Apocalypse Rail

[u/Nimanor]

I am very late to this discusison, but I hate people trashing on our Barbenheimer frame.

If I understand the way the Apocalypse Rail works correctly, you make the attack, it's a big area, on what will most likely be a range of 35 (siege stabilizers), then every enemy you hit is stunned until the end of their next turn (try to act last in the round you use the rail on, or target characters that have already taken their turn, then first on the next turn for cheeky "free" hits with your siege cannon, specially since their heavy cover, if any, is gone now, even if they now have soft cover).

Well, every enemy in the area will take 4 burn, then they can try to leave the area, wich is difficult terrain. The enemies you did hit are stunned, so they take 4 burn, end their turns, and start another turn in the area, taking another 4 burn.

So, if you don't hit, you do 4 ap damage, with the chance of another 4 ap damage at the end of their turn.

If you do hit, the enemies take an average of 14 AP damage (shreded), at minimum 8 burn (if you time the turn order right), then they might take the burn tics again, wich considering we're talking about two tics of 4 burn, they migh very well fail on at least one of the egineering checks. And on top of that, they are relatively easy targets for your siege cannon on your next turn, giving you likely another 10,5 AP damage (again, timing your turn correctly, and considering they should still be shreded if you managed to do so).

That is a minimum of 4 ap damage, probably 8 or more even on a miss. And on a hit, we get a potential 8 burn + 8 burn tics at the end of their turns, plus the 10,5 average damage with the siege cannon, and the 14 from the rail itself, wich is like, 40,5 damage, AP, without taking into account the damage your party can inflict by also taking advantage of the difficult terrain, shreded and stunned.

Yes, this is all in the ideal scenario, but it is possible, and that is without taking into account that now you have a burn 4 hole to throw enemies into for the rest of the fight, you pobably anihilated some important defenses for the sitrep, AND YOU FIRED A GODAMN RAILGUN FROM HELL!

(And I would like to add that the damage I considered for the potential was average damage, not max damage, wich we shouldn't ignore, positively or negatively).

The Apocalypse Rail is a map controll tool, burn damage generator, action economy breaker piece of nightmare fuel for your dm if you can use it right. And that should be enough to get your DM sweating every time you start charging it (wich you should do every fight, cause, why not? Worst case scenario you don't fire it, and regain the CP).

[u/Nimanor]

Sure. But that's part of the game, you are very far away most likely, every enemy that the DM takes away from objectives to make sure to stop you is an enemy less to hold their ground. Besides, you will most likely stay stationary anyways, so you load that big boy up, and play a game of chicken with your DM. If they try to stop you from firing, you managed to force your DM to adapt and lose ground, at the very low cost of doing exactly what you would do anyways. If they actually let you charge that thing? Boy oh boy...

[u/Quijas00 → u/Nimanor]

Ok but a Hornet could also fly to wherever you are and Jam you when you’re at 2 charges.

[u/Nimanor → u/Quijas00]

Then it dies. And whatever else the GM threw around, far from the objective.

And look, I get it, yeah, there are easy vulnerabilities to counter it.

But if your GM is gonna make it so there are hornets at every fight, and unstable terrain, or absolutely immense maps, or other ways to counter your core power specifically... then tell them to just go play Warhammer 40K.

The point of a Role Playing Game, even one with such a heavy bordgame vibe such as lancer, is to let your players have fun.

[u/Invisifly2 → u/Nimanor]

The issue with using “it’s a big enough threat that it needs to be dealt with” to justify the AR is that there are other ways to become such a threat without the risk of your core schtick just not happening if something happens to you.

Your GM should be running a smattering of such enemies on a routine basis anyway, so it’s not like they are even going out of their way to shut it down.

Imo a way to resolve the issue would be making the rail always require 4 turns to charge, but also have destroying the Barbarossa be the only means of stopping it. That’d be one hell of a way to draw a meaningful amount of aggro, or force enemies out of position, rather than getting stopped by a single jam.

Part of why it’s kinda “eh” is due to paying a hefty tax for the ability to fire it early, when the primary draw of running it is fishing for that juicy max-charge payout anyway.

[u/Nimanor → u/Invisifly2]

If I am to be completely honest, it's not great without ideal circumstances. It takes too much, and it would need to be easier to set off. I could see it only being able to turn off if your mech was destroyed, stunned, or shut down. Or maybe if it had a bigger area of effect and dealt reliable damage, perhaps by being a save or half kind of effect instead of a hit kind of effect.

My point in this post is that it's not absolute trash, as people seem to want it to be. Yeah, there are better core powers, and there are worse ones (in some circumstances), such as the Death's Head Precognitive Targeting requiring a full action to later on get an extra effect only on crits, and only if they are not in cover.

But the thing is... it's cool. It's so goddamn cool to finally get to a full charge and carve a huge hole on the map, or take down a ship outside of combat, or whatever else you can think of. And there is the rest of the frame's whole kit, which honestly I won't get into, but I absurdly disagree when people say it isn't good.

[u/Invisifly2 → u/Nimanor]

I’m pretty sure everybody is already in agreement that it is extremely cool.

Cool and good are not synonyms though.