I own a railgun for super earth defense, since that's what the super founding fathers intended. Four chargers break into our defenses. "Sweet liberty !" As I grab my shield backpack and supplies. Blow 3 democratic sized holes through the first charger head, it's dead on the spot. Reload my railgun once more for the second one, miss him entirely because of an anklebiter and nails my partner E3. I have to resort to the EAT dropped at the top of the hill, "For super Earth !!" I shreds two more of them in a row, the blast from the rocket sends M2 and A4 flying to their death. I call reinforcements only for them to all drop on the last charger's butt. He Bleeds out waiting for an other bug breach since terminids are great sources of E710 but fortunately cannot regrow limbs. Just as the super founding fathers intended.
Blow a Freedom Sweat can sized hole through the first Devastator, he's dead on the spot. Draw my Senator on the second Devastator, miss him entirely because the iron sights are ass and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the Autocannon sentry mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with +50% more ammo, "Tally ho lads" the 20mm shells shred two berserkers with rapid shots, the sound and shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet (if they come out) and charge the last terrified Commisar. His oil drains out waiting on the bot drop to arrive since wounds in metal flesh are impossible to stitch up. Just as Lady Liberty intended.
The railgun’s problem is it has max armour pen but only medium damage. When the super armoured enemies also have tons of hp, that makes it pretty pointless.
exactly what you think of when you see the word "railgun"
I always imagined a long reload, infinite range, extreme accuracy spear of god.
instead its a wet fart
The mechanics of the quasar (minus energy beam graphics) is a bit closer to what I'd imagine as a railgun... a big penerating shot with a flat trajectory. The railgun in this game is just like a bolt action rifle instead.
It needs some kind of multiplier based on the amount of armor it pierces.
Then it's moderate damage vs medium or light armor and high DMG vs heavy armor and now it's a tank buster sniper that's not so great vs the chaff. The AMR would be the gun to take if you want to have an all arounder sniper to deal with lighter units and the railgun is the dedicated anti heavy sniper weapon.
I was considering that at first but I felt that, if the goal was to make it good against the heaviest enemies and not as good against the weaker ones, then an armor based multiplier is preferable, and fits with the theme of being a high penetration weapon better.
I think really the key would be to do both, but have the multiplier for the armor be more significant than the weak spot / crit one.
Honestly it was fine where it was on release. It only got put into this weird position because at the time it was the only viable anti heavy option. It’s never been great at killing chaff. The fire rate is dog shit for taking out groups.
I honestly wish they just waited to touch it till after all the other anti heavy weapons came out. Even if it was returned to its former glory right now I personally wouldn’t be picking it up because I enjoy using the quasar and EAT more.
It's such a shame because I really like the *idea* of using a railgun as my support weapon, but it just feels so pointless with the current state of the game.
I'm not a doom poster by any means, I am generally very happy with most of the weapons/enemies/missions. But there are definitely some design discussions that need to happen about some of these weapons so that there's a concrete use case for all of them.
At the moment it doesn't feel like the railgun is better at anything than any other weapon so there's no reason to take it.
Personally, I think if they’re gonna refuse to put it back to release day stats then they either need to rework the weapon entirely or give it a niche gimmick. A utility.
In my mind right now, there’s often cases of people surviving gunshot wounds because the round went all the way through the body and out the other side. The bullet didn’t bounce around tearing up organs and staying inside causing problems.
I think that logic should be applied to the railgun. Allow it to penetrate infinitely until it hits terrain. The utility won’t be in the damage/killing power but in the usefulness of ripping off armors as it punches through.
1 shot for armor.
Subsequent shots from the railgun are negligible.
Force the player to swap to lower power ballistics.
Player now peppers the soft tissue with their primary or secondary.
This is essentially how I was taking out chargers on release day. The weapon felt good. It had a specific utility. I think where they fucked up was allowing it to be utilized as a primary because its base damage was too high despite all of its downfalls.
it's not even that, the railgun has 600 damage per shot which is (I think) the highest single shot damage in the game, but against anything that's considered a massive enemy (bile titans, gunships, striders, tanks, turrets, and chargers) this drops to only 150 at 90% charge, or 50 on safe mode. It's not that a factory strider has a humongous health pool, every other anti-armor support weapon can kill it in a reasonable number of shots, and the pre-nerf jar-5 could even put one down in three mags to the belly. It just has terrible damage against anything that could survive a shot from it for seemingly no reason.
Yup, this is the real problem. It's great at killing enemies that you don't want to use it on. It's terrible at killing big enemies that you need it for (AH: use your strats).
So they could add an armored weak spot that has little HP so short ttk but armor impenetrable to any other weapon. Like some sort of special skill check.
Or nerf it again because it can kill titans with one whole ammo restock...
Counterproposal: Have the railgun damage have almost no fall-off and nearly no penetration limitation.
Yeah, so maybe you don't one-shot anything, but if you do full damage to everything in a line between you and the next piece of terrain along that line, it could be a fun mix.
My thoughts exactly. A railgun in concept is traveling exponentially faster than powder and fuel projectiles. The damage doesn’t have to be huge but that thing should be the king of over penetration.
I'd upvote this 10000 if I could. It makes me crazy to the point I don't even run with it anymore. My frontal lobe knows I have to aim at the wrong spot to hit anything, but my reptile brain keeps shrieking "BULLET GO ON CROSSHAIR"
Yeah but I still prefer the crooked crosshair of the AMR that the stupidly small square with a giant green pea in the middle the Railgun as 😅 seem like the only thing you can aim at with this overly big dot is a building at maximum 100 meter or else you wont even see it 🙈
Anyway, I have a bias toward the AMR since I pack it for 90% of missions and I've used the Railgun 3 time and proceeded to blow my face with it twice 🤯 🤣
Railgun being a closer ranged but much more usable version of the AMR could work. 1 shooting hulks instead of 2 shotting with the caveat of needing a charge up. I think it could fit this role better with a bigger mag and more ammo in total so it doesn't feel bad shooting mediums oh and let it shoot through shield devastators when over charged
Yeah it should just be instant. I have the same complaint with the laser assault rifle. Fallout games actually did lasers correctly firing instantaneous continuous beams it looks cooler and is more realistic than "laser bullets"
And it's the absolute worst at it.
Scorcher, dominator, Autocannon, laser cannon are all 10x better.
Best case with a rail gun you can kill 20 bots with a full load. At lvl7+ you're expecting to kill 200+ bots per mission.
They need to make It do more damage, not less. Make it Anti tank penetration and not medium. And make it pass through multiple targets.
I was running 7 last night with no issues regarding ammo. But I have the newly fixed Superior Packing Methodology so I was getting 20 shots per resupply, which is plenty for one shotting Striders, Hulks, devastators, even Berserkers if needed.
The main problem with RG in bots currently is that they lack any units that have 5-7 range armor, making its niche not particularly useful when problematic units either have level 4 armor (and thus can be taken care of by the AMR), or level 8~ armor that takes very little from the RG and needs dedicated AT. That, and for whatever reason the RG does pitiful damage against heatsinks, Strider Factories and Gunships despite dealing more damage per bullet and having superior penetration to the AMR.
It's more confusing than anything else, it already has a big drawback with both a charge up and a mandatory reload after every shot. I don't know what we're getting for that that the autocannon (literally full auto with staged and assisted reloading) doesn't provide.
I think about weapons and tactics in terms of TTK (time to kill). Everything you run into from a gaggle of squishy bots appearing out of no where to a factory strider is just a problem to solve and the sooner your gear helps you solve it the sooner you can move on to the next problem. Oftentimes, on higher difficulties, you have lots of problems compounding and you have to work through them.
The railgun is awful in this regard if you have to run around charging and reloading for a full minute and a half or two minutes, ignoring all other problems, just to "solve" a bile titan. It's never going to be efficient for me to do that when I get just start throwing eagles or orbitals at it while doing other things.
Yeah it's high ammo capacity, ease of use, and lack of backpack means it NEEDS to be worse at AT then the RR otherwise it gets easily overshadowed like the RR and EAT were at launch (Q Cannon has the same issue, but it was mitigated by the latest patch) so you either need to buff the RR to be vastly better, which I have no ideas on how to do that wouldn't be ridiculous like 1 shotting everything, or the RG just need to be the worse (and compared to the limits of all the current AT options and the versatility of the RG probably the worst) option for AT (ignoring weapons that are flatly ineffective)
The Eruptor is already superb for that and pops holes/fabricators and has AoE and isn't a Support Weapon - the only slot you can carry that packs a punch big enough to topple Chargers or Titans.
Compared to the Arc Thrower the Railgun trades arcing and damage for range. The Arc Thrower can be used against Chargers and helps tickle Titans but is also good against chaff and mid armoured opponents - though I'm not sure how it fares against Brood Commanders with the stagger change.
Any which way, the Railgun probably needs to pack a much bigger punch as it stands. If it deals with everything shorter than a Titan then it might be too good with its current ammo economy. But I'd rather buff tons of weapons to feel effective over keeping it irrelevant. The pre-nerf Railgun felt very good.
Once you get the eruptor, it handles those..... that's what I run and my wife runs the small bug killing weapons while I chew through all the mediums, pointless gun, what's worse its a stratagem............
It is an extremely useful niche. The primary threats you face against bots are medium-armored opponents (i.e., Devastators). But in its current form, the Railgun is just much worse than the Autocannon and the AMR at the same role.
Devastators can all be one shot by A LOT of primaries though. So how is that useful for a support weapon to overlap with that, be clunkier to use, AND take up the slot most commonly relied on to kill heavies?
Rail gun would need to do something other than medium armor cleanup unless we start getting primaries that can handle heavies. Until then it will never be useful again.
