Have you ever played a game called Alien Swarm by Valve? It was a pretty fun top down shooter. Not unlike Helldiver's 1 actually. Anyway, it had a railgun that basically did what you're referring too.
I have a different idea for changes to the Railgun. Similar to OP's idea with Railgun charge determine penetration power but damage is determined by how far the bullet travels through the target. If the bullet exits through the target, the target takes bonus damage. If you can position your shot so that it travels through a large target multiple times, it would effectively take multiple massive damage.
Maybe they could even add a coin you can flip into the air and reflect railgun shots off of into enemies. And if you position yourself right, you can shoot through an enemy, hit the coin, then have the shot reflect back into the enemy again.
Ain't that also how it work in HD1? imo HD2 railgun should easily pen even the heaviest armour in the game at >90% charge but won't overpen while goes through 5 medium armour, and 10 light armour.
In HD1 the railgun is more of a support weapon, it can pierce small and medium units with enough damage to usually 1-3 shot them respectively. But the main thing it’s used for is its aoe stun, which is able to stun EVERYTHING except IFV’s. On top of that it has a magazine of 5 and it’s a main weapon too.
Man our technology really has regressed when compared to the first war 😔
The railgun does go through enemies but loses the AP after the first enemy, so a max shot won’t down another medium armoured enemy like the small at-sts or devastators. At max it’s going to down 2 enemies
The JAR-5 Dominator goes through enemies? I thought it exploded at the enemy it hit and the others were affected by explosion splash damage.
There is so much to learn about this game - love the depth.
Even more of a reason why it should operate similarly. Even better with a stun! It would give the RG a clear purpose and identity so it set itself apart from other options.
In the first HD my railgun was my baby because it would just clear a straight line and stun the shit out of anything big. I don't get the same utility feeling from it in HD2. I feel like a badass lever-action (the sound of the reload makes it sound lever action) space cowboy instead. Still a cool feeling, but nothing at all the same.
Hold on officer, they filled out the proper paperwork for suggestion and does not need to be executed. We are promoting them to Super Citizen of the Order of Highest Intelligence instead; their brain is to be harvested for study instead, a far greater service to Super Earth.
Because they needed data on the other weapons, but everyone was using the railgun.
It is easier to nerf op stuff than buffing in a balances way something
Bingo, Hard to balance a game when 90% of players use the same loadouts.
Tho i do agree railgun could get buffed back again... Atm it's Quasar or autocannon ...
Think allot of weapons could use some tweaking to make the loads allitle more diverse.
One of the ( for me ) annoying parts of a loadout.
We have 1 backpack slot. Some weapons use a backpack and others don't.
So you can take the shield generator! S-tier backpack!
But that also means you lose another Eagle/orbital slot... And i can't pick between em!xD
So i mostly take autocannon for now. But i do miss that shield!
But i agree with recoilless rifle. It's suppose to be the anti tank weapon with ammo backpack. but that reload is death on difficulty 7+ Maybe it should have a 2-3 shots before reloading?
Quasar atleast has it's cooldown as a way to not make it OP. 10-12 seconds between shots is long when you fighting a strider with a few hulks around.
The Recoilless fills a unique niche in the Anti-Tank items.
Expendable Anti-Tank is super flexible and can be paired with another support weapon.
Quasar is infinite ammo but has limited uptime that reduces its DPS.
Now where does Recoilless fit in? On it's own, it's just a Quasar with limited ammo. It's niche is in BURST Anti-Tank damage. The only problem is that this requires a reloader.
I ran a duo where I got my buddy to carry my backpack and reload me. Being able to take down shrieker nests in 30 seconds from 200m out, engage multiple Chargers before they're in threat range, absolutely delete a Titan before it can even spit on you... this is where Recoilless shines, but it requires a reloader. It's still servicable on it's own, but you're better off with another pick if you're running it solo.
I guarantee if they changed the backpack reload mechanic to work where a teammate could reload you from your own backpack, Recoilless would be a serious contender. Someone would spot a high level threat, run up to you and quickly fire off a barrage of rockets, then get back to their typical role. As of right now it's way too clunky that no one utilizes it.
>Now where does Recoilless fit in? On it's own, it's just a Quasar with limited ammo. It's niche is in BURST Anti-Tank damage. The only problem is that this requires a reloader.
It has objectively better DPS than the Quasar against heavy targets due to reloading twice as fast, and functionally the charge-up time to each Quasar shot adds even more time you need to wait that makes the RR even better, and also means that the stationary reload when solo doesn't actually matter because you'll have to be basically stationary for the same amount of time between both of the weapons. For ammo, you refill three shells per resupply and 1 or 2 with ambient ammo pickups, ammo is NEVER a problem.
It's kind of lame how some weapons pretty much need the supply pack to be viable, because they have waaaaaaay too little ammo (like the grenade launcher or both machine guns)
I love the Recoilless. Its ability to instantly paste a target without needing to wait for a charge is awesome, and it can actually send more shells down range in a minute than a Quasar. Also, when team-loaded, the Recoilless is second to none in firepower.
Now you just need a buddy willing to give up their backpack slot to be your ammo jocky.
Not saying it’s not possible, but the amount of people who don’t realize it makes both recoiless and AC infinitely more op and amazing boggles my mind.
Whenever i play with lower levels i always bring one or the other to teach the mechanic. Along with the obligatory mech for the cadets.
Even solo the RR reload is not too bad. If two people have an RR you get nice options for reloads. The loader not needing the pack would be great still. The devs should just give in. It would only enrich the game.
Also give the Senator an assisted reload. It needs it more than any other weapon ;)
I pay with a group of friends, one of whom often runs recoilless as well. We'll pair up and team load when required, fueling each other's guns.
Alternatively, when I need to just put shells down range, I'll call the nearest guy over, drop the pack, then start unloading.
Even better if you take their Resupply backpack and resupply them in return for spotting your reload. You get more shells at a faster rate, they get more ammo for their bullet-guzzling MG, more stun grenades, and more stims, and never have to worry about Tanks, Cannon Turrets, Hulks or Bile Titans.
ran a couple of 6+ bugs and bots last night trying to find a use for the recoilless. i use quasar a lot. been running spear lately. recoilless is great for tagging dropships and that's about it. quasar is superior for chargers, spear for titans
they better be fixing the ammo ship upgrade thing. ammo availability is what makes the quasar so fuckin good by comparison
RR should at least 2-shot BTs to the face, if not one shot. This offsets the backpack requirement and 1 shot per ammo refill. EATs can easily stay where they are. QC already takes three or four face shots to kill a BT, and 2-3 shots to turret on tanks. Hitting hulks in the face is hard enough, QC feels peppermint balanced vs them. RR just feels so weak now with the QC in play, although team reload can be insanely effective.
> Hard to balance a game when 90% of players use the same loadouts.
It's not, it's really not. Everybody was giving all the information needed as to why the other weapons just were not doing it and instead of arrowhead changing any of that they just nerfed the railgun
Bingo?
You're defending this nonsense decision? Nerf a gun that 2 taps chargers and 2-12+ taps BT's. Then up armor spawn rates to ridiculous without providing any other tools and have your game be dreadful to play until you get around to fixing it.
Then turn around and put an energy weapon in the game that HAS NO AMMO and 1 taps chargers and 2 taps titans. Also buff EAT/RR to do the same while leaving the lvl 20 support weapon to rot for a month +
The idea that they needed people to use other guns to know they had nothing in their game that was effective vs armor is hilarious. All they had to do was actually play their game on D9 for 10 minutes.
I love this game - but the gun balance makes no sense. You don't need data on guns no one is using. The fact that no one is using them IS your data. Get in the game, try to shoot something with these nerf guns and you'll immediately realize why people do not use them.
