Final Doom
Thing type	2004 (decimal), 7D4 (hex)
Radius	20
Sprite	PLAS (before pickup) PLSG (wielded) PLSF (firing) PLSS (plasma burst) PLSE (impact)
Class	Weapon Pickup

Shots needed to kill1	Mean	Standard deviation	Min	Max
Barrel	1.45	0.60	1	3
Zombieman	1.45	0.60	1	3
Shotgun guy	1.81	0.76	1	4
Wolfenstein SS	2.77	0.78	2	5
Imp	3.21	0.92	2	6
Heavy weapon dude	3.64	0.98	2	6
Lost soul	4.97	1.09	3	9
Commander Keen	4.97	1.09	3	9
Demon	7.22	1.33	5	11
Spectre	7.22	1.33	5	11
Romero's head2	11.65	1.67	8	16
Revenant	13.84	1.72	10	18
Cacodemon	18.33	1.89	14	22
Pain elemental	18.33	1.89	14	22
Hell knight	22.81	2.10	17	27
Arachnotron	22.81	2.10	17	27
Mancubus	27.24	2.31	21	33
Arch-vile	31.70	2.42	26	37
Baron of hell	45.09	2.84	39	51
Spiderdemon	134.52	1.70	131	139
Cyberdemon	179.06	3.17	171	186

1. This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, backfire checks, and muzzle lighting are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). It is also assumed that all projectiles are launched at nearly the same range, so that the various procedures call P_Random in the same sequence each time. Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
2. Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

Appearance statistics

The IWADs contain the following numbers of plasma guns:

Game	ITYTD and HNTR	HMP	UV and NM
The Ultimate Doom	22	22	22
Doom II	25	26	26
TNT: Evilution	20	18	18
Plutonia	31	31	31

Appearances in other id Software games

• The Doom 64 plasma gun sprites are completely redrawn. It has a blue electric tube on top, which makes a constant buzzing sound. Like the shotguns, the recoiling animation is non-existent, likely to save cartridge space. Other than that, the "new" Plasma gun fires at a slightly slower rate.

• The plasma gun appears as a redesigned version in Quake III Arena, another game later developed by id Software. The Quake III plasma gun has a more streamlined, futuristic look with glowing plasma visible behind transparent parts. The plasma projectiles travel at a higher velocity and create a small radius of splash damage upon impact.

• The Doom 3 version of the plasma gun is again redesigned, with the projectiles moving at slower speed. It uses its own type of ammunition and needs to be reloaded after 50 shots.

• The Doom (2016) version of the plasma gun takes its design from the Doom 3 counterpart. It doesn't require reloading, and shares its ammo pool with the new Gauss Cannon.

See also

• Rocket passes through the player who fired it

Weapons from classic Doom games
Fist | Chainsaw • Pistol • Shotgun | Super Shotgun • Chaingun • Rocket Launcher • Plasma Gun • BFG9000
Italics = Introduced in Doom II