Is it me or is there something seriously wrong with railguns

[Kalidor]

Rail guns were barely real when the books were originally written, I think.

Then again, energy guns still aren't particularly real so.. I guess I dunno what to think.

[Rallan]

because rail guns rely apon sdc ammunition shot out at high speeds to create an mdc attack

And the subatomic particles that energy weapons shoot out are MDC materials?

The problem with railguns isnt' "oh they use this ammunition instead of that ammunition", it's that they completely fail at what they're described as doing. A laser rifle is described as a standard infantry weapon and it does that just fine. A plasma ejector or a particle beam gun is described as a heavy infantry weapon, and it does exactly what it says on the box.

But railguns, especially the burst fire ones that you can have as tripod-mounted infantry weapons, are described as being the Rifts battlefield equivalent of machineguns and other squad support stuff. And... well, they ain't.

Rail guns do a piddly 1D4 or 1D6 on a single shot (as much stopping power as a light laser pistol), and a whole burst aimed at a single person will do 1D4x10 or 1D6x10 (about as much stopping power as a single shot from a plasma ejector). a whole burst spread among several targets is barely worth the effort. What you get is a "squad support" weapon that's useless for squad support, and which is only any good as a longer-ranged alternative to the other heavy infantry weapons. Except to get that extra range you need a weapon that's four or five times heavier than a typical plasma ejector, has very bulky ammunition that isn't compatible with anything anyone else is using, requires its own rather dangerous nuclear power supply, and has to be mounted on a tripod unless it's being used by a cyborg.

It'd be like if heavy machineguns in SDC settings did as much damage per single shot as a punch, and a burst to a single person only had slightly more stopping power than a single shotgun shot. With stats like that, everyone playing HU or Nightbane would take one look at machineguns, call them crap, and wonder why the writeup says they're used for suppressing fire and heavy support when they're about as scary as a LARPer's foam-covered toy sword

[Rallan]

The thing is that they're hyped as machineguns. From the way they're talked about in the books, it sounds like they're support-level weapons that can lay down heavy covering fire and scare the bejesus out of enemy infantry. Then along come the stats and you've just got a very long range alternative to heavy energy weapons, with the added bonus of being expensive and bulky as all heck.

Getting onto energy weapon range, I'll agree that some are rather wonky but others really should be pretty short. A laser capable of skewering a 20th century battleship and still doing damage to something on the far side is gonna be more than capable of dishing out the hurt to pretty much anything within line of sight for miles in an atmosphere, and in space its only gonna be limited by the fact that even lasers lose cohesion over great enough distances. Plasma and ion weapons not so much though. They're firing gouts of charged particles that'll have very little cohesion (they all wanna get away from each other) and react violently with the atmosphere as they pass through it.

[DBX]

i think that rail guns stats are wrong.

Always seen them as heavy weapons - only thing that makes them as such according to their stats is their weight

but the damage they do, they arn't heavy weapons.

it comes to something when the SAMAS pilot uses handheld energy weapons to inflict more damage on his oppenents instead of his primary weapon system

[sHaka]

I know some here use a house rule of double damage on a 17+ and triple on a nat. 20 for rail guns to help raise their lethality.

I agree that they do seem underpowered - I think burst rules for these weapons should be revisited so that they can better function as machinegun equivalents.

The Dead Man's railgun in CWC for example is especially pitiful - the only dead men are those kitted out with them!

[azazel1024]

Interestingly, the real "edge" Rail Gun weapons have in Rifts has more to do with their damage type and ammunition than anything else. Ranged physical damage is very valuable vs the supernatural, psychics, and men of magic. The ability to fire depleted uranium, silver, or wood ammunition is equally useful.

I disagree that real rail guns would be very much like a machine gun at all. If they were, I think the single shot damage would be higher, and bursts would probably be smaller.

Also, and I don't know if anybody has ever noticed this, but it's highly improbable that a kinetic weapon would have superior range to an energy weapon. The equation E=mv[sup]2[/sup] means it should take significantly more energy to accelerate a small projectile than it does to accelerate a particle or stream of particles. Plus there are factors like wind resistance, gravity, etc. And the authors seem to think rail gun ammunition can ignore factors like aerodynamics.

Actually an energy weapon takes a lot more energy to produce the same down range energy.

