A simple railgun rebalance suggestion(in comparison with missile)

[Kuciwalker]

The problem with railguns is they outclasses every type of weapon, not just missiles.

 

For instance a slug does more damage per hit than a HLC and cluster combined and on top of that has more range than HLC and cluster combined. And to sweeten if further railguns don't suffer from having to deal with leading targets and don't lose damage with range.

 

The "leading targets" thing is nonsense, the actual area on the screen you have to put your cursor into is exactly the same size for blasters and railguns. And an HLC has much higher DPS than a slug railgun, and doesn't require charging. AND YOU CAN MOVE WHILE USING IT.

 

This pattern is universal - railguns have far lower dps than blasters. And their damage is delayed rather than up-front (the reverse of burst laser). My Flashfire's quads do 33% more DPS than my Quarrel's slug in the worst case (max range vs hull). At mid range vs shields, they do 94% more DPS.

 

Railguns do not have a damage advantage. Their advantage is range, straight up. And even that advantage isn't pure - railguns are essentially unusable under about 4-5km, and between 5-8km are only useful against bad pilots who fly straight at you.

 

Ion rail is a whole other beast in and of itself. As a scout getting ion is a death sentence since it diszbles regen for 6 seconds and by that time I've been slugged. After getting hit by ion the only thing a scout can do is pop Dfield, pray to RNG, and hope the gunship suffers a massive lagspike. There are almost no opportunities to find LoS and without boosting there is almost no chance of a successful evasive pattern.

 

This is so much ********. I'll repeat, again, that I regularly (>50% of the time!) survive ion lockdown in a ship with less base speed, maneuverability, and evasion than yours.

[Tenacity]

Railguns fire projectiles, just like missiles. They should have limited ammunition as secondary weapons (at least for the slug and plasma rails, ion doesnt seem like it would need real ammo, since it's more of an energy cannon).

 

Railguns fire solid projectiles, which do not travel at the speed of light (by the theory of relativity, no matter can travel at the speed of light without being converted into energy). Hence the railgun should not have an instant hit, there should be a split second delay at the very least, and gunships should be required to lead targets just like you do with blasters.

 

Firing projectiles in space at moving targets would require a ridiculously accurate targetting computer and sensory arrays. Energy weapons dissipate over short ranges, but projectiles would theoretically continue forever. Based on these facts, I would say that slug and plasma railguns should have a 30-40k range, rather than 15, but the pilot should only be able to target enemies that are within his own ship's sensor range (making dampening much more useful against gunships, and range sensors much more useful for gunships). On the flip side, the ion railgun should not have these targetting limitations, but it's blast should only extend 7-10k range at most, with it's effect diminishing exponentially as range increases.

 

To counterbalance these changes, gunships should only have one secondary weapon slot (to pick their choice of railgun), but should have two primary weapon slots like t1 strike fighters, giving them more standard combat options.

[Llama-Eight]

Railguns fire projectiles, just like missiles. They should have limited ammunition as secondary weapons (at least for the slug and plasma rails, ion doesnt seem like it would need real ammo, since it's more of an energy cannon).

Except, as has been mentioned earlier in this thread, the railguns are the gunship's defacto primary weapons. In no way should the gunship be expected to be flying around using it's blasters for the majority of the time.

I don't really have much of an issue with railguns having ammo, since the projectile would be relatively small (kinetic energy being proportional to the square of the velocity) & most of the bulk of the weapon would come from whatever equipment is accelerating the projectile & whatever's powering said equipment. Unlike a missile which needs a warhead, sensors/processing power, an engine & propellant/fuel.

 

Railguns fire solid projectiles, which do not travel at the speed of light (by the theory of relativity, no matter can travel at the speed of light without being converted into energy). Hence the railgun should not have an instant hit, there should be a split second delay at the very least, and gunships should be required to lead targets just like you do with blasters.

All that would do is to change where on the screen we're aiming for, plus add some travel time. How much travel time would be dependant on the projectile's speed & the distance (<15k), so as long as we assume a sufficiently high speed (this is a sci-fi game after all), the slug railgun being effectively instant hit isn't unreasonable (15km in 0.05s = 300km/s, which is significantly higher than the muzzle velocity of a sniper rifle ~0.8km/s, but this is sci fi & we have starships & ftl flight).

 

Firing projectiles in space at moving targets would require a ridiculously accurate targetting computer and sensory arrays. Energy weapons dissipate over short ranges, but projectiles would theoretically continue forever. Based on these facts, I would say that slug and plasma railguns should have a 30-40k range, rather than 15, but the pilot should only be able to target enemies that are within his own ship's sensor range (making dampening much more useful against gunships, and range sensors much more useful for gunships).

