Talk:Displacer /P. W. T.

This weapon system is so expensive to operate, I can only think the stats are a design error. Because of the large amount of exotic materials per round of ammo - 5 Zrbite and 8 Aqua Plastics worth $77,000 - the ammo cost per shot is about $106,000 including Technician costs and overheads. The ammo is far more expensive than the personal Disruptor Pulse Launcher or the craft PWT, even though both of those weapons are more powerful than the SWS PWT. Emptying the magazine on this SWS will not leave you much change from One Million Dollars - enough to make even Dr Evil think twice!

Even the high monetary cost may not reflect the true cost of diverting all that Zrbite - 40 Zrbite for a magazine-load is more than the average yield recovered per mission (unless every mission is a perfect USO Assault).

So unless your bank balance and Zrbite stores are overflowing, this SWS should only ever be used for Base Defence, exploiting the free ammo bug.

You might make an exception for a really critical mission where item space is scarce (T'leth?). The only real advantage this platform has over the Disruptor Pulse Launcher is that it packs a launcher and 8 rounds into just one "item" of the 80-item limit. Even then, it costs you 4 Aquanaut slots, and (unlike the DPL) there is no opportunity to scavenge rounds from the enemy, or even reload at all during the mission from carried reloads.

In my opinion, the stats of this weapon are a design mistake. The stats given for SWS PWT should really be assigned instead to the craft PWT (for realism) or even (for game balance) to the personal DPL. At the very least, like the Gauss Cannon, the (much cheaper) craft ammo should be used and shared with the SWS platforms. Spike 06:44, 3 October 2008 (CDT)