Lasers don't quite follow the equation, but Ed=E/D^2. Energy delivered = Energy divided by the square of the distance. IE a laser that can deliver 200kj of energy at 100ft is going to deliver 50kj at 200ft. As I mentioned lasers don't quite follow this because their beams are very tight. HOWEVER, they do follow this beyond a certain distance once the beams lose collimination. So a laser that can deliver 200kj at 100ft might deliver 50kj at 1 mile and at 2 miles it might deliver 12.5kj.

A physical projectile does slow down, but a nice heavy slug of say osmium or iridium that can deliver 200kj at 100ft can probably deliver 100kj at 1 mile and 60kj at 2 miles.

An energy weapon is also much less efficient. The MOST efficient lasers today don't even hit 50% efficiency. The most efficient rail gun prototypes are over 75% efficient. This means that the energy weapon takes 200kj of energy to produce a beam that delivers only 100kj of energy just inches from the barrel. A rail gun takes 200kj of energy to deliver 150kj of energy inches from the barrel.

Physical weapons also have penetration, which energy weapons do not. Lasers have no penetration and damage their targets through heating and mechanical shock for really high powered ones (IE they vaporize the skin of the target delivering enough energy that it actually creates a 'blast' of vaporized armor/skin. Downside is that this blast obscures the beam reducing delivered energy until the vaporized armor disperses. This is why really high powered lasers would always be pulse lasers so that they can pulse the beam every few dozen miliseconds to reduce beam degredation by the vaporization of the target's skin).

Particle beam weapons have to tunnel through the air and are going to lose a significant amount of energy bashing through air particles. The higher the velocity and the lower the mass the more air resitance effects something. This is why a lead projectile loses energy a lot slower than an aluminum one. Itty bitty particles moving at high relativistic speeds are going to tear through the air losing a lot of energy as it goes.

Plasma weapons need some way to confine the plasma, otherwise it is going to be more like a plasma hose set on a wide setting. It is going to almost immediately lose cohession and spread out, even in a vacuum.

A rail gun works just like a bullet, but at higher speeds. A .50BMG is capable of penetrating over 1/4" of steel at a distance of a mile and a good half inch of steel at short ranges with the right ammunition. A laser that could penetrate 1/2" of steel in 1 second at 10ft is probably not going to be able to do more than blister paint off the skin of a car at 1 mile. Increase the mass of the projectile and it is going to carry momentum much better because there is less surface area for wind resistance to effect. An 8x50mm osmium 'bullet' kicked out at 1,500m/sec from a railgun is going to ruin all kinds of people's day, could probably tear through over an inch of steel at short range and probably still tear a hole through 3/4" steel plate at over a mile distance.

When it comes down to it we are much more likely to see coil gun or rail gun infantry weapons before we do infantry lasers. Heck we are much more likely to see vehicle mounted rail guns long before vehicle mounted lasers with the exception of aerial lasers used to knock down missiles and selectively take out infantry targets...which are still several years away.

A 1,500hp M1A2 abrahams turbine engine spinning its output in to a homopolar generator for 15 seconds could power a rail gun significantly more powerful than its main gun (as in putting a round through the front plate of a MBT and out the otherside). Powering a coaxial rail gun it could easily power one more powerful than a .50 cal BMG and still be able to move the M1A2 at fairly significant speeds (using less than 10% of its power output to power the coaxial rail gun).

A naval warship could temporarily redirect its main engines for a couple of seconds to power a rail gun capable of spearing an Iowa class battle ship through the main belt. A 40,000shp destroyer engine, assuming about 80% conversion efficiency between generator and capacitors/rail gun could in 13 seconds power a railgun as powerful as the 16" main gun of an Iowa class battleship. Yet the ship could have thousands of rounds of ammo...because it could use little itty bitty high density iridium/osmium shells fire at extremely high velocities of 3-4km/sec.
-Matt

[ShadowLogan]

why is it that the average damage of rail guns so inferior when compaired to most energy weapons ? It all just seems strange to me

Two reasons:

1. the Give & Take Damage values are not scaled, but plot driven. I have done number crunching in the past and found that as far as MDC protective values for small platforms (Body Armor, Cyborgs, Power Armor, the Sky Cycle) have an inflated value of x10 compared to their larger cousins (full size Robots, tanks, armored vehicles, etc). If anything this I think showed that protective values are plot driven as opposed to scale. Weapon damages then likely are not in scale either.