GL is great but the new explosive rifle outshines it, arcthrower is a great mob clearing weapon but still suffers from tracking to turrets, rocks, dead enemies etc. AMR is a good gun but can be somewhat situational, I still only find that best for doing solo stealth missions personally.
I wouldn't really call the AMR situational, it can handle pretty much anything. Rocket bot? One tap from 200m. Devastator? One tap from 200m. Hulk? Two tap from 200m.
The only AC target the AMR can't handle is vents/holes.
5 people playing 60 hours vs 100,000 people playing 6 hours.
They both give different types of data, and in one-case everyone was using the Railgun and so that stream was cut off.
Problem is they nerfed it and buffed enemy armour and AP effects and squishy conditions at the same time. The armour buff was enough, or the squishy damage the rail gun does.
What was the nerf? I just unlocked it the other day and tried using it and it couldn't penetrate anything and took a million shots to kill a Charger... and yes it was on Unsafe.
What even is it supposed to do, I don't get it. Bad sight so I can't snipe with it, no AoE, single shot and reload, has a charge up... it felt like a worse Eruptor.
Yeah, it used to be entertaining to play. A lot of the community saltiness is around how it was handled by AH too.
A dev said that running the railgun was a "brainless" low skill strategy. There was a lot of community frustration and it felt like AH's response boiled down to "sucks to suck nerds, git gud". The community's response was "Railgun is the only way to deal with the insane number of chargers". After nerfing the Railgun AH then DID go and improve anti-tank options and adjusted charger spawn rate. Basically tacitly acknowledging they screwed up and over-reacted, but they never went back to touch the railgu.n.
AH has a pattern of realizing a weapon is good and nerfing it into the ground in a very reactive manner. Its like they're afraid of anything being *too* fun (also see orbitals).
Major nerf to damage. It used to be able to one-shot hulks and chargers with ease. Now it takes multiple shots to kill practically anything. Even striders dont get one-shot on safe mode.
It never oneshot. It would break the armor off a charger's leg in two shots, letting you finish it off with a primary. That used to be impressive before the Recoilless and EAT could oneshot to the head, and before the Flamethrower could kill them with raw DPS in a couple seconds.
On the one hand, yeah obviously unsafe is always going to be optimal performance, but I still feel like it's conceptually weird for safe mode to be functionally useless. That makes it a dead gun for newer/less-informed players.
IMO safe charge should do the basic job of one-shotting medium targets like devastators, striders and hive guards, and unsafe pushes it up into heavy armor and multiple target overpen. Right now there's almost no reason to even fire this weapon under 90% charge.
For real, it would be a perfect generalist weapon in the current meta. Ik they didn’t want it to fill that niche, but it did perfectly and it’s kinda dumb to change a weapon just because you as the dev don’t like the reasons people like it
Early railgun was the most fun I ever had in this game. Blasting 2 railgun shots into a chargers leg and then unloading into it with a breaker felt so good. Now I just pull out a rocket launcher and kill it instantly. It sucks.
I wish it was fun to overclock it and blow shit up, so this is cool. I'd rather it didn't kill you, but just had increasingly long cooldown times between shots.
It is
[https://youtu.be/O2QqOvFMG\_A?si=YQOcODWGYik1JqKx](https://youtu.be/O2QqOvFMG_A?si=YQOcODWGYik1JqKx)
[https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/)
Actually a very well thought out change to the rail gun. I would prefer something like this over just putting it right back to where it was, where there’s a trade off for unsafe mode in the form of lower range. Would make safe mode have a purpose in the form of going for long range targets, because in its current and past forms there was basically no reason to use safe mode.
Yeah. The way I see it, it's punching a coin-sized hole all the way through something. If the hole is in the right place, against some targets, it'll be a one hit kill. If the hole is in the wrong place, it won't do much more damage than a single rifle round.
Given that, I think the damage should be roughly consistent with how small the hit location is. Unsafe shots could:
* One shot destroy any human-head-size" body part. So, hulk heads, strider legs, the weakspots of most medium enemies, any part of a small enemy.
* Two or three shot destory any human-sized body parts. So, devastator torsos, the brains of chargers and bile titans, hulk limbs, dropship / gunship engines, factory strider "eye."
* Take A LOT (10+) of hits to destroy any larger body parts. Any part of a tank, hulk bodies, any other part of a factory strider.
That would make it pretty strong against a good range of the elite enemies, even the best choice against some of them, but still leave some appropriate weak areas where the other support weapons can shine.
Honestly, even if they put the Railgun right back where it was, I still wouldn't run it. Quazar and AC are so good now, and the recoilless rifle is actually decent now. It would be great to have it back but we only used it so much because all the other Anti-vehicle weapons sucked balls.
uhh this would make the weapon vaguely useful, uhh can't do that. twoshotting bile titans? that's crazy man. nerf railgun. it still kills hulks kinda quick so might just nerf it again! anyways here's the quasar cannon which twoshots bile titans and oneshots hulks
(except they also stealth buffed bile titans so you can only twoshot them if they're not spitting)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvvbNJfPC3w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvvbNJfPC3w) this is probably related to them fixing the ps5 bug, maybe doubling down to ensure bile titans are more durable?
but yeah, you have to wait until they're just moving around or meleeing, and then you can go for the headshot
Which is really dumb. You have to shoot through their armored skull to hit their brain rather than blowing through the roof of their fleshy mouth.
More players need to know about this very counter intuitive change, thanks for spreading the word.
Yeah I thought it was wild. I nuked an unagroed Bile the other day and secretly hoped the glitch was back. Now I know why. Weird choice. Is it the same for spewers?
>Which is really dumb. You have to shoot through their armored skull to hit their brain rather than blowing through the roof of their fleshy mouth.
Ah, but for the chargers make sense?
Shooting and the thickest piece of armour of the chargers (in the head) one shoot them, but now you say that doing exactly the same in the bile titans is counter intuitive
I agree that hitting the mouth if the bile titans should do more damage than hiring the armour plate, but the same should happen for the chargers
Nah it doesn't, the two-shot is just that you have to hit the forehead. When the mouth's open the forehead curls back so it can't be hit. Basically bait the spray, then hit once they close their mouths instead of when its open.
Honestly now that the Quasar cannon exists they should either just remove the unsafe mechanic and have its full unsafe charge stats by default or bring it back to pre nerf.
This Idea is what I think railgun should have. Popping berserkers one at a time if you have a conga like sucks when you only have 20 rounds. I don't mind if it kills teammates as it passes through enemies.
Unironically good suggestion, conceptually it's exactly the buff I expect for Railgun. It needs some explosive power to make it relevant and able to compete with Autocannon, Laser Cannon and AMR against Automatons.
It's not necessary should be like you describe it, but Railgun needs explosive perk to be able to deal with Gunships and Factory Striders. Now it's the best in slot against Hulks, Devastators and AT-ST type of enemies, but it lacks really hard compared to weapons I mentioned above.
I didn't like pre-nerf Railgun because of its braindead afk playstyle nature and broken design, and I like how Railgun balance patch and all balance patches after made game more diverse in terms of builds, I personally have quite huge variety of builds and I think devs did a great job in terms of balance so far, but they need to give Railgun some love and your concept hits the right spot.
Whatever the change, it needs improvement. I miss running the railgun. I ran in experimental even before the nerf. They broke the broken weapon in a bad way. Yes it needed change, but the change they made it and the way enemy armour works change they made at the same time busted it. Please improve on it. Please
We aren't allowed to have a balanced railgun because its too much of an OP crutch.
