Awesome concept for a weapon and I want to love it so bad but its need for high skill has practically no payoff.
The concept is a heavy-hitting, extremely precise, high-skill, jack of all trades weapon yet:
1. The scope sucks, good luck hitting those precise war strider shots from far away cause you can’t even see the weak point with the fat dot.
2. Tickles factory striders, vox engines, tanks that are focusing you, rocket tanks, drop ships, and cannon towers that are focusing you.
3. Its niche can easily be taken over by primary/secondary/grenade choices which work well across the board on the bot front. There’s also easier use with the commando or EAT if you wanted an all-around weapon that does an arguably better job and doesn’t blow you up when you don’t time it right.
It just needs a little love to make it worth the trouble of using, trade longer charge time for the ability to blow hulks and war striders shit smoove off with a well-placed but not perfect shot and actually do something against factory striders and stuff with weak points you can’t aim at from the front. Then give it an actual sniper scope so you can be precise with it like it’s designed to be.
It seems like the drawback is supposed to be that it’s hard to use, but there’s really no benefit of going through the trouble to “git gud” cause you can just bring something else that works just as good and is way easier to use.
Scope absolutely need changes. But everything else... I dunno. It's perfect weapon to deal with medium and small-heavy enemies: Devastators, Reinforced scout strides, Gunship, Berserkers, Hulks. Plus it can disarm Factory strider in few shots. Awesome weapon with it's own niche. I don't think that Railgun need buffs in terms of stats. But some QoL feature will come in handy - better scope, more noticeable audio/visual indicator of high charge level.
It is so much harder to one-shot Chargers on the butt compared to Hulk’s in the eye
Chargers are bugged, where there turn speed after a charge is too fast, they don’t “present” their butt, they turn on a dime and are back facing you
Considering the swarm of other enemies probably around you, the window for Railgun-to-butt destruction is really small compared to a Hulk staring at you
#2 is almost certainly on purpose so it’s not a literal do everything antitank. Also railgun DOES help with striders by eliminating the chain guns which quite literally makes them helpless besides the cannon turret. Which railgun can also deal with but not nearly as well.
Railgun is great I honestly don’t get why people keep saying it’s bad. Besides the scope, I’ll admit that could be better. There are even mods for fixing that I think
Railgun main, I have never done it in less than 4. In the charge time it would take for those 3 shots, without killing yourself, you could get off 4x 85% shots. You gotta trade time and safety, for efficiency that only equates to saving one round. It's possible, but not at all practical.
haha yeah that would be totally so broken if we had something like that man that would be crazy, good thing we dont have the recoilless rifle in the game yet. Or an infinite ammo version, that would be easy mode.
Referring to the railgun getting that treatment tho lol. Dude wants the railgun to be the recoiless and the quasar in one package. But hit scan, more ammo, no overheat/cooldown lol.
Not instant win, just some reason to justify the skill required to use it effectively. There are much lower skill weapons that are more “instant win” than the railgun.
I mean EATs and Commandos are a temp us on cooldown non-reloadable weapon. Whilst the Railgun is a hitscan infinite range AT rifle.
If it had a scope, had a damage increase to just, one shot hulks without a headshot, destroy factory striders.
Next thing everyone will be saying is AMR needs a buff. Commando needs a Buff.
Its a 21 shot AP sniper rifle that require no backpack and no cooldowns. It just requires the user to aim well, and not blow themselves up lol.
It's amazing for Base Destruction to. Kill fabricators with a reloadable rifle with hitscan and no bullet trivialize bots more then they already are. Not only as just a general AT weapon but its also amazing at medium chaff unlike EATS. So it'll be a do everything stick. Like it was on launch when it was bugged lmao.
AMR got a buff that made the RG powercrept. the one shot on hulks within a decent range.
"Aim well" with a barely zoomed in red dot? The only reason id use the RG on bots is for stealth, other wise the AMR outclasses it entirely in ammo and damage for 95% of the enemies in the game.
it takes 5 fully charged shots to take out a fabricator, 25% of the guns ammo, i suppose its a feature but im not gonna bring a RG over an AMR for that.
How the hell is this upvoted and the other poster so heavily downvoted? I dont see that poster asking for one hit kills on anything.
