New weapon: Railgun

[Matt_Bradock]

This is a concept for a weapon radically different from all previous ones, yet relatively easy to realise using already existing resources present in the game.

The Railgun would be an ammo-based weapon, the ammo being Dis-Integrator explosive blocks. The gun system would consist of 3 different kinds of blocks:

- Railgun targeting computer: the wweapon computer for this gun type

- Railgun chamber: the block that stores ammunition and reloads the weapon (only one required per group, needed to load manually, much like a factory input block)

- Supercapacitor accelerator coil(SAC): these make up the barrel of the railgun, need to be connected to the railgun chamber (much like factory enhancers)

A railgun system would consist of one targeting computer, one chamber for each group, and a number of SAC-s attached to each chamber. The power of the gun only depends on the Z dimension of the SAC-s attached to the chamber, making a single long line of blocks the most effective, and any more lines useless - so these take up much less space than a usual AMC would.

The range, damage per shot, fire rate, projectile speed and power consumption of the railgun would depend solely on the Z dimension of the attached SAC-s. Note that only one SAC block would make it practically useless, providing a projectile speed of 100, and a range of only 400 meters (single block AMC) with a 1 second reload time. Range, damage and speed would drastically increase with every added SAC block, hard capping at 500 projectile speed (affected by PROJECTILE_SPEED_MULTIPLIER line in server.cfg to scale with increased max speed) - no hard cap for damage and range tho.

However, reload speed would DECREASE with each added block, and energy consumption INCREASES dramatically, doubling the base 500 power cost per shot with every 5 added accelerator block (so, 5 SAC blocks take 1000 power, 20 take 8000, 50 take 512000 power for a single shot to happen. . Of course, the weapon starts getting efficient there. (actual scaling up to discussion and balancing, but it is intended to be very demanding on power supply)

To have a badass railgun on your ship, you gonna need some space (length it is) and a lot of power generation and tanks, as you can easily go to into the millions when firing a bigger one. More to that, you'd also need to wait for reloads, the longer the bigger your gun is, meaning you really need to time and aim your shots. In return for that, the gun deals massive damage if it hits, and due to the nature of the ammunition, it creates an explosion having the same splash radius a couple Dis-Integrators would have. main difference being, it would deal multiplied (multiplier needs to be balanced) to shields, making it a really suitable anti-capital gun on special turrets or on the main ship - due to the long reload time, ammo consumption, and relatively slow projectile, it's practical use against small, agile ships is limited at best. This is intended to be an artillery with long range, and the destructive capabilities of a missile hitting unshielded vessels, yet still capable of peeling shields off even large ships, while providing the feeling of "big gun, big shot" instead of raining small pew-pew projectiles like the current AMC systems do, or never hit, like missiles currently do (not), while still making it demanding to operate.



Any opinions?

 

[Draren Thiralas]

1. As russian say: \"Bayan\" (a very, very old idea)

2.If you want a railgun so badly, you can make one from missiles. I saw on youtube, that a missile-based railgun, if large enough, can even blast a planet through (in thickest way possible, if you know what i mean)

 

[Snk]

Pulsators + disintegrators = railgun

 

[Matt_Bradock]

The above mentioned are hard to aim, easy to evade, the Pulsator version cannot be reloaded in combat, and is unusable by AI - also the projectile can be intercepted. Not to mention, THEY DO NOTHING AT ALL against proper shields. ??????.

The purpose of this concept would be providing a capable ship-to-ship and surface bombardment tool that can also be effective against shielded targets, and can be effectively used by AI turrets.

 

[Draren Thiralas]

Missiles actually do full damage to shields, the projectile(s) cannot be intercepted, can be reloaded in combat, and is usable by ai. What\'s the problem?

Missile railgun is made like this(topdown view, x-missile, o-output):

o o o

x x xxxxxxxxxx

x x

x xxxxxxxxxxx

x

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ship front is left part of the post

 

[jzimmerman4]

Before reading this post I was against the idea of a railgun, but now I am 100% on board with this. I really like the different ways it is balanced and I feel that it isn\'t OP since it has a slower firing rate. My only suggestion is that the amo would have the same effect as a disintegrator, not actually be one. When Schema begins to add more weapon types into the game I hope he sees this.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

d1000 missiles would indeed make excellent railgun substitutes, if missiles in general weren\'t seriously underpowered not just by dps/block, but also by missile speed. Good luck ever hitting anything but a stationary target with a missile. They are easy to evade, the homing versions can be outrun even on a base 50 km/h speed limit, and it gets a whole lot easier at higher speed limits - even if the projectile speeds were scaled up as well in the config file. They are useless against anything but stations, and their slow reload time basicly allows full shield regeneration between hits. I have tested on a 1 million shield practice target the effect of a single group AMC of 500 blocks (5x5x20) and a single group of d1000 missiles (same 500 blocks, same dimensions) Guess what, the cannons got shields down, the missiles could NOT.

Indeed, missiles could be a solution (though lacking the interesting concept of ammunition management) AFTER a serious re-balancing.

 

[NeonSturm]

I like the idea.

Can I make a cloaked ship which get 1 shot off and instantly re-cloaks during reload?

 

[StÐeathTech]

I would love to see this to, aswell as maybe some beam type weapons?

like a charge up lazer? something like what the deathstar had for an example.



(So far I see missles, a machine gun lazers type, and the new pulse weapon.)