Long rail guns

[Jan]

I am having fun with long rail guns but I noticed that it often takes a long time to aim using the automatic mode. I think the ship AI is moving the ship in a better angle to shoot. However, often it can not keep up and nothing happens. Rail guns are ready but the ship just moves around. Do I need more side thrusters? It is kind of strange because when I manually control the ship I have no issues to get a good angle.

[Morkonan]

"Automatic mode?" Do you mean the behavior of the ship when you only just "right click to attack the enemy?"

For best use of railguns, see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbLLa-qr6Kw

For a single railgun, the best thing to do is to choose a specific part of the enemy ship you wish the railgun to attack. Click on the Railgun Launcher (the end of the railgun) and then assign it a specific target on the enemy ship to shoot at. The reason this is best is that the railgun has no firing arc and can only shoot "straight ahead." If the enemy ship is more manueverable, your ship may end up missing more often than not because the railgun will simply be firing at any part of the ship that passes by that small narrow firing lane.

A long railgun needs enough crew delivering batteries using walkways (If you just have them at the loading end and don't stage individual crews at various spots along the railgun's length) and at least a Medium Reactor as the source (two-charge or better batteries, since accelerator segments have a two-charge capacity (IIRC)) to get all the accelerator segments charged and ready by the time the railgun is loaded and can then fire. If your railgun is not firing when you think it should, check to be sure all the accelerators are fully charged and that the railgun has been loaded.

[Jan]

The railguns are fine. I think the normal right click attack does weird things. It often activates opposite thrusters to move the ship in position (which makes no sense). The ship is just activating the wrong thrusters and wastes time.

When I manual control my ship with WASD my turnrate is more than enough to aim with the rail gun.

I did a test, my railgun ship with 2 long rail guns agains 3 other ship. With the normal right click attack I can not even defeat 1 ship before the other 2 sourround me. My ship just tries to move and to aim but nothing happens. With manual control I slightly change the ship angle, shoot, aim again, shoot, aim again and shoot. 3 ships dead.

Something must be of with the ship auto attack.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Jan:

..
Something must be of with the ship auto attack.

Some ship configurations have issues with targeting certain large things, like really big ships and stations.

I find it's usually exacerbated by "range" in that if one is staying right at one's outer range limit, the ship may, but not always, have issues targeting and firing its weapons no matter if those are set to "Fire at Will" or "Fire When Target Selected."

The solution there is to move a bit closer in. It may be that the ship sometimes needs to be in range of the targeted object's "center" in order to get a firm firing solution.

This behavior can happen when a ship is very close, too, and the target enemy is large and very irregularly shaped.

What you may want to do is to store a new default Combat Behavior that gets your ship a bit closer to its intended target and then see if that helps.

For any major weapon's Group, I nearly always force "Target" them and don't allow them to "Fire at Will" in any halfway serious engagement. There are two ways to do that, either by "double-right clicking" (right-clicking the target, then right-clicking a component on it) or by using the "Target" button for that weapon's group. One can also right-click on an enemy to choose it as the target for all weapons and then individually assign targets to weapons systems.

Any time one just uses the "Attack" icon or just right-clicks once on an enemy, it appears to reset all the targeting assignments for weapons.

So, to sum: Sometimes, differences between player's experiences may be due to how those players typically engage the enemy and use different methods for targeting and firing at that enemy, IMO. :)

[Jan]

I performed another test and killed all engines on an enemy ship. After attacking the not moving target I noticed that there are some positions where my railguns just don´t do anything. My ships just stands there and does nothing (fire at will modus). Changing to auto attack (meaning constant fire) triggers the instant gunfire and everything dies. So the angle was right all the time. Seems wrong to me.

[Darth Porgus]

Originally posted by Jan:

I performed another test and killed all engines on an enemy ship. After attacking the not moving target I noticed that there are some positions where my railguns just don´t do anything. My ships just stands there and does nothing (fire at will modus). Changing to auto attack (meaning constant fire) triggers the instant gunfire and everything dies. So the angle was right all the time. Seems wrong to me.

Could you provide a screenshot?

[Jan]

Ok, the solution is to set a fixed target and manually rotate (R hotkey) your ship left and right around it. This stops the weird thing the ship does to find the perfect angle.