With the damage production of missiles and the range of heavy missiles, torps, cruise missiles; what if any is the benefit to using railguns? The low dmg output doesnt seem to be compensated with range.
duatha hannan
[ Editor ]
Missles do have travel time. Turrets don´t. The damage per second in an engagement can be much higher with turrets depending on the duration of battle
Red Mage
[ Editor ]
Hybrid Railguns are good in a few ways. The question you are after is the dps drop vs range as paying off. Well in alliances and gangs, sometimes the sniper strategy is the good one. Snipers dont worry about DPS, just one thing ALPHA. The Volly! So if you have 10 pilots with Snipe BS's alphaing at 1700, you are doing 17,000 damage in 1 shot of your team. With that in mind lets look at a few setups using Railguns.
Large Hybrids
[Rokh, EVEMon Sniping Rokh]
[Megathron, EVEMon Megathron: Fleet Sniper RR]
Ogre II x1
Medium Hybrids One word EAGLE. Yes the Munin has bangin Alpha, and the Zellot has good Range/DPS ratio, however Eagle can target and fire at 202+24 O+P, 188 DPS, 689 Alpha. With some tweeks, one could get it just up to Max_Grid = O+P. Even a cloak on this thing, and 2 200km warp ins off each belt and you can pip onto killboards like no tomorrow. Pretty safe ship to fly.
[Eagle, EVEMon 221km 250mm Rail Sniper Eagle]
Duncan R. Green
[ Editor ]
I tend to like Hybrid Weapons (Railguns and Blasters) for PvE, because many NPCs have defender missiles, which will kill missile DPS.
Also, turret weapons instantly hit, whereas missiles have a flight time.
At max skills, the DPS of turrets is typically better than that of missiles because of higher rate of fire, whereas missiles have a higher "alpha" or "volley" damage.
Rashmika Clavain
[ Editor ]
A lot of people will use Rails in PVE for historical reasons. The Gallente line up have had a lot of nerfs/balances (depending upon your point of view), and are not the same ships as they once were.
As such, a lot of people would have trained for Gallente at that time thinking they're an I-Win button. They may still be using rails for PVE rather than cross train into a different gun category, as this would generally also involve training another racial ship type.
Speaking of which, another reason people would still use rails is that they're Gallente specced and they want the ship bonus to hybrid damage.
As has been stated above, Rails also make for the better ranged sniper. Although in typical PVE that isn’t much of a benefit.
tor sinclair
Don't forget rate of fire. At base skills, even a weak railgun will butcher the DPS of a missile launcher.
Missiles naturally have good range and do excellent front-loaded damage. But if it's a more consistent DPS you're after, you're better off with rails.
bajskup
And, u cant do effective missile sniping boat, with rails, u can ;)
worrker
can someone tell me what extra skills there are to make more dammage? my large skils canot kill a bs. i use 250mm large railgun. i must always use my dornes for killing bs ships.
Very simple : open evemon or skills in the market ingame, browse gunnery, read what skills do.
twilighttitus
Railguns make direct damage and that is usefull at pvp for hit and run tactics.
virtucon
[ Editor ]
also guns can hit a small target far away perfectly (biggest of guns can one shot a frigate that is far away) while missiles HAVE to have tons of target painting if they are heavies or cruise to make a frigate semi-killable. so guns and missiles both have their advantage, but for PvP guns are almost always better...
Nope, you’re pretty much wrong on all counts. Firstly define ‘far’ – to me that’s 200-300km. No turret or missile will kill a frigate at that range.
Secondly, define ‘biggest of guns’. I’ll assume you mean 1400 artilleries (generally considered the biggest battleship guns). Bear in mind that there is a class of larger guns only used by capital and supercapitals, and that they track so badly that they can only reliably hit a space station.
And whilst long range combat is definately the remit of turret ships, bear in mind that there are also precision missiles, designed to hit fast targets.
sir liberty
RAILGUNS FTW !!!! It´s just like that ^^
Tagged on Hybrids and Missles :–)
I hear that using T2 ammo bring railguns into the ranks of better dps weapons (for the range). Is there any truth to that?