But gas is a silent killer, I think a sound would not be realistic...
Regarding the use against behemots you're probably right. Currently the damage is balanced for small, medium and big biters. Maybe I'll add research to increase it in the next version.
If you want you can increase the damage in the data.lua file in line 174:
target_effects =
{
type = "damage",
damage = { amount = 20, type = "poison"}
}