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My friend plays chaos undivided, and I.G. Death Korps. and every single unit/squad/character/vehicle, has Plasma rifle/pistol/cannons.

Meltas can do Horrendous AP damage to Vehicles,... but he has enough things that can do that,....

What do you perfer?

I lean more towards reliable melta than overloading plasma. You can't deny that plasma is powerful, but I can shoot melta 6 times in a game and be alright, or I can shoot plasma once, lose the guy holding it, and neuter the squad greatly for AV or MC hunting.

I like plasma for the look and the range, but I tend to run melta for my guard.

I roll a lot of ones, and the 5+ just doesn't cut it.

The only place I use plasma (aside from my marines) is in my stormtroopers.

I run guard, and I personally mix and match. Roughly a 2 -1 ratio, with melta being on top. There is nothing plasma does that melta cannot do, if not always as efficiently. Whereas there are some things a plasma just cant. (landraiders.)
Plus ap 1 saves me so often on the damage chart.

Plasma is great for troops standing still most of the time, like defending objectives. Melta can be a deterent but isn't as good as it has a shorter range.

For example, a squad of Devs with Plasma Cannons vs Multimeltas. Sitting on a objective. For this scenario assume they can control objectives.

Land Raider full of Termies drives up. Plasma can't pen it. However melta needs to be within 12" to be effective. If you wait this the Termies can disembark 2", move and assault. Even if you blow it up the Termies aren't harmed.

However, if the Termies were walking, the plasma can do everything.the meltas can at longer range and more.

Melta is currently one of the most dominant type of weapons in the game.

melta gives 1 more str, 1 better AP, doesn't get hot, rolls 2d6 pen against vehicles, and is 5 points cheaper (in almost all cases) than an equivalent plasma weapon. And is assault so can move and fire.

The plasma pistol's only advantage is counting as a CCW. So it is already worthless if your choice is a meltagun or plasma pistol. But that option is very rare.

The plasma gun has two advantages over the meltagun. One is range. It has an effective 6 inches more range than a melta gun. Due to moving 6 firing 12 being 18 vs 24 inch range. The second advantage is rapid fire. Which doubles your damage both to your enemy and yourself. now gets hot will hurt you on 2s, oh so fun.

Honestly they should switch gets hot and put it on melta weapons and remove it from plasma. But I am pretty sure in 4th edition plasma was king, so they made sure to overnerf it to get people to replace those plasma models.

melta. They look cooler. PLus my sternguard accomplish the same job for being infantry killers. Except plasma cannons are insanely good. I take them with melta guns, so i balance it out.
PLus a lasplas for razorbacks are great for just about everything.

I take melta almost always, but in certain situations I take plasma.

Now those plasma situations are slim, my currently favorite is taking a space marine command squad on bikes with 4 plasma guns, boy do the guys at my FLGS hate it.

But all my other bikes have melta guns. Why? Plasma costs too much and without the FNP from the command squad, it's points list without my enemy doing anything to me.

So, I started this edition all-melta, but I've been slowly moving plasma-wardsly over time.

Melta is good, but it's good because of Ap1. I've found that the +D6 happens way not frequently enough to be much of a draw. A vast majority of the times I'd actually get to shoot melta at AV12, it's without the extra die, in which case the extra shot of the plasma makes the weapon nearly as good as the +1S of the meltagun (once again, it's the Ap1 that makes the difference).

Meanwhile, that extra shot comes in handy against a lot of stuff, from AV10 vehicles to monstrous creatures to terminators, etc. Plus, plasma can threaten out to 24", while a meltagun can only threaten 18", and only threatens to 12" if you're needing to be in melta range. You don't do some things as well with plasma, but you do a lot more things well.

Of course, I still have mostly melta around much moreso than plasma, but that's because of the defensive nature I use special weapons in.

Melta all they way, because I dont want to aid my enemy in killing my men

I like plasma cannons for things like dreadnoughts, but I only really use plasma guns on my plague marines. The 3+ save coupled with FNP does wonders for their survivability when I roll 1s. A 10 man squad of plague marines with 2 plasma guns camping on an objective is also very tough to dislodge, especially if they have cover.

I generally use meltas with my chaos marines largely for the assault property. The shooting before the assault can go from 1 or 2 kills from the bolt pistols to and almost guaranteed 1 or 2 kills from the 2 meltas alone, so to me its well worth taking melta over plasma for them.

Generally speaking it helps to decide before hand whether a unit will be offensive or defensive and then give them their special weapons accordingly. If you're gonna be sitting back taking pot shots, the plasma gun is probably a little bit better, where as a squad on the go can be better helped by the melta.

I prefer autocannons over plasma, sure they dont have the Blast but they have range,
I love meltas, but only on fast movers where the melta rule can really be play out.