Railgun EMP Charge Projectiles

Suggestions
1

Since the railgun uses physical projectiles, they can be modified. In fact, these will be an alternative to particle beam/lance.

  • Normal
  • EMP Charge

EMP Charge: -50% damage per shoot, x4 shield damage (200% of base damage).

I don’t know yet how this will interact with 1 DMG railguns, as the damage change will round down to 0. Alternatively, you can increase size of the weapon by x1.5..x2 instead.

Why:

I was thinking about the fact that we have Particle Lances, for which there is practically no armor. And we don’t have a weapon for effectively discharging shields (Mesons and Microwaves have too small damage).

If your opponent has brought a 200kt ship with 20 layers of armor, you can use a dozen lances to destroy it in 5 seconds from a very decent distance. But what kind of weapon will you use if the enemy has 10k shields? A railgun will take time, and plasma requires a very short distance.

I know that this is essentially the purpose of railguns and plasma, as lasers are very good at dealing with armor. But this is a “universal” weapon, there is no such difference as between a laser and a lance. EMP Charge creates this difference by allowing railguns to be specialized against shields, at which their effectiveness against armor will be near zero compared to other weapons. Shields also won’t be that good at protecting against everything.

I don’t consider Meson as a serious means of dealing damage at all. 1 DMG.

Maybe this change is not necessary at all. Want to know your opinion.

2

Mesons are already quite adequate for this job. You have to consider that not only do mesons bypass shields entirely, they have a probability to bypass armor and deal internal damage directly. Against ships that are heavily armored, this probability is low enough that mesons are indeed not very efficient, but if an opponent has gone heavily into shields and uses only minimal armor, then mesons can be very effective with a bit of technology investment. I don’t think any NPR races use shields so heavily with minimal armor, but I’ve certainly seen players do it.

I’m also not sure we need to have a weapon that specially counters every possible defense. Sometimes, the best counter is to just shoot the damn thing and enjoy the benefits of not overinvesting in passive defenses. Depending on the tech level, 10k shields plus 20 layers of armor is a huge investment even for a 200,000-ton monstrosity which surely means that ship has made severe compromises in propulsion, weapons, or other areas.

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3

To further that train of thought, if one weapon is clearly better than others in flexibility, it would outweigh any other potential “trade offs” that the weapon has, thus making it a “take or break” weapon/technology.

Missiles are already almost in this category, with the “cost offset” of being suspectable to PD and having an actual ongoing economy cost.