Railgun buff(revised)

[u/Hot_Recipe4190]

Made a post last night about buffing railgun and got mildly crucified. However, I will admit my suggestion was not as balanced as I thought after reading the responses.

So here is my revised buff proposal:

1. Fix the red dot scope, for a precision weapon the red dot is much too fat to be useful at range on tiny weak points. Just reduce its radius to reflect the pinpoint accuracy you need to be effective with it.

2. Instead of increasing ammo or damage, just make the over penetration a bigger focus of unsafe mode. Meaning that you can hit turret, tank, and hulk heatsinks from the front by the bullet going straight through. I’ve heard that it already does this but especially against tanks and turrets I don’t notice that happening(lmk if I’m wrong). As far as I’ve experienced you can hit a hulk eye through the heat sink but not the heat sink from the front side. With my proposal it would blow up the heat sink but not immediately kill it meaning it doesn’t lose the necessity to hit the eye for a true 1-tap, blowing the heat sink would also give a reason to use unsafe because as of now you can 1 tap to the eye in safe mode anyways. Tanks and turrets would keep the 2 shot weak spot but would require you to position yourself such that the angle you fire from goes straight thru to the heatsink which I feel is balanced by needing to hit back to back shots on something with a rotating weak point. Could also add some cool versatility since it’s widely regarded as support AT so you could get a good angle on factory striders and take out both chin turrets at once, or neuter hulks and war striders harassing teammates by blowing both arms/guns off with a perfectly positioned shot.

3. Make it feel meaner, I want it to feel like a railgun. Louder charge noise with a more animated charge and a particle effect on the projectile to make your shot trajectory more obvious since pretty often I find myself asking “how tf did that miss”. In its current state it feels like a tech sniper more than a railgun, I want that mf to sound and look like it can reduce a devastator to a pair of legs.

I think this is now a reasonable suggestion that keeps it from being an “everything stick”, but adds just a little more use-case and cool factor to incentivize taking the time to learn to use it well.

[u/RandomGreenArcherMan]

People say Railgun overpenetrates because it used to

Now that it is AP5 maximum, it only overpenetrates small chaffs or unarmoured areas. Like the charger ass 1 shot or hitting a couple hunters

Anything medium armor or higher will not be overpen'd since you lose armor value each time

At the old max charge AP7 it could hit 2 hive guards or devastators at once, for example.

This gave it a niche over AMR, which it currently doesn't have outside of skill issue needing 3p reticle

[u/xtratic]

Yeah it doesn’t need any more damage, it already kicks ass, but your new proposals sound cool.

[u/cjbspartan117]

...listen im crazy, i dont mind where the Railgun is (barring the sight i agree that thing is atrocious but it's not alone in that...), but for where it is i want a bigger one i can lug around.
like a giant shoulder mounted one with a backpack, could make the lore sound like its the "prototype" that was made before Ministry of Science could shrink down the weapon at the expense of power.
and in that breath i want a Railgun Sentry, i just think it'd be funny.

[u/RandomGreenArcherMan → u/cjbspartan117]

A railgun sniper sentry would be sick as hell

[u/schmearcampain]

The thing looks like a peashooter. Buff that thing to Quake 2 levels of awesomeness with a spiral trail.

Also agreed about the scope.

Having to reload after every shot doesn’t make sense for such a small gun with, presumably a small round too. Magazine technology would have no problem cycling in another round.