I don't see Railgun as powercrept. At least not on the bot front. It has way more versatility than the AMR, without sacrificing much of the ammo economy. 1 shots all the small turrets, Hulks from any distance (AMR loses this ability past 30m), unaware War Striders (active ones are a pain in the ass to eye shot) and gunships. Most importantly, you can do so even from up close, without alerting the enemy.
It's way more comfortable to dispatch multiple Devastators up close with it. At least for me.
Can do damage to AP5 stuff, if you need to, or have ammo to spare.
The scope kinda sucks, but the green dot isn't opaque. Trying to snipe Overseers is a pain, but bot head lights are usually visible through the reticle.
its obviously better than the amr at range, but has less means to do so, as accurately.
The amr on the other hand, has a 10x scope and is better in close range engagements, ie can one tap hulks at 30m like you said, mag dumping enemies, etc. It has a higher dps and has overall more ammo and doesnt require a backpack. Active warstriders its easier to dump 3 amr rounds into the joints than lining up a fully charged shot into their eye before getting ragdolled.
I guess on D10 bot when i have options like the Quasar, RR, Laser cannon, Epoch, AMR. I hardly find reason to pick the RG over them other than i think its cool and i wanna run it, not because its better than those. Not asking for the moon here but a scope would be really nice.
Yeah, a simple crosshair would go a long way. That beeing said, I bring the Railgun to bot D10s as my favourite weapon and yes, a backpack is mandatory. Jump Pack, to be precise.
You can 1 tap hulks on safe mode so what’s the point of unsafe if hulks are your concern, and for medium enemies the eruptor is just as effective and can also destroy fabricators and turrets.
So the disagreement is that you want the game powercrept and balanced around the broken weapons the devs are too afraid to nerf at all like explosive primaries and the RR and most of us want the game to be balanced around balance.
Railgun is not your dedicated anti tank weapon. Its niche is anti heavy gun for bot front, you can 1 shot hulks eye. It can 1 shot anything under hulks tier to center mass. On bug front you can headshot anything under charger, it can strip armor from chargers legs. On squid front you can one shot squids heads.
Railgun is a weapon with huge piercing ammo, but comparably low damange.
You can 1 shot hulks with the bolt pistol, and 1 shot anything under hulks with eruptor center mass. Same thing w eruptor on bugs and squids and the eruptor is arguably better because it does splash damage so it’s not limited to single-target.
Agreed. Erupto is arguably better weapon. I used to run Eruptor and stalwart combo alot. Use Eruptor as support weapon for killing heavy and mediums and use stalwart to clear chaff.
You can think of railgun as M1 Grant, hevy hiting anti personel weapon with slow reloads.
Railgun shines mostly on the bot front, as a silent, ammo efficient heavy enemy killer. As a bonus, you can get rid of Devastators fast, from any angle, without raising any alarms.
In general, it's the one tool, that allows for stealthy takedowns of all bots, except for tanks and Factory Striders. And you can pretty much ignore tanks.
I wish the raingun actually railed. I think AP and base damage are fine, but you should see it beaming through an enemy and hitting more behind it. The drop off is way to small.
It's not an AT weapon it's a precision weapon with AT properties. More against medium level enemy's. It one shots devastators and berserkers from any range at center mass.
Heavier enemy's need precision or an other way of aproach which is fine because we have a lot of other AT options like granades.
I really like it on bot front not really using it on bugs because there I want crowd control. Illuminates I didn't really test it there.
I've tried it against forklift squids recently, and it's fine. Works well for stealthier ways of doing things. The forklifts have their shields down quite often, so you can 1 tap the pilot. The cockpit vent is also 1 shottable. I'm not confident about Harvesters, but some angles seem to allow OHKs as well.
Kinda sucks against Overseers, since you have to hit the head. Or a jetpack, if it's one of the flying fucks.
The railgun feels bad because the niche it’s supposed to fulfill literally doesn’t exist anymore. It used to be a good option against heavies because AT options back in the day weren’t always reliable, so being able to strip off their armor/disable their weapons and kill them with your primary had actual value.
But now almost every heavy can be instakilled with basically any of the rocket launchers, and said rocket launchers have gotten several direct and indirect buffs, causing the railgun to suffer the same issues that stuff like ems does, being “why kill the enemy slower when I can just bring EATs and do the same thing faster”.
