Railguns and their use? (Not counting superpen or feedback cascade)

[NCFCpaul]

Contrary (slightly) to the above I have four medium rails on my Fed Gunship with one large long range thermal vent beam and two small efficient thermal vent beams.

My experience is that this is lots of fun and can do damage from quite a long way from the target. Despite G5 dirty thrusters this isn't a ship that handles well at all. Against NPCs it is very effective however.

Sure works for me but without the thermal vent beams I think four rails would make things very hot, and power management does need a little juggling

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Contrary (slightly) to the above I have four medium rails on my Fed Gunship with one large long range thermal vent beam and two small efficient thermal vent beams.

My experience is that this is lots of fun and can do damage from quite a long way from the target. Despite G5 dirty thrusters this isn't a ship that handles well at all. Against NPCs it is very effective however.

Sure works for me but without the thermal vent beams I think four rails would make things very hot, and power management does need a little juggling

This is for you.

PvP - Elite Dangerous PvP - Wingfights in Shinrarta

Few fights in Shinrarta with friends vs GOLD. Thanks for the fights guys Source: https://youtu.be/l9Ft06RhhZM

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

As a PvE only player I was all lasers and multicannons mix for a long time. But NPCs got tougher, breaking shields with lasers only can become challenging, unless you sacrifice a lot of the multicannon kinetic damage, which then makes hull cracking more tedious. So on all my main combat ships, I left the kinetics as is, concentrated the lasers on fewer hardpoints and added two feedback rails to the mix. SCB Duracell builds have become a lot less annoying, as well as chaffers.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

My Krait mk2 uses the same hardpoint setup as in the OP. Definitely recommend this for PvE as the rails do a good job on the shields, but the hull damage you can do with the remaining 3 hardpoints will put a smile on your face. 3 g5 OC multis (one with corrosive) are effective on any NPC in my experience. I use g1 long range and this seems to work well enough, feedback cascade is a must IMO though. Unless I spam the rails I've never had a problem with heat either.

 

[NCFCpaul]

This is for you.

PvP - Elite Dangerous PvP - Wingfights in Shinrarta

Few fights in Shinrarta with friends vs GOLD. Thanks for the fights guys Source: https://youtu.be/l9Ft06RhhZM

forums.frontier.co.uk

Awesome! That's exactly how it should go in my mind but it never quite happens like that when I do it!

 

[Dakka]

My Krait mk2 uses the same hardpoint setup as in the OP. Definitely recommend this for PvE as the rails do a good job on the shields, but the hull damage you can do with the remaining 3 hardpoints will put a smile on your face. 3 g5 OC multis (one with corrosive) are effective on any NPC in my experience. I use g1 long range and this seems to work well enough, feedback cascade is a must IMO though. Unless I spam the rails I've never had a problem with heat either.

see you saying feedback cascade is a must is the problem I have, my goal is to have a ship that can fight for a while without needing to return to a station. Based on your information it sounds like maybe I should mix all three? 2 medium rails, 2 gimballed multicannons(one with corrosive) and a laser of some kind?

In my mind I was originally planning on using the rails to break shields, and let the gimballed multicannons loose while trying to land shots on subsystems with the rails while relying on the fact the multi cannons were gimballed and would not interrupt my fixed weapon targeting.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

see you saying feedback cascade is a must is the problem I have, my goal is to have a ship that can fight for a while without needing to return to a station. Based on your information it sounds like maybe I should mix all three? 2 medium rails, 2 gimballed multicannons(one with corrosive) and a laser of some kind?

In my mind I was originally planning on using the rails to break shields, and let the gimballed multicannons loose while trying to land shots on subsystems with the rails while relying on the fact the multi cannons were gimballed and would not interrupt my fixed weapon targeting.

I went for that option because I don't find synth costs for rail ammo to be a problem and that the SCB spamming of some NPCs does take some heavy sustained fire to override sometimes. Thinking about it though, mine is a multipurpose build with 128t cargo space, so better shields (and pilot perhaps!) and a more combat oriented setup may compensate anyway (I'm thinking against big ships though, I can see how feedback cascade certainly wouldn't be needed for a Python or smaller ship).

Alternatively, a fixed beam SLF with a decent NPC pilot may be enough to help cut though shields. For me it's a build worth trying just to see those three multicannons in action.

 

[Aashenfox]

The people who say they aren't good shield strippers are plain wrong. The reason they aren't very good at damaging hulls is their comparatively low fire rate combined with the fact that when you hit a module, no hull damage is done, therefore, while I'm a huge railgun user (pound for pound best weapon in the game, even without engineering), I tend to either module snipe once the shields are down, or use a more direct hull damage weapon such as PAs/MCs/Cannons.

This is all with pve in mind, but the truth is it changes little in pvp, as most pvp builds sacrifice some thermal resist for either absolute protection from meta PA users or simply because kinetic is the prevalent and most damaging damage type (frags, MCs, cannons), and lasers universally have poor DPE or poor DPS.

Since fast charge SCB engineering, feedback is of more limited use. Being able to land two rounds on a medium ship for maximum effectiveness, in 3 seonds, is hard for even the best (unless the enemy is a really poor pilot), I tend to go all out with super pen these days, for the extra shield damage (feedback damage penalty is HARSH at 20%), or plasma slug, as ammo is always an issue.