#Railgun Rebalance

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

ivory sail
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"In response to the economic sanctions placed upon them by Enceladus Corp., Mars Power Industries has stopped importation of high-durability MPI Railgun parts to Enceladus Prime..."

As it stands, RG is a cheap, just as reliable, and extremely versatile upgrade to the standard Mass Driver... and all the other ones, too.
Its high volume of fire makes it optimal for combat and its relative inaccuracy becomes an advantage in rapidly breaking down ringroids. As a result it's the most effective kinetic weapon in both mining and combat applications, obtained at a negligible price point to the default EMD-14.
To give other mass drivers room to breathe, RG should suffer from accelerated wear accumulation, reducing its durability in all but the lightest of dives without compromising its combat effectiveness or breaking the bank of fresh ringas.
Visual ablation "sparks" considerably increase in frequency and quantity.
RG's strong ammunition economy could also be reversed by increasing ammunition consumption per shot with an according decrease in velocity, but I appreciate the current variety.

"...Nakamura Dynamics has been working to pick up the slack, but the sudden overload of demand leaves their quality control considerably lacking."

foggy lichen
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It even says in the item description that they are subject to significant wear, but they don't really have much more than other Guns

mystic stump
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No! My railgun!

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But yeah, it's currently OP

forest haven
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I guess, maybe rather than nerfing it, other guns could be buffed? say, less chunk spread? Because that 10 kilo gauss slug is perfectly designed for the job or something.

stray stirrup
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I wonder if RG should be the lightest of kinetics (in terms of installed mass).
My experience is limited to COADE which isn't as rigorous as it would want to be, but you can generally make lighter CGs than RGs in it, other things equal.

foggy lichen
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TBH: Railguns should start off with really good accuracy, but very quickly lose accuracy as they suffer wear

ivory sail
ivory sail
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on K37 it's also balancing out your heavy butt

ivory sail
foggy lichen
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TBH: I wonder if it is bugged somehow, cause any other gun would likely be utterly ruined by such a extreme amount of dakka

ivory sail
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hohmann transfer, put your mouse on your spacebar, make yourself some pancakes

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fwiw i don't remember many weapons accumulating significant wear other than nani

making RG accumulate Overheat damage on sustained fire would make sense but it sounds complicated, the first(?) weapon to incur two damage types on use

ivory sail
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jacking up power draw would encourage a similar behavior of controlled bursts

stray stirrup
ivory sail
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soo exorbitant repair costs and lower durability outside of wear?

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it's only like E$20,000 and people at that stage aren't encountering much thermal or kinetic damage outside of accidents

forest haven
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And every time you shoot, you get barrel-rich raport

mystic stump
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The rails are probably the component getting replaced, and the surrounding hardware. The expensive part of the weapon will be all the power electronics that switch the magnetic fields, control that switching and manage ammo introduction into the system

stray stirrup
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I wonder if it is possible to have different costs or even ability to enact repairs on different damage parameter for the same module.
So for example fixing rail wear for RG would either entail replacing the entire rails or would be impossible necessitating replacement of the whole gun.

mystic stump
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I like how the current system is really simple and easy to understand. It is helpful that it is common between all equipment - players have better things to worry about

latent gyro
restive storm
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I'm pretty sure railguns already wear out much faster than coilguns - to the point where they are not reliable for a longer dives.

stray stirrup
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Probably depends on whether you're using them as your only mining tool, or only as weapon and for mulching large ringroids, after which you switch to MWG/CL-150 cooking.

mystic stump
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I think the issue is only relevant if you reserve railguns for combat only. They are very powerful for this. Wear is an unrealistic way to resolve the issue given short firing times in seconds or rounds fired per dive.

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They fit being a cheap weapon given both mechanical complexity and simplicity of use.

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Considering ships have limited hardponts potentially it is already fairly balanced.

The best resolution then is some hostile ships that are better armoured against low mass rounds.

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Perhaps a mechanic where small mass accelerator rounds have an exponentially reducing effectiveness against moderately damaged reactors.

stray stirrup
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I think, regarding penetration the mass-driver/RG balance should maybe be flipped - railgun rounds are lighter and travel above cratering velocity so they do a lot damage, but don't penetrate as deeply (assuming similar aspect ratio) and destroy themselves on impact.

Maybe impact absorber (though it seems to have little actual utility in game other than being cheap way to have a craddle, and so very little impact) could be outright pierced by coilgun rounds, but absorb a handful of railgun rounds before getting actually shreded (as in absorber disappearing in a shower of fragments like destroyed ship minus reactor going, leaving only craddle).

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Mind that originally railgun was a bit of a superweapon, requiring high-stress and showering targets with withering storm of fast kinetics.

ivory sail
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lowest is the only tuning that makes sende to me given that it's still capable of immediately dishing out fatal reactor leaks

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even 5t ammunition expended is approaching hauler gameplay dive lengths using RG as a mining tool
100kg is plenty to beat down a fighting K37

ivory sail
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K225-BB run, maybe an hour in length?

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