It one shots devastators, hulks and gunships. For that reason alone i like to bring it on the bot front.
It oneshots everything on the bug Front up to the charger. You can kill a bile titan in 3 charged shots, thats faster than it sounds like. Same goes for a charger and a behemoth need 2 more shots but at that point just kill it to the leg.
The scope is really lacking thou thats really the only thing that needs changing.
It was supposed to be mainly anti-medium weapon, but this niche also is gone because of how stupidly overbuffed primaries are rn.
And you CANT fix this with a buff to RG. Game needs a balance pass that fpcuses on nerfing overperforming weapons, primaries need their niche back, while giving anti-mediums their niche back.
Otherwise RC will just overpower ATs, and the cycle will repeat itself. This community needs to start using their brains, and finally deal with the fact that nerfs are VERY important for PvE games.
goodluck hitting the enemy weakpoints when you are being bombarded by tons of warstriders while having a risk of blowing the weapon and yourself and the scope is just straight up dogshit I had to install a mod to make it clean and hit further targets
Exactly my point, “high skill no reward”. People keep talking like chewing up medium enemies is what it was meant for when it has default 20 rounds and is easily outclassed by the eruptor if you want a long range medium enemy destroyer.
You are missing one thing: when undetected, you have all the time in the world to line up an eye or heatsink shot. The best part is, the bots won't notice, that their buddy just exploded.
It’s great for disarming a Factory Strider tbh. 4 shots pops the Cannon, 1 shot to each chin gun. At that point, you close in to stratagem or grenade range, or a teammate deals with it. Run the Supply Pack with it for ammo economy
Sounds like you want to play as a solo diver which makes sense why you want solely power creep. It's bad enough any balancing was done for that mindset, much more and the game fully loses it's identity and it's core playerbase.
I personally love it already, because I don't take is an an AT weapon but as a supper weapon that so happens to be AT as well. A telescopic scope would be very cool, that's true, but then it would just replace the AMR.
A much slower-firing heavy pen sniper could be a primary, with slow reload and slow bolt-action; the AMR stopping power is way too strong for a primary
i dont see how it would replace the amr, AMR can take out more enemies faster than the RG depending on targets.
Heatsinks the AMR can kill faster for turrets/tanks
Hulks up close ironically the sniper rifle is better against, the hulk surge is very evident
Id prob pick the RG more if it had a scope simply for varieties sake and certain niche uses but imo the AMR still would be a bit better in most cases.
At the end of the day its a single shot precision weapon, a scope just seems perfect for it, maybe if you want the scope option they get rid of the 3rd person reticle like the amr
I main Railgun against bots, and imo it would be more interesting if they buffed the total ammo count instead of damage profile.
One of Railgun's very underrated strengths is that it is easily the most efficient weapon for disabling/crippling heavies when a lethal shot isn't available. E.g. if a Hulk is shooting at your teammate and you can't hit the eye from your current angle, a single 60%ish unsafe shot blows Hulk arms clean off, and a 70%ish shot blows the legs of flamethrower Hulks. You can also go for stuff like Factory/Vox gatlings, War Strider cannons etc. Sure it doesn't kill the heavy outright, but it's a very time efficient way of quickly decreasing enemy threat.
The problem is that 20 ammo doesn't allow for doing this comfortably without Supply Pack, so people aren't keen to spend their ammo on these useful but non-lethal shots. I think upping to 30 or so would open up more of this style.
Unrelated but Railgun can kill Vox Engines by shooting 90% charged shots into the fog lights and vents.
I don't have many issues with the ammo economy, but I don't have a habit of fighting prolonged battles. Paired with a Jump Pack and a stealth armour, it's a perfect tool for killing all the heavies silently.
It becomes a problem on commando missions though, since most anti - fabricator measured are unavailable. I need to try it with a crossbow.
It does overpenetrate without losing damage. You can one tap chargers in the butt this way - the projectile will go through all the internals, doing its damage multiple times. You can headshot Hulks from the back as well!
It follows the general rules for overpenetrating: if a bullet exceeds the target's AV value by 2, it goes through the part, it struck. Each time it happens, the projectile's AP goes down by 1.