That's not entirely unreasonable, but if we can already use spotters for artillery, why shouldn't the gunship be able to fire at targets that an ally has on their sensors?

 

And if we're going for this kind of "realism", then we should remove the evasion stat from all craft, as that's purely an abstraction (to make life easier for the coders if nothing else) & any ship that wants to not be hit should fly evasively, scouts would have a much easier time of this than bombers/gunships, as they should with strike fighters in the middle.

 

 

On the flip side, the ion railgun should not have these targetting limitations, but it's blast should only extend 7-10k range at most, with it's effect diminishing exponentially as range increases.

You only get things like that if it's firing a cone, if it's firing a well collimated beam, you get lower energy drop off with range.

 

To counterbalance these changes, gunships should only have one secondary weapon slot (to pick their choice of railgun), but should have two primary weapon slots like t1 strike fighters, giving them more standard combat options.

And if they're getting more blaster slots, they'll need more speed & maneuverability to be able to use them, ie, some sort of hybrid between the current gunship & a strike fighter.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Llama-Eight

[Zoom_VI]

The "leading targets" thing is nonsense, the actual area on the screen you have to put your cursor into is exactly the same size for blasters and railguns. And an HLC has much higher DPS than a slug railgun, and doesn't require charging. AND YOU CAN MOVE WHILE USING IT.

 

This pattern is universal - railguns have far lower dps than blasters. And their damage is delayed rather than up-front (the reverse of burst laser). My Flashfire's quads do 33% more DPS than my Quarrel's slug in the worst case (max range vs hull). At mid range vs shields, they do 94% more DPS.

The thing is the delay is inconsequential as most of the time the target doesn't know the railgun is being charge until its fired. Thus the delay is in a practical sense, nonexistent.

DPS is a silly number, In a dogfight landing back to back hits for one second is are enough, often my time-on-target for a pass is barely half a second. And in that half a second I am incapable of dealing half as much damage as a railgun slug, and on top of that lack the native 28% shield piercing slug has.

 

Railguns do not have a damage advantage. Their advantage is range, straight up. And even that advantage isn't pure - railguns are essentially unusable under about 4-5km, and between 5-8km are only useful against bad pilots who fly straight at you.

So? every other primary weapon in the game is unusable over 6k range. and most of the heavier weapons are unusable at close range due to how tracking penalties work at <500m.

 

 

 

This is so much ********. I'll repeat, again, that I regularly (>50% of the time!) survive ion lockdown in a ship with less base speed, maneuverability, and evasion than yours.

 

Oh please, you and Tsuk are the only two damn people I have ever encountered that have claimed of "regularly surving ion lockdown." And the only hints you have mention on how to do so, is "just regen and BR out." ***, ion disables regen, and I have never EVER been left with enough engine power to use engine component ability.

The options for a scout when ion'ed is too pop Dfield and pray.

 

Besides gunships have,

1) the best close-range weapon

2) the best long-range weapon

3) the best utility/CC weapon

4) the best shield component ability

 

Name one other damn ship that has all four of those.

hint: there isn't one

[Llama-Eight]

Besides gunships have,

1) the best close-range weapon

2) the best long-range weapon

3) the best utility/CC weapon

4) the best shield component ability

 

And yet Gunships can still be easily ripped a new one by a scout/strike fighter...

[HoloGrinder]

In comparison with other missiles, I find that railgun is little overpower in the following aspects.

 

1. DPS. Railgun hit causes instant damage while the missile have to travel to target before doing any damage. Missile also has cooldown while railgun can be charged right away after it is fired so missile dps is far behind the railgun dps.

 

2. Actual hit chance. While railgun has accuracy and missile does't have it, Railgun target has no warning indication that he is being target by railgun. The only railgun warning I note is the glowing light when railgun charged up which I only noted it at 10000m or lower. For missile, we have the warning sound and the evasive maneuver. If you couldn't break the missile lock, you could boost out of missile max range even when they are fired. This is an obvious case for slow travelling missile.

 

3. Railgun has the base 3 second charge time which is equal to most of the missile, However, the damage and range of railgun is much better than missile. For example, the slug railgun damage 1600 at 15000m while the concussion missile deal roughly 1000 at 7000m.

 

4. Ammunition. Missile has limited number of ammunition while railgun use blaster power pool which could be regenerate over time.

