Harpyja
DUST University
Ivy League
489
   |
Posted - 2013.08.11 01:59:00 -
[1] - Quote
Forge guns and sniper rifles are classified as railgun weaponry, and as a result deal 10% more damage to armor and 10% less damage to shield from base damage values.
But railgun turrets are still bonused against shield and penalized against armor. I don't see any logic why a smaller sized railgun in the form of a FG or a SR does more damage to armor while a railgun turret does less damage to armor.
I will be recalling ammunition lore to the best of my ability. Blasters and railguns use the same ammunition, but each uses it differently. Blasters take canisters with suspended plasma, pump the plasma into a cyclotron which then shoots a heated state of plasma in a contained magnetic field around a small projectile. This makes sense as to why blasters (and ARs) deal more thermal damage than kinetic damage, which makes them hit shields more strongly.
However, railguns take the entire canister shell and propel it to supersonic velocity. Thus, the shell has a lot more kinetic energy than what a blaster shoots. But since the plasma is not processed as in a blaster, it isn't the main damage type for a railgun. This means that railguns have more kinetic energy and less thermal energy, while blasters are the opposite.
Shields are naturally more resistant to kinetic and explosive damage, while armor is naturally more resistant to EM and thermal damage. So why do railgun turrets deal more damage to shield than armor? FGs and SRs deal their damage in the correct form.
This is a simple request to flip two numbers around to make railguns deal 10% more damage to armor and 10% less damage to shield.
In fact, this change will benefit armor vs shield and will cause no change to armor vs AV. The forge gun already deals the correct amounts of damage towards armor, so what I'm asking for won't change that. But it will make the balance between shield and armor better.
I'm prepared for all those armor tankers to scream at me and tell me that there is already so much weaponry on the field that's bonused against them. But what they all seem to forget is that shield tankers have less EHP and worse repair capabilities. So the fact that shield have better resistance towards most AV is cancelled out by less EHP and worse repairs.
But again, this changes nothing with regards to armor vs AV. Armor tanks can already easily destroy a shield tank. The railgun is Caldari design, but Gallente Madrugars can use it better than the Caldari's own Gunnlogi. And this is because it does less damage to armor but more to shield, coupled with the fact that Madrugars can actively repair all their armor back quickly.
A railgun vs railgun battle should prove the Caldari victorious in most cases. The one thing that shield tankers got right now *cough* railgun sniping *cough* can be done better by a Madrugar. This needs to change before 1.5 |