Railguns: Long Range or High Capacity?

[Ben Drinkin]

Looking for opinions on what to put on my railguns. I like the idea of having a lot more ammo to work with, but making damage falloff more or less irrelevant seems quite nice too.

[Inscydeus]

What ship? If you're in a fast ship, go for high cap as you should be able to stay within 1km of your target fairly easily, making damage falloff a moot point.

[Ben Drinkin]

Originally posted by Inscydeus:

What ship? If you're in a fast ship, go for high cap as you should be able to stay within 1km of your target fairly easily, making damage falloff a moot point.

Krait. So I suppose high cap would work better.

[Mama Symphonia]

High capacity unless you have a really slow ship. Drag drive your thrusters, mod your power plant for thermal if necessary, and you should be able to keep up with your target fine without long range.

[Chro]

long range for sniping, also railgun ammo is very cheap to craft

[Hobo Misanthropus]

If your ship has a big Fuel Tank (I think the Krait does) Sturdy Plasma Slug is pretty good too, for PVE. Should be able to spam 2x Rails nonstop without overheating.

[HairballHacker]

If you have the sort of ship where you fight in close, short range blaster is good. Long range if you are in a slow and poorly manuverable ship like a corvette. I never run out of rail gun ammo as it is really cheap to synthesize so I never choose high capacity.

[Turih]

Long-range. Why?

Because of something that noone has mentioned here yet - damage fall-off.

Long-range mod is not only about increasing max range but also about increasing the distance threshold before you start dealing reduced dmg.

Simply put: long range mod = more damage (same applies to lasers)
Which ultimately means that it does not mean you have to put this mod only on slow ships.

High-cap has terrible reload time and after all the experience with rail gun mods I would never use this one ever again.

[semidomestic]

Originally posted by HairballHacker:

If you have the sort of ship where you fight in close, short range blaster is good. Long range if you are in a slow and poorly manuverable ship like a corvette. I never run out of rail gun ammo as it is really cheap to synthesize so I never choose high capacity.

I agree. Long range and high cap add mass and affects maneuverability. The only downfall to short range is power draw and range. Add the super penetrator exp and your thermal load goes down 40%. I short range everything except MC on anything more maneuverable than an FGS. On most weapons, short range has about the same damage as overcharged without the added mass, and there's usually an experimental to help compensate for thermal load and power draw.