So I was looking through the config files, and in the damagemultiplier file, I noticed that, while the other CV weapons have mostly correct multipliers, the CV plasma cannons do not. They're supposed to do 25% of their listed damage per minute to shields (for example, a light plasma cannon that lists 40,000 damage per minute does 10,000 shield damage per minute). This checks out for other weapons (for example, the light laser cannon does 20,000 shield damage, and as such shows a damage multiplier of 0.5 to shields).

However, the plasma cannons (all of them - light, medium, heavy) have shield damage multipliers of 1. This means they're doing their full damage to shields, while they're supposed to only have a multiplier of 0.25.

So unless I'm missing something (which I may be) it seems the CV Plasma cannons are way over-tuned and are doing 4x their intended damage to shields, blowing all other weapons out of the water.

Is there another multiplier that interacts with the shieldamage multiplier to bring it down to its intended 25%?

Actually I lied - some of the other weapons also seem to have incorrect multipliers (rockets for example are supposed to only do 12.5% damage to shields, but have multipliers of 40%-54%).

Again, could be there's another factor that brings those down, but I'm not sure what it is.

EDIT: Turns out we can ignore this. Testing in-game clearly shows lasers taking down a target's shields roughly 2x as fast as plasmas, so in-game at least its working out.

Now I'm just curious as to why, for plasmas at least, the multiplier in the config files is different (aka shows a 1 instead of 0.25) while still yielding proper results in-game.

EDIT 2: Figured it out - I forgot to factor in the ammo damage when applicable.