Railgun
| Railgun | |
|---|---|
| |
| Category: | Defense |
| Function: | shoots slow narrow penetrating shots |
| Fits small grid | |
| Mass: | 1,364.0 kg |
| Power: | 3.6 MW |
| Range: | 1,400 m |
| PCU: | 80 |
| Size: | 1x2x8 |
| Time to Build: | 30 sec |
| Fits large grid | |
| Mass: | 14,470.0 kg |
| Power: | 38 MW |
| Range: | 2,000 m |
| PCU: | 80 |
| Size: | 1x2x8 |
| Time to Build: | 100 sec |
| Data Controls: | [edit] [purge] (?) |
The Railgun is a static Block Weapon. This rather expensive endgame weapon fires projectiles at extremely high velocity. Being a ship's equivalent of a sniper rifle, one shot is able to penetrate many layers of armor deep, but only one block wide. Railguns need to recharge their capacitor before use, similar to jump drives. They are slow, fixed weapons, and there is no turret variant, so when used alone, they are weak to concerted attacks by fast-moving small ships.
The ammunition for the small- and large-grid Railguns are Small Railgun Sabots and Large Railgun Sabots, respectively. The ammunition contains depleted uranium and is expensive to produce.
Damage
The large-grid Railgun has the same max trajectory as the Artillery and Artillery Turret (2000m), and the small-grid Railgun has the same max trajectory as the Assault Cannon and Assault Cannon Turret (1400m), which makes them the farthest reaching weapons in game. Thanks to their fast muzzle velocity (of around 2km/s) there is no bullet drop to be expected in gravity.
Railguns are known for having the highest damage of all weapons of their respective grid size -- the large one does 50000 penetration damage, and the small one 8000. Their area of effect is deep but narrow, only one block wide. Unless they hit an explosive target such as a tank, there is no explosion. Their highly focused sniping power is counterbalanced by their extremely low rate of fire. They can only reload one sabot at a time, and they need to recharge their capacitors fully before they can shoot it.
Small-grid Railgun:
- 4,000 penetration damage
- Perfect precision (0 degrees deviation).
- Fires one shot then takes around 20 seconds to recharge (see Power section for details).
- Round travels at 1,000m/s, vanishes after travelling 1,400m and it is affected by natural gravity.
- 30 kN recoil force applied to ship.
Large-grid Railgun:
- 50,000 penetration damage
- Perfect precision (0 degrees deviation).
- Fires one shot then takes around 60 seconds to recharge (see Power section for details).
- Round travels at 2,000m/s, vanishes after travelling 2,000m and it is affected by natural gravity.
- 120 kN recoil force applied to ship.
Both Sabot types are a missile type and because of that they can be targeted and destroyed by turrets having "Target Rockets" enabled, but because of their immense speed and turret's reaction times and rotation speeds, it's not very effective.
Construction
Railguns exist for small and large grid and take up 1x2x8 blocks of their respective grid size.
Railguns take up a huge volume when installed, especially the large-grid one whose 250 cubic metres make it the most voluminous weapon in game. Their unwieldy size restricts where they can be placed and how they can be armored up, making them vulnerable to enemy AI turrets that are set to focus on destroying weapons first.
Each Railgun has 3 conveyor ports that accepts its ammo, one on the very end and two on both sides near the end. It is full of mount points along its back half, and has none in the front half.
Large-grid Railguns are expensive to build because they require 150 Superconductors, and small-grid ones require 20.
Power
- Large Railgun: To recharge 500 kWh (at max input 38MW and 20% loss), it takes 3 batteries (with max output 3x12MW=36MW) around 60 seconds.
- Small Railgun: To recharge 16 kWh (at max input 3.6MW and 20% loss), it takes 1 battery (with max output 4MW) around 20 seconds.
Inventory
- Large Railgun: 240L which corresponds to 6 Large Railgun Sabots.
- Small Railgun: 48L which corresponds to 5 Small Railgun Sabots.
Both have conveyor ports and can be connected to a Conveyor system to automatically pull ammo from containers.
Recipe
 Railgun | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Component | Large Ship/Station Required | Large Ship/Station Optional | Small Ship Required | Small Ship Optional |
 Superconductor | 150 | — | 20 | — |
 Steel Plate | 50 | 300 | 5 | 20 |
 Power Cell | 100 | — | 10 | — |
 Large Steel Tube | 60 | — | 6 | — |
 Construction Comp. | 150 | — | 20 | — |
 Computer | 100 | — | 20 | — |