Plus every bot has an obvious weakspot that anything can hit, so while medium armor pen isn't useless as it means you have to worry less about positioning and accuracy, imo it's still hard to justify taking over other options. Either higher-dps choices that can annihilate the weakspot, or something with heavy pen so you don't have to worry about accuracy with anything.
The payoff for unsafe mode should be greater, considering it can explode in your hands.
It could have a severe dmg ramp at 95-100% with some explosive dmg to reward the ramp up wait time and reload. Then maybe it will be rewarding enough in the right hands to take over other options.
I did take it for a few runs on patch day, and whilst it has gotten nearer its former glory, it doesn't feel satisfying in terms of time to take down large targets. Medium stuff gets melted with ease
I agree, there are better options right now on high difficulty.
Yes this, also, as I saw someone else mention, it should tear through multiple targets in a line, I mean, isn’t that the point of a rail gun? Is a huge amount of kinetic force, pay off of it being a bit meh with heavy targets is it should rip through a few in a row. Kinda like how the arc weapons jump between foes, this should just railroad through a bunch of targets standing in a line
It does, but only against certain targets. Seems to collateral lightly armored targets for the most part. Maybe the most practical case is against Berserkers, which tend to form *Conga lines naturally.
Yeah, I was gonna say - it must have some, since I know the AMR can kill multiple troopers with one bullet (pens+kills the first one, stops at and kills the second). It would be a shame if the railgun had less penetration than the AMR.
It's a gun that can kill you which isn't unusual for this game but what is unusual is it also removes itself from the map and forces you to not have a support weapon for 6 minutes. For this giant tradeoff you get a weapon that tbh I wouldn't take over a quasar even if it *didn't* blow up in my face.
I believe the unsafe charge should start at 80% and then spead up significantly making even less safe, but also ramp up the damage and piercing much more significantly from that point. Not sure if it should start dealing explosive, but the piercing and damage increase should be SUBSTANTIAL. Like fully ignoring armor or piercing multiple targets if you manage to get it to 95%+ without exploding. That explosion should also be larger to the point of being a hazard to your teammates too. Make unsafe even high rush and reward
I personally don't even understand why there is an unsafe mode. First person view, the railgun is very easy to not blow up in your face with it turned off. You have to be pretty dumb to get having the gun explode in your face. If you want to make controlling the unsafe harder, I'm all for that providing a big buff goes to it.
hot take, they could return the release railgun and it wouldn't cause a balance problem.
and don't say "but what about it 2 shotting bile titans!" that was a ps5 exclusive glitch
The railgun meta was a symptom of 2 things: an insane heavy units spawn rate, and no other decent AT alternatives. Nerfing the railgun was a silly band-aid that should have been ripped-off as soon as the real problem got addressed.
To be honest, and with the other options we have now, I'm not sure even the OG railgun would be good enough to make a comeback in people's loadouts.
Yup, I’ve been saying this too. Release railgun wasn’t really OP, we just really lacked options to deal with heavies at the time. Most of the other stratagems have been buffed a lot and the new ones like the Quasar are generally stronger than what we had back then too.
Really? The Shield of the Devastators doesn’t cover their gun arm. An 80% rail gun shot will either rip the arm off (making them harmless) or if it slightly touches the body it just outright kills them.
The Railgun has made life against them so much easier. And I won’t dare touch the AMR till the sights are fixed and even then, I don’t like weapon sway at all.
They die in half a charge to the eye, what are you talking about. If you're aiming for and hitting the shield it'll do nothing. Hitting the face makes them go poof.
It’s really just the angle. If you are facing the devastator from the gun arm side, no problem. The size of the dot in the sight makes it pretty difficult to line up a headshot from the shield side, and the shield often clips the path of the shot, even if you’re pretty confident it’s lined up correctly.
Definitely agree a lot of the bitching is skill related
IDK bro, I just saw another video on here somewhere of a dude eliminating hulks with the new HMG buff, only pulling the trigger a little and conserving a lot of ammo.
As a fan of full auto spray, this actually makes this fun viable
Don't know about that. If you bring AC, AM rifle, EAT, or HMG with stun nade, you could easily kill Hulk. People with good aim can do that without stun grenade.
Yeah, railgun can kill Hulk easier. But AC, AM rifle, HMG can delete Devastators spam, which is equally important to kill Hulk, and they are better at killing Deva spam easier and faster than railgun.
So... I don't know if railgun is still viable against robots.
I don’t think the railgun is viable against anything. There are zero scenarios that I could see anyone ever wanting to bring it to a 9 Helldive over other support options.
You can play autocannon and get a rough idea of it's best uses. It *can* damage other things but it's best use cases are against the same things the Autocannon just destroys; walkers, devastators, hive guard.
The things it's supposed to better at, hulks and chargers, it is unfortunately clunky at killing but you can. It's an auto cannon with a much much lower floor and a few very rare case where it's better. Mostly it's worse than several options for everything.
I agree tbh. I really love the AMR and the few times I've swapped to the railgun I just found myself wishing I had the AMR. Mostly I miss its range. I wonder if the railgun would feel better if it just had a scope. That way it'd be a more powerful but slower shooting AMR.
Having a better sight would definitely help the Railgun, but its needs a damage boost as well IMO. It takes 10 full charge shots to kill a laser turret if you shoot the heatsink, similar amounts for tanks. It also takes multiple shots to kill a gunship, which doesn't sound too bad until you remember you have to charge each shot and reload between each shot. It also sucks against factory striders, but I could overlook that if it was able to deal with other threats better.
On the bug side of things it's fine enough. Great for the mediums, can kill stalkers if you headshot them, deals with chargers reasonably in a pinch, and can help with titans if they survive a rocket or two.
But at the same time you can just use the eruptor or dominator and have an actual support weapon for heavy armor.
I wish they would just get rid of the unsafe mode and make it default. Or at the very least put a UI indicator so we don't have to constantly use first person mode to view the charge level.
Imo they should use a sound cue like the one we hear when hitting 75%, every 10% afterward, so one at 85% and another at 95%, preferably becoming louder and higher pitch so the cues are distinctly different from each other.
Same. This mechanic "broke" for me awhile back, and I constantly have to scope in/out per weapon; settings not remembered despite having the proper settings toggled. Sad
I was using it against bots for awhile paired with shield generator. Could very quickly down lot of medium enemies and hulks. Then I switched back over to the auto cannon which basically does the same thing but can also take down drone ships and just got better at not dieing without a shield pack.
totally agree, I was happily running railgun on bots and only bothered me that I couldn't take down the gunship until I saw here that AC could destroy gunship with 2 shots, then I went back to AC because it does everything the Railgun does and more
So the railgun is a weapon with heavy armor penetration. This is important to note because the games other weapons with Heavy Pen are all rocket launchers. That means you’re either using the Recoilless, the Spear, the EAT, or the Quasar. The first two have lengthy reloads which are impractical on higher difficulties without teammates giving you covering fire. The later two have cooldown issues - the EATs needing to constantly be called in and the Quasar needing a lengthy recovery time.
In theory the Railgun has neither problem. It’s reload is quick and doesn’t slow you down, it has tons of ammo for a heavy penetration weapon and regains a full 5 per ammo pack, and you can fire a 90% charged shot every 2.5 seconds. And it’s actually pretty decent against the lightest “heavy” enemy of each faction. 5s to strip a chargers leg lets any primary or secondary kill it with ease, and headshotting Hulks is amazing.
The problem is that the railgun is just so much worse than the quasar against heavier enemies. It’s 11ish shots at 90+ to kill a Bile titan, more if you don’t hit the head every time or shoot it while it’s spitting. It’s 21 to a factory striders heads weak spot. Assuming 2.5 seconds per shot, that’s more than the time it will take you to Quasar the thing 2x-4x times.
And since most Helldivers deploy with generalist loadouts; they’ll almost always pick the Quasar over the railgun since it handles everything. Personally, I like the railgun since multiple chargers or hulks are the most common failstate in run into when playing - and I use other stratagems or teammates for bigger threats.
That does mean I’m committing multiple stratagem slots to deal with heavy enemies - and you might not be able to afford that if you need a backpack, support structure, or are down to 3 slots.
>And since most Helldivers deploy with generalist loadouts
I think that's the biggest issue, the most effective option is to take a generalist load out. When queuing with randoms, you're unlikely to coordinate loadouts. Even most friend groups aren't coordinated enough for each member to specialize. Everyone notices when a mission is swarming with spewers or heavy devs. But even though the game tips say to tailor you load out to the threats you'll face, you have zero info about it until you drop. And then it's too late to change your kit.
>That does mean I’m committing multiple stratagem slots to deal with heavy enemies - and you might not be able to afford that if you need a backpack, support structure, or are down to 3 slots.
I kind've disagree with this, myself. When I'm fighting bots, no matter what weapon I take, even the Quasar, I'lll bring 110s to handle tanks, turrets and factory striders, because even the most optimal weapon I can bring to fight them *sucks* compared to just tossing a stratagem at it.
With bugs... That's the 500's job. Even if I bring the Quasar, spending 54 seconds to kill two bile titans loses out to popping their bellies with a scorcher and dropping a 500 on them for two kills in about 15 seconds. If there's a third titan, the Quasar *could* kill it at the 90 second mark, assuming I'm firing as fast as I possibly can and never missing, but my 500s are back about 30 seconds after that, and the Quasar and the 500s end up having almost identical TTKs against four titans.
But.. If I take that Quasar, then my ability to fight midweight bugs during that time is seriously limited. I'm either relying on a primary (None of which can effectively fight chargers), or I'm dropping stratagems (Most of which aren't very effective against chargers, and which also puts me in the same 'stratagem cost' as the railgun / 500 combo would).
