Damage: 1400
Energy: 110
Speed: 500m/s
Range: 1km
Autoaim: same as now
Reload time: same as now
Cost: same as now

For.

It would be a move in the right direction, but I'm afraid that at 500m/s it would not miss in the hands of a good pilot.

Still, it would be a better than nothing change.

For, provided the sound is alot better, the railgun currently sounds like a hmmmm, well it's just bad okay?

/me goes off to try and make a better railgun sound

/* edit */

And perhaps with those upped specs you could give it a 0.5 second charge delay?

well damage needs to go up at least to 1300 and speed alsho *should* be increased as well... but I'm willing to try any intermediate points between current and this.

Drop energy to 100 (the major delay in firing is waiting for recharge), decrease autoaim to none at all (there is some in 3.2.11 for some reason) and increase damage to 1500. Otherwise, you are ok. :)

no, not 1500. 1500 == insta-kill on a bus with quad.

So? That would make it equal to rockets, which it needs to be competitive.

How about limiting the rail to one per ship? Deals with the quad problems. Come to think of it, we could do that for sunflares too. Limit them to 2 per ship.
Well assume the manufacturers developed crappy drivers for the weapons so our onboard computers crash if we hook-up too many. Yeah. . . that's the ticket.

The rail gun is a *long* range weapon, which means that it shouldn't be a good weapon to use in a dogfight. If two ships squared off at 300m, one with rails, one with tachyons, I would hope the ship with tachyons would win. Consider the following:

Rail Gun
Damage: 1250
Energy: 120
Speed: 700 m/s
Duration: 2 seconds (1.4 km range)
Autoaim: none
Reload Time: 2 seconds
Cost: 3000cr

Before you freak out, think what this would mean. A sniper would be able to hit a target at relatively long range (~1km) and do a fair amount of damage with this weapon. Anything slower wouldn't be realistic for targets at that range. However, if someone were to go up against another player at close range armed with this weapon, it would be very ineffective. Sure, you would be able to hit the target easily, but one shot would drain almost all of your battery, and your firepower would be abysmal (625/s) compared to that of any other energy weapon (the gov't issue plasma cannon does 1500/s for crying out loud). This way, the weapon would be great for picking off targets at long range that couldn't immediately fire back, and would be terrible in an all out firefight. Finally there would be a real sniper weapon (shoot, move, avoid large firefights).

I still liked the idea which had a min range... Lemme go dig it up for ya!

Wouldn't not having enough raw power to shoot the weapons just mean not having enough battery? Hence 120 energy per shot.

Ooh! /me had a wicked idea. Make sunflares take energy to fire! Heh heh heh.
(No, really, please don't do this)

I think a good excuse for allowing not more then x number of weapons on a ship would be that there isn't enough raw power (nrg) to shoot the weapons, or like the hull would melt due to so much heat from firing weapons. I donno. Just a thought.

Been suggested and shot down phaser

Its a RAIL GUN it shouldnt need to re-charge. Rails work on the principal of electromagnetic propulsion, so the ammo must be some sort of metal / composite.
The problem with the rail gun is that its too damn slow, if it fired at the correct speed you would need 10x the ammo. Grrrrr.

Minimus

(Yes make Suns take energy to fire. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Fire too many suns = end up flying backwards )

Wouldn't electromagnetic propulsion require a rather large electrical charge? (Magnetic field strength is related to electric field strength after all) Makes sense that firing a rail gun would drain the battery. Charging the capacitors and such...

Giving suns "kick-back" is somewhat different than making them drain the battery. I agree that that would be more physically accurate though, and it actually has been suggested in a number of different threads.

Just replace the Rail with my PCC

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1676&page=1

The 'Rail' principal works on a series of e/m cells which are turned on and off in sequence to accelerate the ammo down the track, just like a monorail - but faster.
I cant see that this would take a particularly large charge. The military were experimenting with rail guns years ago that could knock out a tank with an inch square cube !!!!

Minimus

/me rolls his eyes at all the rail gun experts here.

I suggest some of you take the time to study this website:

http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun.htm

It's a good introduction to do it yourself rail guns, gauss rifles, and other EM fun.

I particularly want to draw attention to sentences like:

"This design calls for a 100kiloampere pulse which should be accomplished at 3.2kV."

and note that the final product while impressive as a homemade EM weapon is generating projectiles which kinetic energy on par with a small handgun.

Besides which, this is a game and realism is not the primary consideration.

I love that site!

Too bad i already read everything on it.

Also, it it says all high power rail guns have that big fireball coming out of the front.