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Rail Cannon (new weapon type i'd like to see)
meldrithpw
Member Posts: 360 Arc User
With the new lobi plasma torp we now have a torp that does damage other than kinetic. (i'll have to double check to see if the torp from the crystalline event does ap exclusively or does kinetic as do all other torps.) The Plasmatic Biomatter Torpedo Launcher is buffed by things that normally buff plasma energy weapons instead of projectiles.
I'd like to see the converse for cannon.
Rail Cannons are weapons that shoot a projectile propelled by a magnetic pulse. Because of this, they do not lose inertia once fired, so, unlike other energy weapons, it does not have a damage dropoff by range.
for game mechanics, what I'm talking about is a cannon that does kinetic damage, is used via the cannon boff skills, reacts to shields as do other energy weapons, and is effected by energy weapon traits, but projectile consoles.
and of course, I'd like to see it available in all the cannon formats: turret, dual, dual heavy, and craftable with all their possible funky mods.
if instead it's added as a new lobi weapon to the Ferengi Marauder set, it should change the rule 62 proc from bonus mine and torp damage to 'all kinetic damage'. (yes, I know this would probably result in more ram attacks.....)
(note: in RL the first rail cannon were tested in the late 20th century. by the 25th, I expect they'd be pretty well perfected....)
I'd like to see the converse for cannon.
Rail Cannons are weapons that shoot a projectile propelled by a magnetic pulse. Because of this, they do not lose inertia once fired, so, unlike other energy weapons, it does not have a damage dropoff by range.
for game mechanics, what I'm talking about is a cannon that does kinetic damage, is used via the cannon boff skills, reacts to shields as do other energy weapons, and is effected by energy weapon traits, but projectile consoles.
and of course, I'd like to see it available in all the cannon formats: turret, dual, dual heavy, and craftable with all their possible funky mods.
if instead it's added as a new lobi weapon to the Ferengi Marauder set, it should change the rule 62 proc from bonus mine and torp damage to 'all kinetic damage'. (yes, I know this would probably result in more ram attacks.....)
(note: in RL the first rail cannon were tested in the late 20th century. by the 25th, I expect they'd be pretty well perfected....)
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I like it.
Though Im not entirely sure how useful it will be... considering we already have ships with lances.
Though they are ship exclusive... I could imagine something like this being developed for battle with the iconians...but im not entirely sure why they would have it instead of torps. seems like torps are still going strong just spreading out in varieties of damage.
im on the fence about it.
wouldnt be interesting to see in concept though if cryptic came up with anything.
Within the Star Trek universe and excluding warp speed, ships can fly at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Consider 50% (ST:TMP) or 75% (ST:TNG Technical Manual) speed of light at full impulse. Phaser weapons have a range of ~300km (ST:TNG Technical Manual). On top of that, the navigational deflector is specifically designed to move incoming "projectiles" out of the way - even when the ship is moving at hundreds of times the speed of light.
So, you basically have to consider this.
1. You have to launch a projectile at near light speed.
2. You have to hit a moving (and dodging) target that can, itself, move at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
3. It has to get past the navigational deflector of the target.
4. It has to get past the shields of the target.
The only reason torpedoes work is because they have propulsion systems that allow them to maneuver. Of the items/weapons/abilities in STO, there are a few that use the location of the target when the weapon is fired. That limitation has made them largely ineffective.
Just stick a borg doff in a torp tube and fire.
BSGO [/10charlimit]
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
Only way to make that effective realistically would be to borrow a concept from some other space based sci-fi and modify it...
The Chaff Gun
A shotgun style spray of projectiles, which are not solid metal slugs but armoured casings containing some sort of phasing device to allow them to pass through shields, 100% through the shield damage but damn all accuracy, a ranged cone effect where hitting the target depended on physically pointing your ship in the right direction, and odds are a rail gun/mass driver capable of shunting enough metal at enough speed to do anything would be damn big, a fixed mount in the hull, probably built in at the yards, so not removable or transferable from ship to ship.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
This^
Also rail cannons, guns, MACs, whatever you want to call them, arent really "Trek." lore wise, it would take a lot of work to replace a ships energy weapons with MACs. Cryptic has a decent amount of IP freedom, but things still have to make sense in the Trek verse/.
