General > Discussion

Some means about rail/coilguns and transport

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nick87720z:
Some of my notes, i would like to share:

- New ammo unification for RL, railgun and coilgun.
It just looks strange, that newer antimatter nano-rocket ammo is proposed for older railgun, but not for more advanced coilgun. While RL looks unable to launch AM rocket of proper size (as rockets seem launcher only by engine without pre-acceleration), hybrid rocket looks suitable for anything, that can launch AM rockets, too. As for coilgun - it naturaly looks like infantry adaptation of ufo missile launcher. Since it has, according to description, highest caliber  than any human infantry weapon (bigger than railgun), would be essential to prefer it for micro-missile experiments. However, it doesn't mean, that it obsoletes railgun...

- It is strange, that railgun with its relatively lower caliber (lower than coilgun) has only 2 shots capacity. I remember 2.4 time, where it had 8 or 6 shots and even had assault weapon class. While it is naturally rather sniper, than assault, it should have obviously bigger ammo capacity than coilgun - its image showes changeable barell and clip, including obviously more than 2 shots. To better attenuate barell errosion, each next shot with same clip could have degrading damage, e.g. by 5 per shot. It could just subtract 5*<missing_shots> for current clip from max damage, if such thing is possible - thus, after 8 shots it will barely better than SR (only by precision), also decrement itself could optionally progress, e.g. by 1, begining e.g. from 4 or 3 (if evaluation of missing ammo shots is ever possible).

- Should not micro-rocket ammo be explosive? One time i tried skirmish with antimatter railgun ammo, at dam. After passing bridge and checkpoint building on its end, i noticed enemy, hiding behind bulding right in front of exit from bridge. I found it as ideal case for AM railgun. Though it did not kill hovernet, it clearly pierced both walls. According to description, AM rockets are really frag explosive. Applying this property to initially piercing ammo, it could create splash damage at hit point, on both sides of pierced wall, and fletchette-like shot behind of wall (consisting of both rocket and wall fragments, each with slightly different damage).
  Btw, even for solid AP sniper shots, wall piercing damage could completely convert to weakened original shot with difference going to wall fragments behind. Of course, it would depend on wall material - metalic walls (e.g. gates) would generate much less shrapnel, but it could have light fire damage.
Specially for coilgun/railgun solid slugs, hitting metal surfaces and probably alien armor, it could create blinding effect at hit point (though i'm not sure, wether carbon nanotube plate can generate same amount of flash as metal plate).

- Is it ok, that ufo armor may be penetrated by human coilguns? Railgun is initially researched in response to alien infantry armor, but ufo armor should be way taughter (in tactical HP scale may be 200 for harvester and even higher for later - not transport). It may be fun or not, but it is possible to eliminate last  usually badass survivors in corrupter just by staying under proper side section with one or more men seeking via IR googles and coilgunner shooting through floor. I'm not sure though, how ufo armor is scaled to tactical gameplay.

- In above case is ok, there could be some interesting way of intentionally damaging ufo engines (for studied ufo), thus turning possible harvest/terror mission into crash site if mission is aborted (though happiness impact could be same for first aborting, before conversion is happened). Though i usually don't agree such resolution (for alien base 1 abort is enough to turn complete all-extatic state into begining or worse, at standard hardness).

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