 

With that said, I think Railgun is a bit "too efficient" compared to other secondary weapon. My suggestion fix for railgun is that its charge time should be increase to 4 second, equal to that of proton torpedoes. With this, the railgun retain it's tremendous range and damage while it allow other to have more time to react when fighting gunship.

 

Anyone agree with me?

 

First why are we comparing Rail guns to missals? Why not compare them to rapid fire blasters or rockets or drones or mines? they don't compare they are all different weapon types.

 

Second good GS pilots make it look easy but it is not that easy to score hits. Think of it like a single laser bolt firing 15000m away at a very small target. You have to charge it and at the moment it's charged take your shot. you only get 1 shot then you have to charge it again. Do you hit with every laser shot you take even at 1000m?

 

Lastly vulnerability, a GS sniping is a sitting duck. Scouts and even strikers can sneak up on them and once they do the GS has little real chance to survive the encounter. (If you tell me that they beat you up close all the time with there burst lasers also I'll tell you to go get better.)

 

That said GS's are the second most exploitable ship class as they can sit out of your range and snipe you while they are being protected by capitol ship lasers.

 

The most exploitable ship is the bomber both drone carrier and mine layer because they can put the drones and mines inside solid objects where they can not be hit. On top of that the force multiply like no other when they are grouped. On top of that bombers are a ship that requires no skill and will put the worst pilot atop the score board with out upgrades. They have broken dog fighting and they should be the ones getting nerfed or removed even.

[Broba]

Guys you have to realize that the power given to gunships is due the fact that they need to be stationary to inflict damage. Make them mobile, they are vastly underpowered. Stop complaining about how strong they are, I regularly do more damage than a gunship would using a star guard or flash fire.

[Zoom_VI]

Railguns are inherently borked balance-wise due to efficiency.

 

In TDM and to a lesser extent domination victory is achieved by wiping out opponents as fast as possible. Now the problem with dogfighters is that as the skill level between opponents equalizes the TTK goes up astronomically. Two good pilots dogfighting can take half a minute or more to kill each other. However TTK with railgun weapons does not increase nearly as much as combatants skill levels are equalized.

 

So in a situation where victory is determined by kill efficiency, dogfighters are straight up outclassed by railguns. The only time a dogfighter can kill faster than a gunship can is in situations where opponents skill levels are vastly unequal, allowing one player to dominate the other rapidly. However balanced should never be measured by scrub situations.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Zoom_VI

[Kuciwalker]

Oh please, you and Tsuk are the only two damn people I have ever encountered that have claimed of "regularly surving ion lockdown." And the only hints you have mention on how to do so, is "just regen and BR out." ***, ion disables regen, and I have never EVER been left with enough engine power to use engine component ability.

The options for a scout when ion'ed is too pop Dfield and pray.

 

Distortion field helps, but I have survived without it. You only have to survive for about 6.1 seconds to get enough energy for BR. That is enough time for a gunship to ideally get off 2 shots. Even if you make no attempt to evade at all, that means with a scout's base 33% evasion you have a ~1 in 9 chance of surviving. If you are evading even a little bit the crippling tracking penalty on railguns (5% per degree!) means that's probably around 50% evasion, for a 1 in 4 chance of surviving. If you are < 6s away from even the slightest cover you are likely to reduce that to only 1 opportunity for a shot, improving your odds to 1 in 2.

 

And of course, this is all assuming that a single ion hit completely drained all of your engine power, which is generally only true if you have been running it low. If there are enemy gunships on the map I work to keep an engine power reserve so that I can take a single hit and still have enough power for a BR.

[Kuciwalker]

Railguns are inherently borked balance-wise due to efficiency.

 

In TDM and to a lesser extent domination victory is achieved by wiping out opponents as fast as possible. Now the problem with dogfighters is that as the skill level between opponents equalizes the TTK goes up astronomically. Two good pilots dogfighting can take half a minute or more to kill each other. However TTK with railgun weapons does not increase nearly as much as combatants skill levels are equalized.

 

So in a situation where victory is determined by kill efficiency, dogfighters are straight up outclassed by railguns. The only time a dogfighter can kill faster than a gunship can is in situations where opponents skill levels are vastly unequal, allowing one player to dominate the other rapidly. However balanced should never be measured by scrub situations.

 

A gunship that is actively under attack by a scout also has a very high TTK. It is in many ways harder for the gunship to actually get good shots in, because to use the railgun effectively it has to open up a huge amount of distance, turn around, and then charge for several seconds.