Anyone want to give me a Temporal Heavy Dreadnought pack? I'll be your friend
Hey, even that ancient NX-01 was equipped with 'Phase cannons' likely a predecessor to Phasers, point being launching a physical projectile in space combat, however cool it may look to the observer, is (and will likely always be, barring any explosive warhead in the projectiles) less efficient than an energy based weapon.
I wouldn't put it past the Ferengi to develop and market such weapons, mind you, it'd be like them to try to sell a Flintlock to a Marine and call it an upgrade...:P
They could rip the Repeater idea (rapid-fire railgun) from them and model them sort of like a beam (a straight line visual mainly due to the fact you wouldn't otherwise see the projectile, rather than the funny "guided" projectile of the Vaadwaur Polarons).
Then again, speaking about guided bullets, they do exist thanks to DARPA.
So railguns/mass-drivers/MACs with semi-guided rounds. Basically, Vaadwaur Polarons retextured and damage type altered (if they're not going for a more beam-like effect such as the Bolo Repeaters). Only advantage is that they don't lose damage at maximum range, but conversely, might be more likely to miss at range. Still against bare hull, going to be devastating (combined with the major buff to Tachyon Beam for shield stripping).
Yea, the Phase weapons were meant to be the direct predesessor to Phasers. Both used a form of Phased Energy, but Phasers were probably a lot more refined.
I do not think it can be a mix.
As for the "stats": no drop-off damage, it impacts both shield and hull, it seems, I could be mistaken, a tad OP?
A bit more info would be nice, Sir.
Personally, I'd like to see Vulcan Minigun type weaponry.
Immense fast friring, but with very low damage.
Example: 300 RPM/1damage/hit @MK xii.
Of course, fully mastered by Projectile Mastery and consoles.
Thoughts?
There are all kind of scifi books that have explored the idea and grappling with how one deals with their very slow and easily avoided nature unless the target is fixed. EvE Online of course makes it a faction's primary strength.
Frankly I don't see them as feasible except for artillery/WMD, or very up front dog fights where a fighter is just as likely to blunder into a "friendly" mass stream as they are to blow something else up with it.
I thought in STO pretty much everything works like a guided missile.
E=mC^2. matter and energy are the same thing--as mass approaches the speed of light (squared) it becomes energy.
Besides, as I noted in my original post, there already is a bit of crossover between weapon types with the lobi bioplasmic torp, and the crystalline shard torp.
All I was really thinking of originally was that it would be nice to have cannon that do straight kinetic damage--just a different flavor other than phas/dis/plas/tet/pol/ap, and one that could take the greatest possible advantage of all that kin res debuffing that the Xindi and Vaudwaar have given us.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized this would have to function considerably different than standard energy weapons, but it should still work.
One compromise for those that think this is a bit overpowered might be decreased range--possibly down to 6km, which should still be sufficient for most of the escorts and raiders for whom this type of weaponry would be most appealing
But, since the damage is being caused by a physical object, like a torp, I still think the shield to hull damage distribution should be more like torps than other energy weapons.
as for a step backwards technologywise--not all species in the trekverse are at the same tech level. This could be the height of Pakled engineering--or as I am more inclined to think, clever Ferengi repackaging of outdated equipment.
Of course, if my suggestion isn't complicated enough already, we can introduce the idea of different types of shot. cannon scatter volley can do grapeshot/canister rounds and torpedo high yield could trigger an explosive round.....
Yes in fluid space I'd expect any kind of purely kinetic missile to be like shooting into frozen jello. In a dense particle concentration like a nebula I would expect fall off expressed as member cancellation within a stream (basically a distance-increasing percentage of falloff).
Otherwise no, or with an otherwise extremely low percentage of potential falloff.
Shields: Big Energy Curtains for the purpose of stopping Energy weapons. Much like stretching a piece of Plastic wrap between two sticks, standing it up in front of a wall, and throwing a knife at it. Not exactly sure where Energy shields got "keneitic(aka physical)" damage resistance from. I can understand it from stopping the the damage after a torpedo explodes. But I really can't see these stopping the torpedo itself.