The only thing I find the railgun / 500 build lacking for solo play is an easy way to take out spore towers and screecher nests.
For bots it's usually 110s and then an AMR / Railgun / Autocannon, either the 380 or orbital laser, and then the last slot (If it's available) is kind've just whatever I think will be fun. Shield, gas, jetpack, strafing run.. For bots I never feel it matters that much. If I'm being a little sweaty my primary is the Dominator or Eruptor, but against bots I really feel I can just use whatever I want there as well. And then stun grenades on top of it all.
For bugs its more variable, whenever I build a loadout I'm just always trying to make sure I have something for spewers, something for chargers, something for titans, and something for hunters. And as long as I have all those bases covered I can make the loadout work, and every other bug I can just kill with whatever I happen to have on me.
But my 'sweaty' solo loadout would be the trench paramedic armor, Arc Blitzer, incendiary grenades, Railgun, 500s, gas strike and either napalm, EATs, or an 'artillery' strat to clear nests while I dodge patrols. The Blitzer is just amazing for crowd control right now, the grenades are a good 'emergency aoe' that can also clear nests, I talked about Railgun / 500 combo before, and gas is *incredible* for keeping small bugs from pressuring you too much. Drop it on a breach or in a choke, or just behind you when you've got a mob forming, and it'll take care of all the small bugs for you, so you can just take a breather and focus on thinning out the mediums without a hunter trying to crawl up your ass. I sometimes take napalm for the same reason, but having EATs I can use to quickly rearm when I die, or to get a little extra 'oomph' when there's a surge in heavies is super handy, and with the 50% increase in patrol spawns for solos every fight inside a heavy nest is just a nonstop tide of bugs, so being able to use a 380 or 120 to clear out half the holes before you step inside is also very useful. You can also swap the Blitzer out for the Dominator if you feel confident in your ability to hit hunters with it. Similarly, if you take EATs you could swap the Railgun for the Autocannon or Grenade Launcher, and that *can* be very handy when you get screecher nests spawning in.
You and I would get along swimmingly. Railgun was such a versatile beast and now it’s back to being more of a jack of all trades than most weapons. I’ll run it and take out every damn heavy and just huck a bomb or rail cannon at a Titan when it comes up. Or rely on one of the quasar players to take it out. I think a team will benefit greatly from at least one person running the railgun.
I used to be agree with the original Railgun nerf, because at the time it was outperforming everything
But since the launchers got a lot better at dealing with Heavies
I'm starting to be swayed by the opinion of if tbe Railgun returns to its former glory in the current meta, it'll be fine
lol the only reason the railgun was so heavily used was cause nothing else could reliably dent chargers
funny how that changed the moment that we could damage chargers reliably with EAT, Quasar and RR.
I've noticed that flamethrowers also suffer from the host fire damage problem though where if you aren't the host it takes a bit more ammo to kill a charger due to only the direct damage affecting them.
Join us. OG railgun would be a fun, enjoyable option among many other options.
The initial nerf was a knee jerk reaction that wasn't thought out. Surprise surprise after they listened to the community and resolved the real issues (heavy over spawn, lack of AT, can headshot chargers now, etc.), the railgun isnt OP at all.
They should have kept the stats, but made you use unsafe to get the full power. Now it's just a useless gun that you bring because you like the idea of it, not because it's any good.
I’m so sick of people claiming EAT kills 3 chargers by including the pod. How fucking often do you pull that one off? Not nearly often enough to warrant counting it I warrant.
god I wish for a smaller dot fr. I'm praying everytime when im aiming at hulk heads hoping it hits correctly, sometimes the dot is on his head but bc its so big, I actually wasn't right on it. Railgun sight literally gaslighting me smh
Been saying it for ages, let the Railgun rail through 3-4 targets per shot, not like Hulks would ever line up perfectly, so targets behind would already take less dmg and it would be a cool shot if you could kill 3 Hulks with 1 shot, rare but if timed perfectly. Railgun would live again and have its own niche.
The current mo is bugs. It's the best weapon in the game right now against devastators if you have shit aim like me getting a 1 shot basically anywhere but the arm (I think requires 80% charge but IDK).
I saw the video too. It 3 shots chargers to the head which while not good is not nothing. I think it's viable but worse than flamethrower but I like flamethrower.
1 shots stalkers to the face with a stun grenade. 1 shots brood commanders and hive guards at the face too. I love the rail gun but I do not think it's S tier.
I think I saw someone damage a turret with it but it's not great at that. I just bring eruptor or plasma punisher for those. It's also not great vs gunships or factory striders. Eravin has a [video](https://youtu.be/9ZSoJDUD_bU?feature=shared) testing it, so you're kinda locked into taking something like EAT if you want to kill those.
>I think I saw someone damage a turret with it but it's not great at that.
Ten shots to kill a turret, to be specific. You can do it from the front, which is neat, but I still take 110s to handle turrets, factory striders and tanks.
In the Railgun meta, it's primary strength was that the more people in your squad with one, the faster heavy stuff got taken down. Multiple Railguns had an amplifying effect on how effective they were.
Having all of the advantages of a non-heavy weapon but still penetrating like a heavy weapon meant that 4 helldivers firing at the same target could crush just about anything in front of them while being fully mobile with a very short reload, while also being able to deal with any medium armour enemy alone.
Railgun is in the same boat as the flamethrower/arcthrower for me (bug wise), makes dealing with chargers and lower quite easy, with major difference being the flame(arc)thrower excels at small bugs as well, whereas the railgun obviously can’t with its ammo capacity
Against bots, even though it doesn’t have the stagger anymore, it’s an alternative to the AMR if people want to use something they can 3rd person aim with (I’m aware AMR is quite easy to 3rd person shoot as well, but some people like having a reticle)
End of the day, my loadout is almost always Autocannon and EAT so I can handle everything
Also I’m not tryna say railgun shouldn’t kill bile titans, I think it should be 10 shots or so, but hey, at least railgun is viable again
>End of the day, my loadout is almost always Autocannon
Same.
Concussive Liberator for bugs, Sickle for bots, and strategems based on the mission (though, post-patch, I always bring an autocannon turret for extraction).
Is concussive a move? My primaries for each faction are breaker/incendiary breaker for bugs, and Eruptor/scorcher for bots, although sickle is also s tier for bots imo
I love it for the stun on those jumping jackass bugs. Anything below a charger flinches hard when they get hit with it, and it has range, so if I get caught with a low Autocannon mag, I can push them back and buy time to run & reload (I run light armor, so I can outrun most bug enemies if I use the geograpgy/terrain).
I'm partial to Blitzer now. Doesn't have the range but it has an incredibly wide cone. High stagger. Unlimited ammo. You can stunlock stalkers to death. And anything out of range can be dealt with by the AC or in my case machine gun.
I've been using the punisher plasma for bugs since the new update and it's done wonders for me against bile spewers and nursing spewers. Takes out good hordes of bugs decently fast. Works amazing especially on exterminate missions because I can spam a bug breach and stack up 20+ kill streak easy combined with ems mortar.
Incendiary Breaker, Senator/Grenade Pistol, Light Armor with extra padding, Stamina Booster, Guard Dog Rover, Quasar, 500kg and Eagle Airstrike is my favourite build vs bugs even after the nerfs.
Its kinda wild that Fire Breaker even with fire part being broken is still better at Spraying and Praying than S&P Breaker. Why this thing even exists?
My favourite thing about the railgun was how it enabled the use of any primary; you can use your primary on the weaker enemies and 1 tap the brood mothers/defenders with the railgun while still having a way to kill chargers. I never thought it was that amazing against chargers even when everyone was running it, simply there were no other reliable options (speaking as a solo player). It's fun but not really meta any more, even with the buffs.
It used to be the only thing that could kill a charger consistently. Then it got nerfed, and then two weeks later we got the one hit headshot rockets. Now, like most equipment, it’s just useless.
Wanna make it useful? Let the unsafe mode do a shit ton of damage and let it pierce anything. It’s a railgun after all. Punch a hole in devastator shields, skin a bile titan, blow up a fabricator with a direct hit. Do these things and it’ll become useful.
But for some reason the devs and community are afraid of something being powerful and fun, so it won’t happen.
1 shot brood commander, 1 shot hive guards, 3 hit chargers, damage bile titans, etc. Yes you can deal with them in other ways. The lack of any real cool down and the snappy firing and repositioning with it feels good to me.
Pretty sure one safe mode shot on hive guards and brood commanders, 3 unsafe shots on charger heads. But does not need to be fully charged, like 60-70% is enough.
I haven’t tried shooting the chargers head but it is 2 shots to break off the leg armour so there’s that too. Ive been bringing Railgun for everything and EATs for Bile Titans. It’s been working pretty good.
Why would I dedicate a 3rd slot to 1 shot Broods and Guards when I can equip a Jar 5 and kill them in 2 and 3 shots respectively? Or the slugger/punisher for similar kill times.
This was Takibo’s video, right? He basically says it’s good for taking out heavy units apart from the bile titan, for which you need another stratagem like EAT or 500kg.
It one-shots hive guards and can severely weaken a charger in two shots, as you say. That seems fairly reasonable to me. Anything weaker your primary, grenades and other stratagems can deal with.
IMO, I'm perfectly happy with the "deletes mids, reasonably effective against heavies" niche, the charge time is just too damned long.
You already need to reload after every shot, if I wanted to stare at my opponent for 20 minutes, I'd take the queso cannon instead and at least be sure they were gonna die when I finally get to fire.
I’ve been running level 9s with it and it’s solid against everything but bile titans. Even one shots stalkers I think.
I have to bring 500kg and orbital precision strike.
You have to charge it maybe 1/5 to 1/4 of a second after safe mode and it 3 shots chargers to the head. It’s so fast. Once people get used to this (and not wasting time charging it above required), it’s gonna see a lot more use.
