Personally, as far as plasmaman go. They only have a couple defined positive features;
A: They spawn with a spacesuit, and are space-proof. And due to the fact they wear helmets, are immune to gas/smoke.
B: They serve as a status symbol for players who’ve racked up 100+ karma.
As for negatives;
A: They explode immediately on contact with air, meaning any antag can instantly kill them by stunning/stealing their helmet. This doubles as making the plasmaman uncloneable, as they will just burst into flames again on being ejected from the cloner. And due to the lack of helmet, can’t be extinguished.
B: As antagonist changelings, if they change form they will catch on fire. And if you are not fast, you’ll die. As traitors they cannot change clothes, meaning once security disovers the bad guy is a plasmaman. Bye-bye stealth. As shadowlings, when they turn into the shadowling antags they eject their clothes, which has a high chance of killing them outright due to fire.
C: If you die as a plasmaman, that’s it for you. Cloning is arguably impossible for them, unless you either have a highly competent experienced medical team. (You need two of them for the quick method). Or you need to be put in a new body, which at that point. Why not just make them uncloneable?
My proposed solutions;
A: Instead of the plasmaman going on fire instantly, make it take several seconds. This gives you a chance to both clone them properly. And for the plasmaman to react to their attacker.
B: Instead of the plasma suit being an “exosuit” make it a jumpsuit and keeping the helmet as is. This lets you put items over it, allowing you to customise your plasmaman’s appearance somewhat. It also lets antags change clothes to preserve stealth.
C: Either change how changeling transform works, or shadowling transform works. To only ejecting clothes at the very end. Or remove shadowling and changeling from the roster of what antags plasmamen can be.
D: For the sake of synthetica, allow RnD to make the damn suits!
TL;DR: Plasmamen suffer from a multitude of issues, and debuffs. With very little in the way of buffs bar “muh karma status”.