[2.0.19] Railgun firing speed is severely animation-constrained to as little as 16%

[buggy123]

Summary

Railguns are currently severely firerate constrained by their animation, and in combat conditions will fire at approximately 1/6th of their nominal maximum firing speed, or 0.13 shots per second.


More detail

The railgun has a default firing speed of 0.5 shots per second, and with upgrades it is capped at 0.86 shots per second. While it is a known issue that the firerate caps at 0.86/s despite the infinite research, the issue goes far beyond that.

Using the map editor, I created a simple series of tests to explore the maximum firing rate. With stacked spawners creating targets for railguns to shoot, I tested two scenarios.
First, I positioned spawners so that spawned biters don't move much, allowing a railgun to fire along the same angle constantly and with no shortage of targets.
Second, I placed a large area with a array of railguns and constantly moving targets, simulating a chaotic battlefield or asteroid field for a more realistic figure for firerate. I ensured that railguns consistently have a target somewhere within their field of view, so they are never simply idling.

I waited 10 minutes, and used the production graph to find the average firerate per turret over that time period.



Results

Max research, min animations: 42 per minute, 0.7/s, or 81% of listed firerate
No research, min animations: 21 per minute, or 0.35/s, or 70% of listed firerate
Max research, realistic: 8.3 per minute, 0.138/s, or 16% of listed firerate
No research, realistic: 7.9 per minute, 0.132/s, or 26% of listed firerate


As you can see, even in the absolute best case scenario, railgun turrets only achieve about three-quarters of their nominal firing rate. In the worst case, the actual firing rate is on the order of one sixth.

This is a severe nerf to the viability of using railguns on space platforms, and it's very evident in-game; platforms intending to approach the shattered planet are forced to slow to a crawl. Railguns cannot consistently hit huge asteroids at high speed, even if you line the entire front of the platform with them and have endless railgun ammo available.


Conclusion

The animation of railguns severely hampers their effectiveness in certain situations. I would recommend either speeding up the animation significantly, or reworking how the animation works so that the turret will always fire at the advertised rate regardless of the animation state or apparent aiming position.

I have attached my testing map to this post. You will need to switch forces to see the consumption graph for different railgun groups.


Edit: Fixed a figure that was swapped

[semen_sommelier]

Yeah I noticed also. Hopefully a fix comes soon. I unfortunately spent several million science on it before I realised the shooting speed wasn't getting any faster at all.

[mikehendi]

A possible solution is to change the inner workings of the raigun to make it simply shoot (after selecting a target and rotating to it), regardless if the target still exists at the moment the shot should be fired. (so the decision to fire a shot is irreversible the moment the railgun selects a target and starts rotating to it). This solves the situation for the prometheum deep field asteroid area, as at some point simploy shooting becomes more important and aiming becomes less of a "neccesaty"

To me it looks like the railguns seem to "fight" over who gets to shoot the target a lot (I tried out endless amounts of target prio to stop the "arguing" with very minor improvements only), so they rotate to an angle to fire, but then don't fire, rotate to a different angle to fire, then don't fire, etc. This problem actually becomes WORSE if MORE targets become available! When increasing the ships speed, railgun ammo consumption goes DOWN instead of up, by a lot!

Personally I'm fine with the hard limit of 0,86/s for the turrets, as they may become too OP quickly otherwise, but they should be able to actually FIRE 0,86/s. Personal (and less rigorous than OP) test results are the railguns shooting speeds (at 2M km out) are approximately

- 0,21/s when 0,86/s is researched (@150 km/s (with grossly, order-of-magnitude amounts of unsustainable ammo consumption for the other turrets)
- 0,29/s when 0,86/s is researched (@100 km/s (still way too large ammo consumption for the other turrets)
- 0,39/s when 0,86/s is researched (@35-40 km/s (with sustainable ammo consumption across the board)

So at sustainable speed, railguns shoot less than half as much as promised, at higher speed this drops to about 25% of the displayed shooting rate.

PS I used rare quality railguns for all of the above data.

[Muche]

Also see 116987 Railgun turrets do not obey railgun speed upgrades.

[mikehendi]

Also see 116987 Railgun turrets do not obey railgun speed upgrades.

The 0.86/s upgrade limit is a different matter entirely

[Muche]

That topic is about railguns' designed top firing speed of 0.86/s due to animation.
This topic is about railguns not able to reach the designed top firing speed of 0.86/s due to animation.
Yes, they are not duplicates, but they are related.

[Theragus]

I have seen a couple of these reports already here on the forum (for example 123146)
The end result is that some asteroids will eventually slip through the railguns defenses due to shooting speed and target priority limitations after you just let them run for long enough.
Railguns will lock onto their target when they prepare firing and try to not target asteroids targeted by other railguns, so it will inevitably lead sometimes to this behavior.

I do agree that the animation speed on the railguns is a cause for concern, especially for Shattered Planet travel, the same goes also for the throughput of rocket silos, but since those are not endangering to accidentally destroy your stuff it is another topic entirely.
As mentioned it also makes the Shooting Speed upgrades for railgun after a certain point become pointless.
All in all, it makes it hard to accurately design and build setups for railguns this way.

[Stefit1]

I have seen a couple of these reports already here on the forum (for example 123146)
The end result is that some asteroids will eventually slip through the railguns defenses due to shooting speed and target priority limitations after you just let them run for long enough.
Railguns will lock onto their target when they prepare firing and try to not target asteroids targeted by other railguns, so it will inevitably lead sometimes to this behavior.

I do agree that the animation speed on the railguns is a cause for concern, especially for Shattered Planet travel, the same goes also for the throughput of rocket silos, but since those are not endangering to accidentally destroy your stuff it is another topic entirely.
As mentioned it also makes the Shooting Speed upgrades for railgun after a certain point become pointless.
All in all, it makes it hard to accurately design and build setups for railguns this way.

For some reason devs are fixing way smaller and less impacftul, non-crash causing bugs, but aren't fixing an endgame aspect like the railgun turret speed bug, it's a "minor issue", you see. Fortunately, there is a mod that fixes it already. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/fix-railg ... pendencies

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report. I used the other linked report's save file to investigate this issue and it's now fixed for the next release.

[Muche]

What would the theoretical maximum firing speed be if the charging up were instantaneous?
In other words, the further infinite firing speed tech would apply to charging up only; and aiming and actual firing be capped by animation?

[Rseding91]

What would the theoretical maximum firing speed be if the charging up were instantaneous?
In other words, the further infinite firing speed tech would apply to charging up only; and aiming and actual firing be capped by animation?

I don't know. But the default firing speed is already fast enough that it can erase all huge asteroids with a few on a platform after this fix.