#JusticeForRailguns

Cmdr CrunchyLettuceBoi

C
#Class3RailgunsNow
#Class4RailgumsNow

Its sad that railguns can only be in class 1 and 2, we need more firepower! Most class 4 weapons are gumballed laser/kinetic weapons, apart from the plasma accelerator, but if ships can handle a class 4 PA, why not a railgun?

This is something that players have been asking for over a few years but hasn't been implemented, something so simple as the mechanics are already there!

#JUSTICEFORRAILGUNS
 

KylePanarid

K
One of the balancing aspects when it comes to ship choices in the game is the hardpoint configurations- For instance, right now you could strap 7 railguns to the federal gunship, but only 5 to the krait mk2, despite the latter being the more costly choice.

So with this kind of arrangement you'd end up diminishing one of the game's incomparables->

e.g. when you decide on a ship, you're deciding whether you want quantity or sizing when it comes to your weaponry. And if you're deciding on a railgun heavy configuration as it is now, it makes the ships with many small hardpoints more appealing than the ships with fewer, larger hardpoints.
 

CMDR The Riz

CMDR The Riz
Ytterium said:
Class 4 Railguns would be stupidly broken, that's why. They would basically be a Plasma Accelerator with no projectile aiming skill needed, and would shrek modules even more already. This is just a problematic idea on so many levels.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. I thought that would be the case too, but after quickly looking at the numbers, here's what I found (TLDR at the bottom):

First, we need to figure out how Class 3 and 4 Rail Guns would scale based on how the Class 1 and 2's scale. I'll also throw in the Class 2, 3 and 4 Plasma Accelerators to help with this. I end up with the following:

WeaponPower DrawDistro DrawDamageThermal LoadRate of Fire% Power Increase% Distro Increase% Damage Increase% Thermal Increase% ROF Decrease
1D Rail gun1.152.6923.311.91.6-----
2B Rail gun1.635.1741.520.11.229.4%48.0%43.9%40.8%33.3%
2C Plasma Accelerator1.439.6754.3170.3-----
3B Plasma Accelerator1.971383.4210.327.4%25.6%34.9%19.0%0.0%
4A Plasma Accerlerator2.6317.712524.70.325.1%26.6%33.3%15.0%0.0%

Based on the above, it looks like both weapon types have roughly constant scaling between hardpoint sizes - enough to approximate them as constant, at least. Under that assumption and using the scaling values for the Class 2 Rail Gun, here's what I came up with for our theoretical Sidewinder-launching Class 3 and 4 Rail Guns:

WeaponPower DrawDistro DrawDamageThermal LoadRate of FireDamage/Second
1D Rail gun1.152.6923.311.91.637.3
2B Rail gun1.635.1741.520.11.249.8
(3A Rail Gun)2.117.6559.728.30.8047.8
(4S Rail Gun)2.7311.385.939.80.5345.8

So our Doomsday Class 4 Rail Gun will dish out...
... twice the damage of a Class 2. Putting some of this into a pretty chart:

1612641161196.png


Current 3-PA 2-Rail Meta-De-Lances get most of the damage of our theoretical Class 4 already by using two Long Range Class 2's - 74.7 MJ, accounting for Super Penetrator and Feedback Cascade. The only thing a Class 4 could offer in this setup is a single, stronger Feedback Cascade or Super Penetrator Rail in exchange for another pair of Plasma Accelerators.

And for fun, adding Short Range Blaster to the mix:

SRB
WeaponDamageThermal LoadThermal w/ ExperimentalDamage/Second
1D Rail gun40.815.56.8165.2
2B Rail gun72.626.111.587.2
(3A Rail Gun)10436.816.283.6
(4S Rail Gun)15051.822.880.2

For reference, a stock 4A Plasma Accelerator deals 125 MJ; an efficient one deals 155 MJs, and SRB'd it would deal 219 MJ.

So no - Class 3 and 4 Rail guns likely won't break anything. At least not any more than everything currently is.

As always, feel free to double-check my numbers to make sure I didn't divide by 0 somewhere.

TLDR:
No. Class 3 and 4 Rail Guns would not be overpowered.
 

Slange Lands

Slange Lands
Speaking of rail guns, the Imperial Hammer runs waaaaaaaay hotter than its analog , the rail gun. Fdev, could you please balance the Imperial Hammer's heat accordingly? Thank you.
 

lemon407

L
CMDR The Riz said:
No. Class 3 and 4 Rail Guns would not be overpowered.
Click to expand...
I always apricate analysis, BUT, frome what i can see, there are a few things you did not take into considering with this.
The first being, rail guns have an armor pen of 100, meaning it ignores hardness of armor. The rail gun also can have engineering to make it penetrate even better, AND is hit scan, not projectile.

So crafts like the corvette would murdererize ships because it would just be destroying their interal module like it was nothing.
 

Cmdr CrunchyLettuceBoi

C
Could the same not be said for the class 2 railgun against the class 2 plasma accelerator then?
Ytterium said:
Class 4 Railguns would be stupidly broken, that's why. They would basically be a Plasma Accelerator with no projectile aiming skill needed, and would shrek modules even more already. This is just a problematic idea on so many levels.
Click to expand...
 

tolm

tolm
Maybe they could work if it wasn’t just simply a “bigger gun” approach?

- They could, of course, scale like missiles do ... giving more ammo rather than an actual larger weapon.

- Or they could be “cluster” weapons, with multiple rail guns mounted on a single hardpoint that fire in sequence? The C3 could be the equivalent of 3x C1s that fire as a rapid burst of 3 shots. C4 could be the same idea but with 3xC2s. Similar in operation to Imp Hammers or Burst Lasers.

- Or maybe it’s still a cluster but only one fires each time. Which provides no extra raw damage but a shorter “reload” time (since the next one is actually already loaded and just a short cooldown is required) and hence higher DPS but also higher heat, since you’re firing more rapidly.
 

lemon407

L
Well to be fair, non one uses missiles for god reason The only way they could up rail guns is they would need to have either reduced penetration, or have a vastly smaller ammo pool.

Again i think a lot of people are thinking is terms of just damage, thats not what the problem is with rail guns being scaled up. Bigger rail guns would be shredding module left and right. In the game larger ships have higher armor ratings meaning weapons do less damage to them if they dont have high enough armor pen. Rail guns do full damge to every single ship in the game.

which while plasma also has 100 armor pen, its also not a hit scan weapon.
 

Sylow

Sylow
Long story short: FD already quite some time ago stated that they did experiment with class 3 and 4 railguns. They found no good spot for them. Either they felt lacking for the size (in the players hands) or they suddenly felt crazily overpowered (when used by NPCs), without managing to get to a good compromise.
 

DemiserofD

D
Sure, if they nerf class 2's.

Frankly, railguns are stupid op already. They do ridiculous dps with ridiculous dpe while having ridiculous ap. A class 2 rail is as powerful as a class THREE beam laser, with better dpe and ap to boot, and ridiculously better module damage.

Railguns should be changed to explosive damage and have their damage nerfed by 30%.

THEN the new variants can be introduced.
 

Trollymctrollerson

T
With current railguns, the class 2 have a slightly longer spin up time than class 1. Maybe if they used the same mechanic for the larger sizes to make them progressively harder to use?
 
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