Engineers Why do railguns and beam lasers have so few blueprints?

[KR4K40]

Seriously. All they get is long/short range/lightweight/sturdy and, in the case of railguns, high cap mags.

All other weapons get those but also a mix and match combination of overcharged/rapid fire/efficient/focused and , in the case of frags, double shot

why are railguns and beam lasers so overlooked by engineers? I'd love to see rapid fire or double shot railguns or focused or efficient beams. Is there a reason they get such a barebones treatment?

With the upcoming changes to engineer blueprints, lightweight, long range and sturdy will get more interesting for those high power/heat weapons but I can't help but feel like they could use some love.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Beams are getting more BPs in next update, including efficient

 

[KR4K40]

Beams are getting more BPs in next update, including efficient

yeah but what about railguns tho

my railfus need some love

 

[Ydiss]

yeah but what about railguns tho

my railfus need some love

Rails are getting attention at some point later, hopefully in the upcoming beta (according to Mark, though no promises etc).

 

[KR4K40]

Rails are getting attention at some point later, hopefully in the upcoming beta (according to Mark, though no promises etc).

Here's to hoping. Better railgun blueprints would be great. Double shot plasma slug rails would be pretty fun for PVE

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

yeah but what about railguns tho

my railfus need some love

Same here - rails seem to be FD's red-haired stepchild. Pretty much everything received a higher class or buff in some way, rails were indirectly nerfed by heat mechanics over and over ahain.

Still love and use them, but that's only because I'm ginger.

 

[Zeeman]

Same here - rails seem to be FD's red-haired stepchild. Pretty much everything received a higher class or buff in some way, rails were indirectly nerfed by heat mechanics over and over ahain.

Still love and use them, but that's only because I'm ginger.

Yup... I loved my triple imperial hammer iCourier in one of the Beta's, then I got around to building a triple rail iCourier in the regular game (I don't have imperial hammer access) and had lots of fun, until I realised I was doing more damage to myself int he end than the enemy...

The heat thing really does need to get a good looking it, it's just a bit too mad now. I think heat should never have caused damage (apart from getting too close to stars), systems should have shut down in priority order to keep the ship exceeding 100% (kind of like priorities in the same was as we do with power).

As weapons, they would have been useful for pirates - fire a heat weapon at a ship long enough, and everything shuts down, no damage, but you can then loot them ship...

Z...

 

[KR4K40]

Same here - rails seem to be FD's red-haired stepchild. Pretty much everything received a higher class or buff in some way, rails were indirectly nerfed by heat mechanics over and over ahain.

Still love and use them, but that's only because I'm ginger.

And that's without talking about that pitiful ammo capacity. All other one shot, burst damage weapons (cannons, PAs) get 100 spare rounds. Railguns? only 30. Apart from using feedback cascade on one spellcasting railgun, you absolutely have to use plasma slug if you want to use those as an actual weapon

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

And that's without talking about that pitiful ammo capacity. All other one shot, burst damage weapons (cannons, PAs) get 100 spare rounds. Railguns? only 30. Apart from using feedback cascade on one spellcasting railgun, you absolutely have to use plasma slug if you want to use those as an actual weapon

Well - I've made it my pet project to make them useful again since I've read about the balance changes and tried engineering around their issues. Tried three lightweight thermal vent beams along with two mag enhanced super penetrator hammers on a Python (47 shots, yay, but at least the mag size increase works for them so you can fire two batches in close succession).

It wasn't remotely efficient and only worked due to the AI being bad.

My MC loadout is still tangibly faster at dispatching them and allows me to keep full pips to shields for the entire time whilst allowing me to fit overcharged on everything whilst going brain-afk. It's fitted in regards to the upcoming changes, but currently it's a joke compared to an all fixed MC fit:

Spoiler

[video=youtube;Bw69k7JU0vc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw69k7JU0vc[/video]

 

[GG7]

Beams are getting more BPs in next update, including efficient

Long overdue! But I am really pleased that these are coming to Beam Lasers because this is my primary weapon of choice on all my combat ships.

The current offerings have never been much to write home about. I tended to use the Light Weight Mount upgrade simply because its secondary effects often produced the best DPS and most balanced upgrade to the stock version. Seemed odd that this was what worked best over all the other options.

I'm looking forward to seeing exactly what the Overcharged mod will provide. After recently discovering that Thermal Shock reduces your DPS by well over 20%, basically erasing any DPS gains achieved by the primary upgrade, perhaps the Overcharged mod might provide enough DPS boost to counter most or all of that loss and allow you to have a Beam Laser with Thermal Shock that actually has the same or better DPS spec than stock.

 

[KR4K40]

Well - I've made it my pet project to make them useful again since I've read about the balance changes and tried engineering around their issues. Tried three lightweight thermal vent beams along with two mag enhanced super penetrator hammers on a Python (47 shots, yay, but at least the mag size increase works for them so you can fire two batches in close succession).

