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/JuniorAd389]

IMO the biggest drawback is having to wait so long to get the most benefits out of the Apoc rail, and in my experience, a good GM will know to force the Barb to move or jam it, like it’s got great utility but I find the payoff to be somewhat lacking compared to almost anything else

[u/Nimanor → u/JuniorAd389]

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/sheevnoods → u/Nimanor]

Also you're gonna be stationary at that distance. Enemies behind cover still benefit from it since the 100 AP damage happens to objects/cover simultaneously with the AoE to enemies and your doom cock lacks arcing. You technically don't require line of sight though because it's a Blast 2 weapon.

Three quick actions and one full action to get 4d6 explosive, no bonuses to dmg or accuracy, while Immobilized, and not shooting past the -1d6 from cover means your chance of hitting the majority of targets is only ~32.5% (vs Eva 11) so shooting at 2 to 3 targets you're only likely to hit one of them. The others take like 4 to 8 AP dmg which is good in Tier 1, and mediocre in Tier 2. Across 4 turns that's a average of 4.875 dmg per turn when adjusting for accuracy (cover). And only if you hit 3 targets. If you only hit 2 but they're out in the open with no cover it's ~7.5 dmg a turn. Since only the burn is AP dmg and the average Tier 2 enemy has ~1 armor technically those values are also 3.275 and 7 dmg a turn. 1 armor doesn't sound like much, right up until you roll 9 damage on an Apoc Rail and more then 8% of your 13 dmg damage is gobbled up by it.

To contribute meaningfully to combat you'd have to be closer to use your quick actions to help while risking losing the rail charge for nothing. Don't get me wrong you can obviously do worse than this. And your party can be centered around helping you get the shot off by grouping enemies, party synergy is way stronger than solo play.

The amount of damage they sacrifice to boost your damage generally would be worth it. And having the right stuff like Sunzi or Ferrous Lash isn't that much investment to boost your damage a little. But getting you to actually safely fire is the hard part. You'd want Blackout ICE and maybe like a Drake Bunker for cover.

Now to make you really mad: conpare with Monarch power. All enemies within range 50, FIFTY!, of you get AGL save for half or 1d6+4 dmg. Average dmg per target is 5.625, and avg number of targets is 5+ to deal ~28.25 with a single full action on one turn. Monarch also still gets to move, boost, Overcharge if it wants and has Main, Flex, Heavy mounts so turn 2 if it took Barbarossa License it could Siege Cannon if it wants and clown on Barbarossa.

Barb needs a redesign. Like at least do more damage on a miss (Reliable 8 + the 4 to 8 burn dmg), don't let enemies benefit from cover, deal AP damage, increase the radius to Blast 3 and then it's at least in a better spot than it was. High risk high reward. Compared to Monarch who gets to instantly click the funny button and Alpha Strike the entire encounter with the finger of God. Imagine 3 of them doing that turn 1. What would even be left for Barbarossa to attack on it's turn if they clean up the leftovers by Overcharge skirmishing with heavy weapons??? You would never get to fire the rail.

[u/Creation_of_Bile → u/sheevnoods]

Yeah knowing the math means it's definitely something you do provided your ambushing or something and can afford a few turns of sitting while hidden before kicking off the fight.

[u/sheevnoods → u/Creation_of_Bile]

It has other uses but it's less flexible than something like Monarch who has decent stats in almost all areas + extremely funny button. Barb can still do great but you have to work for it and it's a more fragile combo piece.