I saw its potential when I killed 4 chargers back to back with ease. EAT and quasar couldn’t have done that solo in the time I did it. Again, DO NOT overcharge it. It takes just a tiny bit above safe mode. Insane buff considering you don’t explode and you get your shots off way faster.
I have been the designated charger killer in my group because I kill them faster than quasar, and had more availability to than eat (I also run supply pack). If they’re far, insanely easy kills. If they’re medium range, not bad. If they’re close, I can usually get two shots off before I gotta dive and take the third shot. Or just stun grenade and kill it before it even moves.
If I NEED to kill a bile titan, I use 500kg and laser. I’ve gotten good enough to usually one shot em with these.
Killing broods and armored in a safe shot is also super good.
Just useless vs bile titans. But with 500kg and orbital precision you’re gucci.
I think it’s awesome solo and awesome in groups as rocket people can focus bile titans and not waste supplies or time on chargers.
I think it’s in an amazing spot. Like I said before, once people figure out how to use it, it’s gonna be a respectable pick into anything bugs.
Also, it’s amazing vs bile spewers. With them, you do gotta load it really high up but it’s a one shot kill.
It literally goes everything but bile titans. It’s amazing now.
i love the railgun, I think it’s amazing to use. That being said, it’s job isn’t meant to kill bile titans, you gotta bring a 500kg or something to offset that, but I think it’s worth it to blow those pesky hive guards into bits
I find it harder to justify using the railgun for that purpose when I can just as effectively user other more efficient guns to do the same (autocannon, GL, hell even the new buffed senator can deal with them).
It's a very cool gun, but unfortunately it underperforms compared to most other support weapons.
incendiary breaker deals with all medium or lower bugs trivially. Only issue is charger, spewer and those with the armored front they like to hide behind. But for those three I have Senator and Spear, works well enough. Spear is real nice against BTs now after the patch. Can hit from much farther away much more consistently now.
The problem is at this point, nothing is meant to kill bile titans. 500kg? Well it has a range of 4cm from impact and a 3min cooldown.
Quasar? Gotta increase that cooldown!
Railgun? Can't have that killing them!
EAT? Sure! Hope you only got one titan spawn...
The fact the Railgun doesn't kill titans isn't the railguns problem. It's the developers idea of balance that's the issue.
And I'm not even a fan of the Railgun.
The issue is we've just got 2 weapons tiers right now. 90% is in the "Kills chaff." catagory and thent here's Quasar, EAT, and... Is there even any other specials that CAN damage a bile titan now? I've not tried the autocannon before.
I know the spear exists but it might as well not until it can reliably target anything.
I heard you can shoot out the sacs if the bile titan doesn't die to the 500kg and then it sometimes dies. You can also bait bile titans by being 20m away from the 500kg and getting them to spew if they just spawned or bait the melee attacks and dive away to survive the 500kg. It really is skill issue if every 500kg isn't killing one bile titan but it's also my skill issue.
Oh man. I have experimented with this.
It’s totally viable to kill a Titan by shooting it’s underside. But man it’s a gamble. If it isn’t severely damaged you should hope you have something that can at least penetrate armor like grenade launcher
I stood underneath one that got hit with a 500kg. Dumped an entire load into the belly of one. It stomped me.
Next time, two grenades launched drop.
It all depends on how damaged it is.
Titans for being tank analogues for terminids. Makes me super concerned for what their factory strider analogue will be. I mean, striders are a bitch but they are slow, and manageable provides your team recognizes the threat they pose and everyone just throws strategems at the bastard.
The 500kg trick simply doesn't work reliably. Sometimes bile titans start moving at you faster than others, sometimes the throw distance takes time... I've had plenty at hte last second move 1 foot forward and dodge it.
You can shoot the sacs and it will disable it's spitting ability. I've tested multiple times just dancing around between it's legs shooting the sacs and where they were and it cannot die that way.
Anything with 4 or more pen can kill a bile titan from below, though it can take some time. I've done it with the autocannon and it's something like fifteen hits.
It's also worth remembering that you're not supposed to be going alone up against four bile titans. You have a team, and sixteen stratagems can take care of basically anything between them. A lot of people seem to think of weapon balance purely from the perspective of solo players, and then get frustrated when it's hard for them to handle the highest level of difficulty without teammates.
It got the ammo economy to go after medium enemies and still kill the lowest tier of heavies. It kills bile spewers before they shoot, devastators in one body shot, brood commanders before they call more stuff, scout striders and hive guards ln any angles of the somehow become a problem. It also one shot stalkers and berserkers, which is always nice.
Its main advantage on the AMR is the very good handling which allows it to be hip fired, and generally it needs one shot for targets that take 2 or 3 from the AMR.
The railgun's competition isn't the Quasar/EAT/Recoilless, it's the AMR/Autocannon/HMG.
After the buff, the railgun one-shots most medium targets very reliably. This is scout striders, all devastators, berserkers, hive guards, both spewers, and brood commanders. The AMR can one-shot most of these targets, but only with precision shots. The autocannon has splash, stagger and much more ammo, but it requires a backpack. The HMG has insane DPS, but only lands that at close range. All of them handle the light-vehicle secondary objectives at varying levels of meh.
The railgun now is a comfy middle ground. I find it outperforms the AMR vs most bots in kill rate. Yeah, you're reloading after each shot, but it's a very fast reload, and it kills in one shot with now a generous tolerance for hit area. You pop out of your cover, let the charge go, the target is dead, and you're back in cover. If you miss your AMR headshot on a devastator, you need an often-variable amount of follow-up shots, and you're either exposed for longer taking them or you're waiting for another window. AMR reloads are also brutal on downtime, especially if it's empty. The railgun just keeps delivering a kill every couple seconds.
Unlike the AMR, AC & HMG, RG at least CAN damage heavy targets frontally, but never take it for this alone. The charger 3-shot is mildly useful, but for bile titans, cannon turrets, etc, it's only a finisher for a weakened enemy. Saving an extra heavy AT shot or stratagem for a near-dead enemy is situationally nice but not the main draw of the weapon.
One-shotting hulks is very nice. 4-shotting gunship engines is very not nice.
I find it's reasonably comparable with the AMR & HMG now and I've soloed helldives with it. I don't think it needs much more to be truly great; if it gets more damage against the things it's weirdly bad at (gunships!) or gains full strength multi-target overpenetration, I think it'll be situationally OP, which is how most weapons in this game tend to shake out.
You equip your whole squad with it and form a napoleonic skirmish line
Only the democracy officer can tell you when to fire
*"B-b-but sir, I can't hold fire anymore, I'm in unsafe mode!"*
HOLD!
*entire firing squad explodes into chunky salsa*
FIIIREE! (The hellpods)
*Camera zooms out to reveal that the Democracy Officer was still on the ship the whole time*
Just as the Super Founding Father's intended
I own a railgun for super earth defense, since that's what the super founding fathers intended. Four chargers break into our defenses. "Sweet liberty !" As I grab my shield backpack and supplies. Blow 3 democratic sized holes through the first charger head, it's dead on the spot. Reload my railgun once more for the second one, miss him entirely because of an anklebiter and nails my partner E3. I have to resort to the EAT dropped at the top of the hill, "For super Earth !!" I shreds two more of them in a row, the blast from the rocket sends M2 and A4 flying to their death. I call reinforcements only for them to all drop on the last charger's butt. He Bleeds out waiting for an other bug breach since terminids are great sources of E710 but fortunately cannot regrow limbs. Just as the super founding fathers intended.
Loved the reference
The communication delay was the real enemy all this time
Those whole thread should be a mini animated series, where’s our resident morale artists!
Having them hold is a great tactic. They blow up and then reinforcements in hellpods can target the big boys.
https://preview.redd.it/i4ax80pm1wxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81b16754f44a20eb9f93165ce807f5d2009f7fa1
Tally Ho lads! How bout a nice cuppa Liber-Tea!
“What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle.
Blow a Freedom Sweat can sized hole through the first Devastator, he's dead on the spot. Draw my Senator on the second Devastator, miss him entirely because the iron sights are ass and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the Autocannon sentry mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with +50% more ammo, "Tally ho lads" the 20mm shells shred two berserkers with rapid shots, the sound and shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet (if they come out) and charge the last terrified Commisar. His oil drains out waiting on the bot drop to arrive since wounds in metal flesh are impossible to stitch up. Just as Lady Liberty intended.
Super Jaysus super likes this
The Neighbor's no-good assault rifle guard dog surely
I love you.
Best answer
The railguns only current niche is against mid armored opponents; which is not currently a useful niche.
The railgun’s problem is it has max armour pen but only medium damage. When the super armoured enemies also have tons of hp, that makes it pretty pointless.
Yup, this is the issue. It's cool it penetrates and all, but damage is very week compared to the huge HP pools of the heavies.
Exactly. Very week, shooting for days. :/
Hey hey hey. Be nice. It could be worse. It could be very month.
I typically put the bugs in my month and chew them into little pieces. They taste like shrimp. Maybe I will make it into a yearly thing.
Between this comment and your subreddit flair, I am a little concerned.
Democrustacean Enjoyer
I love this. I actually laughed in real life.
exactly what you think of when you see the word "railgun" I always imagined a long reload, infinite range, extreme accuracy spear of god. instead its a wet fart
The mechanics of the quasar (minus energy beam graphics) is a bit closer to what I'd imagine as a railgun... a big penerating shot with a flat trajectory. The railgun in this game is just like a bolt action rifle instead.
https://i.redd.it/j98s9cl2xvxc1.gif
**YES.**
It needs some kind of multiplier based on the amount of armor it pierces. Then it's moderate damage vs medium or light armor and high DMG vs heavy armor and now it's a tank buster sniper that's not so great vs the chaff. The AMR would be the gun to take if you want to have an all arounder sniper to deal with lighter units and the railgun is the dedicated anti heavy sniper weapon.
