ThaDeuce wrote:unless you are piloting a robot or piece of power armor, the answer to why rail guns do less damage is simple: ammunition.
The average rail gun holds anywhere from 30-100 rounds in a standard clip and most have drums or canisters that can be attached that go from 200-2000 rounds. The average energy weapon gets 10-15 shots from an e-clip and 20-30 from a long e-clip, and e-clips usually cost more to recharge than a handful of metal slugs.
When one is in a prolonged battle, reloading takes time, especially if
you're using an energy weapon that connects to a canister that takes
several melee attacks or even rounds to reload. I'd rather have a weapon
that I can just keep firing until the battle is over than a weapon that I have to reload so frequently that I'm totally ineffective for half of combat.
True
Rail gun barrels will almost never overheat. This is for two reasons. 1) modern weaponry uses a CONTAINED EXPLOSION to propel a
round, this generates an extremely high level of heat... Rail guns do not use this method of propulsion. 2) Most (even modern) rail guns literally suspend the projectile in the barrel so that there is no contact with the sides. If there was contact, it would degrade the rails and eventually make the rail gun simply wear out. Google "Metal Storm" for the most recent development in real-life MLA (magnetic linear acceleration) technology. This computerized artillery piece is unbelieveable and incredibly destructive.
Not true. First railguns use uh... Rails an armiture and the round. The rails are in solid contact with the armiture and the round sits in front of the armiture. The e-m forces cause the armiture to accelerate forward pushing the round. The round is fired followed by what is left of the armiture, which is a hot plasma muzzle flash. The other method and what the Rifts Railguns actually are is gauss field acceleration. This method uses pulsed magnetic coils and a round. A coilgun is also refered to as a gauss rifle/pistol etc. as it actually uses gaussian forces to accelerate the round while the railgun uses Lorentz forces to move the armiture. Both are MAWs as they use E-M forces but in different methods. Metal Storm is the name of the company not the
weapon but the weapon that people usually refer to when they say that is
the large system the company has demonstrated. The Metal Storm weapon is NOT a MAW it is a larger version of the O'Dwyer electric gun wich is just an innovation for conventional rounds. It fires the round using
electric current rather than a mechanical means like a hammer. The weapons are faster because all the rounds are pre loaded in a barrel/magazine and fired in sequence. They state the concept is ancient essentially derived from roman candles.
So in my game the common railgun is a coilgun as it does less damage than the Boomgun and fires a lot of round which is something a railgun can't do because of it's unique design. The Boomgun is the only railgun
in Rifts it is slow firing but is able to transfer a lot of energy to the round.
Also, regarding the recoil vs. knockdown arguement. Remeber: this is the future, rail guns are definitely going to have built-in recoil
suppression. This issue is specifically addressed in the description of the glitter boy armor in the original Rifts core game book. Also, even modern weapons have many methods of recoil suppression, such as bull-pup designs, gas recoil-driven reloading mechanisms, and look at the design of the .50 cal Barret, see the gas ejection ports on the front that look like wings? Those are recoil suppression. So yes, as far a physics go; for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, but everyone who argues against the knockdown effect of rail guns is outright ignoring not only modern recoil supression techniques, but ones that may be developed by a time of a technology level like in Rifts: Earth. So my house rule is YES, RAIL GUNS DO KNOCK TARGETS DOWN. Although I do agree that they should do more damage. I usually add an extra die or two to the damage or have masive penetration/knockdown/SDC damage to targets inside armor additives when players use rail guns."
How do you reduce the recoil? It can't be solved with buffers like modern weapons use The entire barrel assembly, including the rails or coils, would
have to be able to move in the weapon. None of the railguns depicted are large enough to allow that. Then there is all your gas comments...
Only one problem and you stated it earlier, there is no gas in a MAW. What does the bull-pup configuration have to do with recoil dampening???
The bull-pup configuration just allows a weapon to have a shorter length to barrel ratio in comparison to a standard configured weapon.
A round that will pierce the target is more likely to leave the target standing as the KE is not transferred to them. Shotguns and other weapons that are usually said to knock people back don't use rounds that
are ment to penitrate like an 9mm or an AP round. MAW is far more likely to rip through a soft target and leave them standing. On a hard target like PA it would likely knock them back as MDC isn't penitrated.
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