Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I know these ideas to 'fix' rails are a dime a dozen but...

turrent damage is currently limited by turret tracking over sig radius, but sig radius does still factor into the damage equation from what i've read.

since rails excel at neither tracking nor alpha, why not make their niche pinpoint accuracy? reduce the sig radius factor of large rails/ammo. they are the 'sniper' weapon after all.

it looks as if the sig radius for all large turrets is 400m, why not decrease it for rails? should the target be moving with rails' poor tracking, they are better able to hit smaller targets than lasers and projectiles.

this isn't any base damage or tracking increase, but it's more a niche role, and that's i hear what rails are currently lacking

flame away!

Well, if you reduced the signature resolution of large rails from 400m to say, 300m - you get the same result as if you had just increased their tracking by 25%. It's innovative but does essentially the same thing.

Actually I've been musing over this for a while too.

In order to balance/buff rail guns, they need to be not only viable, but also have a feature, which distinguishes them from other long range turrets.

I will use largest BS turrets as examples in this:
Tachyon Beam Laser II:
RoF, 12.55s
Optimal: 52.8km
Falloff: 20km
Damage mod: 5.4x
tracking: 0.0139205 rad/sec
Distinguishing feature: Instant ammunition change, allowing instant range/damage modifiers. Highest Cap use. Versatile but unable to deal kinetic/explosive damage. Highest fitting requirements.
Additional. t1/faction crystals last a VERY long time.

1400mm Artillery II
RoF 20 ish seconds
Optimal: 48km
Falloff: 35km
Damage mod: 12.8x
tracking: 0.009 rad/sec
Distinguishing features: Selectable damage types and range. bonus' to falloff. Highest Alpha, Lowest DPS, Lowest Cap use

425mm Railgun II
RoF: 9.56s
Optimal 57.6km
Falloff: 24km
Damage Mod: 3.3x
tracking: 0.009625 rad/sec
Distinguishing features: longest potential optimal range. lowest dps and alpha. high-ish cap use. limited to thermal and kinetic damage. very poor tracking (T2 rail gun ammo carries tracking penalties). Reasonable rate of fire. low ammo capacity for rate of fire. in many cases, optimal+falloff is well beyond parent ship's maximum targetting range.

So, with this information, it is reasonably clear where the rail gun fails as a LR battleship weapon. It cost's too much cap for what you get, has very high fitting requirements. and has unnecessarily long range.

Personally, I would reduce cap use, increase rate of fire, ammunition capacity, and reduce optimal range by roughly 10%. this would be a flavoursome change, as some modern weapons based on the rail gun principle are capable of more than 1 million rounds per minute, with reasonable power requirements (Google Metal Storm). Also we just don't need BS and below class weapons capable of shooting at 250km, when it's more or less impossible to get the ship to target that far.

Being capable of 100-175km would be more preferable, with higher rate of fire, thus increasing dps. I suppose you could compare this to a very long range autocannon, but with long optimal. A nice rate of fire would be about 7.5-8 seconds, which would be further augmented by skills and ship bonus'. Another possible rebalance could be a change of Spike ammunition. reduce range bonus by 10%, increase base damage by 10%.

Fix javelin, they are broken beyond all usability, they are worse than faction antimatter by far. If they would be to rails what scorch is to pulse, then we have a good fix right there. Might play aroudn with their stats too though, but javelins suck