FDev have already said that they have done internal testing and the resulting weapons were either far too effective or far to ineffective with virtually no middle ground in between. If the large and huge railguns don't have enough damage output they become outclassed by other weapons or smaller railguns, but if they are made to have useful damage output on a longer charge time their damage per shot values go through the roof and you suddenly get into the territory of being able to one-shot smaller ships. For example, a large rail with 100 burst DPS and a 2.5s charge would need 250 damage per shot, and would be capable of one-shotting stock Sidewinders and Eagles, along with stock Adders, Haulers, and iEagles with less than 2 pips to SYS. Considering that these are the ships that new players use, it would not be wise to add another weapon to the game that could be used to discourage new players from continuing to play via insta-gib.
Rails are already impulse weapons. So you want to add something it already has, and reduce it's primary penalty for use.
Honestly, this. Railguns are already very strong weapons in the right hands, especially when you consider the engineer secondary effects (which also reduce heat BTW). I really don't see the need to buff railguns as they currently exist in-game.
Instead of C3 and C4 rails, we should get coilguns. Charge them up like the seismic charge launcher, draining distributor all the while, and release when you have the power you want. Tapping the trigger ploots out the slug, while a full charge yeets it at 10km/s or so. Possibility for multiple ammo types (implemented correctly this time), like AP, Canister, APHE, AX, etc.
Doesn't even need to be a coil gun, just something with a variable propellant charge. Heck, they could even use liquid propellant if people are concerned about the magnetic field generated by a coil gun would prematurely detonate the ammunition.
As for the multiple ammo types, I really don't see why this hasn't already been added. I suspect it has something to do with engineers (seriously though, how does modifying a gun change the ammo I fire out of it when I'm still buying the same ammunition for it? Do my multis somehow continuously add a corrosive/incendiary compound to the ammo I use?)
