Jump to content

Welcome to the Forum!

The best place to exchange builds and ideas! Vote for the best ideas and suggestions here.

Join the Avorion Discord!

Connect with other passionate players and talk about the latest news.
Discord

DLC Avorion Into the Rift Out Now!

Now available on Steam!
Steam

Railguns and PvP


mysteryx
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi folks.

 

We're thinking about setting up pvp (in any way, dunno where and how and rules and things and bla).

 

I've tested different ways of blocking incoming damage, hull/armor/integrity fields.

Then i've added 5x1000 dps weapons of every type, and start shooting.

 

2 milion armor hitpoints (because shield doesn't matter in pvp)

Every weapon is well balanced so far, beside the railgun.

 

In my opinion the armor blocks must reduce the incoming railgun damage.

Otherwise armor would be a bit useless, and placing smallblocks (w/o integrity field) is better than armoring(with integrity field) the ship.

 

Is my thought correct, or am i missing something?

 

o/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ideally all blocks should have an 'armour' value which depends on the material (and this could be used to make Ogonite more useful), and railguns should have an 'armour-piercing' value which can be changed by adding or removing materials in the turret factory (and is randomly generated on looted railguns). A high tier railgun would have an armour-piercing value something like 10x the armour value of iron or titanium, but only about 1.2x that of Ogonite and 1.6x that of Avorion. On firing at an enemy ship, the railgun scans all blocks in its path until the sum of their armour values exceeds the armour piercing value (let's say it counts 'n' blocks). The base damage is then applied to the first n-1 blocks, and the last block receives damage equal to d(p-Σ)/a, where 'd' is the base damage, 'a' is its armour value, 'p' is the armour piercing value of the railgun slug and Σ is the sum of the armour values of the preceding n-1 blocks. This would make armouring more interesting and may encourage the use of a 'frontal shield' which would be a solid block of armour used to absorb damage. This could be applied to other turrets as well like bolters and chainguns, although they would have lower armour piercing values. Lasers and lightning turrets should probably stick with the old system or have different mechanics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmmm....

 

with the advanced turret stats mod you can actually see how many layers of blocks a railgun is able to penetrate (given enough damage done i presume). So far i have seen anything between 2 and 7 blocks of penetration.

 

Considering a railgun does 1k damage per shot and can penetrate 4 blocks.

 

I am unsure of how the mechanics for this apply tho.

Does it mean a railgun (given enough damage and/or low block HP) can destroy 4 blocks and then damage/destroy the 5th but no further (even tho in theory it could)? or does it stop at the 4th and excessive damage is lost?

 

They way to mitigate damage and render railguns somewhat less effective would then be to layer thin armorsheets and basically "abuse" the system. 

 

edit:

 

I did i quick test in creative.

 

a) 20 layers of Iron armor 0.05 thick (21HP/block),

b) 20 layers of ogonite armor 0.05t thick (157HP/block)

c) 10 layers of ogonite armor 1 thickness (3003HP/block)

 

i shot each once with a Tech 12 Avorion railgun (single) with a damage/shot of 336,7 and a hull penetration of 7 blocks.

 

What i expected to find was:

a) 7 blocks destroyed, damage to 8th

b) 2 blocks destroyed, damage to 3rd

c) damage only to the first block

 

What i found:

a) 7 blocks destroyed

b) 7 blocks destroyed

c) probably damage to the first block

 

Interestingly the game does not show damaged blocks in the repair screen. I thought it might.

Also it seems that railguns do not bleed / lose damage if the penetrate a block, but instead apply full damage to every block up until their respective hull penetration value.

 

So in this case each shot did the following:

a) 7 x 21HP = 147 damage

b) 7 x 157HP = 1099 damage

c) ???

 

So considering railguns: the block HP only matters if it is greater than the damage / shot.

 

Which means that if you want to reliably protect against railguns it is best to layer as many thin and small blocks as possible of trinium (high penetration, low damage /shot railgun)

Or fewer small but very thick ogonite armor blocks. (low penetration, high damage/shot).

 

Personally i think this is an oversight in the penetration mechanics of railguns, they should NOT deal full damage to each succesive block up until the max hull penetration value.