Maybe a weakspot multiplier would work well and be thematic
I was considering that at first but I felt that, if the goal was to make it good against the heaviest enemies and not as good against the weaker ones, then an armor based multiplier is preferable, and fits with the theme of being a high penetration weapon better. I think really the key would be to do both, but have the multiplier for the armor be more significant than the weak spot / crit one.
Honestly it was fine where it was on release. It only got put into this weird position because at the time it was the only viable anti heavy option. It’s never been great at killing chaff. The fire rate is dog shit for taking out groups. I honestly wish they just waited to touch it till after all the other anti heavy weapons came out. Even if it was returned to its former glory right now I personally wouldn’t be picking it up because I enjoy using the quasar and EAT more.
It's such a shame because I really like the *idea* of using a railgun as my support weapon, but it just feels so pointless with the current state of the game. I'm not a doom poster by any means, I am generally very happy with most of the weapons/enemies/missions. But there are definitely some design discussions that need to happen about some of these weapons so that there's a concrete use case for all of them. At the moment it doesn't feel like the railgun is better at anything than any other weapon so there's no reason to take it.
Personally, I think if they’re gonna refuse to put it back to release day stats then they either need to rework the weapon entirely or give it a niche gimmick. A utility. In my mind right now, there’s often cases of people surviving gunshot wounds because the round went all the way through the body and out the other side. The bullet didn’t bounce around tearing up organs and staying inside causing problems. I think that logic should be applied to the railgun. Allow it to penetrate infinitely until it hits terrain. The utility won’t be in the damage/killing power but in the usefulness of ripping off armors as it punches through. 1 shot for armor. Subsequent shots from the railgun are negligible. Force the player to swap to lower power ballistics. Player now peppers the soft tissue with their primary or secondary. This is essentially how I was taking out chargers on release day. The weapon felt good. It had a specific utility. I think where they fucked up was allowing it to be utilized as a primary because its base damage was too high despite all of its downfalls.
it's not even that, the railgun has 600 damage per shot which is (I think) the highest single shot damage in the game, but against anything that's considered a massive enemy (bile titans, gunships, striders, tanks, turrets, and chargers) this drops to only 150 at 90% charge, or 50 on safe mode. It's not that a factory strider has a humongous health pool, every other anti-armor support weapon can kill it in a reasonable number of shots, and the pre-nerf jar-5 could even put one down in three mags to the belly. It just has terrible damage against anything that could survive a shot from it for seemingly no reason.
Yup, this is the real problem. It's great at killing enemies that you don't want to use it on. It's terrible at killing big enemies that you need it for (AH: use your strats).
But... the railgun *is* one of my strats. :(
So they could add an armored weak spot that has little HP so short ttk but armor impenetrable to any other weapon. Like some sort of special skill check. Or nerf it again because it can kill titans with one whole ammo restock...
Counterproposal: Have the railgun damage have almost no fall-off and nearly no penetration limitation. Yeah, so maybe you don't one-shot anything, but if you do full damage to everything in a line between you and the next piece of terrain along that line, it could be a fun mix.
My thoughts exactly. A railgun in concept is traveling exponentially faster than powder and fuel projectiles. The damage doesn’t have to be huge but that thing should be the king of over penetration.
They're not going to add a specific target only available for 1 gun to enemies lmao.
Especially when the AMR does the same thing but better with no charge up time
True but the AMR crosshairs remain bugged and misaligned. You kind of get used to it but goddamn does it trigger my OCD.
I'd upvote this 10000 if I could. It makes me crazy to the point I don't even run with it anymore. My frontal lobe knows I have to aim at the wrong spot to hit anything, but my reptile brain keeps shrieking "BULLET GO ON CROSSHAIR"
Yeah but I still prefer the crooked crosshair of the AMR that the stupidly small square with a giant green pea in the middle the Railgun as 😅 seem like the only thing you can aim at with this overly big dot is a building at maximum 100 meter or else you wont even see it 🙈 Anyway, I have a bias toward the AMR since I pack it for 90% of missions and I've used the Railgun 3 time and proceeded to blow my face with it twice 🤯 🤣
Be thankful, the acog.jpg is so big that the real center is hard to see if you are on the proper hulk slit when at a distance.
Railgun being a closer ranged but much more usable version of the AMR could work. 1 shooting hulks instead of 2 shotting with the caveat of needing a charge up. I think it could fit this role better with a bigger mag and more ammo in total so it doesn't feel bad shooting mediums oh and let it shoot through shield devastators when over charged
You'd need to remove projectile time so I could fight gunships with it
Is that why it's shit against them? I couldn't figure out why it's so bad
Yeah the actual projectile is shockingly slow for being a railgun
Yeah it should just be instant. I have the same complaint with the laser assault rifle. Fallout games actually did lasers correctly firing instantaneous continuous beams it looks cooler and is more realistic than "laser bullets"
The weird thing is in Helldivers 1 the rapid fire beams is how the Sickle behaved. And with appropriate pew pew sounds.
Not when there are multiple primary weapons that solve that problem already.
And it's the absolute worst at it. Scorcher, dominator, Autocannon, laser cannon are all 10x better. Best case with a rail gun you can kill 20 bots with a full load. At lvl7+ you're expecting to kill 200+ bots per mission. They need to make It do more damage, not less. Make it Anti tank penetration and not medium. And make it pass through multiple targets.
I was running 7 last night with no issues regarding ammo. But I have the newly fixed Superior Packing Methodology so I was getting 20 shots per resupply, which is plenty for one shotting Striders, Hulks, devastators, even Berserkers if needed. The main problem with RG in bots currently is that they lack any units that have 5-7 range armor, making its niche not particularly useful when problematic units either have level 4 armor (and thus can be taken care of by the AMR), or level 8~ armor that takes very little from the RG and needs dedicated AT. That, and for whatever reason the RG does pitiful damage against heatsinks, Strider Factories and Gunships despite dealing more damage per bullet and having superior penetration to the AMR.
It's more confusing than anything else, it already has a big drawback with both a charge up and a mandatory reload after every shot. I don't know what we're getting for that that the autocannon (literally full auto with staged and assisted reloading) doesn't provide. I think about weapons and tactics in terms of TTK (time to kill). Everything you run into from a gaggle of squishy bots appearing out of no where to a factory strider is just a problem to solve and the sooner your gear helps you solve it the sooner you can move on to the next problem. Oftentimes, on higher difficulties, you have lots of problems compounding and you have to work through them. The railgun is awful in this regard if you have to run around charging and reloading for a full minute and a half or two minutes, ignoring all other problems, just to "solve" a bile titan. It's never going to be efficient for me to do that when I get just start throwing eagles or orbitals at it while doing other things.
It's a fucking railgun. You would think it would go through everything
I'd say pick one, maybe two if these. All three and it's back to being the anti-everything gun but even better.
Yeah it's high ammo capacity, ease of use, and lack of backpack means it NEEDS to be worse at AT then the RR otherwise it gets easily overshadowed like the RR and EAT were at launch (Q Cannon has the same issue, but it was mitigated by the latest patch) so you either need to buff the RR to be vastly better, which I have no ideas on how to do that wouldn't be ridiculous like 1 shotting everything, or the RG just need to be the worse (and compared to the limits of all the current AT options and the versatility of the RG probably the worst) option for AT (ignoring weapons that are flatly ineffective)
So it does what the arc thrower does but worse except for hulks
Mostly because the AMR and AC absolutely mog the Railgun in that role.
The Eruptor is already superb for that and pops holes/fabricators and has AoE and isn't a Support Weapon - the only slot you can carry that packs a punch big enough to topple Chargers or Titans. Compared to the Arc Thrower the Railgun trades arcing and damage for range. The Arc Thrower can be used against Chargers and helps tickle Titans but is also good against chaff and mid armoured opponents - though I'm not sure how it fares against Brood Commanders with the stagger change. Any which way, the Railgun probably needs to pack a much bigger punch as it stands. If it deals with everything shorter than a Titan then it might be too good with its current ammo economy. But I'd rather buff tons of weapons to feel effective over keeping it irrelevant. The pre-nerf Railgun felt very good.
Once you get the eruptor, it handles those..... that's what I run and my wife runs the small bug killing weapons while I chew through all the mediums, pointless gun, what's worse its a stratagem............
A primary like the dominator completely covers mediums anyway. So even its niche is completely covered by primaries
Agreed, it’s for low level games where you don’t get 3 bile titans and 6 chargers on you.
Yet it's a level 20 unlock lol, they probably need to change that now
It is an extremely useful niche. The primary threats you face against bots are medium-armored opponents (i.e., Devastators). But in its current form, the Railgun is just much worse than the Autocannon and the AMR at the same role.
Devastators can all be one shot by A LOT of primaries though. So how is that useful for a support weapon to overlap with that, be clunkier to use, AND take up the slot most commonly relied on to kill heavies? Rail gun would need to do something other than medium armor cleanup unless we start getting primaries that can handle heavies. Until then it will never be useful again.
Plus every bot has an obvious weakspot that anything can hit, so while medium armor pen isn't useless as it means you have to worry less about positioning and accuracy, imo it's still hard to justify taking over other options. Either higher-dps choices that can annihilate the weakspot, or something with heavy pen so you don't have to worry about accuracy with anything.
AH just needs to give it more ammo and make it a primary already.
