That's true.
I think I mentioned how much they cost when I asked him about it. I think he said you can give them some abilities in the base template, stuff that's not expensive enough to justify a big multiplier. So in that sense it might be better, unlike with mortals/angels in which every little thing puts the price up that little bit higher.
Not sure about Loyalty, though. Most of my artifacts will be building sized and held inside my body within the City of Rule or deep underground, so being stolen from isn't really a concern for me, anyway. And if you can't steal something, you'd wanna break it. *shrug* It probably is pretty freakin' expensive for what it is, but I'm guessing it can also fill the role of the form it takes; a suit of armor, for example, would probably protect ya pretty well before you add on other stuff.
I think the Recoil trait might just be a bad one for artifacts, too; absurdly expensive, and they're already nigh-indestructable, so you could probably just have an artifact shield and tack on other stuff if you wanted for it to be an effective god-to-god-combat shield.
My guess is their base ability as an artifact will reflect whatever their new price becomes, too, so meh. I kinda like the idea of there being but a few supremely powerful divine artifacts, all of truly immense power. Stealing them would be beyond merely an extraordinary feat, as you are, in the vast majority of cases, stealing from the gods themselves.
Oh yeah, and I think you could make multiple lesser artifacts just by specifying you were. Or something. Meh.
Actually, I think I'll ($$$) price check on the Thunder Guns if they're made using only Plasmancy.
Thunder Guns are basically artillery pieces that are powered in large part (in my current idea of them) by the magical power/energy of the crew using it, which helps explain part of why it has a large crew, around 10-12, to spread the drain around. They use plasmancy mostly because they typically shoot lightning(for long range), which I would think explodes what it hits, and can probably leap from Gun to Gun to get a bigger bolt; plasma, for medium range, in the form of a condensed ball, which expands upon impacting, splattering molten death over all it hits; and fire(short range, of course(relatively speaking)), which does much as you would expect. Doesn't need a whole lot of training, though it does need some. Knowing Plasmancy doesn't make the operation itself easier, though it would probably help aiming if you manipulated what came out, as would several other magics. The Gun itself looks like a long 4-sided obelisk of black metal, around half a foot around at the front end(not perfectly square, somewhat rectangular/tall trapezoidal), around a foot and a half at the back; it would quite often be bent down to be set into the ground there, for stationary emplacements. Set up usually has it set at an angle between 70° and 15° with the ground, depending on the expected range of engagement(higher is better for longer ranges), usually elevated (either with the bottom part of it being perpendicular with the ground, with the sudden bend and all, or on a carriage of some sort) between 2 to 4 feet above the ground at the lower end.