Bigger railguns and gauss?

[RedivivusCrowd]

I might be alone in thinking this but I feel like gauss cannons and railguns need more love, AKA size 3&4 variants.

Instead of scaling up the heat generated, maybe increase the charge time for each shot, so that way they won't melt your ship whenever you use them but they won't be too overpowered.

I don't know, do others have thoughts as to how larger railguns/Gauss could be implemented in a way that's balanced gameplay wise?

 

[Bottom Hat]

They've been asked after for years.

 

[Kamiyoda]

I don't know, do others have thoughts as to how larger railguns/Gauss could be implemented in a way that's balanced gameplay wise?

Not without going the missile route and avoiding increasing the damage all that much as the size increases.

Have you seen the stats for even the smalls?

Though as an aside, the thought of a Corvette blowing itself up the the OG Lance used to is amusing.

 

[shevek]

How much heat do you think they should produce?

 

[RedivivusCrowd]

How much heat do you think they should produce?

I would say make them roughly on par with with equivalent sized PA's so approx 29.5 for a huge and 22=23 for a large.

 

[RedivivusCrowd]

Not without going the missile route and avoiding increasing the damage all that much as the size increases.

Have you seen the stats for even the smalls?

Though as an aside, the thought of a Corvette blowing itself up the the OG Lance used to is amusing.

Yeah I've seen the stats and used them, they don't particularly blow me away. That being said they are size 1 so that's fair enough.

Only thing that stands out for me is their armour pen. So even against big ships they'll do full damage.

 

[Screemonster]

I'm just picturing something like twin-linked smalls for the large one and twin-linked mediums (or quad-linked smalls) for the huge.
Matter of taste whether they should act the same and fire all barrels at once, or whether they should continuously fire and stagger the shots.

... a 4-barreled auto-railgun would be pretty dank for a huge mount actually. Same chargeup time, but it staggers each barrel while you're holding the trigger down so the second barrel charges while the first is a quarter of the way done, the third when it's halfway there, the fourth when it's three-quarters charged...
and then when it fires the second one is mostly charged, the third is halfway, and it just keeps on cycling for as long as you hold the trigger. Awwyeah.

 

[RedivivusCrowd]

In terms of damage I would again have them do roughly the same damage as a PA of the same size, so around 125 for the huge and 83ish for the large.

In my view PA's would still win out damage wise due to a big chunk of their damage being absolute which the railgun lacks.

Also you can throw on stuff like overcharged or efficient PAs which again, railguns lack.

 

[[VR] Orodruin]

So even against big ships they'll do full damage.

Hydra would like to know your location.

 

[Bigmaec]

My reverski Phantom approves of this message.

 

[Vekt Ey'doom]

There should definitely be SIze 3 and 4 Railguns. I think they could balance them by keeping their module damage and penetration capacity quite low. Firing a larger projectile relative to the length of the rail, they'd inflict catastrophic hull damage, but be less successful at penetrating the hull and inflicting module damage on the whole.

TL;DR for balance reasons, they would be equal to Small/Med in Module damage capacity, but inflict much greater hull damage.

My reverski Phantom approves of this message.

Imagine the Mamba if it had access to Large/Huge Railguns... A Sniper's delight.

 

[GunnerBill]

I think they could balance them by keeping their module damage and penetration capacity quite low. Firing a larger projectile relative to the length of the rail, they'd inflict catastrophic hull damage, but be less successful at penetrating the hull and inflicting module damage on the whole.

This "balance" makes no sense! I hate made up balancing. Greater power consumption and heat is sufficient.

In addition to the above the natural increased power requirement and capacitor draw (per shot) would naturally limit use without anything artificial being tacked on.

---

Edit: I meant to add some more to this but I was on my phone so didn't!

 

[Bigmaec]

There should definitely be SIze 3 and 4 Railguns. I think they could balance them by keeping their module damage and penetration capacity quite low. Firing a larger projectile relative to the length of the rail, they'd inflict catastrophic hull damage, but be less successful at penetrating the hull and inflicting module damage on the whole.

TL;DR for balance reasons, they would be equal to Small/Med in Module damage capacity, but inflict much greater hull damage.



Imagine the Mamba if it had access to Large/Huge Railguns... A Sniper's delight.

Terrible convergence.
A Railaconda with large and huges though

 

[Vekt Ey'doom]

Terrible convergence.
A Railaconda with large and huges though

When you're sniping at 7K, even a type 10 has perfect convergence though. Only the mamba has the speed to keep a hostile at that range though.

Anaconda is too slow, and not agile enough at the engagement ranges it will be stuck at.

 

[galahad2069]

There definitely should not be c3 an c4 railguns. Huge damage stats given to low skill weapons is the opposite of balance.

 

[RedivivusCrowd]

I hate made up balancing. Greater power consumption and heat is sufficient.

If they did that then they'd have to cool down size 1 and 2s. A size 2 PA has 15.58 thermal load per shot, a size 2 rail has 20.

Size 3 PAs have 21.75 and size 4s have 29.48. A size 2 rail has 28%(ish) more heat generated than a size 2 PA. If we applied that same metric to bigger versions we'd end up with numbers like 27.84 for large rails and 37.73 for huges.

In my view that is prohibitively hot, especially when you factored in that there are no efficient upgrades for rails, which in my opinion is a mistake but oh well.

So this leaves a few possible remedies, reduce the heat of railguns across the board, rework their engineering to give them options available to many other weapons, look at alternative ways to balance them like giving larger railguns longer charge times.

 

[RedivivusCrowd]

There definitely should not be c3 an c4 railguns. Huge damage stats given to low skill weapons is the opposite of balance.

You say low skill but I'm gonna disagree, I would argue they are just as hard if not at times harder to use than PAs.

PA may have a slower shot speed but there's no charge up when you shoot, pull the trigger and they fire immediately. While rails have hitscan, the charge time means you need to maintain more time on target as opposed to a PA.

In addition their damage would be good but as I've said before, PAs would still win out damage wise.

 

[galahad2069]

You say low skill but I'm gonna disagree, I would argue they are just as hard if not at times harder to use than PAs.

PA may have a slower shot speed but there's no charge up when you shoot, pull the trigger and they fire immediately. While rails have hitscan, the charge time means you need to maintain more time on target as opposed to a PA.

In addition their damage would be good but as I've said before, PAs would still win out damage wise.

All hitscan are low skill, especially the long range ones, that's beyond question.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Hitscan Cutter FTW!!!

 

[RedivivusCrowd]

All hitscan are low skill, especially the long range ones, that's beyond question.

Did you know rail gun damage starts dropping off before the 1.5km mark? When you get to the 2.5km mark they're only doing a small fraction of their damage.