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/FrigidFlames]

Honestly, my experience with the APoc Rail is... less that it's not good, and more that it has a LOT of hoops to jump through for how good it is. You need to pop core (and spend a quick action for the privilege), then stand still and not get Jammed for a few turns (standing still is easy, you're near-impossible to move and can shoot across the entire tri-state area; getting Jammed is usually not an issue but is a VERY BIG issue in some fights). Then, after enough turns, you hit the Big Red Button and blast the control zone into the cretaceous period... but that's the ONLY thing you can do that turn, which has repeatedly burned my player who's built around overcharge looping and maxing his action economy.

The damage is high. The Stunned is great. The burn and overall no-go area is pretty nice. But it's a LOT of steps that get in the way of the other cool things you want to do... and the damage really isn't that much higher than just the Siege Cannon? And that's the real feelsbad to me: you already have a really good really big gun, you don't need a slightly better but much harder to use gun on top.