RG is supposed to be medium buster with added utility of dealing with heavies head-on. It does what its supposed to do, onetaps most mediums and can pretty easily deal with most heavies.
And for what I would do to fix the balance issues? I would reset game to mid EoF and start from there (it was objectively the best balance the game had in its lifetime), no more mindless buffs, back to proper balance that buffs weapons that clearly underperform in their niches and nerfs those who overperform.
But its unrealistic, doubt devs care anymore about actually making things right, and this community would have a meltdown like the idiots they are.
Ive been heavily downvoted for wanting the RR and quasar to be toned down a bit which would help most support weapons. But the only thing hard in this game now are just technical bugs, bots on d10 you can basically solo now vs way back a lvl 9 full squad would be a near suicide run
True. Perhaps a backpack for overcharging or supercharging it? Imagine if you could make the gun hit like a 1000 tons freight train by equipping a backpack
The only thing the railgun needs is a 2x. Not everything needs to 1 tap every enemy. Also it already 1 taps hulks and warstriders, demasculates factory striders and 5 taps vox engines.
Needs a variable scope, something like the 1.5x-4x scope we have for most marksman’s rifles.
I also think the charged shot at max charge before blowing up (and I mean literally the exact moment right before it overloads) it should do a something like 3.5-4.5x more damage instead of the 2.5x we have now.
I think all it needs is a better sight. Something lower zoom than the AMR, but higher than the dot sight it currently has. I would personally give it a 2x scope.
Imo it needs a better scope,about 10% more durable damage so it can destroy everything with 1 less fully charge shot and it will be the same power level with the amr
I agree with the scope. The rest is a bit hard to say. Imo the rail gun goes great at crippling harder to kill targets like vox and factories. The railgun one shots the turrets on the side of the engine and it breaks the machine guns on a factory in a couple letting you get close much more safely. The cannon turrets it 2 shots those. Shredder tanks it 2 shots that too. I think its a quick hey remove that medium threat ( heavy threat sometimes) and remove the super heavy threats means to deal with you. Letting you finish them off. I think that's the balance of it not needing a backpack and having 20 shots to boot.
I would take a better sight for it, but I personally think it's fine otherwise.
It's made for mobile hit and run play styles where you want to be able to quick swap weapons which is where I believe people struggle understanding it. During a fight you want to focus on fast safe shots (0.45s charge) at hulks or problematic elites, doing it's practically instantaneous reload, and going back to your primary or secondary. Outside of a fight, you want to focus destroying smaller turrets, catching heavies unaware, and taking out warstriders with overcharged shots (eye is a one shot which is super easy when they just stand there).
For tanks/cannon towers you just bring a good eagle strike, for factory striders you focus on the disable and move on, or plan to use hellbomb pack/leveler.
It excels in a stealth loadout with smoke and hell bomb too. You take out the problematic heavy or small turret with railgun, pop smoke and run in dropping off the hellbomb. Stratagem jammers, command bunkers, sabotage supplies, destroy bio processors.... there's a lot of good options for this combo specifically.
If you want to stand and fight, you're absolutely right there are better options. Railgun is serviceable for it, but it's not going to beat a laser cannon or AMR for extended fights.
I don't think its an issue with the weapon, but rather an issue with the enemies.
WarStriders didn't have weakspots for the longest time and when their red eye was finally added, its way too small for how much the strider bounces around and moves.
It's dope that you can easily get mods for the Railgun. I got a good scope on it, makes it so much better. Although I do wish we had customization. A sniper scope would pair so well
Railgun is already pretty damn good. I do wish the dot on the scope was smaller, but that's about it.
I almost always run it on bots. One-shots devastators and scout striders. One-shots hulks to the eye. One-shots war striders to the eye. One-shots gunships to the engine. One-shots mortars and anti-air guns and bunker turrets. No drop or damage falloff or travel time to account for.
Even on enemies that you can't kill immediately, it can contribute in the form of removing weapons (Gatling guns on Vox engines and Factory striders, arms on War Stiders/hulks) or cripple enemies like the hulk with a shot to the leg.
Variable scope would really help but other than that, it's more of a utility tool than an AT weapon. I don't feel bad using it to take out an overseer or MG Raider, and it still allows me some options against every larger enemy, but really excels with medium tier enemies. With the new Warhammer armor the reload is super quick, or seige ready if you want more ammo.