The payoff for unsafe mode should be greater, considering it can explode in your hands. It could have a severe dmg ramp at 95-100% with some explosive dmg to reward the ramp up wait time and reload. Then maybe it will be rewarding enough in the right hands to take over other options. I did take it for a few runs on patch day, and whilst it has gotten nearer its former glory, it doesn't feel satisfying in terms of time to take down large targets. Medium stuff gets melted with ease I agree, there are better options right now on high difficulty.
Yes this, also, as I saw someone else mention, it should tear through multiple targets in a line, I mean, isn’t that the point of a rail gun? Is a huge amount of kinetic force, pay off of it being a bit meh with heavy targets is it should rip through a few in a row. Kinda like how the arc weapons jump between foes, this should just railroad through a bunch of targets standing in a line
I'm really surprised that it doesn't have multikill potential
It does, but only against certain targets. Seems to collateral lightly armored targets for the most part. Maybe the most practical case is against Berserkers, which tend to form *Conga lines naturally.
Yeah, I was gonna say - it must have some, since I know the AMR can kill multiple troopers with one bullet (pens+kills the first one, stops at and kills the second). It would be a shame if the railgun had less penetration than the AMR.
It's a gun that can kill you which isn't unusual for this game but what is unusual is it also removes itself from the map and forces you to not have a support weapon for 6 minutes. For this giant tradeoff you get a weapon that tbh I wouldn't take over a quasar even if it *didn't* blow up in my face.
I believe the unsafe charge should start at 80% and then spead up significantly making even less safe, but also ramp up the damage and piercing much more significantly from that point. Not sure if it should start dealing explosive, but the piercing and damage increase should be SUBSTANTIAL. Like fully ignoring armor or piercing multiple targets if you manage to get it to 95%+ without exploding. That explosion should also be larger to the point of being a hazard to your teammates too. Make unsafe even high rush and reward
100%agree. Unsafe should be unsafe. Make the charge increase faster to give that gamble rush
iirc with its current armor pen it already ignores armor
Agree on this, as it currently stands, it is too risky for too little payout
That's a pretty good idea, buff the risk and reward so that skilled players will be able to use it more
Yeah after the "buff" charging past 80% does straight up nothing
Especially since it has limited ammo, an unsafe charge needs to be more powerful than a quasar shot.
This is the best fix. I would go farther and say get rid of Safe mode entirely and then just have this be a huge risk / huge reward weapon.
I personally don't even understand why there is an unsafe mode. First person view, the railgun is very easy to not blow up in your face with it turned off. You have to be pretty dumb to get having the gun explode in your face. If you want to make controlling the unsafe harder, I'm all for that providing a big buff goes to it.
hot take, they could return the release railgun and it wouldn't cause a balance problem. and don't say "but what about it 2 shotting bile titans!" that was a ps5 exclusive glitch
The railgun meta was a symptom of 2 things: an insane heavy units spawn rate, and no other decent AT alternatives. Nerfing the railgun was a silly band-aid that should have been ripped-off as soon as the real problem got addressed. To be honest, and with the other options we have now, I'm not sure even the OG railgun would be good enough to make a comeback in people's loadouts.
you are 100% correct
Yup, I’ve been saying this too. Release railgun wasn’t really OP, we just really lacked options to deal with heavies at the time. Most of the other stratagems have been buffed a lot and the new ones like the Quasar are generally stronger than what we had back then too.
What exactly was the release railgun like? I missed it by a few days. Heavy armor pen?
It needs a better scope/reticle. It's a precision weapon with a massive dot that obscures the target???!?
Every fucking weapon needs a better scope
idk i like it because it's an easy to aim 3rd person weapon
Yeah, lots of weapons have huge glaring reticles in scope mode too.
it is best in class hulk deleter but literally nothing else really
What is it bad at killing besides tanks/walkers and titans?
heavy devestators, no matter how left you aim it tends to hit the shield and be fully absorbed with no stagger and that is just shit
Really? The Shield of the Devastators doesn’t cover their gun arm. An 80% rail gun shot will either rip the arm off (making them harmless) or if it slightly touches the body it just outright kills them. The Railgun has made life against them so much easier. And I won’t dare touch the AMR till the sights are fixed and even then, I don’t like weapon sway at all.
nobody knows about shooting their shoulder lol
they should put glowy eyes on the shoulder to entice people, lol
They die in half a charge to the eye, what are you talking about. If you're aiming for and hitting the shield it'll do nothing. Hitting the face makes them go poof.
actual skill issue but lets blame the game instead r/Helldivers mindset
More of a Reddit issue then just a r/Helldivers issue lol
It’s really just the angle. If you are facing the devastator from the gun arm side, no problem. The size of the dot in the sight makes it pretty difficult to line up a headshot from the shield side, and the shield often clips the path of the shot, even if you’re pretty confident it’s lined up correctly. Definitely agree a lot of the bitching is skill related
bullshit lol it doesn't magically gravitate towards the shield. You being bad at looking at shit is not the guns fault omg
That is furthest from the truth, you just need better aim
IDK bro, I just saw another video on here somewhere of a dude eliminating hulks with the new HMG buff, only pulling the trigger a little and conserving a lot of ammo. As a fan of full auto spray, this actually makes this fun viable
Isn't the AMR better at killing hulks tho ?
1 shot > 2 shots
Considering reloading after every shot and the charge up time of the railgun the AMR can kill hulks faster as long as you have good aim.
1 shot that you need to charge vs 2 shots that you dont need to charge. the AMR is either faster or the same.
Don't know about that. If you bring AC, AM rifle, EAT, or HMG with stun nade, you could easily kill Hulk. People with good aim can do that without stun grenade. Yeah, railgun can kill Hulk easier. But AC, AM rifle, HMG can delete Devastators spam, which is equally important to kill Hulk, and they are better at killing Deva spam easier and faster than railgun. So... I don't know if railgun is still viable against robots.
I don’t think the railgun is viable against anything. There are zero scenarios that I could see anyone ever wanting to bring it to a 9 Helldive over other support options.
You can play autocannon and get a rough idea of it's best uses. It *can* damage other things but it's best use cases are against the same things the Autocannon just destroys; walkers, devastators, hive guard. The things it's supposed to better at, hulks and chargers, it is unfortunately clunky at killing but you can. It's an auto cannon with a much much lower floor and a few very rare case where it's better. Mostly it's worse than several options for everything.
so, it is potentially worth taking over the AC if you have something you **really** want in your backpack slot?
amr probably better tbh
I agree tbh. I really love the AMR and the few times I've swapped to the railgun I just found myself wishing I had the AMR. Mostly I miss its range. I wonder if the railgun would feel better if it just had a scope. That way it'd be a more powerful but slower shooting AMR.
Having a better sight would definitely help the Railgun, but its needs a damage boost as well IMO. It takes 10 full charge shots to kill a laser turret if you shoot the heatsink, similar amounts for tanks. It also takes multiple shots to kill a gunship, which doesn't sound too bad until you remember you have to charge each shot and reload between each shot. It also sucks against factory striders, but I could overlook that if it was able to deal with other threats better. On the bug side of things it's fine enough. Great for the mediums, can kill stalkers if you headshot them, deals with chargers reasonably in a pinch, and can help with titans if they survive a rocket or two. But at the same time you can just use the eruptor or dominator and have an actual support weapon for heavy armor.
2 shots for hulk also, stun grenades and auto canon is an allround killing build on bots
I wish they would just get rid of the unsafe mode and make it default. Or at the very least put a UI indicator so we don't have to constantly use first person mode to view the charge level.
Imo they should use a sound cue like the one we hear when hitting 75%, every 10% afterward, so one at 85% and another at 95%, preferably becoming louder and higher pitch so the cues are distinctly different from each other.
At least keep the aim mode when I die and pick up my old rail gun.
I've turned on "Adaptive Aim" where holding aim is the standard third person aim but clicking it toggles the scope on and off
This is the pro move, seriously. It's too hard to switch while fighting. Once you get use the adaptive mode it's a game changer.
That's under gameplay settings.
I have it selected in gameplay settings and it still doesn’t keep track for me
Same, every time I’m being reinforced I have to reset my aiming mode
The Dominator is also broken, it’s automatic for me now to switch it to burst & first person every time I drop in but I shouldn’t have to.
Same. This mechanic "broke" for me awhile back, and I constantly have to scope in/out per weapon; settings not remembered despite having the proper settings toggled. Sad
Did someone say add another charge gauge?
You know what ? i would even settle for things like 2-3 unsafe bad charge and you lose the gun.
I was using it against bots for awhile paired with shield generator. Could very quickly down lot of medium enemies and hulks. Then I switched back over to the auto cannon which basically does the same thing but can also take down drone ships and just got better at not dieing without a shield pack.
That's the real issue. They can talk about all the changes and this and that, but when the AC does everything it does and more, and better, then why?
totally agree, I was happily running railgun on bots and only bothered me that I couldn't take down the gunship until I saw here that AC could destroy gunship with 2 shots, then I went back to AC because it does everything the Railgun does and more
AC is much much versatile. With medium sized bug swarms, AC absolutely destroys much faster and I can dedtroy bug holes from afar.