Like, okay, for example? Instead of using magnetic coils to accelerate a projectile, why not use a warp coil instead? It'd add a lot more speed and destructive power to the projectile if it was shot out at near-light speed.
I mean, it probably wouldn't be THAT hard to do with the tech that's demonstrated in STO's timeline.
It's called a "Torpedo Launcher"
Used to throw the torpedos out of the ship before their warp drives fire up...
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
Then again, one of the best weapons is a 21st century shotgun. So...
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Shields are glorified forcefields, hence they stop both energy and physical objects.
In fact, shields are more resilient against kinetic energy than energy weapons. Allthough they really should not have innate resistance against torpedoes in STO as torpedoes with a matter-antimatter warhead are essentially the mother of all energy weapons and not kinetic in nature.
Just glorified, dumb firing, pop guns.
Anyway, technically, torpedo launchers are rail cannons, they just fire propelled and guided torpedos rather than dumb projectiles.
That's what torpedoes do.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/treknology-weapons.htm
Still, you have to HIT a moving target that can be many, many kilometers away and dodging. The projectile has to maneuver because of the distances involved. So, it becomes a torpedo!
According to the TNG tech manual, weapon ranges are in the hundreds of thousands of km. So, to adjust that to STO, you have to multiply the distance by, at least, 10,000. If you are 10km away in game, then you are really 100,000km.
To put it in another perspective, imagine hitting a fly with a bullet from 1km while you are riding in a car on a bumpy road. Even if a computer fires the weapon, it's still unlikely to hit.
Also, this is what navigational deflectors were specifically designed to block, even when the ship is moving at warp.
Why is this a sign of uncreativity? I don't understand why "creative" equals "just cram everything" in our game for some people.
Seriously, shotguns, machine guns, rail guns - I don't play "Mount and Blade" and ask for machine guns and mortars (with a straight face :P). Star Trek is a established universe with established rules. Of course Cryptic can (and will) change everything because a game is simply fan fiction and can do what it wants but people that are familiar with those rules will tell you that this proposal isn't very plausible to begin with. It's like asking for bow and arrow for away teams, and while those were actually used in the show under very special circumstanes, making thos available as "standard gear" is just jumping the shark.
As a gag/vanity item a lot of stuff works, but bringing in ancient weapon tech because it's cool in other franchises doesn't really go well for a lot of people, obviously. It's like "why do you want a Star Trek game when you change everything so much it hardly resembles Star Trek anymore?" - and this has nothing to do with being unflexible or uncreative, it just doesn't make much sense. Would I ask for phasers in BSGO I'd get the same replies, basically
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"Guns are old tech, we don't want any."
um, if you guys missed it, there is a shotgun, swords, lirpa, batleth and whip available....are you suggesting that we get rid of everything made before the 25th century just to satisfy your antiquiphobia? well then, by all means, lets get rid of the constitution class ship and all of the kdf/rom ships based on TOS, as well as the costumes, retrograde phasers and Klingon disrupters...heck, lets throw out everything that isn't brand new and shiny, even if it works better than the latest gadget.
ok, now that I've got that defensive rant out of my system, back to related news.
In stumbling around memory alpha I came a cross a ship that would be perfect to introduce kinetic cannon. We never saw the original Ferengi Ulis' Raider in combat in the one episode we saw it in the Enterprise series. It is old tech, but the Ferengi do use kinetic weaponry, cannon are built for raiders, and are experts at remarketing "new and improved" versions of the same old thing.
plus, (personal preference) I like the lines.
***
"NOW with 34% More Panache! "
they already have them. it's the Fek'ihri ship graphic and sound of the Kar'fi carrier, the S'kul fighters and the Fer'Jai frigate. I've been pushing for the set, graphics and sound to be made available to other ships for about a year now.
I'd have to agree with this sentiment. You can't really complain about obsolete weaponry when people are happily running around blasting people with a good ol' pump action boomstick.
In fact lo-tech in a way makes perfect sense. Current tech is developed to counter current tech, so pulling out a low tech alternative you can't counter would give a tactical advantage.