Why do railgun shots cost so much?

LTHalle

L
I mean, realistically all the money you pay is for the platform itself - a hyper-kinetic magnetic launcher - but the projectiles you fire are typically just chunks of dense metal. I mean, even if it's specially treated in some way (which is silly since it doesnt even have to be aerodynamic... space and all) it's still way more expensive than multicannon ammo.

One railgun shot is 200 Cr, which is 2x as expensive as a magazine of 90 multicannon bullets. That means that one chunk of metal is the same price as 180 bullets that are, I'd reckon, at LEAST the equivalent of .50 caliber but possibly or probably more judging by the fact that they can tear apart ship hulls with relative ease.

I mean I understand from a balance standpoint that the railgun is an extremely powerful weapon, but it already costs a lot on its own (412k for a class 2 railgun as opposed to the 33k for the gimballed pulse lasers I have right now), why make the ammunition so expensive when there's no justifiable realism behind it?
 

LTHalle

L
Midnight_Sun323 said:
I think real ones (prototypes anyways) fire depleted Uranium or something?
Click to expand...

Even if we use the ~3k Cr/ton price of regular old non-depleted uranium on the market... I can't imagine the railguns fire more than 10 kg shots, so that's ~90 shots per ton of uranium (since there's probably some pieces that are wasted) which means the material costs are gonna be roughly 33 credits per shot fired. That means whoever manufactures the ammunition is employing a 600% markup for... cutting it into blocks/cylinders? Wow, harsh marketing
 

ChubbyBunneh

ChubbyBunneh
They used to be 450 a pop. Just be glad the price got reduced.

They make it relatively expensive because the weapon is borderline OP. I'm using 3 medium rail guns on the Python and every fight pretty much goes the same: Spam lasers til the shields are down. Target drives and hit it with 3 rail gun shots all at the same time. Target is neutered and just floats around to be killed at your leisure. It's really bad for big ships like Anacondas and Fed Drop Ships because their drives are so easy to hit.
 
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Hamerstein

Hamerstein
In the hands of a good pilot, the Railgun is an "I win" button.

In Alpha (and early Beta), the Railgun didn't use ammo, it just generated a lot of heat. It was the snipers paradise, many players not using a RG were insta-gibbed from 2 km out.

So FD gave it ammo, and made the ammo expensive so that you only used them for big game (unless you were rolling in cash).
 

Don_Von_Hulio

Don_Von_Hulio
They used to have no ammo at all in Beta. FD nerfd gimbals really hard back then so no one used them at the time, some quit testing because of that.... lol anyways those who could use fixed weapons proficiently quickly adopted rails and the Eagle became an Alpha Ninja, many complained.

I used them for one mission and took them back off. They seem weaker than i remember, plus the ammo capacity doesnt appeal to me for what it is..... id rather use dumb rockets if thats how its gonna be.
 

Camio

Camio
I'd attribute it to the fact that they can take out subsystems in 1-2 shots, and deal pretty high hull damage. Needs to have a balance somewhere, and making you pay that extra for them makes sense, imo.
 

korsobar

K
Ammo cost is a terrible way to balance things given how unbalanced credit earning has been. There will be rich old players that can fire 10,000 rail gun rounds and never bat an eye. All high ammo costs does is make sure they are the only ones using them.
 

Belisarius

Belisarius
Don_Von_Hulio said:
They used to have no ammo at all in Beta. FD nerfd gimbals really hard back then so no one used them at the time, some quit testing because of that.... lol anyways those who could use fixed weapons proficiently quickly adopted rails and the Eagle became an Alpha Ninja, many complained.

....
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like a good way of making the railgun rare would be, to only allow it in very large weapon slots so that
1. it can only be used in large (and expensive) ships
2. the lower turning speed of said larger ships means, that it may hard to use it against smaller agile ships (making it an effective weapon against other large ships only)

Requiring a large weapon slot for a railgun also fits to common sense ... AFAIK the magnetic coils needed for a railgun (not to forget any cooling equipment for them) are quite bulky
 

LTHalle

L
I tried out a medium railgun in my Cobra build (replacing a Pulse Laser). It definitely seems to only be useful on big things (ASP/Type 7 and up) since my lasers actually tend to have high, cheaper, and more reliable dps against anything smaller, or it just dies to fast to justify the firing cost.

Additionally, it doesnt seem to do that much damage at all the subsystems. Most I managed to do was about 45% to an ASP's power supply, but that was a direct hit from ~200 meters, which I feel doesn't happen that often.

Are they only good if you have lots of them? Should I maybe try swapping out my two class 1 lasers for class 1 railguns instead of having one class 2 railgun?
 
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