What does this mean?

The needed code and animation assets to make uch a weapon would be heavy on the hands of CCP. They need to get the game balanced, as they see it, before making any new mechanics as the one you have mentioned. Remember that there will always be room for two sets of Light and heavy weapon which are categorized in Anti-infantry (your idea) and Anti-vehicle (my idea with the PLC) I like your idea but, like I said, this post is intended for AV in which case they still have room to make the weapon that you visualize.

Personally, I Think that either the PLC needs some kind of Vehicle Lockon(like swarms) or extend the splash damage to a decent Flux Nade. It won't be OP against infantry because of its 1 shot clip and massive reload time (and then a charge up). Plasma is supposed to be moderately better against shields (an anti-shield AV is something we're missing).

I suppose the changes I'm suggesting would make the PLC more of a mortar system than a shoulder mounted RPG (as it is apparently designed to be). Changing it to a mortar system would also benefit from some kind of range finding UI.

I agree in a sense that increasing direct damage would benefit the PLC greatly. On the other hand increasing the damage to the levels necessary to make the power vs difficulty of use viable leave a big chunk of balance issues unattended. Having that much power on a scout suit that can move very quickly around the match will have the vehicle community crying for a nerf and the cycle of nerf buff, nerf buff will start.

As a PLC user, making the weapon easier to use is never an option. Dumbing it down so it can become the next FOTM is not the answer and the complexity and difficulty of use should remain the same.

You are completely correct but he was talking about added splash radius. I think everyne agrees that direct damage needs to be buffed and splash should stay the same but it's to what extent should direct damage be buffed. Due to difficulty of use and rate of fire the plasma cannon deserves a damage increase to the same levels of the breach for gun since its very difficult to get more than one shot in a row on a vehicle that is running away. But as I said before, with the mobility of scouts, if kept in the light weaponry section, the weapon would be too powerful if not overpowered.

I'm thinking 300 dps against vehicles would be in order. With my math a normal forgegun with operation 5 runs at about 350 DPS including the reload after 4 shots. From the top of my head it deals something like 1350 damage, takes 4 seconds to charge before skills, at operation 5 gets a 25% reduction to charge-up time and takes 4 seconds to reload if I'm not mistaken. So DPS is 4*1350/(4*4*0.75+4) = 337.5 DPS.

Thus a consistent 300 dps for the PLC sounds very useful. This results in a direct damage of 1500, if the RoF is actually 5 seconds per shot as was argued above. If I remember correctly it's direct damage currently sits at about 1000 damage, so a 50% buff seems like it'd actually do something.

(300 DPS for a light weapon may sound like a lot, but then the PLC is very difficult to actually use as an AV weapon when blaster-tanks do drive-bys at over 50 km/h.)

Again, I have no idea why CCP thinks this isn't an option. At least fix it temporarily until you have better designers that can come up with a better weapon-design or something. The PLC could be made useful within 24 hours, or it could be left unattended for the next 6 months. Which shall it be?