 

This also explains why railguns are the superior weapon of choice in any circumstance either pvp or pve. Near instant application combined with a broken penetration system makes them shipgutters. Not even taking shield penetration into account. :P 

 

Edit 2:

 

Since this was done in creative and i cheated in bunch of random weapons: the max penetration value for a railgun i found was 14.

It seems that the hull penetration is affected by rarity mostly.

All weapons where techlevel 12 since i spawned them close to the spawn system.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You need to consider the fact railguns, for some reason, miss about half the time despite being 100% on target. I have a set of crazy railguns I made just for fun and they are pretty bad.. When they hit, they really hurt, but a lot of the time they miss. When they miss it's the whole volley too (they shoot 12 shots/sec, if the first misses, all other miss for some reason).

 

I don't know if it's lag or what, but their track record is pretty terribad in my experience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You need to consider the fact railguns, for some reason, miss about half the time despite being 100% on target. I have a set of crazy railguns I made just for fun and they are pretty bad.. When they hit, they really hurt, but a lot of the time they miss. When they miss it's the whole volley too (they shoot 12 shots/sec, if the first misses, all other miss for some reason).

 

I don't know if it's lag or what, but their track record is pretty terribad in my experience.

 

Railgun hits not registering and them blowing thru more blocks than they should are both bugs imho...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Testing I've done:

 

Weapon: Exceptional Trinium Railgun Tech-Level 27 with 343 damage per shot and apparent penetration value of 5. Its too much bother to specify every case and every detail, so I will just leave my conclusions. Whether you trust me or not is up to you.

 

- Railgun round hits the first block it encounters, dealing full damage to the block HP and the ship HP.

- It then proceeds to deal the same damage to the next block in its linear path, dealing the same full damage to each and additional damage to the ship HP. Amount of blocks damaged depends on penetration value, which also works as damage multiplier against total ship HP.

- Penetration starts from the hit location, not from the turret firing, which means that hitting a target from the max range does not reduces the depth of penetration.

- Armor plate standing in the way prevents damage to underlying blocks. It, however does not prevent damage multiplication to ship total HP.

- If Armor plate is destroyed by the shot, it doesn't block that shot anymore, only reduces the penetration depth by 1.

- Sizes of damaged blocks do not seem to matter. I haven't tested if the depth of penetration has a limit, but since it starts from the hit location, there's not a realistic size of a ship, that can reduce the damage with sheer volume.

 

Considering all this, here's a conclusion: The best way of defending against Railguns is:

1.) Shields. As long as Railgun doesn't ignore the shield completely, it will do the minimum 1x damage regardless of range or angle.

2.) Reasonably thick Armor layer. Making it thicker will not change anything, but if it covers a larger area, therefore has higher individual HP, it can withstand greater number of Raigun rounds protecting other blocks from taking any damage. Add the IFG's effect to it, and you have a very durable protection.

3.) As few overlaying systems as possible. The less blocks the Railgun round pass trough, the less ship HP damage is multiplied. In perfect scenario, if you have a layer of armor and only a single system under it, you will only receive a double of the Railgun's base damage as ship HP damage. Using broadside, vertical or flat-face design allows that. On the other hand, multiplying blocks, i.e. making many thin armor sheets will only ensure, that hostile Railgun will exploit its penetration to its maximum potential (i.e. a 10xPen Railgun will only damage the outer armor block, but it will do 10 times its base damage to the ship as a whole with each shot).

 

Use this data however you see beneficial.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That are basically my findings too.

 

Regarding armor tho: you could stack 0.05 x 0.05 x 0.05 hullblocks (weight) in in thick (20+) layers and abuse the fact that railguns only penetrate up to their penetration value and not further idependent of damage done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That are basically my findings too.

 

Regarding armor tho: you could stack 0.05 x 0.05 x 0.05 hullblocks (weight) in in thick (20+) layers and abuse the fact that railguns only penetrate up to their penetration value and not further idependent of damage done.

Yes, but again, you will always receive (base damage)*(penetration rating) to your ship HP. It is much better to instead just sandwich a single system block between the two layers of armor - this way the damage will only triple, and all the penetration beyond that will be wasted.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That are basically my findings too.