2. the average Rail Gun burst wastes ammo (in Rifts). The CR-40 uses 1d4MD per rnd in a 40rnd burst, effectively only 10rounds really hit looking at the damage for a burst. The Boomgun round carries 200 submunitions, but effectively only 30-180 actually strike (if they each do 1MD). This pattern is typical of Rail Guns in Rifts. If one wanted to make them more efficient: either reduce the ammo spent OR increase the number of rounds that actually hit within the burst (instead of 30rnd missing on the CR-40, 10rnds might miss doing 3d4x10 instead).

[dragonfett]

Are there any strafing rules or targeting a specific area with with a continuous stream of fire (as opposed to aiming at a specific object) and everyone in the area takes damage unless they jump behind cover. What do you guys think?

[Shorty Lickens]

because rail guns rely apon sdc ammunition shot out at high speeds to create an mdc attack

Based on what I've read those bullets are MDC. And thats how I play it in my game.
The only reason even they do Mega Damage is the ridiculous velocity.

[Dustin Fireblade]

why is it that the average damage of rail guns so inferior when compaired to most energy weapons ? It all just seems strange to me .If the railgun (as heavy as it is) is supposed to fill the role of squad automatic weapon or machine gun in a infantry unit ,power armor squad or whatever . You would figure there would be some benifit to damage or some bonus to "supress" the enemy due to the incredible rate of fire these weapons produce . It just seems odd to me , What do you guys think?

I use a number of house rules for rail guns, and switched to using mini-guns for area suppression. Rail guns became much more like a anti-material weapon or infantry rifle (for borgs and PA)

[Aaryq]

I think rail guns would be more effective in combat if there were rules similar to a "morale check" like in other systems. They can put a lot of lead down range (I know it's not really lead) in a short time, so if there was a morale check, it could be great for surpessive fire.
Either that or lower the rate of fire and increase the damage to make it more like a real machine gun. I'd have to re-work the math but it should work.

[ShadowLogan]

Im not sure if I really agree even in a conventional U.S. infantry fire team the S.A.W (squad automatic weapon) is the most casualty producing asset within that squad short of calling for air or artillery suport . Granted not every round will hit but it seems the current system is really flawed. The volume of fire alone warrants more damage. Or failing that it should have some area of effect like a cone of damage that affects multipe lacations on a single target or multiple targets in a given radius

Well the damage for individual rounds vs burst suggests to me that the burst damage in this case is supposed to be concentrated fire on a single target. In that regard they are very inefficient with regard to the number of rounds that actually hit (how that compares to RL I'm not sure, but compared to the 2E RT setting Rifts is awfully inefficient in comparision).

The individual round damage in the typical description I think would apply toward the use of the old machinegun rules found in Rifts: MB (pre-RUE or some of the other older firearm settings) which did cover area effect sprays. Damage in that case wasn't very good (IIRC something like 1round x a small modifier depending on the duration of the burst). Those rules where not carried over to RUE and other new settings (DR, RT2E, possibly even Splicers as I do not have access to that setting/book).

[azazel1024]

I'd go with a cone of damage and also have two different types of rail guns. The big, heavy fast kind and the smallish fast, rapid firing kind.

The later is what we see everywhere. These should do their burst damage to everything in a smallish cone, say 5ft for light rail guns, 10ft for medium rail guns, 15ft for heavy rail guns and 20ft for really heavy railguns. To targets bigger than 10ft in height they take double damage.

The former should doll out a big, gross, stupendous amount of damage, but they are single shot and only kick out a round or three a melee. These are the ones that dish out say 2d4x10 damage for a single round or more. More akin to a main tank gun, then a machine gun.
-Matt

[dragonfett]

I had seen somewhere on a military documentary show or something like that that the number of bullets that hit their target from a machine gun increases at a geometric rate as the number of bullets fired per seconds increases. Unfortunately I can't remember the show or the numbers they were talking about, just that they were talking about a chain gun (you know, the ones that have multiple barrels and are spun around as they fire). Can someone else here verify this?

[azazel1024]

I doubt it is at a geometric rate, but yes it does tend to increase.

