Railgun implementation idea

BlazeOfGlory

So when You think about railgun what do You see?

I see a huge gun that fire solid blocks of metal at insane speeds that can pierce just about anything. I thought about it and came to this idea that with all the details and balancing of such powerful gun. My idea is that with such gun You more build a ship around the gun then gun around ship.

Pros:
- Insane projectile speed. Almost an instant hit.
- Always pierce multiple modules and systems to point it can pierce whole ship through.
- Have a chance to go through shield without stopping.
- Ammo do not explode as it is just a solid block of metal.
- Very long firing range.

Cons:
- Fixed gun platform. Similar to Ion laser it can not move at all so in order to aim it whole ship need to move.
- Ammo is made of four parts, ammo factory and ammo storage can hold only one round at the time.
- Requires 8 crew to operate.
- Requires a lot of power (maybe 8?) to operate and drains all power from the gun with every shot.
- Can not start fire on board (unlike normal canon it just fires solid block of metal so no high explosive filler there)
- Extreme recoil. You wont be able to put it on really small ship or it will go all over the place. Weapon more suited for big capital ships.
- Very expensive, for sure late game weapon where player have lot of money to even buy it.

That is all. Feel free to discuss and maybe we will see it in some shape or form 😉

MistrNinja

BlazeOfGlory I love this idea and just another thing to throw in there to help it balance. It has to take a while to charge up so that you can't just walk into a fight and rip apart an enemy with 3 railgun ships. Also, I know this is implied but it'd have to be MASSIVE because you could essentially handicap a ship with one shot.

BlazeOfGlory

MistrNinja I added two more cons to balance it out.

First of all recoil so that You can not put it on smaller ships and have team of three just evaporating any ship in one go. If ship is not heavy enough then it will go all over the place whenever it fire.

Second cost of it will need to be very high. Not only gun but also ammo factory cost plus all the energy and crew to run it. So for sure late game weapon designed to fit large battle ship or capital ship.

Danii

I love this idea!

I personally build larger type ship's
i'd love to add Massive railgun's to my capital ship

https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/698-v-s-c-ship-s/3
Danii.

MistrNinja

BlazeOfGlory That sounds perfect to balance it out!

pleegwat

I've been thinking about rail guns as well. What I'm thinking, the reason railguns are typically put on large ships are their size, often described as the full length of the ship.

Instead of having an ammo system on the railgun, I'd suggest requiring to build a gun/loading point in the back, with an arbitrary number of barrel sections in front of them. All of the barrel sections would have to be powered in order for the gun to fire; projectile velocity is proportional to the square root of barrel length and damage (kinetic energy) is proportional to barrel length.

MistrNinja

pleegwat Thats a really good idea and would definitely call for absolutely massive gunships! Also that would keep it really balanced while still awesome.

BlazeOfGlory

pleegwat We could have two versions. One large for huge capital "doom canons" and smaller ones for battleships as I described. But this is for Walt to decide 😛

Ilya It is nothing more as balancing factor. I know in real life it would create cone of melted metal that would set everything a blaze (hihi). But from game design point it must have drawbacks. I personally make games in spare time, design and code them ;P In game design there is term called "power curve". Where each element must be placed on such in right place to make pace of game feel balanced. There are stuff like First Choice Optimal strategies that kind of break this rule (Those are things for newbies so they feel powerful and stand a chance vs better players example noob tube from CoD) in some way and often have low skill input to huge power output. If railgun would go through shield, always pierce modules and set fire on them it would push such weapon way above power curve or its other drawbacks would need to be multiplied to point of being a gimmick more than anything useful. This is because of how fires work in the game. Single fire can cripple Your ship as crew will scramble to put it out ignoring other aspects of Your ship.

fiinhvip

Great Idea! I definitely will add it to my ship

Walt

Yup, railguns would be awesome, definitely planning on those. 🙂

stargazer

Maybe make it so it can be shot down by the point defense system or once hit would change it's trajectory.

Danii

stargazer The projectile fired from a railgun is a solid block of metal anti missile guns (LMG'S atm) cant blow up a solid block of metal. Plus it travel's at an insane speed so they'd miss the shots they fire anyway's

Ilya

-Can not start fire on board

if real, it WILL start fire on board because at so huge velocities it will just melt going through ship.

Ilya

BlazeOfGlory imagine: you see a ship in fog of war and you have no sensors, you go invegistate what is that ship... and BAM! your ship splits-in-two and gets ablaze.

pleegwat

BlazeOfGlory

We could have two versions. One large for huge capital "doom canons" and smaller ones for battleships as I described. But this is for Walt to decide 😛

My reasoning for using barrel rooms has to do with the way damage works. If the whole rail run was one room, it would also get destroyed in one go, probably requiring lots of damage to be applied before it would be destroyed but then leaving a huge gap in the ship. Having it in sections means much less damage would be needed to destroy individual sections, which would weaken the gun immediately.

MistrNinja

Ilya I'm pretty sure that's the problem. Even if your ship has two separate control rooms and generators, one shot down the middle and you're toast. All you'll be able to do is watch you crew scramble around the floating parts of you ship putting out fires while the enemy loads up another devastating shot. It'd be way to easy with the railgun because of the range and penetration. Plus, I personally think it'd be way cooler to just be able to slice a ship clean in half with one shot without having to worry about it getting nerfed.

MistrNinja

I started another thread about pirate ambushes and I think it'd also help balance the rail gun because as opposed to fighting one big ship you'd fight several smaller and weaker ones. This way the railgun could keep it's ridiculous damage an penetration and in exchange would be relatively useless against a small fleet of enemies.