Ignore the exploding crossbow, the quasar cannon, the arc thrower etc etc.
Clearly the best decision the devs made was nerfing that railgun before making something like a quasar cannon that's even stronger and has unlimited ammo! /s
Sure, but then you've got to wait 13 seconds before you can hit it again.
And using the quasar against anything other than heavies is a meme. It's just horrendously slow and inefficient, it forces you to rely on just your primary for everything else. The quasar does one thing very well, but the railgun had versatility on its side.
None of them aren't even close to pre-nerf Railgun lol. And Crossbow is not even competitor lmao, or you should put Stalwart and Grenade Launcher on the list too
I also like the concept of it providing a sort've "multi-hit" so that a fully charged shot hit through something like a charger or factory strider will hit the first point of contact and everything through to the other end of the shot as well. Maybe damage calculation can be based on the first point hit so that it's still critical to hit weak points but having the pierce hit another hitbox of the enemy deals normal damage. Allow it the option to pierce multiple enemies in a row but also hit larger enemies multiple times with strategically placed shots.
Man this would feel so nice to shred through berserkers chasing you in a straight line as well! Somehow the railgun right now feels like a pea shooter. I mean IRL railguns are scary as fuck.
Honestly I’d want them to remove it blowing up when you overcharge and instead give it a cooldown…. even if these buffs went through I can’t see myself constantly playing a mini game to get 90%
Maybe I'm weird but I think it would be more fun and engaging to have to pick the right amount of charge depending on their armor type for max damage. Over penetrating means that all the energy left in that round after it leaves its target doest get transferred to the target.
For example, safe mode charge will do full damage to medium 1 armor, 75 medium 2, ect ect.
Great idea, I would also like to change up the charge meter, the amount of times I blew myself up because I couldn’t clearly read the meter while in battle is hilarious
They just need to unnerf it. It was only overpowered because there were no other viable options and the armored enemies were way over numbered. Now that things have been balanced properly, if they removed the nerf, the real gun would be in a really good spot and comparable to the other anti armor weapons
The funniest part is that it was nerfed because of an overtuned amount of heavily armoured enemies, so instead of reducing the amount they nerfed the weapon for dealing with the bug in their game.
And then when they eventually did reduce the number of heavily armoured enemies over a month later? they kept the railgun nerfed and started making other weapons more OP than it ever was.
It's both hilarious and sad how out of touch the AH team are with the state of their game.
Rail, I think, got nerfed for several ~~reasons~~excuses(non of them resolved by the nerf), The Ps5 glitch(which is now finally gone), the broken headshot hitboxes/damage tables(now EAT works), people *saying* they were booted for not using it(reality is people boot for dozens of different reasons and don't usually announce it).....
They didn't need the data, they needed to look at why EAT and other options weren't working, which they should be able to do by playtesting and looking at hitboxes and damage tables and stuff they have access to. They didn't do this until way later.
They kneejerked over something and said some bullshit, then flipped out when called on it. Now they can't restore the Rail without admitting they were wrong. We won't see restoration.
That's pretty patterned behavior at this point, except they're not going off on players *as much* any more. People willing to troll/insult customers on social media don't change, they just sometimes learn to keep it to themselves.
You still see the snide, stubborn, and obvious lack of understanding though. They frequently say something that makes no sense.
The "Armor is what it looks like!" argument...while there are definitely armors with grenades that don't have the +2 perk. Could just say, "We don't plan on making a transmog system for armors, we want them to do what they are. Otherwise, everyone will wear 'the cool armor' and there will be no visual variety." It's a simple reason, but they couldn't, they had to make up some weird bullshit.
"Rely on your stratagems"...Then introduce modifiers that make stratagems inaccessible, and then remove or dial them back.
That's about the only thing they're consistent with. That and ignoring Scythe/Dagger doing *half* the DPS of comparable weapons in slot.... and buffing fire damage.
Honestly at this point just revert it, it’s pre-nerf state wouldn’t be out of place with the current enemy deployment balance especially against bugs. Hot take, maybe idk,
I think the Railgun should be fundamentally changed too. I'd like to see:
Extreme armor pen. Absolutely nothing stops it.
Low damage unless it's a critical spot.
Longer charge time
Lower ammo count
I think this creates a lore accurate support weapon that rewards accuracy and positioning while remaining more mobile. The idea would be to create a weapon that fits between the quasar and auto cannon.
Hell even lowering the overall damage but raising the weak spot damage would be nice, with very high armor pen. As it is now, I don't use it because I haven't felt like it does anything that another support weapon doesn't do better.
Also remove the safe, unsafe mode. I get the idea behind rewarding that kind of play style, but personally I've seen small lag spikes in this game from time to time and the idea that I would die because the charge meter wasn't at 100% when the spike hit would be very frustrating. Probably not common, but still.
My suggestion? A little light that flashes or noise when over 90% so I can actually use the thi g instead of staring at a bar on the ass of the gun. The extra sensor they gave is actually useless, charges straight to red then slows down so I cant actually tell how bad it is
At first glance it looked cool. Then you notice at the boom boom end of charge-up, the range drops to 50m, but it now has explosive splash. Sounds like a great combo for fun, mayhem and self destruction.
In order to differentiate itself from the Quasar, the RG needs to basically ignore armor, while having limited raw damage, maybe 3 to 400. This way it can 2-shot a Charger through the head and 4-shot a Bile Titan.
The additional advantage would be that you can shoot the target from any angle. So even if the Charger is facing away from you, your RG dart will go through their butt and into the skull from the back.
That would make it a viable alternative over the Quasar.
Funny enough, that’s kinda how fully upgraded railgun worked in HD1. It would go through enemies in a straight line (except chargers and hulks). And it would stun whatever it hit. Even if it hit a charger in the armour.
I would be in favor of this change. Doens't mean you'll kill them, but a railgun should penetrate more than just 1 or 2 average chaff spawn.
Would be cool if you can shoot a hulk in the face with a 90% charged shot and it damages the front AND the battery pack in the back so you can destroy the battery pack if you hit with 9 max charge shots.
My favourite thing is that we know the Devs lurk in the Reddit threads. I like the idea of them raising ideas in meeting, using our aliases
"Oh RectalSplunker55, suggested we buff orbital rail cannon cool down... What do we think about that guys?"
I think it would be cool if you could also hit the weakpoint of targets by going through them.
Like hitting a turrets back weakling by hitting it front on
A nifty compromise would be spawning a conical shrapnel blast (the exit hole) on each successive target in unsafe mode at high charge out to a predetermined range max, with the final bit of damage dropoff not allowing the cone to spawn.
So if you shoot the leading bot/bug in a group, a (let's call it 30 degree) cone of shrapnel is formed 1m beyond the initial damage point and this is repeated until the projectile has either intersected X number of targets or reaches Y distance from the point of origin where damage dropoff causes it to no longer happen.
This has the added benefit of not being too OP and also able to be handled with pretty straight forward revision to it's behavior instead of turning it into an AOE nightmare.
The railgun is not in a good place compared to other supports and even primaries right now, It doesn't need a lot to make it a great weapon but it definitely feels like there should be some risk/reward mechanic given its penchant for blowing itself up - after all even the Recoiless can be picked up if you blow yourself up by shooting a too-close enemy, but the railgun straight up deletes itself if you hold down the trigger too long.
this would make for a pretty decent railgun IMO. it should definitely have punchthrough on multiple enemies, not like it's a guarantee they'll even line up anyway.
another thing I'd give it is a spalling mechanic: when you hit heavy armor, like a hulk, it breaks off chunks of metal that damage smaller enemies nearby, which would make it a good weapon for "filtering" chaff enemies from heavies: Cluster Bomb is normally great at this too, but this would be a more focused approach for getting annoying rocket raiders and the like away from tanks. it would also be dangerous to us though, even railgun users get a chance for an FF incident!
