Railguns were a disappointment

[katastic]

I haven't used them for asteroids, so this is separate from that. And I know, this is my subjective experience BUT:

I had big demolishers on Vulcanus. I transport railguns down to try them out. I put down like 8 (3 rare, 2 uncommon). Railgun research is practically free at this point in the game so i have 3,3 upgrades.

A BIG demolisher shows up .... and gets... one shot... (I know shots hit each of their segments adding damage) [To be clear, I think ONLY ONE gun fired and still killed it]

I get an achievement for what feels like a huge let down in tension / fun / fulfillment. I had so much more excitement trying to put down 200 gun turrets with red ammo to kill a small / medium demo.

And this feels like I just typed in a cheat.

Maybe this doesn't normally happen. But I wanted to give my honest experience.

On a slightly related note: I know the lore is "worms are territorial so they don't go outside their territory" but I wish you could fight say, a family/pod of lower-tier worms along side that tier. Like, big demolishers had medium and small ones. Medium demos had small ones. If you can take the big one in a fight, you can easily take the rest, but there's so much more dynamics of "oh no, another one is coming from behind!" most of the fun with worm killing has been me setting up a fight... only for a second worm in the neighboring territory coming from behind and destroying all the power lines disabling the electric/rail turrets. I yelled "JUDAS WORM!" and genuinely laughed. Perhaps mod territory but the world becoming "forever safe" is kinda boring. It'd be nice if worms eventually (say, forced to flee from bigger worms stealing their territory) tried to move into your territory and you got a warning and had some actual reason to setup defenses on Vulcanus.

Hope you're all having a great day,
--Kat

[CyberCider]

They are definitely designed and balanced as a space thing first and foremost. Oneshotting demolishers and stompers is kind of just a bonus you get. Personally, I’m just a bit iffy about it, but they’re definitely brought down even further by the miscellaneous other issues they have. Like the fact that, even in space, they’re not very useful outside of promethium science, so they feel a lot like a “I need this thing just to get the next thing” kind of unlock. And the fact that their infinite techs are practically capped at some embarrassingly low levels. You reach the turning animation speed cap and big stomper oneshotting threshold at like, below level 10. That stinks. Overall they feel like a conceptually cool but exceptionally poorly executed unlock. You’re forced to use them for this one thing, but otherwise they’re useless. They’re like, the “rocket control unit” of turrets.

[Stargateur]

wait until you try with the railgun equipment

[Hares]

So, let me translate.
"Railguns, the ultimate weapon of the final war, one-shot the largest enemy in the game, and that got me excited disappointed."

Have I understood you correctly?

P.S.
Have a nice image:

Ultimate weapon of the final war

12-06-2024, 04-57-20.png (27.43 KiB) Viewed 807 times

[The Phoenixian]

The fact that Railguns are unlocked on Aquilo, and that the final planet lacks the signature enemy to use all those weapons up until that point on feels like a waste, yeah.

[mako00]

+1 to that. Not the railguns are the disappointment though, it's the big demolishers that are disappointing.

There's no reason to expand to big demolisher territory before endgame, and at that point, the handheld railgun completely trivializes them.

Maybe it would be enough to limit the pierce effect to e.g. 5 targets, so you can't skewer the poor things with a single shot.

[The Phoenixian]

+1 to that. Not the railguns are the disappointment though, it's the big demolishers that are disappointing.

There's no reason to expand to big demolisher territory before endgame, and at that point, the handheld railgun completely trivializes them.

Maybe it would be enough to limit the pierce effect to e.g. 5 targets, so you can't skewer the poor things with a single shot.

The issue with pierce limits is that you'd need to do it in a way that didn't break them in space, since one of their advantages there is that a single shot will break apart a whole column of asteroids, not just the target.

[CyberCider]

+1 to that. Not the railguns are the disappointment though, it's the big demolishers that are disappointing.

There's no reason to expand to big demolisher territory before endgame, and at that point, the handheld railgun completely trivializes them.

Maybe it would be enough to limit the pierce effect to e.g. 5 targets, so you can't skewer the poor things with a single shot.

It would probably be best to implement this on the demolisher side instead. Make them only able to receive simultaneous damage from X segments at once.
In space, railguns very frequently need to pierce more than 5 asteroids.

[jaylawl]

One shotting demolishers with a handheld railgun does feel off...

[kpreid]

I felt a little let down too when I got the railgun and ran around Vulcanus clearing out every demolisher. I don't think the problem is necessarily that the end game weapon is OP; rather, for me, there isn't enough motivation to expand on Vulcanus and run up against space limits that make finally being able to easily kill big demolishers a game-changing event. If there was more reason to sprawl out on Vulcanus (like there is on Nauvis to find sufficiently rich patches of all resources) then the railgun would feel more like "finally I have truly conquered this planet" instead of "meh more space I am not in urgent need of".

That said, I think it might be neat to also unlock the hand-held railgun much later than the railgun turret (e.g. behind a 100k research) so that you have a motivation to figure out how to kill big demolishers with building railgun turrets and leading them into range, instead of just flying around their tails with mech armor.

[katastic]

I think i'm going to experiment with modding demolishers to either he surrounded by pods of smaller demolishers, or split into smaller ones when you shoot them. Maybe even, shooting one in the mid segment splits it into two like a crazed centipede. So if you're going to kill them, you should have other types of defenses to deal with the harder to railgun-one-shot bonus enemies. Maybe smaller parasite critters swarm out from the carcass

[ichVII]

You know you can also kill a big demolisher with 900 gun turrets in a 30x30 square using red ammo and physical projectile damage 6. That was more of a let down then taking 2-3 shots (or one well placed) with the railgun. I think we are missing behemoth demolishers.

To me, big stompers being one-shot is completely reasonable. Even if there were behemoth stompers, the railgun should still one-shot them.

[jaylawl]

I think i'm going to experiment with modding demolishers to either he surrounded by pods of smaller demolishers, or split into smaller ones when you shoot them. Maybe even, shooting one in the mid segment splits it into two like a crazed centipede. So if you're going to kill them, you should have other types of defenses to deal with the harder to railgun-one-shot bonus enemies. Maybe smaller parasite critters swarm out from the carcass

That sounds like what demolishers could do with!