#Rail stabilizing!!!

84 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

magic robin
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Right now, railfans are overpoweredly broken and have broken the pvp meta, i have an idea for this.
Railguns in real life first need to be stable before firing functionally, thats why i think swinging a railgun around would definitely lower the damage.
My idea is that a railgun should be pointing at the targeted point a bit longer, making railfans functionally still viable, but slower shooting.
This is just brainstorming, but i really think railfans in general need to be nerfed

sand fossil
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if anything, railfans are actually pretty weak in the meta since they get shut down by many tactics, such as ramming, large shields (making raw tanking more viable), and PD-walls also being able to shut down a whole load of other stuff
if anything, the best mid-tier solution is to have all-round defense to be able to snag wins against a railfan

rich beacon
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rockets plus any other weapon on a mid-speed ship will crush a rail fanning ship most of the time

magic robin
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but this requires to always use a heavily armored ship

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else there is a guaranteed one shot dead

sand fossil
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you can still go 110 m/s and kill railfans lol

rich beacon
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you need a ship of similar size, obviously, but thats with all ships, a small railfan is super easy to defeat and a big one is so huge, 2 small ships or one that is a similar size and fast enough to get into range will defeat it

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if you wanna defeat a only railgun built ship, you do need to build a ship that can even do something against it, you need armor, speed or shields
but those are celever to include in your ship anyway so it isnt really like the existence of rails is forcing you to use them

sand fossil
magic robin
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its just annoying when a 1.5 m ship can pierce a 0.5 block of armor in a single shot

coral ridge
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Rails can be shot down and large shields generally stop them dead. They're not hard to counter at all

inner anchor
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Nevermind the fact that forcing limited movement to take full advantage of a railgun's damage sounds boring af even outside of a pvp meta

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they even railfan in the expanse bro

magic robin
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with a single railgun

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not 40 at a time which one shots everything

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ofc yall want to keep railfanning cuz you all railfanners

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i think the railgun should be more used like it was intended

magic robin
daring plover
inner anchor
magic robin
coral ridge
magic robin
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i see how they are used on built in

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that seems balanced

daring plover
# magic robin my dad who works in the army

I call bull, because A) railguns have been given up on, funding has been withdrawn by congress from the US Navy B) the Navy's the one making rails and C) those are experimental, who knows how technology might develop to make extensive stabilization unneccesary

magic robin
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ohw damn

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but railguns are cool

coral ridge
daring plover
coral ridge
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Shrike is the most obvious one

magic robin
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why didnt they just make the railgun aimable

inner anchor
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Railguns most certainly have not been given up on, there are practical applications for linear accelerators that use no actual accelerant aside from raw power consumption besides weaponry

daring plover
coral ridge
inner anchor
daring plover
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then go ahead

coral ridge
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Real world railguns are kind of outside the scope of this discussion

daring plover
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and for that matter, what other practical uses are there?

inner anchor
daring plover
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CHina's looking to use steam catapults for orbital launches, sure, but those aren't railguns

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okay, great

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railguns haven't been given up on

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doesn't change the fact they're not a matured technology yet

inner anchor
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It's a good thing that wasn't the original argument

daring plover
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who says?

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I brought up 3 points

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you countered 2

inner anchor
daring plover
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3rd still stands

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you're actually trippin

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C) those are experimental, who knows how technology might develop to make extensive stabilization unneccesary

inner anchor
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I never stepped towards B. or C. I stated that railguns are still being developed as a counter to your point A, which stated the opposite.

daring plover
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B point was a subsidary of A point

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and I put forth that counter to the overall topic of this discussion, which is the validity of

my dad who works in the army
and
Railguns in real life first need to be stable before firing functionally

lusty sparrow
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Any gun needs stability. Railguns would be no different. That doesn't mean they have to be completely still in all motion. (Because matching the expansion of the universe, orbital speeds and rotation of the planet would be challenging.)
All a railgun needs is power and the two rails passing current through the projectile as often as possible. Just like a gun needs its barrel to keep the gas in until the bullet comes out. (The complications come in because we don't have materials and a power source to make that work as reliably as a gun)

Nerdy science stuff aside, however. Forcing a certain style of movement on a ship to make one of its weapons operational will make it awfully predictable. On top of that, it would pretty much force you to design the ship around this limiting weapon. You wouldn't kill railfanning with this, you'd kill the railgun use itself.

inner anchor
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I don't really quite even understand the premise of his original point, about railguns needing to be stable before firing

Like yeah, so does anything that guides a projectile

daring plover
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I'm not too sure about that myself ngl

inner anchor
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Just because the mechanism is in a specific sphere of motion doesn't make the mechanism unstable, in the same way that turning 90 degrees with a rifle in your hand doesn't automatically make the gun explode due to instability. The bullet is going to fire straight and true regardless, depending on where the barrel is pointed.

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All you need to do is pace your shot

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Nuloen said the same thing but in a much longer and well thought out breath

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lel

lusty sparrow
inner anchor
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I agree

lusty sparrow
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and ngl, railgun bullets moving in arcs when raifanning would be fun. even if it shouldn't work

inner anchor
coral ridge
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The expansion of the universe isn't a "motion" or "speed" you don't have to compensate for it unless you're talking extreme distances and/or superluminal velocities

coral ridge
lusty sparrow
coral ridge
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Ehhhhh

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It's weird and complicated because it's physics and it's space expanding

magic robin
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and

coral ridge
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But fair

magic robin
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im talking ingame movement

lusty sparrow
# magic robin im talking ingame movement

Yes. We were simply wondering about the internal logic of the proposed limitations.
Rail fanners are often called one trick ponies, limiting their movement would make it more so.

gaunt hatch
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I still say the real solution is to make the Mining laser chew through Armor at Asteroid speeds. That change alone would alter the meta.

magic robin
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yes

coral ridge
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OK that's a bad "no" for that statement but whatever 😛

gaunt hatch
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Really. Given a short ranged hard counter to armor to the meta, there should be less armor tunnels and more disruptors.

inner anchor
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Mining laser but it debuffs armor and allows it to take significantly more damage from other weapons 😳