[Suggestion] New Vanguard Cannon: TITAN-150 Railgun [Theorycraft]

Yes, prepare for 0 peripheral vision:

Higby mentioned he wanted the quad prowler to reload each barrel individually, so it would work sort of like a MAX. Except you'd only use the one button to fire the loaded barrels. So that's cool.

I hate the idea. It looks ridiculous from an aesthetic point of view. I'd prefer a utility option along the lines of a burstfire utility slot option that trades accuracy for close-range lethality, or something along those lines.

Edit: How would a quad turret even work? Would it be restricted to HEAT only, or would we get three new guns to accommodate each shell load? Would it be a utility slot option?

Deployed prowler has 325 velocity and 1250 DPS. I don't see why you think 275-300 velocity and 500 DPS is unreasonable.

Velocity upgrades were cited in the original post, which at a maximum of 20 per rank over 5 ranks would translate into something like 400 meters per second. That's substantially faster than the prowler's AP cannon while deployed, and it'd presumably allow the tank to easily hit targets at distances that even the prowler struggles at. As far as DPS is concerned, velocity -- and, by extension, the ability to actually hit a target, and especially a moving or fleeing one -- is more important than spreadsheet DPS in a long-range armor battle, especially when taking into consideration how difficult it is to actually connect enough rounds down range on a target that's moving even slightly to take advantage of that DPS.

Exactly. Assuming the damage rises linearly with charge, you have a weapon that is 500 DPS along the entire charge timer. What that ends up giving you is a platform that has a 4s leeway to land a shot without any loss of DPS compared to the normal 150 AP. So you can land shots during the latter half of the normal 150's reload, and if you have to extend out to 6s you still don't lose any damage.

For that kind of versatility, I'd expect the stand up DPS to be lower than the normal cannons because you are more consistently able to connect during fights in cover. You might be able to compensate with ridiculous accuracy penalties, but at that point is it worth even having the rapid fire option?

If I wanted to prevent reinventing the wheel, I'd probably look into treating the round as a vehicle and handling the collision through that system. When it explodes, the projectile disappears and the 'push' should vanish with it. Theoretically at that point you just need to tune mass values so that you're moving things appropriately.

Now that kind of round with be more of a light vehicle killer. If you wanted something on the other end, you might go for a weapon that has an armor penetration value. Basically something that acts as a reverse reinforced armor. Against the high armor of MBTs/Blockade Sundies you get good damage, but against the more lightly armored Harassers and MBT rears it doesn't do as well as a regular 150 AP.

Didn't say the tank had to stop, just that it would coast until power came back on.

I feel this is how a "railgun" should be , 350m/s is too slow and the splash should be removed.

Splash damage is to ensure infantry targets can still be killed when directly hit with the shell. It would be really cheesy if someone survived a direct hit.

If direct damage is over 2000, it will instagib infantry regardless of flak armor, resist shield, NMG, etc.

You can just play with damage resist values so infantry take like 200% damage from the weapon or something. Or alternatively buff the direct damage but give vehicles a higher resist.

It's an AP damage class type. Other weapons use the same class so balancing it that was is a bit weird.

Here's the way I picture the railgun:

It still has bullet drop (it's a solid projectile after all, gravity is a thing), but it has a high enough velocity that it's a minor concern at most ranges.

~600-800 m/s (if the velocity is any lower than 500, I propose we change the name from "railgun" to "magnetic catapult")
~1 second fire delay with capacitor-whine sound.
5,750 direct damage (don't worry lib pilots, your resistance will reduce this enough to keep it from killing you)
~8-9 second reload? (giving an 9-10 second total cycle, DPS would be roughly equivalent to a 2500/4 sec gun)
Reload speed certs add up to a whole second instead of half second (because otherwise it'd be a joke). Alternatively, there could be a cert line that reduces/removes the charge-up time instead of reducing reload time.

Now I know what you're thinking, "IT'S OVER 5,000! My tank only has 4,000 HP!", but this number was specifically adjusted to account for armor. Against a stock Prowler/Mag front, armor would reduce this damage to 2127, so a two-shot kill. Don't worry, you have a full 9-10 seconds to kill him or get out of there after taking that hit (which is way more time than his shield can buy him). If you have reinforced front armor it'll drop to 1840, meaning a three-shot kill.

Against side armor it would inflict 2415, which basically would only make a difference if he's got a gunner or a friend. Reinforced side armor on a Magrider/Prowler has the same value as reinforced front, so that is also an option if you want to turn it into a three-shot kill.

The fun part of course is rear armor. Yes, I specifically picked this number so that a rear shot would deal 4025 damage and gib the tank.

One small catch though is that with these numbers, Lightnings are a two-shot kill regardless of whether they have fire suppression or reinforced armor. The only way for a Lightning to survive a third shot is to have someone repairing them.

And I'm pretty sure it'll one-shot Harassers.

It would additionally one-shot ESFs, infantry (of course), Flashes, and MAXes. Though in the MAX's case, I may consider giving them something like a 32% resistance so that if they are wearing Flak 5, the MAX will survive with a sliver of health left.

Edit: though if it's being given the AP damage type I guess it'd have to be 4792 damage for the math to work out the same way.

You could easily make a new weapon damage type. The Vortex and the Phoenix get their own damage types... heck if I remember correctly the Vortex actually gets three damage types, one per charge level.

First charge: 1,000 damage, 400 m/s, not too accurate.
Second charge: 2,000 damage, 650 m/s, accurate.
Third charge: 3,000 damage, 1,235 m/s, overwhelming accuracy.
I love the idea of a rail gun; it's something the NC could really use on the Vanguard.
BUT THEN, I saw that the TR were getting a quad-cannon. VanuLabs posted a video about it months ago, but that picture reminded me of it. WHAT IS MY FAILRIDER GETTING?

I understood it as a consecutive reloading. Like it reloads every one second and each barrel that's empty lines up in the queue. So you can fire two rounds, keep two in the barrel if you need them and still have it reload without every leaving you in a dead zone where you cannot fire if you have to. Of course emptying all four rounds would give you one very long reload.

SOE needs to do something to alleviate the Vanguards miserable AI performance and a railgun does not do that. A railgun, assuming it follows accepted railgun characteristics, will make Vanguards better in 1v1 situations and worse in large zergs. Vanguards need AI help, they need a way to lock down spawn rooms like Prowlers and Mags.

low damage, charge... i think it's not NC style

I would rather not be one hit killed from behind with my tank, without being abled to fight back.

Also this would most likely become the new favourite NC anti air weapon, since it would 1 hit kill even a Liberator, with this high velocity it would clear out the sky.




Also, the quad Prowler seems a lot like a fake / troll to me.

It is not published by SOE official, who else would get hand on the model.

Also the barrels don't show knockback when shot.

I also isn't ever see the used landscape, and I know the continents quite good.


I suppose it is made in a 3D modelling and animation program.

Now just buff the Vulcan so it can kill tanks effectively out to at least 200 meters and that would be one awesome loadout.

Btw I'm all for more variation in tank gameplay, it might make more people want to pull them for more than just armored taxi's (Not that I mind blowing up infantry players using them for that)

P.S this Rail Cannon should be able to OHK ESF's too, because MBT's being able to snipe things out of the sky is awesome.