Quake Combat+ is a refinement & continuation of Quake, SMC & Quake 1.5, built on Darkplaces, aiming to provide the ultimate Quake singleplayer combat experience and perfect the existing works without straying far from the original design/balance to retain compatibility with the many great custom-made user maps out there.
Most improvements to weapons in this mod are quite minor & conservative, but the lightning gun is definitely an exception:
-Vastly diversified death animations.
-Double the attack range, but slightly reduced damage on any dealt past the vanilla range (increased range is singleplayer only).
-Improved various effects.
-Reduced cell consumption rate & increased ammo capacity.
Vanilla you hardly get to use this awesome gun, and that was a real shame. It chewed through ammo in seconds and additional ammo was hard to come by. This addresses that, yet it still remains the least-used gun in the game.
Powerful? yes. Neccessary? definitely. You will need it, as you've not fought a terrifying quake horde like this before. For every buff the player gets, the enemies get twice as many.