FangTheCat Oh. Well don't forget to factor in a Craft capable of Dodging them and Destroying them Accordingly. Partially, Railguns are Overpowered, but they also have their own weaknesses, such as Cost and Vulnerability. Good Point though... That's one heckuva Railgun...
ARE Railguns Really OP?
Sombreroman
Its like 2000% (I dunno what that means.. but it is.) And yes, they are expensive.. Buuuut people making ships for factions don't care as much.. (Oh and the railgun corner mod stops chain reactions, on mine atleast)
FangTheCat True, but if the Tip is destroyed the Railgun cannot fire.
Sombreroman
yea....
They are overpowered IF (and only if) Correctly armored, big enough... bla bla blah ...
But yea they expensive.. .-.
what happens if you combine a fighter and a rail gun? hmm.......
GoodMorningCosmoteer Small Rails are pretty much Overly Priced Cannons, to be honest...
Sombreroman
how about making a pirate galleon... hmmm.... THINKING INTENSIFIES
I don't think rail guns are op because I have a ship that does not use rail guns that can easily cripple yours.
culanns_hound
And?
I have a ship which easily cripples yours..
The point is that a ship designed to counter other types of ships nullify any obvious "OP-ness"
(This specific thing is: Shields > Rail.......... Armor < Rail
Heres an example with my 4m cost "Notha"
Look how much armor it tears through.
This isn't even counting what it would do upon hitting reactors, factories, even corridor.
Don't know if anyone noticed this. For a weapon that mainly use power to fire, rail gun actually don't consume too much power.
Take energy-based weapons for example, small laser spent 250 power and deal 400 damage per shot. So the damage/power ratio is 1.6. Same ratio goes for ion beam (2000 damage/1250 power per second).
But if you look the number of rail gun. Say, a rail gun with 8 accelerators, witch consume 4740 power (1 launcher, 8 accelerators, and 6 ammo) and deal 12162 impact damage per shot. The ratio is 12162/4740=2.566, way more efficient than any other energy-based weapons. I am not even taking the ridiculously high penetration damage rail gun has into consideration, which would at least double the damage/power ratio.
So yeah, IMO the rail gun is OP (long rail gun only, short rail gun still suck).
samepage I guess Credits are the Balancing force behind them then... It isn't cheap to have a long Rail, and they're Pretty fragile as Well... If one part of the Rail is destroyed, the rest go with it.
Sombreroman You are probably right about the credit thing. However, I don't think balance based on the credit is the right way to do it. This game is most about ship design and crew/power management. Making a weapon super expensive so no one can spam it felt like a little cheap IMO.
The only way I can think of to reliably protect my rail gun is to bury them deep inside the armor and with a lot of shields. The same design I used to build to protect ion beam.
Speaking of ion beam, l had this feeling that they were replaced by rail gun completely. Rail gun is just superior in every way. Any ships large enough to carry a rail gun shouldn't waste space on ion beam. Any ships too small to carry a rail gun are probably too small to use ion beam anyway.
samepage then again, a small rail gun is useless... And even the smallest possible is bigger and more explosive than ions.. I still like ions
FangTheCat samepage I do agree though. Ion beams have suffered since the Railgun was added. Maybe Walt can add Focusing optics that increase their damage or something along those lines... But then again, Maybe not.