It wasn't remotely efficient and only worked due to the AI being bad.

My MC loadout is still tangibly faster at dispatching them and allows me to keep full pips to shields for the entire time whilst allowing me to fit overcharged on everything whilst going brain-afk. It's fitted in regards to the upcoming changes, but currently it's a joke compared to an all fixed MC fit

Pretty cool build. Sad state of affairs though, especially considering the power requirement and heat generation of railguns. Now imagine if railguns were actually good and had access to double shot. Standard rails would fire in a burst similar to iHammers, but the iHammers themselves? A burst of SIX rounds, muahahahahahaha

railguns would become the ultimate git gud weapon, especially the hammers

 

[UnhappyDev]

Railguns do have the feedback cascade special effect, a very useful effect that is getting a buff in the next patch

Other than that, I guess that it's a tricky balancing act for railguns. In the past they have been part of meta builds that Frontier stepped in to nerf (rail-de-lance anyone?)

I did try putting 7 on my corvette. It fried unless I used a heatsink for each shot. Didn't exactly do huge damage when I hit all 7 on target either.

 

[Mephane]

My MC loadout is still tangibly faster at dispatching them and allows me to keep full pips to shields for the entire time whilst allowing me to fit overcharged on everything whilst going brain-afk. It's fitted in regards to the upcoming changes, but currently it's a joke compared to an all fixed MC fit:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw69k7JU0vc

Yeah, the problem is that overcharged adds a percentage to the distributor drain, but MC drain WEP so gently that the change is neglibible. With overcharged lasers, on the other hand, you actually get to feel this disadvantage (and some people say that on lasers, rapid fire is superior for this very reason). For multicannons (and cannons), overcharged needs a different drawback, but I am not sure which one.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Mainly because FD fears of making seemingly strogn weapons strong while making cheap and weak weapons even stronger.

#FDlogic

 

[Helvetios]

Here's to hoping. Better railgun blueprints would be great. Double shot plasma slug rails would be pretty fun for PVE

on an imperial hammer, 6 shots landing

 

[KR4K40]

on an imperial hammer, 6 shots landing

pewpewpew pewpewpew yesssssssss

 

[PhanttoM]

on an imperial hammer, 6 shots landing

Speaking of that, does anybody know if they fixed the out-of-sync 4th and 5th shots from the Imperial Hammer when using the High Capacity Mod?

 

[Sylow]

No idea, sorry. I loved my iHammer on my iCouriers center mount before 2.1. But after the railgun heat nerf, which seems to hit the iHammer even harder than the regular railgun, i replaced it with Pack-Hounds. They also are fun to use, and can actually be used without filling all my utility mounts with heat sinks...
.
Unfortunately since i already fully modded all my weapons on my iCourier by now (and my ship runs very close to the power capacity limit) the iHammer would need huge improvements to make it worth switching back to it for me.
.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

Pretty cool build. Sad state of affairs though, especially considering the power requirement and heat generation of railguns. Now imagine if railguns were actually good and had access to double shot. Standard rails would fire in a burst similar to iHammers, but the iHammers themselves? A burst of SIX rounds, muahahahahahaha

Well - it should be okay-ish after the update (-10% wep drain for all fixed lasers, an additional -10-20 % wep drain, no more damage penalty and less grid cost for lightweight modded lasers). Anyway - high cap mags allow for six round bursts with hammers, but I agree double shot would be hot (quite literally).

Yeah, the problem is that overcharged adds a percentage to the distributor drain, but MC drain WEP so gently that the change is neglibible. With overcharged lasers, on the other hand, you actually get to feel this disadvantage (and some people say that on lasers, rapid fire is superior for this very reason). For multicannons (and cannons), overcharged needs a different drawback, but I am not sure which one.

Tough one, probably an ammo penalty. Never really understood FDs reasoning behind OCs grade progression in the first place.

Speaking of that, does anybody know if they fixed the out-of-sync 4th and 5th shots from the Imperial Hammer when using the High Capacity Mod?

Not sure what you mean, but I didn't notice a problem so far.

 

[PhanttoM]

<snip>
Not sure what you mean, but I didn't notice a problem so far.

There was a bug a few months ago, when modding Imperial Hammers with High Capacity Magazine — It would give the railguns 1-2 extra rounds depending on your RNG roll in each "clip", but those extra rounds would be fired off out of sync and without player input.

With a 5-round clip, it would go something like this;
• Hold trigger = 5 shot burst. Release trigger
• Reloading
• 1 shot burst would go off without player input
• Reloading

It got significantly worse when you had a 4-round clip, as it would first fire 4 shots. Reload. Then proceed to fire 2 shots without input.
I immediately removed the mod after nearly hitting clean ships due to the extra shots going off by themselves. Haven't touched the mod ever since that.