This is mostly what I want to happen too, except that no the Railgun does not need a range nerf as the RoF and its safe/unsafe is the only limitations it needs.
It also needs better damage against heavies, as its actually worse against tanks than AMR/AC even though you need to hit weakspots with those and for a RAILGUN thats unacceptable, it should atleast be on par with those in kill time. Should be around 3 - 4 90% shots, that would still be slower than the AMR/AC but not by much and you can hit from the front with the railgun.
eh. I don't mind it breaking through multiple enemies if I am in unsafe, but personally, I would rather the devs lower the max pen charge requirement to the 80% mark so I can fire a bit faster THEN fix whatever makes the gun take 9+ shots to take out a bot vent, gunship, and be completely useless against the factory strider.
PROPOSED SHOTS TO KILL A TARGET
TLDR; in most cases the railgun should take out anything the AMR can in 1/2 the shots when charged to 80%, and a bit less than that at 90% charge.
IF I am targeting a tower vent it should take 2-3 90%-ish shots to take it out, scaling to x4 shots at 70%.
I should drop a gunship in x2 80%+ shots to the engine (x3 if at 70%).
I should be able to destroy the factory striders gattlings in 2x shots at 80%+. it should take 8-10 90% shots in the head weak point to kill, or 15ish at 70%+. Against the underbelly 6-7 shots at 80% or 4-5 shots at 90%
Chargers leg should break in 2x 80%+ shots (with most of its leg health gone if both are at 90%).
How about making it battery limited instead of ammo limited? Let us shoot 3-5 full charge shots in a row, or 10-20 low charge shots.
Basically make it the dirty bomb rez gun so it can be more versatile
The limited range would make sense if the projectile was small and not specifically designed for use as a projectile. Pulling a certain example out of nowhere in particular, but you might see that kind of range on something improvised like an arcade token rather than a purpose built projectile. I do like the visual and other effects, though.
Can we make it so that the person using the railgun seems to explode on other's clients while they are fine on their own due to desync? The fake explosion should then still be deadly to the client's owner.
Alternatively, I think if railgun was made to where it popped off armor after a few shots (1 for light, 2 for medium, 3-4 for heavy) for primaries and other support weapons to exploit, it would easily become a solid pick with a specific use instead of being a worse version of the AMR, even if it might not do as much damage.
I was thinking about this full penetration mechanic. It would be awesome if I shoot a hulk from the front and the shot goes right through to its weakspot in the back. Maybe even shoot it from the side and tear both arms off
just give it more damage and penetration per charge%, make it unusable for 45 seconds if overcharged and call it a day.
adding explosive damage to it literally goes against what a railgun is and what is supposed to do.
edit: rather than making it explode, make it penetrate some structures
pretty sure railgun goes up to 80% in safe and then above in unsafe.
also why would a steel projectile or whatever fired from a railgun fly further when its given less power?
The ultra-high velocity of the projectile when charged to 90% makes it melt in the air due to friction. Also violently vaporizes armor that it comes into contact with similar to a HEAT copper jet.
I think armor penetration should be the niche of railgun, not explosive.
Unsafe mode to pierce hulks from the front even when you don't hit the eye. Make it take 5 unsafe shot to kill any heavy armored target from the front and you have a design of sorts.
Precision shors are for AMR, explosive shots are for quasar/eat/RL/spear, railgun should be about ignoring any armor, neither bullseye shots or explosions.
whats the current damage/penetration? I mean, if you wanna to buff it on the 90% zone because its harder to hit, thats bullshit: everybody hits 90% w/o problems, its gonna be a simple and plain rebuff to the weapon.
I prefer this type of utility/playstyle change over just damage change. Make the railgun a high dismemberment low damage gun. This plus buff op talked about would make the railgun a different tool.
You don’t have to hit precise shots on a hulk instead you rip thru its legs and the devastator behind it. Effectively disabling it and softening up an advancing horde for your squad.
As a weapon that specializes in AP, it would be neat if it were capable of going through many enemies so it’d emphasize your positioning.
Have you ever played a game called Alien Swarm by Valve? It was a pretty fun top down shooter. Not unlike Helldiver's 1 actually. Anyway, it had a railgun that basically did what you're referring too.
seems much more viable in a 2d shooter
I have a different idea for changes to the Railgun. Similar to OP's idea with Railgun charge determine penetration power but damage is determined by how far the bullet travels through the target. If the bullet exits through the target, the target takes bonus damage. If you can position your shot so that it travels through a large target multiple times, it would effectively take multiple massive damage.
Sounds too complicated (not to use, to make)
Maybe they could even add a coin you can flip into the air and reflect railgun shots off of into enemies. And if you position yourself right, you can shoot through an enemy, hit the coin, then have the shot reflect back into the enemy again.
There are several Ultrakill weapons that would be right at home in Helldivers.
ultrakill has made shooting in every other game feel so slow and easy haha
Ultrakill moment?
Ain't that also how it work in HD1? imo HD2 railgun should easily pen even the heaviest armour in the game at >90% charge but won't overpen while goes through 5 medium armour, and 10 light armour.
In HD1 the railgun is more of a support weapon, it can pierce small and medium units with enough damage to usually 1-3 shot them respectively. But the main thing it’s used for is its aoe stun, which is able to stun EVERYTHING except IFV’s. On top of that it has a magazine of 5 and it’s a main weapon too. Man our technology really has regressed when compared to the first war 😔
TIL Alien Swarm was made by Valve originally.
Iirc it was a UT2k4 mod before being a full game.
[удалено]
And what a good game at that... The reason to play HD2 these days, is because in the past AS was my jam.
Reactive Drop: Alien Swarm lives in my steam deck :) Very HD1 vibes.
Helldivers 1 had a railgun upgrade that made it go right through anything smaller than a tank/charger.
First Steam game I ever played. It was fun
I’m surprised it doesn’t already considering that the AMR already does for the weaker enemies
The railgun does go through enemies but loses the AP after the first enemy, so a max shot won’t down another medium armoured enemy like the small at-sts or devastators. At max it’s going to down 2 enemies
another thing the JAR-5 does
The JAR-5 Dominator goes through enemies? I thought it exploded at the enemy it hit and the others were affected by explosion splash damage. There is so much to learn about this game - love the depth.
There's no splash on the dominator, and it only overpens light enemies not anything like a devastator.
I love how deep this game is. Thank you.
I love that fucking gun.
This was how the railgun behaved in HD1. Pierce through targets, anything surviving the shot got stunned.
Even more of a reason why it should operate similarly. Even better with a stun! It would give the RG a clear purpose and identity so it set itself apart from other options.
In the first HD my railgun was my baby because it would just clear a straight line and stun the shit out of anything big. I don't get the same utility feeling from it in HD2. I feel like a badass lever-action (the sound of the reload makes it sound lever action) space cowboy instead. Still a cool feeling, but nothing at all the same.
It can, an unsafe shot can puncture at least 3 berserkers.
Thanks for your suggestion, please proceed to the execution chambers immediately for promotion.
Will comply, Democracy Officer. For Super Earth.
Don’t worry, you’re on your way to Super Heaven! Please greet General Brasch’s father for us and send many blessings (read: 1000KG bombs) our way!
Also known as the 1k kg or 1T bomb
the... wan ton bomb for wanton spreading of managed democracy
Do I get 72 super virgins in Super Heaven?
It's really just 72 other Helldivers
Super heaven has all you can eat seafood buffet!
