Railgun vs. PA

[J4ze]

Hello there,

While testing different loadouts in Coriolis, I found that Railguns seem to deal far more damage than Plasma Accelerators (even when taking absolute damage into account). Hence I don't understand why PA are often chosen over Railguns in loadouts. Can you please explain me the differences damage wise ? (I already know the differences regarding projectile speed and weapon winding).

Thanks a lot !

 

[Gerdofal]

My guess is it has more to do with the way they fire than the damage they do. In a fast moving encounter, it can be really hard to his with your third and later shots.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

PA's have an absolute damage component for which there is no resistance.
Railguns are pure kinetic.

PA's fire when you press the button.
Railguns charge and fire a moment later.

I can hit something with a PA.
I can almost hit a planet with a railgun.

 

[coca_fr]

In my Anaconda warbird i use Railguns and they are really effective at taking down shield.

I'm absolutly noob at aiming with PA. You need a very agile ship to use it.

 

[Gun Star]

I use a H PA on my Conda for my opening hello after hitting them with a KWS.

I'm getting better at chasing down targets and can usually hit them again with the PA. That H PA is great when fighting the big ships. They're like a giant bullseye.

I go back and forth between having the Rails and MC's on the little hardpoints on my conda. It just depends on my mood.

My FDL I just made on the other hand. 3 PA's 2 Rails. That thing just destroys stuff. Rails are good for sniping modules if you can aim them.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I use a H PA on my Conda for my opening hello after hitting them with a KWS.

I'm getting better at chasing down targets and can usually hit them again with the PA. That H PA is great when fighting the big ships. They're like a giant bullseye.

I go back and forth between having the Rails and MC's on the little hardpoints on my conda. It just depends on my mood.

My FDL I just made on the other hand. 3 PA's 2 Rails. That thing just destroys stuff. PA's are good for sniping modules if you can aim them.

To be fair, I do use a pair of small rails on one of my Anacondas.. it seemed the only worthwhile thing to stick in those two tiny hard points up front, since they won't give us plasma repeaters like fighters have, and I can't just weld a fighter to the nose of my Anaconda.... They're both long-range Feedback Cascade modded and make for a delightful "Hey you!" - kind of a ship-based sucker punch, before the beams and multicannons light up. Fun Multiplier goes exponential if I sub target an SCB.

 

[bladebss]

Rail guns.. dont do more damage than plasma.
Rails just fire quicker.

Plasma only needs to be lined up and fired every 3 seconds to maintain its dps. The rail gun must be fired just over every second.

The heat from a plasma and the cap draw has longer to recover between shots due to its low rate of fire, not so much with the rail gun that if you fire continually will cook you, at least in any quantity.

Plasma also has the absolute damage thing going on, as well as being able to be made efficient. Rails are also thermal damage and do less damage to hull that plasma.

 

[XanderVekk]

Rail guns.. dont do more damage than plasma.
Rails just fire quicker.

Plasma only needs to be lined up and fired every 3 seconds to maintain its dps. The rail gun must be fired just over every second.

The heat from a plasma and the cap draw has longer to recover between shots due to its low rate of fire, not so much with the rail gun that if you fire continually will cook you, at least in any quantity.

Plasma also has the absolute damage thing going on, as well as being able to be made efficient. Rails are also thermal damage and do less damage to hull that plasma.

Rails are also hit scan, they can be modded to stop an SCB charge cold, and long range mod module sniping is absolutely hilarious with penetrator rounds. No need to do hull damage if the enemy has no power plant! Heavens help them if they have higher than a G1 PP mod.

Plus, rail guns are ridiculously fun. They’re probably my favorite weapon, took a lot of practice to aim.

If I remember right, don’t both plasmas and rail guns actually hit one class above their actual in terms of damage and penetration? I.e. small counts as a medium, medium as a large, etc.

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

The plasma I'd say is over all better it has absolute damage only thing that helps against it is pure mj count and hull points
Railguns don't have a travel time and are more likely to hit but, you have to be able to track the target long enough to charge and can be countered with resistance. And PAs are cooler I run a C4 rapid fire plasma slug on my fdl the heats not in issue thanks to the distributor draw and 4 thermal vent beams keeps the heat low it's quite a blast


And please add a class 1 plasma accelerator and make it the same one the fighters have

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Railguns are pure kinetic.

Rails are also thermal damage and do less damage to hull that plasma.

please decide you two...

the ingame info says thermal for the rails, their category says thermal+kinetic
the ingame info says absolute for the PAs, their category says thermal+kinetic

last but not least - some coriolis IO says

50% Thermal and 50% kinetic for Rails and
75% Absolute, 12.5% Thermal, 12.5% Kinetic

Rails penetrate with 40-80% chance, doing 95% of its damage to any module they hit, with a penetration depth of infinite
Plasmas penetrate with 40-80% chance, doing 85% of its damage to any module they hit, with an unknown penetration depth

and now do not forget:
Rails come as smalls and mediums,
PA's come as mediums, large and huge Hardpoints.

so finally, the decision which ones to use depends mostly on two factors: you skill to hit with them, and the ship you are outfitting with them

If I remember right, don’t both plasmas and rail guns actually hit one class above their actual in terms of damage and penetration? I.e. small counts as a medium, medium as a large, etc.

for quite a while, they both have 100 pierce, so size doesnt matter at all

 

[Cmdr Aeries Hunter]

You need a very agile ship to use it.

