Railguns

[drNovikov]

I was checking out the weapons spreadsheet when I saw "none" against railgun recoil. To my knowledge, railguns do have recoil due to the conservation of momentum. When launching a projectile, railguns get pushed in the opposite direction just like every other firearm.

Railguns main distinctive features that would greatly influence gameplay are projectile speed, damage, and penetration. A near-hitscan long range weapon with high penetration and high damage... that might be a tricky thing to balance in a multiplayer game (sniping turrets off enemy bases, eviscerating ships, ohe hit kills on smaller vessels. etc).

Which downsides could balance the aforementioned railguns prominent properties?

1. Aiming speed. One should not be able to quickly aim a railgun (or any other major capital ship weapon) at an incoming fast moving vessel and instakill it.
2. Fire rate. Should be low enough for players to consider other options. Should be low enough to prevent significant destruction of a battleship before the opponent has a chance to
3. Stackability. One should not be able to place a tight packet of mutliple railguns inside a reasonably sized ship and have a mega sniper device that annihilates enemy ships. Of course, a limit could be set by licenses, but I am convinced there should be engineering-related factors of balance, not just server rules.

Railguns should require a decent infrastructure (capacitors, chargers, etc) that would take a significant amount of space and add weight, thus requiring big ships to effectively use them, making weapon spam difficult, and limiting carying vessel's agility.

Capacitors could be added like refinery updrade modules. The more you got -- the greater the speed/damage. But said capacitors should require time and energy to charge up. This will prevent rapid fire and, probably, limit the numver of simultaneously charging railguns via overloading the reactors.