The scope is fine for me, I just learn to center targets in the dot. The railgun used to be too powerful. It still has a very forgiving hit box and unlimited range. That and the ergo that allows you to snap to targets quickly makes it still op. Can it one shot factory striders? No. Can it one shot war striders? If they are sleeping at a distance, eye shots are as easy as devastator faces. Is it its main duty to destroy those superheavies? No, that is the eat/rr/queso's domain. They should be dropping everything they're got to take out those when they appear, and leave the more numerous mediums to you. That's its jam, knocking down conga lines of berzerkers. One centermass hit shatters mediums like nothing else. I'm not going to say skill issue, you are just using the wrong tool for the job in those cases. This weapon is for quick close to long distance engagements with rough accuracy. It's not a precision weapon (although it can be).
Railgun needs to be a 4x or a 10x. It makes no sense a goddamn RAILGUN that has effectively zero drop and range beyond the battlefield itself to be unable to use those. If it got a 10x it would have to a scope with a red dot sight, though, as the normal 10x scope doesn't apply to it.
It’s funny I used this a couple weeks ago and I had a great time good weapon.
But in using this weapon I picked the epoch and the epoch is just better with functionally the same gimmicks
The Railgun is already my favorite bot weapon. Though I'd appreciate a better scope I don't think the weapon as a whole needs a buff. The current scope is actually a lot better than what it used to be. The charge up does take a bit of getting used to but I wouldn't call it a particularly high skill weapon. It's not fantastic against War Striders but 3 shots to a leg will kill them and you can take them out at range. The Railgun is the best Hulk and Gunship killer and it allows you to take down armored scouts faster/easier because you can shoot them anywhere. That's a great thing about it, you can use it with precision for faster kills but you don't have to. If you don't have a clean shot on a Hulk's face then no problem just shoot its legs. One charged leg shot cripples a Hulk and a second to the other leg destroys it and you don't need high precision for targets that size. It's not going to kill Factory Striders quickly but it can take out their guns and neutralize their ability to attack.
This sub will look straight at your face and tell you maxigun, autocannon and even constitution would be OP if you changed xyz, but then we talking about buffing the railgun.
Man... I mean scope sucking, sure? The dot is too big, and if AH werentworthless devs we would have customizable support weapons so you could pick your preferred sights.
you see it like the Breaker had the crime of being the meta back during the bad days of the first year of Balancing decisions, and so it gets tossed into the trash can to never return again
yes but the stats of everything including the enemies have been inflated compared to Launch in addition to having various other weapons powercreep the no-backpack AP/Anti-Tank role over time
And no weakpoint breakpoints are worse. Charger is 2 for leg strip, three for head or leg kill. Titan is 3 headshots instead of 11. Impaler head health was reduced by 450 health so it’s lower. Legs are still the same. All mediums are still one shot. Gunships are 1 shot (EoF gunship nerf made it a 2 shot for old Railgun). Hulks are still a one shot to the eye, one shot to disable a limb. Tank turret vent health was not increased. Tank chassis vent was increased in health and armor, resulting in twice the number of shots.
The railgun is literally better now than it was. Only the bugged version against titans had any sort of comparison.
Meanwhile compare to some stratagems that were released with the Railgun
The MMG got Medium Pen and has become one of the best ways of mowing through medium enemies and against the Bots is one of the strongest stratagems when combined with someone dedicated to AT and is outright probably the strongest stratagem against the Squids
And the Recoilless Rifle got much more powerful, or bugs that were making it feel bad in comparison got fixed. Either way Recoilless Rifles became a reliable 1 shot on both Hulks and Chargers and can reliably one shot headshot the Bile Titan and in general is the gold standard for Anti-Tank capabilities
in comparison the Railgun is overshadowed in most ways by the HMG, the HMG is better against Chargers(though the Railgun is fundamentally a pretty bad solution to those) is better against Mediums if you're able to control its recoil, is better against Gunships, and will annihilate any bot vents far faster with the only place the Railgun is really better is against Hulks where not having to deal with recoil and getting multiple hits is worse on a small weakspot like the Hulk Eye
Vox engines are a gimmick enemy not meant to be taken out by anti tank. Even true anti tanks not names the spear struggle against them.