I use two fixed advanced plasmas on a Cutter

 

[Wily Rites]

An old thread now but, as I'm currently learning about both plasm accelerators and rail guns and have come across this in my perusing, I thought I'd add some of what I've worked out too. I've just add two large PA's to my krait phantom which already has two medium rail guns, the heat is harder to handle, I have to learn to be patient so as not to overheat. I just swapped to the plasmas, where previously there were two large multi cannons. The nice thing about using the cannons with the rail guns was that they let the ship cool down between rail gun strikes.

The thought that I really wanted to add to this thread, as it has not been mentioned, is this: Rail guns are micro-gimbled, making them wickedly good over long range, where as the plasma's are great for up close and personal; I'm really loving having both; Rail guns for long range and Plasma Accelerators for close.

As mentioned above, now I just need to learn to kerb my excitement so as to not overheat and self cook my internals! Hard though, It is just way to tempting to slam in a rail gun shot between plasma blasts, when that perfect opportunity opens up in close range.

 

[zeta]

PA's have an absolute damage component for which there is no resistance.
Railguns are pure kinetic.

PA's fire when you press the button.
Railguns charge and fire a moment later.

I can hit something with a PA.
I can almost hit a planet with a railgun.

Afaik, rails deal 70% thermal, 30% kinetic damage.

If you shoot NPCs, they likely have standard shields with low thermal resistance hence rails may appear to do more damage. On top of this rails have very good DPE (damage per energy in the sense of using small amount of distributor draw for the amount of damage they deal).

If you go up against CMDRs, they either have biweaves with high thermal resistance or prismatics with 30% thermal resistance but very high MJ so you will have a different experience with rails.

 

[Dragsham]

Rails come in various flavours.
From 6km long range with super penetrative experimental which in a fast ship can be very effective. Picking off the enemy from a vast distance away.
To short range rails that do a ton of damage especially in volleys. Only drawback is the heat they generate.
Sturdy rails have their place too being alot cooler when fired than short range rails. Sturdy also have alot of extra piercing damage.
Only PAs I use are focused thermal conduit. Twice the shot speed and the heat they generate is converted into dps via the experimental.
PAs are hard to master, as are rails.

 

[Kissamies]

Only PAs I use are focused thermal conduit. Twice the shot speed and the heat they generate is converted into dps via the experimental.
PAs are hard to master, as are rails.

I too, prefer faster shot speed version. This can be achieved either with Focused or Long Range mods. The other advantages of those mods are rarely very meaningful, so it depends on which downside you prefer. More heat or extra weight and power usage. I mostly do mass PvE combat, so Plasma Slug is essential for my PAs.

Easier to hit the subsystems with those mods and PA to the PP really hurts. Sometimes I hit without meaning to. It's like rolling a critical hit.

 

[galahad2069]

The other advantages of those mods are rarely very meaningful

There are no advantages of focused/long range PA's at all. They are just plain worse than efficient ones in practice, because of the lower damage and higher distro draw.

'Stay away from the forum' is probably the best advice you can give new players if they want to learn a thing or two about ship builds. The sheer amount of misinformation in threads like this one is a good example why.

 

[St0rmFury]

My vulture has a short ranged PA because it can really stick to his opponents.

 

[Three Stars]

Short Range PAs are quite good at zeroing power plants, assuming you can be on target with them and have a good enough distributor to keep WEP high. With the way that module breach damage is handled (%chance to breach —> module damage), it’s better to do as much damage as you can with each hit rather than relying on multiple non-guaranteed hits to stack up damage. It’s the reason why PAs are better than APAs for module damage. Having to make 3 consecutive 40% breach rolls to do the same damage as one large 40% breach roll is not a good trade.

Overcharged isn’t as good. It may seem like less heat, but a lot of the heat needs to be handled by the WEP capacitor, and making that burden 25% higher means you do worse (or wait longer) on consecutive shots. Plus, the extra range is not helpful as you’ll rarely be making shots beyond 2 km anyway with base PA speed.

There’s nothing wrong with using Focused or LR to make PAs easier to hit with, and that can be better with less maneuverable ships, but you do lose damage in the exchange. Ironically, LR is probably the best option for APAs where the whole point of them is making multiple consecutive shots to get the most damage.

 

[Kissamies]

Short Range PAs are quite good at zeroing power plants, assuming you can be on target with them and have a good enough distributor to keep WEP high. With the way that module breach damage is handled (%chance to breach —> module damage), it’s better to do as much damage as you can with each hit rather than relying on multiple non-guaranteed hits to stack up damage. It’s the reason why PAs are better than APAs for module damage. Having to make 3 consecutive 40% breach rolls to do the same damage as one large 40% breach roll is not a good trade.

Overcharged isn’t as good. It may seem like less heat, but a lot of the heat needs to be handled by the WEP capacitor, and making that burden 25% higher means you do worse (or wait longer) on consecutive shots. Plus, the extra range is not helpful as you’ll rarely be making shots beyond 2 km anyway with base PA speed.

There’s nothing wrong with using Focused or LR to make PAs easier to hit with, and that can be better with less maneuverable ships, but you do lose damage in the exchange. Ironically, LR is probably the best option for APAs where the whole point of them is making multiple consecutive shots to get the most damage.

Yes, pretty much all of this. Short Range is better than Overcharged because it's hard to hit at long ranges with the regular shot speed anyway. Efficient is generally needed if you want to use a lot of them. Rapid Fire is not that good, but can be used if you can't stand the rate of fire and the reload time. I made a twin rapid fire APA Krait Phantom for the lulz. Pretty fun to fire them alternately. Only Lightweight and Sturdy are useless mods. Main advantages are really niche and Efficient does the secondary advantages better.

 

[MottiKhan]

Back during my criminal career, I used mostly PAs. Very effective alpha and splash damage. Once I changed my ways, I used Imp Hammers. Lately, I've been doing PVE, so it's lasers and multis.