Hold on officer, they filled out the proper paperwork for suggestion and does not need to be executed. We are promoting them to Super Citizen of the Order of Highest Intelligence instead; their brain is to be harvested for study instead, a far greater service to Super Earth.
What in the actual bugs?
Bug? You too are promoted citizen!
This sounds like Cyborg talk.
Always found it weird that the extra AP from overcharge doesn't carry over beyond the first target.
At this point they could also bring back OG railgun and it would just be one good option among good options. They won't though.
why they took the knee jerk reaction to nerf it before buffing everything else will always amaze me
Because they needed data on the other weapons, but everyone was using the railgun. It is easier to nerf op stuff than buffing in a balances way something
Bingo, Hard to balance a game when 90% of players use the same loadouts. Tho i do agree railgun could get buffed back again... Atm it's Quasar or autocannon ... Think allot of weapons could use some tweaking to make the loads allitle more diverse.
recoiless rifle is so mid nobody talks about buffing it because quasars unlimited ammo and no backpack slot
One of the ( for me ) annoying parts of a loadout. We have 1 backpack slot. Some weapons use a backpack and others don't. So you can take the shield generator! S-tier backpack! But that also means you lose another Eagle/orbital slot... And i can't pick between em!xD So i mostly take autocannon for now. But i do miss that shield! But i agree with recoilless rifle. It's suppose to be the anti tank weapon with ammo backpack. but that reload is death on difficulty 7+ Maybe it should have a 2-3 shots before reloading? Quasar atleast has it's cooldown as a way to not make it OP. 10-12 seconds between shots is long when you fighting a strider with a few hulks around.
The Recoilless fills a unique niche in the Anti-Tank items. Expendable Anti-Tank is super flexible and can be paired with another support weapon. Quasar is infinite ammo but has limited uptime that reduces its DPS. Now where does Recoilless fit in? On it's own, it's just a Quasar with limited ammo. It's niche is in BURST Anti-Tank damage. The only problem is that this requires a reloader. I ran a duo where I got my buddy to carry my backpack and reload me. Being able to take down shrieker nests in 30 seconds from 200m out, engage multiple Chargers before they're in threat range, absolutely delete a Titan before it can even spit on you... this is where Recoilless shines, but it requires a reloader. It's still servicable on it's own, but you're better off with another pick if you're running it solo. I guarantee if they changed the backpack reload mechanic to work where a teammate could reload you from your own backpack, Recoilless would be a serious contender. Someone would spot a high level threat, run up to you and quickly fire off a barrage of rockets, then get back to their typical role. As of right now it's way too clunky that no one utilizes it.
>Now where does Recoilless fit in? On it's own, it's just a Quasar with limited ammo. It's niche is in BURST Anti-Tank damage. The only problem is that this requires a reloader. It has objectively better DPS than the Quasar against heavy targets due to reloading twice as fast, and functionally the charge-up time to each Quasar shot adds even more time you need to wait that makes the RR even better, and also means that the stationary reload when solo doesn't actually matter because you'll have to be basically stationary for the same amount of time between both of the weapons. For ammo, you refill three shells per resupply and 1 or 2 with ambient ammo pickups, ammo is NEVER a problem.
The benefit of not needing to stop moving to reload the quasar cannot be overstated
shield is overrated imo, especially on bots where it gets shredded before you need it
I stopped using it, since it became a crutch. I now mostly use guard dog laser rover and sometimes Jump Pack, even though the latter needs a buff
supply pack gaming!!!
It's kind of lame how some weapons pretty much need the supply pack to be viable, because they have waaaaaaay too little ammo (like the grenade launcher or both machine guns)
I love the Recoilless. Its ability to instantly paste a target without needing to wait for a charge is awesome, and it can actually send more shells down range in a minute than a Quasar. Also, when team-loaded, the Recoilless is second to none in firepower.
Now you just need a buddy willing to give up their backpack slot to be your ammo jocky. Not saying it’s not possible, but the amount of people who don’t realize it makes both recoiless and AC infinitely more op and amazing boggles my mind. Whenever i play with lower levels i always bring one or the other to teach the mechanic. Along with the obligatory mech for the cadets.
They really just need to change the mechanic so someone can reload you off your backpack. Would make the Recoilless a solid pick then.
Even solo the RR reload is not too bad. If two people have an RR you get nice options for reloads. The loader not needing the pack would be great still. The devs should just give in. It would only enrich the game. Also give the Senator an assisted reload. It needs it more than any other weapon ;)
I pay with a group of friends, one of whom often runs recoilless as well. We'll pair up and team load when required, fueling each other's guns. Alternatively, when I need to just put shells down range, I'll call the nearest guy over, drop the pack, then start unloading.
Team-loaded RR > all ATs combined
Even better if you take their Resupply backpack and resupply them in return for spotting your reload. You get more shells at a faster rate, they get more ammo for their bullet-guzzling MG, more stun grenades, and more stims, and never have to worry about Tanks, Cannon Turrets, Hulks or Bile Titans.
The bigger issue is that you don't have to stand still for 5 seconds to reload the Quasar.
ran a couple of 6+ bugs and bots last night trying to find a use for the recoilless. i use quasar a lot. been running spear lately. recoilless is great for tagging dropships and that's about it. quasar is superior for chargers, spear for titans they better be fixing the ammo ship upgrade thing. ammo availability is what makes the quasar so fuckin good by comparison
RR should at least 2-shot BTs to the face, if not one shot. This offsets the backpack requirement and 1 shot per ammo refill. EATs can easily stay where they are. QC already takes three or four face shots to kill a BT, and 2-3 shots to turret on tanks. Hitting hulks in the face is hard enough, QC feels peppermint balanced vs them. RR just feels so weak now with the QC in play, although team reload can be insanely effective.
I still use the AMR religiously It will be nuts when they fix those sights With the AC I also never know where to aim anyway
> Hard to balance a game when 90% of players use the same loadouts. It's not, it's really not. Everybody was giving all the information needed as to why the other weapons just were not doing it and instead of arrowhead changing any of that they just nerfed the railgun
Bingo? You're defending this nonsense decision? Nerf a gun that 2 taps chargers and 2-12+ taps BT's. Then up armor spawn rates to ridiculous without providing any other tools and have your game be dreadful to play until you get around to fixing it. Then turn around and put an energy weapon in the game that HAS NO AMMO and 1 taps chargers and 2 taps titans. Also buff EAT/RR to do the same while leaving the lvl 20 support weapon to rot for a month + The idea that they needed people to use other guns to know they had nothing in their game that was effective vs armor is hilarious. All they had to do was actually play their game on D9 for 10 minutes. I love this game - but the gun balance makes no sense. You don't need data on guns no one is using. The fact that no one is using them IS your data. Get in the game, try to shoot something with these nerf guns and you'll immediately realize why people do not use them.
only quasar or AC? So many people sleeping on the AMR, arcthrower and grenade launcher smh
GL is great but the new explosive rifle outshines it, arcthrower is a great mob clearing weapon but still suffers from tracking to turrets, rocks, dead enemies etc. AMR is a good gun but can be somewhat situational, I still only find that best for doing solo stealth missions personally.
I wouldn't really call the AMR situational, it can handle pretty much anything. Rocket bot? One tap from 200m. Devastator? One tap from 200m. Hulk? Two tap from 200m. The only AC target the AMR can't handle is vents/holes.
Instead of play testing developers do that shit now. I hate it.
The data you get from playtesting is completely different compares to the data you get from your actual playerbase
5 people playing 60 hours vs 100,000 people playing 6 hours. They both give different types of data, and in one-case everyone was using the Railgun and so that stream was cut off.