 

Regarding armor tho: you could stack 0.05 x 0.05 x 0.05 hullblocks (weight) in in thick (20+) layers and abuse the fact that railguns only penetrate up to their penetration value and not further idependent of damage done.

Yes, but again, you will always receive (base damage)*(penetration rating) to your ship HP. It is much better to instead just sandwich a single system block between the two layers of armor - this way the damage will only triple, and all the penetration beyond that will be wasted.

 

Do you really? Or do you recieve the block HP * penetration depth in damage? when i try this in single player creative there are no damage numbers popping up since i am shooting myself basically. so i dont know for sure what damage i actually do. I just presume you wouldn't do more damage than the block had HP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you really? Or do you recieve the block HP * penetration depth in damage? when i try this in single player creative there are no damage numbers popping up since i am shooting myself basically. so i dont know for sure what damage i actually do. I just presume you wouldn't do more damage than the block had HP.
I don't see what is so hard in making a practice dummy to run tests on... but as far as I can tell, yes, blocks HP doesnt matter. I used layers with more and less HP than Railgun damage rating was, yet the damage to the ship HP remained consistent.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you really? Or do you recieve the block HP * penetration depth in damage? when i try this in single player creative there are no damage numbers popping up since i am shooting myself basically. so i dont know for sure what damage i actually do. I just presume you wouldn't do more damage than the block had HP.
I don't see what is so hard in making a practice dummy to run tests on... but as far as I can tell, yes, blocks HP doesnt matter. I used layers with more and less HP than Railgun damage rating was, yet the damage to the ship HP remained consistent.

 

I made practice dummys... they just don't show damage numbers when shot.

But i'll take your word for it that it isn't block HP that counts, but rather the damage per shot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll redo it later and see what went wrong...

 

Also i do test with and w/o integrity fields.

 

 

Edit:

 

So it appears it shows it now. Don't know why before, or maybe I just didn't see it.

But i observed sth other:

 

Still using the same setup as before. 336,7 dmg /shot railgun, 7 hull penetration.

 

this is what happened:

 

The thin layers of iron armor where hit for 2352 damage (7*336)

 

The thin layers of ogonite armor where hit for 2352 damage (7*336)

 

BUT

 

The thick layers (3003 hp each) where ALSO hit for 2352 damage.

 

I expected the first ones tbh, but the 3rd on? The gun does not have enough damage to kill the first block, but still applies damage as if it was penetrating and damage 7 layers even tho it failed to destroy the first block.

 

Then i put one thick block (3003 HP) as single and wonder oh wonder: 336 damage

 

It seems that railguns assume to penetrate all underlaying blocks they hit and apply THAT damage to all blocks... even if they cannot destroy the first block.

 

The difference between using Integrity field and no field was:

 

the thin layers of ogonite armor took 3 hits before getting destroyed. no observable difference between the others.

 

It really seems that railguns are applying more damage than they should in many cases and are currently utterly broken.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Precisely as I stated before. The damage displayed is a damage to the ship HP, not to the blocks. This is what I told you about layering blocks - if you provide more blocks for the Railgun to penetrate trough, it will simply multiply the damage your ship suffers. Type of blocks is irrelevant - Armor only prevents the damage to the blocks behind it, while it lasts, and does not affects the damage to the ship at all.

 

I've never claimed them to work as intended. Just wanted to provide more accurate testing data to report.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Precisely as I stated before. The damage displayed is a damage to the ship HP, not to the blocks. This is what I told you about layering blocks - if you provide more blocks for the Railgun to penetrate trough, it will simply multiply the damage your ship suffers. Type of blocks is irrelevant - Armor only prevents the damage to the blocks behind it, while it lasts, and does not affects the damage to the ship at all.

 

I've never claimed them to work as intended. Just wanted to provide more accurate testing data to report.

 

I never said you where wrong in the first place, i just didn't know and wanted to find out myself. Especially since railguns where so much better than any other option.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would prefer Railguns (as stated in this thread) that are stopped by Armor, but if not, then Railgun deals half the damage to first block, then does half of the remaining damage to the next, then does same to the next, etc. until its penetration number is expended, at which point the remaining damage is dealt to the last block. This will make Railguns still good at damaging and destroying internal, more fragile blocks, yet would not multiply the ship HP damage at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...