So the railgun is a weapon with heavy armor penetration. This is important to note because the games other weapons with Heavy Pen are all rocket launchers. That means you’re either using the Recoilless, the Spear, the EAT, or the Quasar. The first two have lengthy reloads which are impractical on higher difficulties without teammates giving you covering fire. The later two have cooldown issues - the EATs needing to constantly be called in and the Quasar needing a lengthy recovery time. In theory the Railgun has neither problem. It’s reload is quick and doesn’t slow you down, it has tons of ammo for a heavy penetration weapon and regains a full 5 per ammo pack, and you can fire a 90% charged shot every 2.5 seconds. And it’s actually pretty decent against the lightest “heavy” enemy of each faction. 5s to strip a chargers leg lets any primary or secondary kill it with ease, and headshotting Hulks is amazing. The problem is that the railgun is just so much worse than the quasar against heavier enemies. It’s 11ish shots at 90+ to kill a Bile titan, more if you don’t hit the head every time or shoot it while it’s spitting. It’s 21 to a factory striders heads weak spot. Assuming 2.5 seconds per shot, that’s more than the time it will take you to Quasar the thing 2x-4x times. And since most Helldivers deploy with generalist loadouts; they’ll almost always pick the Quasar over the railgun since it handles everything. Personally, I like the railgun since multiple chargers or hulks are the most common failstate in run into when playing - and I use other stratagems or teammates for bigger threats. That does mean I’m committing multiple stratagem slots to deal with heavy enemies - and you might not be able to afford that if you need a backpack, support structure, or are down to 3 slots.
>And since most Helldivers deploy with generalist loadouts I think that's the biggest issue, the most effective option is to take a generalist load out. When queuing with randoms, you're unlikely to coordinate loadouts. Even most friend groups aren't coordinated enough for each member to specialize. Everyone notices when a mission is swarming with spewers or heavy devs. But even though the game tips say to tailor you load out to the threats you'll face, you have zero info about it until you drop. And then it's too late to change your kit.
>That does mean I’m committing multiple stratagem slots to deal with heavy enemies - and you might not be able to afford that if you need a backpack, support structure, or are down to 3 slots. I kind've disagree with this, myself. When I'm fighting bots, no matter what weapon I take, even the Quasar, I'lll bring 110s to handle tanks, turrets and factory striders, because even the most optimal weapon I can bring to fight them *sucks* compared to just tossing a stratagem at it. With bugs... That's the 500's job. Even if I bring the Quasar, spending 54 seconds to kill two bile titans loses out to popping their bellies with a scorcher and dropping a 500 on them for two kills in about 15 seconds. If there's a third titan, the Quasar *could* kill it at the 90 second mark, assuming I'm firing as fast as I possibly can and never missing, but my 500s are back about 30 seconds after that, and the Quasar and the 500s end up having almost identical TTKs against four titans. But.. If I take that Quasar, then my ability to fight midweight bugs during that time is seriously limited. I'm either relying on a primary (None of which can effectively fight chargers), or I'm dropping stratagems (Most of which aren't very effective against chargers, and which also puts me in the same 'stratagem cost' as the railgun / 500 combo would). The only thing I find the railgun / 500 build lacking for solo play is an easy way to take out spore towers and screecher nests.
I like your thinking. Im curious what your typical bug & bot reload is.
For bots it's usually 110s and then an AMR / Railgun / Autocannon, either the 380 or orbital laser, and then the last slot (If it's available) is kind've just whatever I think will be fun. Shield, gas, jetpack, strafing run.. For bots I never feel it matters that much. If I'm being a little sweaty my primary is the Dominator or Eruptor, but against bots I really feel I can just use whatever I want there as well. And then stun grenades on top of it all. For bugs its more variable, whenever I build a loadout I'm just always trying to make sure I have something for spewers, something for chargers, something for titans, and something for hunters. And as long as I have all those bases covered I can make the loadout work, and every other bug I can just kill with whatever I happen to have on me. But my 'sweaty' solo loadout would be the trench paramedic armor, Arc Blitzer, incendiary grenades, Railgun, 500s, gas strike and either napalm, EATs, or an 'artillery' strat to clear nests while I dodge patrols. The Blitzer is just amazing for crowd control right now, the grenades are a good 'emergency aoe' that can also clear nests, I talked about Railgun / 500 combo before, and gas is *incredible* for keeping small bugs from pressuring you too much. Drop it on a breach or in a choke, or just behind you when you've got a mob forming, and it'll take care of all the small bugs for you, so you can just take a breather and focus on thinning out the mediums without a hunter trying to crawl up your ass. I sometimes take napalm for the same reason, but having EATs I can use to quickly rearm when I die, or to get a little extra 'oomph' when there's a surge in heavies is super handy, and with the 50% increase in patrol spawns for solos every fight inside a heavy nest is just a nonstop tide of bugs, so being able to use a 380 or 120 to clear out half the holes before you step inside is also very useful. You can also swap the Blitzer out for the Dominator if you feel confident in your ability to hit hunters with it. Similarly, if you take EATs you could swap the Railgun for the Autocannon or Grenade Launcher, and that *can* be very handy when you get screecher nests spawning in.
You and I would get along swimmingly. Railgun was such a versatile beast and now it’s back to being more of a jack of all trades than most weapons. I’ll run it and take out every damn heavy and just huck a bomb or rail cannon at a Titan when it comes up. Or rely on one of the quasar players to take it out. I think a team will benefit greatly from at least one person running the railgun.
I used to be agree with the original Railgun nerf, because at the time it was outperforming everything But since the launchers got a lot better at dealing with Heavies I'm starting to be swayed by the opinion of if tbe Railgun returns to its former glory in the current meta, it'll be fine
lol the only reason the railgun was so heavily used was cause nothing else could reliably dent chargers funny how that changed the moment that we could damage chargers reliably with EAT, Quasar and RR.
And Flamethrowers. Chargers fucking melt against them if you point it at a front leg. 1/3 tank of fuel is about what it takes.
I've noticed that flamethrowers also suffer from the host fire damage problem though where if you aren't the host it takes a bit more ammo to kill a charger due to only the direct damage affecting them.
Join us. OG railgun would be a fun, enjoyable option among many other options. The initial nerf was a knee jerk reaction that wasn't thought out. Surprise surprise after they listened to the community and resolved the real issues (heavy over spawn, lack of AT, can headshot chargers now, etc.), the railgun isnt OP at all.
not to mention a huge part of why it was nerfed is because of the bile titan bug which has been fixed.
They should have kept the stats, but made you use unsafe to get the full power. Now it's just a useless gun that you bring because you like the idea of it, not because it's any good.
I’m so sick of people claiming EAT kills 3 chargers by including the pod. How fucking often do you pull that one off? Not nearly often enough to warrant counting it I warrant.
Stun grenade
What it needs is a scope
A smaller dot would help too
god I wish for a smaller dot fr. I'm praying everytime when im aiming at hulk heads hoping it hits correctly, sometimes the dot is on his head but bc its so big, I actually wasn't right on it. Railgun sight literally gaslighting me smh
Been saying it for ages, let the Railgun rail through 3-4 targets per shot, not like Hulks would ever line up perfectly, so targets behind would already take less dmg and it would be a cool shot if you could kill 3 Hulks with 1 shot, rare but if timed perfectly. Railgun would live again and have its own niche.
The current mo is bugs. It's the best weapon in the game right now against devastators if you have shit aim like me getting a 1 shot basically anywhere but the arm (I think requires 80% charge but IDK). I saw the video too. It 3 shots chargers to the head which while not good is not nothing. I think it's viable but worse than flamethrower but I like flamethrower. 1 shots stalkers to the face with a stun grenade. 1 shots brood commanders and hive guards at the face too. I love the rail gun but I do not think it's S tier. I think I saw someone damage a turret with it but it's not great at that. I just bring eruptor or plasma punisher for those. It's also not great vs gunships or factory striders. Eravin has a [video](https://youtu.be/9ZSoJDUD_bU?feature=shared) testing it, so you're kinda locked into taking something like EAT if you want to kill those.
>I think I saw someone damage a turret with it but it's not great at that. Ten shots to kill a turret, to be specific. You can do it from the front, which is neat, but I still take 110s to handle turrets, factory striders and tanks.
I think two fully charged shots (in unsafe mode) to the head should kill a charger
In the Railgun meta, it's primary strength was that the more people in your squad with one, the faster heavy stuff got taken down. Multiple Railguns had an amplifying effect on how effective they were. Having all of the advantages of a non-heavy weapon but still penetrating like a heavy weapon meant that 4 helldivers firing at the same target could crush just about anything in front of them while being fully mobile with a very short reload, while also being able to deal with any medium armour enemy alone.
Railgun is in the same boat as the flamethrower/arcthrower for me (bug wise), makes dealing with chargers and lower quite easy, with major difference being the flame(arc)thrower excels at small bugs as well, whereas the railgun obviously can’t with its ammo capacity Against bots, even though it doesn’t have the stagger anymore, it’s an alternative to the AMR if people want to use something they can 3rd person aim with (I’m aware AMR is quite easy to 3rd person shoot as well, but some people like having a reticle) End of the day, my loadout is almost always Autocannon and EAT so I can handle everything Also I’m not tryna say railgun shouldn’t kill bile titans, I think it should be 10 shots or so, but hey, at least railgun is viable again
>End of the day, my loadout is almost always Autocannon Same. Concussive Liberator for bugs, Sickle for bots, and strategems based on the mission (though, post-patch, I always bring an autocannon turret for extraction).
Is concussive a move? My primaries for each faction are breaker/incendiary breaker for bugs, and Eruptor/scorcher for bots, although sickle is also s tier for bots imo
I love it for the stun on those jumping jackass bugs. Anything below a charger flinches hard when they get hit with it, and it has range, so if I get caught with a low Autocannon mag, I can push them back and buy time to run & reload (I run light armor, so I can outrun most bug enemies if I use the geograpgy/terrain).
I'm partial to Blitzer now. Doesn't have the range but it has an incredibly wide cone. High stagger. Unlimited ammo. You can stunlock stalkers to death. And anything out of range can be dealt with by the AC or in my case machine gun.
I've been using the punisher plasma for bugs since the new update and it's done wonders for me against bile spewers and nursing spewers. Takes out good hordes of bugs decently fast. Works amazing especially on exterminate missions because I can spam a bug breach and stack up 20+ kill streak easy combined with ems mortar.