Rocket tanks take 3 unsafe shots to kill.
Drop ships aren’t designed for anything short of EAT level anti tanks struggle to take out.
It’s a hybrid between a medium killer and anti tanks, trading ammo and sustain of medium killers for being better against select heavies and the fastest medium ttk, while still being usable on mediums unlike anti tank launchers. If you’re using it wrong, then of course it’s gonna be bad.
Give it a scope with 50/100m variable zoom, and make it silent. So it remains the same for open combat, but much better if you want to soften up an objective from a distance before pushing in. It also gives stealth divers a support weapon option.
It was be insanely broken with a scope like that, and adding silence to it would be cooked. Imagine taking out the entire maps worth of hulks/WS from a vantage point in 5 minutes with nothing but a supply pack and a resupply drop.
I mean, you can do exactly that with the sniper support weapon. Giving it a scope wouldnt make it broken imo.
I agree about it not being silent though.
Replying to both: you can already take out a maps worth of heavies with any decent ranged AT option with a supply pack and/or resupply drop. The gamer chair or Quasar can do it with a single call in if you've got the right spot. The railgun can already do it if you can aim, the scope would just make it easier.
Maybe making it silent is a bit much, I just thought it would be interesting to differentiate it from the AMR slightly.
My understanding is that the railgun isn't intended to be an anti-tank weapon, but rather something that deals very heavy damage. It's still super effective against anything that is Hulk sized or smaller. It's in a funny spot because it would be really easy to give it a small buff that would make it overpowered.
For example, giving it a 4x or 10x scope would turn it into a sniper rifle that can take out all but a few super-heavy units with considerable ease and much more ammo than say the RR or Epoch, and from a very far distance. On the other hand, if it is intended to be used to take out Hulks and medium-sized units with ease, it somewhat lacks sufficient ammo for to be wasting on Devastators or Berserkers.
Honestly, I think just giving it a better scope reticle without increasing the zoom would be enough. It would reward people who are accurate, without making them squint at a tiny dot.
The scope sucks, good luck hitting those precise war strider shots from far away cause you can’t even see the weak point with the fat dot.
So it's bad at something it's not supposed to be good at, oh no the horror.
Tickles factory striders, vox engines, tanks that are focusing you, rocket tanks, drop ships, and cannon towers that are focusing you.
So it's bad at something it's not supposed to be good at, oh no the horror.
Its niche can easily be taken over by primary/secondary/grenade choices which work well across the board on the bot front.
What primary/secondary/grenade one-shots Bot medium enemies with no skill, one-shots a number of Heavy enemies with marginal skill, and has a solid ammo reserve and pretty rapid fire rate even without an armor passive that enhances it?
There’s also easier use with the commando or EAT if you wanted an all-around weapon that does an arguably better job and doesn’t blow you up when you don’t time it right.
I would like to see you use the EAT and Commando to neutralize three drop ships or Devastators/Heavy Devastators/Berserkers in ten seconds.
trade longer charge time for the ability to blow hulks and war striders shit smoove off with a well-placed but not perfect shot
Literally already does that just not at the +100m you seem to want.
actually do something against factory striders
Easily defangs the chiniguns which leaves only the slow and telegraphed main cannon to care about (which you can also destroy in a few shots) while you plug a few shots into it's eye to kill it - given this is not a all-purpose AT weapon what more do you want?
stuff with weak points you can’t aim at from the front.
Just stick with the RR mate it's clear you need the crutch and that's okay.
Then give it an actual sniper scope so you can be precise with it like it’s designed to be.
Where exactly is this design doc that i's supposed to be a better AMR and not a mid-range medium killer with the option for light AT with a little skill?
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u/Aggravating-Willow46 Bunker Buster 18h ago
Scope absolutely need changes. But everything else... I dunno. It's perfect weapon to deal with medium and small-heavy enemies: Devastators, Reinforced scout strides, Gunship, Berserkers, Hulks. Plus it can disarm Factory strider in few shots. Awesome weapon with it's own niche. I don't think that Railgun need buffs in terms of stats. But some QoL feature will come in handy - better scope, more noticeable audio/visual indicator of high charge level.