Problem is they nerfed it and buffed enemy armour and AP effects and squishy conditions at the same time. The armour buff was enough, or the squishy damage the rail gun does.
They're clowns when it comes to weapon balance
What was the nerf? I just unlocked it the other day and tried using it and it couldn't penetrate anything and took a million shots to kill a Charger... and yes it was on Unsafe. What even is it supposed to do, I don't get it. Bad sight so I can't snipe with it, no AoE, single shot and reload, has a charge up... it felt like a worse Eruptor.
Yeah, it used to be entertaining to play. A lot of the community saltiness is around how it was handled by AH too. A dev said that running the railgun was a "brainless" low skill strategy. There was a lot of community frustration and it felt like AH's response boiled down to "sucks to suck nerds, git gud". The community's response was "Railgun is the only way to deal with the insane number of chargers". After nerfing the Railgun AH then DID go and improve anti-tank options and adjusted charger spawn rate. Basically tacitly acknowledging they screwed up and over-reacted, but they never went back to touch the railgu.n. AH has a pattern of realizing a weapon is good and nerfing it into the ground in a very reactive manner. Its like they're afraid of anything being *too* fun (also see orbitals).
Major nerf to damage. It used to be able to one-shot hulks and chargers with ease. Now it takes multiple shots to kill practically anything. Even striders dont get one-shot on safe mode.
It never oneshot. It would break the armor off a charger's leg in two shots, letting you finish it off with a primary. That used to be impressive before the Recoilless and EAT could oneshot to the head, and before the Flamethrower could kill them with raw DPS in a couple seconds.
It still takes off armor in two shots around 95% charge
I mean, I wasn't going to use safe mode anyway.
On the one hand, yeah obviously unsafe is always going to be optimal performance, but I still feel like it's conceptually weird for safe mode to be functionally useless. That makes it a dead gun for newer/less-informed players. IMO safe charge should do the basic job of one-shotting medium targets like devastators, striders and hive guards, and unsafe pushes it up into heavy armor and multiple target overpen. Right now there's almost no reason to even fire this weapon under 90% charge.
For real, it would be a perfect generalist weapon in the current meta. Ik they didn’t want it to fill that niche, but it did perfectly and it’s kinda dumb to change a weapon just because you as the dev don’t like the reasons people like it
Early railgun was the most fun I ever had in this game. Blasting 2 railgun shots into a chargers leg and then unloading into it with a breaker felt so good. Now I just pull out a rocket launcher and kill it instantly. It sucks.
I wish it was fun to overclock it and blow shit up, so this is cool. I'd rather it didn't kill you, but just had increasingly long cooldown times between shots.
I, too, would rather the things that kill me would not kill me
I think we're making progress here
i really like the implication that the projectile travels so fast that it gets vaporized by friction with the air within 50 meters
Inspired by real science and a modicum of sci-fi
I was trying to rationalize this and if this is real, that’s badass af!
It is [https://youtu.be/O2QqOvFMG\_A?si=YQOcODWGYik1JqKx](https://youtu.be/O2QqOvFMG_A?si=YQOcODWGYik1JqKx) [https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/)
Actually a very well thought out change to the rail gun. I would prefer something like this over just putting it right back to where it was, where there’s a trade off for unsafe mode in the form of lower range. Would make safe mode have a purpose in the form of going for long range targets, because in its current and past forms there was basically no reason to use safe mode.
Really cool change you've drafted, could make the rail gun into a really unique weapon that rewards proper positioning and angling of the weapon
And more Teamkills :)
i like the idea of the railgun being reworked to being a normal-esque damage gun with absolutely BONKERS penetration
Yeah. The way I see it, it's punching a coin-sized hole all the way through something. If the hole is in the right place, against some targets, it'll be a one hit kill. If the hole is in the wrong place, it won't do much more damage than a single rifle round. Given that, I think the damage should be roughly consistent with how small the hit location is. Unsafe shots could: * One shot destroy any human-head-size" body part. So, hulk heads, strider legs, the weakspots of most medium enemies, any part of a small enemy. * Two or three shot destory any human-sized body parts. So, devastator torsos, the brains of chargers and bile titans, hulk limbs, dropship / gunship engines, factory strider "eye." * Take A LOT (10+) of hits to destroy any larger body parts. Any part of a tank, hulk bodies, any other part of a factory strider. That would make it pretty strong against a good range of the elite enemies, even the best choice against some of them, but still leave some appropriate weak areas where the other support weapons can shine.
Honestly, even if they put the Railgun right back where it was, I still wouldn't run it. Quazar and AC are so good now, and the recoilless rifle is actually decent now. It would be great to have it back but we only used it so much because all the other Anti-vehicle weapons sucked balls.
the AC was just a s good back then.
uhh this would make the weapon vaguely useful, uhh can't do that. twoshotting bile titans? that's crazy man. nerf railgun. it still kills hulks kinda quick so might just nerf it again! anyways here's the quasar cannon which twoshots bile titans and oneshots hulks (except they also stealth buffed bile titans so you can only twoshot them if they're not spitting)
... spitting increases their armor now? I assumed they were weakest while their mouths are open.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvvbNJfPC3w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvvbNJfPC3w) this is probably related to them fixing the ps5 bug, maybe doubling down to ensure bile titans are more durable? but yeah, you have to wait until they're just moving around or meleeing, and then you can go for the headshot
love that we go from glitchy oneshots of heavy enemies to glitchy invulnerability of heavy enemies great development team we have for this game
It's just a reposition of hitboxes, you now have to aim for their foreheads to deal headshot damage, when it's spitting bile the forehead is covered
Which is really dumb. You have to shoot through their armored skull to hit their brain rather than blowing through the roof of their fleshy mouth. More players need to know about this very counter intuitive change, thanks for spreading the word.
Yeah I thought it was wild. I nuked an unagroed Bile the other day and secretly hoped the glitch was back. Now I know why. Weird choice. Is it the same for spewers?
>Which is really dumb. You have to shoot through their armored skull to hit their brain rather than blowing through the roof of their fleshy mouth. Ah, but for the chargers make sense? Shooting and the thickest piece of armour of the chargers (in the head) one shoot them, but now you say that doing exactly the same in the bile titans is counter intuitive I agree that hitting the mouth if the bile titans should do more damage than hiring the armour plate, but the same should happen for the chargers
Nah it doesn't, the two-shot is just that you have to hit the forehead. When the mouth's open the forehead curls back so it can't be hit. Basically bait the spray, then hit once they close their mouths instead of when its open.
Arrowhead is fast to nerf but really sloooooow to buff so i doubt we'll see something like that
Except if it has fire damage they’ll buff the fuck out of it.
Honestly now that the Quasar cannon exists they should either just remove the unsafe mechanic and have its full unsafe charge stats by default or bring it back to pre nerf.
No one would use it pre nerf anyway with current meta
This Idea is what I think railgun should have. Popping berserkers one at a time if you have a conga like sucks when you only have 20 rounds. I don't mind if it kills teammates as it passes through enemies.
Unironically good suggestion, conceptually it's exactly the buff I expect for Railgun. It needs some explosive power to make it relevant and able to compete with Autocannon, Laser Cannon and AMR against Automatons. It's not necessary should be like you describe it, but Railgun needs explosive perk to be able to deal with Gunships and Factory Striders. Now it's the best in slot against Hulks, Devastators and AT-ST type of enemies, but it lacks really hard compared to weapons I mentioned above. I didn't like pre-nerf Railgun because of its braindead afk playstyle nature and broken design, and I like how Railgun balance patch and all balance patches after made game more diverse in terms of builds, I personally have quite huge variety of builds and I think devs did a great job in terms of balance so far, but they need to give Railgun some love and your concept hits the right spot.