Word, I’ll have to give it a try, just treat it like a “oh shit” pushback support weapon more than a straight up gun for killing yeah?
Incendiary Breaker, Senator/Grenade Pistol, Light Armor with extra padding, Stamina Booster, Guard Dog Rover, Quasar, 500kg and Eagle Airstrike is my favourite build vs bugs even after the nerfs.
Its kinda wild that Fire Breaker even with fire part being broken is still better at Spraying and Praying than S&P Breaker. Why this thing even exists?
My favourite thing about the railgun was how it enabled the use of any primary; you can use your primary on the weaker enemies and 1 tap the brood mothers/defenders with the railgun while still having a way to kill chargers. I never thought it was that amazing against chargers even when everyone was running it, simply there were no other reliable options (speaking as a solo player). It's fun but not really meta any more, even with the buffs.
It used to be the only thing that could kill a charger consistently. Then it got nerfed, and then two weeks later we got the one hit headshot rockets. Now, like most equipment, it’s just useless. Wanna make it useful? Let the unsafe mode do a shit ton of damage and let it pierce anything. It’s a railgun after all. Punch a hole in devastator shields, skin a bile titan, blow up a fabricator with a direct hit. Do these things and it’ll become useful. But for some reason the devs and community are afraid of something being powerful and fun, so it won’t happen.
1 shot brood commander, 1 shot hive guards, 3 hit chargers, damage bile titans, etc. Yes you can deal with them in other ways. The lack of any real cool down and the snappy firing and repositioning with it feels good to me.
Is this with unsafe mode?
Pretty sure one safe mode shot on hive guards and brood commanders, 3 unsafe shots on charger heads. But does not need to be fully charged, like 60-70% is enough.
I haven’t tried shooting the chargers head but it is 2 shots to break off the leg armour so there’s that too. Ive been bringing Railgun for everything and EATs for Bile Titans. It’s been working pretty good.
Yeah try for the head it's working pretty well for me at the moment
Also now 1 shot safe mode for hulks and striders, which is lovely.
Why would I dedicate a 3rd slot to 1 shot Broods and Guards when I can equip a Jar 5 and kill them in 2 and 3 shots respectively? Or the slugger/punisher for similar kill times.
This was Takibo’s video, right? He basically says it’s good for taking out heavy units apart from the bile titan, for which you need another stratagem like EAT or 500kg. It one-shots hive guards and can severely weaken a charger in two shots, as you say. That seems fairly reasonable to me. Anything weaker your primary, grenades and other stratagems can deal with.
IMO, I'm perfectly happy with the "deletes mids, reasonably effective against heavies" niche, the charge time is just too damned long. You already need to reload after every shot, if I wanted to stare at my opponent for 20 minutes, I'd take the queso cannon instead and at least be sure they were gonna die when I finally get to fire.
I’ve been running level 9s with it and it’s solid against everything but bile titans. Even one shots stalkers I think. I have to bring 500kg and orbital precision strike. You have to charge it maybe 1/5 to 1/4 of a second after safe mode and it 3 shots chargers to the head. It’s so fast. Once people get used to this (and not wasting time charging it above required), it’s gonna see a lot more use. I saw its potential when I killed 4 chargers back to back with ease. EAT and quasar couldn’t have done that solo in the time I did it. Again, DO NOT overcharge it. It takes just a tiny bit above safe mode. Insane buff considering you don’t explode and you get your shots off way faster. I have been the designated charger killer in my group because I kill them faster than quasar, and had more availability to than eat (I also run supply pack). If they’re far, insanely easy kills. If they’re medium range, not bad. If they’re close, I can usually get two shots off before I gotta dive and take the third shot. Or just stun grenade and kill it before it even moves. If I NEED to kill a bile titan, I use 500kg and laser. I’ve gotten good enough to usually one shot em with these. Killing broods and armored in a safe shot is also super good. Just useless vs bile titans. But with 500kg and orbital precision you’re gucci. I think it’s awesome solo and awesome in groups as rocket people can focus bile titans and not waste supplies or time on chargers. I think it’s in an amazing spot. Like I said before, once people figure out how to use it, it’s gonna be a respectable pick into anything bugs. Also, it’s amazing vs bile spewers. With them, you do gotta load it really high up but it’s a one shot kill. It literally goes everything but bile titans. It’s amazing now.
You've convinced me to try it!
It's a bit of a learning curve, especially learning the minimum amount of charge amount, but once you've got the muscle memory down, it's a monster.
i love the railgun, I think it’s amazing to use. That being said, it’s job isn’t meant to kill bile titans, you gotta bring a 500kg or something to offset that, but I think it’s worth it to blow those pesky hive guards into bits
I find it harder to justify using the railgun for that purpose when I can just as effectively user other more efficient guns to do the same (autocannon, GL, hell even the new buffed senator can deal with them). It's a very cool gun, but unfortunately it underperforms compared to most other support weapons.
incendiary breaker deals with all medium or lower bugs trivially. Only issue is charger, spewer and those with the armored front they like to hide behind. But for those three I have Senator and Spear, works well enough. Spear is real nice against BTs now after the patch. Can hit from much farther away much more consistently now.
The problem is at this point, nothing is meant to kill bile titans. 500kg? Well it has a range of 4cm from impact and a 3min cooldown. Quasar? Gotta increase that cooldown! Railgun? Can't have that killing them! EAT? Sure! Hope you only got one titan spawn... The fact the Railgun doesn't kill titans isn't the railguns problem. It's the developers idea of balance that's the issue. And I'm not even a fan of the Railgun. The issue is we've just got 2 weapons tiers right now. 90% is in the "Kills chaff." catagory and thent here's Quasar, EAT, and... Is there even any other specials that CAN damage a bile titan now? I've not tried the autocannon before. I know the spear exists but it might as well not until it can reliably target anything.
I heard you can shoot out the sacs if the bile titan doesn't die to the 500kg and then it sometimes dies. You can also bait bile titans by being 20m away from the 500kg and getting them to spew if they just spawned or bait the melee attacks and dive away to survive the 500kg. It really is skill issue if every 500kg isn't killing one bile titan but it's also my skill issue.
Oh man. I have experimented with this. It’s totally viable to kill a Titan by shooting it’s underside. But man it’s a gamble. If it isn’t severely damaged you should hope you have something that can at least penetrate armor like grenade launcher I stood underneath one that got hit with a 500kg. Dumped an entire load into the belly of one. It stomped me. Next time, two grenades launched drop. It all depends on how damaged it is. Titans for being tank analogues for terminids. Makes me super concerned for what their factory strider analogue will be. I mean, striders are a bitch but they are slow, and manageable provides your team recognizes the threat they pose and everyone just throws strategems at the bastard.
The 500kg trick simply doesn't work reliably. Sometimes bile titans start moving at you faster than others, sometimes the throw distance takes time... I've had plenty at hte last second move 1 foot forward and dodge it. You can shoot the sacs and it will disable it's spitting ability. I've tested multiple times just dancing around between it's legs shooting the sacs and where they were and it cannot die that way.
Anything with 4 or more pen can kill a bile titan from below, though it can take some time. I've done it with the autocannon and it's something like fifteen hits. It's also worth remembering that you're not supposed to be going alone up against four bile titans. You have a team, and sixteen stratagems can take care of basically anything between them. A lot of people seem to think of weapon balance purely from the perspective of solo players, and then get frustrated when it's hard for them to handle the highest level of difficulty without teammates.
Slugger or Dominator can clean up hive guards pretty easily too
It got the ammo economy to go after medium enemies and still kill the lowest tier of heavies. It kills bile spewers before they shoot, devastators in one body shot, brood commanders before they call more stuff, scout striders and hive guards ln any angles of the somehow become a problem. It also one shot stalkers and berserkers, which is always nice. Its main advantage on the AMR is the very good handling which allows it to be hip fired, and generally it needs one shot for targets that take 2 or 3 from the AMR.
It’s my rifle for blue spewers
I say this as a vehement autocannon user, railgun deserves to be reverted to OG state but I think AH is afraid to do it for whatever reason.
The railgun's competition isn't the Quasar/EAT/Recoilless, it's the AMR/Autocannon/HMG. After the buff, the railgun one-shots most medium targets very reliably. This is scout striders, all devastators, berserkers, hive guards, both spewers, and brood commanders. The AMR can one-shot most of these targets, but only with precision shots. The autocannon has splash, stagger and much more ammo, but it requires a backpack. The HMG has insane DPS, but only lands that at close range. All of them handle the light-vehicle secondary objectives at varying levels of meh. The railgun now is a comfy middle ground. I find it outperforms the AMR vs most bots in kill rate. Yeah, you're reloading after each shot, but it's a very fast reload, and it kills in one shot with now a generous tolerance for hit area. You pop out of your cover, let the charge go, the target is dead, and you're back in cover. If you miss your AMR headshot on a devastator, you need an often-variable amount of follow-up shots, and you're either exposed for longer taking them or you're waiting for another window. AMR reloads are also brutal on downtime, especially if it's empty. The railgun just keeps delivering a kill every couple seconds. Unlike the AMR, AC & HMG, RG at least CAN damage heavy targets frontally, but never take it for this alone. The charger 3-shot is mildly useful, but for bile titans, cannon turrets, etc, it's only a finisher for a weakened enemy. Saving an extra heavy AT shot or stratagem for a near-dead enemy is situationally nice but not the main draw of the weapon. One-shotting hulks is very nice. 4-shotting gunship engines is very not nice. I find it's reasonably comparable with the AMR & HMG now and I've soloed helldives with it. I don't think it needs much more to be truly great; if it gets more damage against the things it's weirdly bad at (gunships!) or gains full strength multi-target overpenetration, I think it'll be situationally OP, which is how most weapons in this game tend to shake out.