[Verain]

Comparing railguns with missiles is ludicrous. Of course a railgun is superior to a missile. That's the point of a gunship, which pays a price in shield strength, hull strength, pitch, yay, maximum speed, and engine consumtion rate in comparison to a strike fighter- it is the price paid to bring the superior weapon to battle.

 

 

Note that it's certainly not strictly better than- a missile targetting area is large, and you can be moving (even very quickly) whilst locking on, and the missile, once fired, will strike the target no matter where they go (only a cooldown can save them). On top of that, the missile can be locked on while firing the much higher dps blasters- primary weapons are a big deal, not some perk.

 

 

Anyway, whole concept behind thread is bad.

[Llama-Eight]

Second good GS pilots make it look easy but it is not that easy to score hits. Think of it like a single laser bolt firing 15000m away at a very small target. You have to charge it and at the moment it's charged take your shot. you only get 1 shot then you have to charge it again. Do you hit with every laser shot you take even at 1000m?

 

Lastly vulnerability, a GS sniping is a sitting duck. Scouts and even strikers can sneak up on them and once they do the GS has little real chance to survive the encounter. (If you tell me that they beat you up close all the time with there burst lasers also I'll tell you to go get better.)

Sounds like someone's been spending some time on their gunship & getting a bit of perspective.

 

That said GS's are the second most exploitable ship class as they can sit out of your range and snipe you while they are being protected by capitol ship lasers.

Only if the opposing player is either a)stupid enough to follow them all the way in to the capitol ship or b)a spawn camper. Granted, Bombers can drop their mines/drones & then retreat to the cap ship's protection, but killing drones/mines is easy (with tab for targeting).

 

On top of that bombers are a ship that requires no skill and will put the worst pilot atop the score board with out upgrades.

I'm very rarely towards the top of the scoreboard in my bomber & I have very little skill with it (in TDM at least, I have a vague idea what to do in a domination match).

 

They have broken dog fighting and they should be the ones getting nerfed or removed even.

Or people could learn how to deal with them, bombers are large, slow & easy to hit. If you're having issues with them in a scout/strike fighter try a gunship (or another bomber, protons = awesome). While bombers have definitely changed the pre-existing balance, they have some very large weaknesses that aren't too difficult to exploit (especially if you have any form of missile). Best advice is probably to fly a bomber & watch how people kill you, or how you can survive their attacks.

[Zoom_VI]

Distortion field helps, but I have survived without it. You only have to survive for about 6.1 seconds to get enough energy for BR. That is enough time for a gunship to ideally get off 2 shots. Even if you make no attempt to evade at all, that means with a scout's base 33% evasion you have a ~1 in 9 chance of surviving. If you are evading even a little bit the crippling tracking penalty on railguns (5% per degree!) means that's probably around 50% evasion, for a 1 in 4 chance of surviving. If you are < 6s away from even the slightest cover you are likely to reduce that to only 1 opportunity for a shot, improving your odds to 1 in 2.

 

And of course, this is all assuming that a single ion hit completely drained all of your engine power, which is generally only true if you have been running it low. If there are enemy gunships on the map I work to keep an engine power reserve so that I can take a single hit and still have enough power for a BR.

 

Firstly evading without boosters is pointless, I always move onto a trajectory that is perpendicular to the gunships when I get ion'ed. That is the fastest possible way to exit their tracking arc, and in most cases I never ever make it there. Base cruising speed is nothing from the perspective of a gunship 12km away.

 

Secondly they generally only need one slug not two since the ion hit often takes half my shield arc. Considering slug only needs 950 of its 1600 damage to go through to kill, I don't exactly have to have taken all that much damage shield wise for the following slug to become a one hit kill.

 

I say a ion drains all power, because while that isn't technically true, it is in practical sense because scout's performance in everything from dogfighting to satellite holding to gunship hassling is directly linking to their engine pool. At no time after I have initiated combat do I find myself at 100% engine pool, it is nearly universally between 35% to 70%. at those points Ion is a effective complete drain. Gunships may be at a better place since their frequent stops means that they are often sitting on 100% engine pools.

 

Also you say you can only escape with BR, now how is it balanced that one particular weapon can only be counter with exactly one particular component. Some builds should be disadvantaged to others but no build should only be countered by one specific build.

 

Also how may I ask is ion in any way balanced with regards to strike fighters?

 

At this point I am getting a little peeved at how every single TDM is looking a lot like Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night with all the railgun charging blooms all across the sky.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Zoom_VI