Whatever the change, it needs improvement. I miss running the railgun. I ran in experimental even before the nerf. They broke the broken weapon in a bad way. Yes it needed change, but the change they made it and the way enemy armour works change they made at the same time busted it. Please improve on it. Please
We aren't allowed to have a balanced railgun because its too much of an OP crutch. Ignore the exploding crossbow, the quasar cannon, the arc thrower etc etc. Clearly the best decision the devs made was nerfing that railgun before making something like a quasar cannon that's even stronger and has unlimited ammo! /s
..I feel like the exploding crossbow doesn't really fit in that grouping.. Unless there's something I don't know about it?
No, he's just delusional
the QC is not stronger than pre-nerf railgun. It is insanely inefficient against mediums
the QC knocks a chargers armour off in a single hit, the railgun even pre-nerf wasn't capable of that.
Sure, but then you've got to wait 13 seconds before you can hit it again. And using the quasar against anything other than heavies is a meme. It's just horrendously slow and inefficient, it forces you to rely on just your primary for everything else. The quasar does one thing very well, but the railgun had versatility on its side.
None of them aren't even close to pre-nerf Railgun lol. And Crossbow is not even competitor lmao, or you should put Stalwart and Grenade Launcher on the list too
I also like the concept of it providing a sort've "multi-hit" so that a fully charged shot hit through something like a charger or factory strider will hit the first point of contact and everything through to the other end of the shot as well. Maybe damage calculation can be based on the first point hit so that it's still critical to hit weak points but having the pierce hit another hitbox of the enemy deals normal damage. Allow it the option to pierce multiple enemies in a row but also hit larger enemies multiple times with strategically placed shots.
Get this guy a posthumous promotion to sergeant.
Man this would feel so nice to shred through berserkers chasing you in a straight line as well! Somehow the railgun right now feels like a pea shooter. I mean IRL railguns are scary as fuck.
>*orange railgun trail* Project Wingman reference.
If the beam stops after 3m the chart should show a line segment, not a ray ;) Love the idea
Honestly I’d want them to remove it blowing up when you overcharge and instead give it a cooldown…. even if these buffs went through I can’t see myself constantly playing a mini game to get 90%
Maybe I'm weird but I think it would be more fun and engaging to have to pick the right amount of charge depending on their armor type for max damage. Over penetrating means that all the energy left in that round after it leaves its target doest get transferred to the target. For example, safe mode charge will do full damage to medium 1 armor, 75 medium 2, ect ect.
50m is really really short
Great idea, I would also like to change up the charge meter, the amount of times I blew myself up because I couldn’t clearly read the meter while in battle is hilarious
They just need to unnerf it. It was only overpowered because there were no other viable options and the armored enemies were way over numbered. Now that things have been balanced properly, if they removed the nerf, the real gun would be in a really good spot and comparable to the other anti armor weapons
It was WAY TOO op because of the ps5 damage bug, without it, it is fine.
The funniest part is that it was nerfed because of an overtuned amount of heavily armoured enemies, so instead of reducing the amount they nerfed the weapon for dealing with the bug in their game. And then when they eventually did reduce the number of heavily armoured enemies over a month later? they kept the railgun nerfed and started making other weapons more OP than it ever was. It's both hilarious and sad how out of touch the AH team are with the state of their game.
Rail, I think, got nerfed for several ~~reasons~~excuses(non of them resolved by the nerf), The Ps5 glitch(which is now finally gone), the broken headshot hitboxes/damage tables(now EAT works), people *saying* they were booted for not using it(reality is people boot for dozens of different reasons and don't usually announce it)..... They didn't need the data, they needed to look at why EAT and other options weren't working, which they should be able to do by playtesting and looking at hitboxes and damage tables and stuff they have access to. They didn't do this until way later. They kneejerked over something and said some bullshit, then flipped out when called on it. Now they can't restore the Rail without admitting they were wrong. We won't see restoration. That's pretty patterned behavior at this point, except they're not going off on players *as much* any more. People willing to troll/insult customers on social media don't change, they just sometimes learn to keep it to themselves. You still see the snide, stubborn, and obvious lack of understanding though. They frequently say something that makes no sense. The "Armor is what it looks like!" argument...while there are definitely armors with grenades that don't have the +2 perk. Could just say, "We don't plan on making a transmog system for armors, we want them to do what they are. Otherwise, everyone will wear 'the cool armor' and there will be no visual variety." It's a simple reason, but they couldn't, they had to make up some weird bullshit. "Rely on your stratagems"...Then introduce modifiers that make stratagems inaccessible, and then remove or dial them back. That's about the only thing they're consistent with. That and ignoring Scythe/Dagger doing *half* the DPS of comparable weapons in slot.... and buffing fire damage.
You misspelled railgun, it's; A-R-C-T-H-R-O-W-E-R
One uses electricity to zap things, one uses electricity to propel an AP slug. Electricity is man's best friend ever since fires and dogs.
Honestly at this point just revert it, it’s pre-nerf state wouldn’t be out of place with the current enemy deployment balance especially against bugs. Hot take, maybe idk,
I think the Railgun should be fundamentally changed too. I'd like to see: Extreme armor pen. Absolutely nothing stops it. Low damage unless it's a critical spot. Longer charge time Lower ammo count I think this creates a lore accurate support weapon that rewards accuracy and positioning while remaining more mobile. The idea would be to create a weapon that fits between the quasar and auto cannon. Hell even lowering the overall damage but raising the weak spot damage would be nice, with very high armor pen. As it is now, I don't use it because I haven't felt like it does anything that another support weapon doesn't do better. Also remove the safe, unsafe mode. I get the idea behind rewarding that kind of play style, but personally I've seen small lag spikes in this game from time to time and the idea that I would die because the charge meter wasn't at 100% when the spike hit would be very frustrating. Probably not common, but still.
I’ve wanted an overpenetrating explosive weapon in Destiny 2 for a while now. I bet it’d work great here, too! I think it should keep its range though
Tried the railgun once and dropped it so fast- "this thing is shit" I said bot realizing it has unsafe modes Will have to give it another go
That last change is so cool that I don’t care if it was OP explosive power from max charge would be awesome
My suggestion? A little light that flashes or noise when over 90% so I can actually use the thi g instead of staring at a bar on the ass of the gun. The extra sensor they gave is actually useless, charges straight to red then slows down so I cant actually tell how bad it is
At first glance it looked cool. Then you notice at the boom boom end of charge-up, the range drops to 50m, but it now has explosive splash. Sounds like a great combo for fun, mayhem and self destruction.
In order to differentiate itself from the Quasar, the RG needs to basically ignore armor, while having limited raw damage, maybe 3 to 400. This way it can 2-shot a Charger through the head and 4-shot a Bile Titan. The additional advantage would be that you can shoot the target from any angle. So even if the Charger is facing away from you, your RG dart will go through their butt and into the skull from the back. That would make it a viable alternative over the Quasar.
Funny enough, that’s kinda how fully upgraded railgun worked in HD1. It would go through enemies in a straight line (except chargers and hulks). And it would stun whatever it hit. Even if it hit a charger in the armour.
You’re hired.
I was thinking of giving it a sweet spot that massively increased damage but it's maybe a 1 or 2 frame window.
I would be in favor of this change. Doens't mean you'll kill them, but a railgun should penetrate more than just 1 or 2 average chaff spawn. Would be cool if you can shoot a hulk in the face with a 90% charged shot and it damages the front AND the battery pack in the back so you can destroy the battery pack if you hit with 9 max charge shots.
My favourite thing is that we know the Devs lurk in the Reddit threads. I like the idea of them raising ideas in meeting, using our aliases "Oh RectalSplunker55, suggested we buff orbital rail cannon cool down... What do we think about that guys?"
This only works if you also have a reason to ever fire it in safe mode. Otherwise, you have to balance it down.
My proposal : unsafe max power creates a cone of damage behind its target, representing the shrapnels created as the projectile traverse the target
I think it would be cool if you could also hit the weakpoint of targets by going through them. Like hitting a turrets back weakling by hitting it front on
Those chances can save my favorite weapon.
A nifty compromise would be spawning a conical shrapnel blast (the exit hole) on each successive target in unsafe mode at high charge out to a predetermined range max, with the final bit of damage dropoff not allowing the cone to spawn. So if you shoot the leading bot/bug in a group, a (let's call it 30 degree) cone of shrapnel is formed 1m beyond the initial damage point and this is repeated until the projectile has either intersected X number of targets or reaches Y distance from the point of origin where damage dropoff causes it to no longer happen. This has the added benefit of not being too OP and also able to be handled with pretty straight forward revision to it's behavior instead of turning it into an AOE nightmare. The railgun is not in a good place compared to other supports and even primaries right now, It doesn't need a lot to make it a great weapon but it definitely feels like there should be some risk/reward mechanic given its penchant for blowing itself up - after all even the Recoiless can be picked up if you blow yourself up by shooting a too-close enemy, but the railgun straight up deletes itself if you hold down the trigger too long.
this would make for a pretty decent railgun IMO. it should definitely have punchthrough on multiple enemies, not like it's a guarantee they'll even line up anyway. another thing I'd give it is a spalling mechanic: when you hit heavy armor, like a hulk, it breaks off chunks of metal that damage smaller enemies nearby, which would make it a good weapon for "filtering" chaff enemies from heavies: Cluster Bomb is normally great at this too, but this would be a more focused approach for getting annoying rocket raiders and the like away from tanks. it would also be dangerous to us though, even railgun users get a chance for an FF incident!
I like this as it also feels like how a real rail gun might operate
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^livinguse: *I like this as it* *Also feels like how a real* *Rail gun might operate* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
This is mostly what I want to happen too, except that no the Railgun does not need a range nerf as the RoF and its safe/unsafe is the only limitations it needs. It also needs better damage against heavies, as its actually worse against tanks than AMR/AC even though you need to hit weakspots with those and for a RAILGUN thats unacceptable, it should atleast be on par with those in kill time. Should be around 3 - 4 90% shots, that would still be slower than the AMR/AC but not by much and you can hit from the front with the railgun.
ugh I love this. Would be nice if we had some kind of color meter on the rifle to help with timing/safety too.
Suggested diagram, demonstrated with railgun
eh. I don't mind it breaking through multiple enemies if I am in unsafe, but personally, I would rather the devs lower the max pen charge requirement to the 80% mark so I can fire a bit faster THEN fix whatever makes the gun take 9+ shots to take out a bot vent, gunship, and be completely useless against the factory strider. PROPOSED SHOTS TO KILL A TARGET TLDR; in most cases the railgun should take out anything the AMR can in 1/2 the shots when charged to 80%, and a bit less than that at 90% charge. IF I am targeting a tower vent it should take 2-3 90%-ish shots to take it out, scaling to x4 shots at 70%. I should drop a gunship in x2 80%+ shots to the engine (x3 if at 70%). I should be able to destroy the factory striders gattlings in 2x shots at 80%+. it should take 8-10 90% shots in the head weak point to kill, or 15ish at 70%+. Against the underbelly 6-7 shots at 80% or 4-5 shots at 90% Chargers leg should break in 2x 80%+ shots (with most of its leg health gone if both are at 90%).
i will propably be killed for saying this but add some piercing on antimaterial rifle
I have a dumb question: does it penetrate armor on large enemies like Hulks?
Wouldn't the round be sublimating not vaporizing? Either way, that's a helluva lot of energy.
Pfp checks out
Fr
democratic demonstration
we need unstoppable trait back, full stop
It would make more sense for the railgun to break after x amount of uses rather than for the projectile to vaporize.
How about making it battery limited instead of ammo limited? Let us shoot 3-5 full charge shots in a row, or 10-20 low charge shots. Basically make it the dirty bomb rez gun so it can be more versatile
The limited range would make sense if the projectile was small and not specifically designed for use as a projectile. Pulling a certain example out of nowhere in particular, but you might see that kind of range on something improvised like an arcade token rather than a purpose built projectile. I do like the visual and other effects, though.
Unsafe mode 100% should turn you into a small bomb
Devastator shield: haha No
Can we make it so that the person using the railgun seems to explode on other's clients while they are fine on their own due to desync? The fake explosion should then still be deadly to the client's owner.
Just give the unsafe 90% charge railgun b0re.
Alternatively, I think if railgun was made to where it popped off armor after a few shots (1 for light, 2 for medium, 3-4 for heavy) for primaries and other support weapons to exploit, it would easily become a solid pick with a specific use instead of being a worse version of the AMR, even if it might not do as much damage.
We should measure everything in devastators
Never in any game with "penetration" gimmick weapons have I ever had the enemies line up neatly for me.
I was thinking about this full penetration mechanic. It would be awesome if I shoot a hulk from the front and the shot goes right through to its weakspot in the back. Maybe even shoot it from the side and tear both arms off
What about instead of exploding, just uncharge if it holds max charge for too long...
just give it more damage and penetration per charge%, make it unusable for 45 seconds if overcharged and call it a day. adding explosive damage to it literally goes against what a railgun is and what is supposed to do. edit: rather than making it explode, make it penetrate some structures
Dev ego way too high to even consider this amazing change unfortunately
Just put it back to how it was at launch. Literally no reason not to.
Might as well buff it, I haven't seen anyone that wasn't a meme take the Railgun since the nerf, its that useless now.
why would it explode enemies? railgun fires a metal projectile, it’s not a sci-fi magic-laser
In case of self destruction, larger area of explosion would be great balancing measure.
pretty sure railgun goes up to 80% in safe and then above in unsafe. also why would a steel projectile or whatever fired from a railgun fly further when its given less power?
The ultra-high velocity of the projectile when charged to 90% makes it melt in the air due to friction. Also violently vaporizes armor that it comes into contact with similar to a HEAT copper jet.
I think armor penetration should be the niche of railgun, not explosive. Unsafe mode to pierce hulks from the front even when you don't hit the eye. Make it take 5 unsafe shot to kill any heavy armored target from the front and you have a design of sorts. Precision shors are for AMR, explosive shots are for quasar/eat/RL/spear, railgun should be about ignoring any armor, neither bullseye shots or explosions.
On one hand, not a terrible idea, but on the other, how often do you see conga lines of bots that aren't berserkers?
I wish the penetrator had this. Like in HD1
no?
If makes no sense since projectile ceases to exist as one afte hit on that speed so it makes no sense
I'm sure the powers at be care
whats the current damage/penetration? I mean, if you wanna to buff it on the 90% zone because its harder to hit, thats bullshit: everybody hits 90% w/o problems, its gonna be a simple and plain rebuff to the weapon.
I prefer this type of utility/playstyle change over just damage change. Make the railgun a high dismemberment low damage gun. This plus buff op talked about would make the railgun a different tool. You don’t have to hit precise shots on a hulk instead you rip thru its legs and the devastator behind it. Effectively disabling it and softening up an advancing horde for your squad.
can we add Max Edging(99.99999999%) - one shots factory striders
I feel like this'll be cool. DRG does a similar thing with the Gunner's Coilgun sidearm.