Fire 50 rounds at 500 rounds a minute and you can have a pretty good spread, fire 50 rounds at 5,000 rounds per minute and recoil, wind shifts, etc are going to tend to cause less drift in the overall shot pattern down range for the same number of rounds. Now over the same period of fire you'll have the same general drift.
-Matt

[dragonfett]

I think it also had to with the way a chain gun fires so many rounds so fast. Damn, I wish I could remember the show that I had seen it on.

[Shadow Wyrm]

I had seen somewhere on a military documentary show or something like that that the number of bullets that hit their target from a machine gun increases at a geometric rate as the number of bullets fired per seconds increases. Unfortunately I can't remember the show or the numbers they were talking about, just that they were talking about a chain gun (you know, the ones that have multiple barrels and are spun around as they fire). Can someone else here verify this?

You're thinking of a gatling gun not a chain gun. the reason a gatling gun fires so fast is because its driven by an electric motor not the recoil or gases of the rounds firing.

[dragonfett]

Thanks for correcting me.

[Killer Cyborg]

The thing is that they're hyped as machineguns. From the way they're talked about in the books, it sounds like they're support-level weapons that can lay down heavy covering fire and scare the bejesus out of enemy infantry. Then along come the stats and you've just got a very long range alternative to heavy energy weapons, with the added bonus of being expensive and bulky as all heck.

Got any examples of this?
I don't remember them ever being specifically compared to machineguns for their role in combat, but my memory is kinda buggy.

[Killer Cyborg]

Are there any strafing rules or targeting a specific area with with a continuous stream of fire (as opposed to aiming at a specific object) and everyone in the area takes damage unless they jump behind cover. What do you guys think?

Spray rules. P. 34 of Rifts (original)

[Killer Cyborg]

page 270 of R:UE mentions it being used as a tripod mounted machine-gun.

"Rail guns are most commonly used with power armor where they are perhaps their most formidable, mounted on vehicles and giant robots, or as heavy, tripod mounted machine-guns."

It does indeed say "rail guns are most commonly used... as heavy, tripod mounted machine-guns," so that does carry some connotation of their intended use.
On the other hand, it also says that they're "perhaps most formidable" with power armor.

I think it's more of a statement about the nature of the guns (shoots a bunch of rapid-fire solid rounds) than the machineguns' intended purpose in combat (mowing down large numbers of enemy soldiers and vehicles), but I can see where it would give the wrong impression of how the guns work in the game.

My problem was always that you spray out a lot of rounds, but only ever really hit one target at a time. I've always thought it should be more of an area effect.

Has anybody tried giving railguns the ability to burst and spray as per p. 34 of the original Rifts book?

[Wooly]

Machineguns in the last 70 years have been primarly used for suppressive fire. If railguns are the the equivalent of modern machineguns then the somewhat lame damage per round stats are justifiable because they can still serve their role as a suppressive fire weapon. Especially because they have improved range over energy weapons.

[Wooly]

I had seen somewhere on a military documentary show or something like that that the number of bullets that hit their target from a machine gun increases at a geometric rate as the number of bullets fired per seconds increases. Unfortunately I can't remember the show or the numbers they were talking about, just that they were talking about a chain gun (you know, the ones that have multiple barrels and are spun around as they fire). Can someone else here verify this?

You're thinking of a gatling gun not a chain gun. the reason a gatling gun fires so fast is because its driven by an electric motor not the recoil or gases of the rounds firing.

You are both wrong.

A chain gun does not operate by gas or recoil. is literally driven by a electrical motor with a chain which moves the bolt back and forth. Chainguns have one barrel. An example: M242 Bushmaster

Gatling gun is a hand cranked design from the 1890s by Dr. Richard Gatling.

A motorized gatling cannon is probably best refered to as a gatling style gun or cannon. Gatling style guns which fire small arms ammunition are referred to as miniguns.

My experience has been with the M242 Bushmaster and the GAU-12.

[Killer Cyborg]

Machineguns in the last 70 years have been primarly used for suppressive fire. If railguns are the the equivalent of modern machineguns then the somewhat lame damage per round stats are justifiable because they can still serve their role as a suppressive fire weapon. Especially because they have improved range over energy weapons.

Unfortunately, Palladium never really came up with decent rules for suppressive fire.

[Killer Cyborg]

perhaps modifying kitsune's rules for 'spray' firing, i tend to find his stuff fairly balanced.
http://www.kitsune.addr.com/Firearms/Ru ... _Rules.htm

Nice!

[Rallan]

Machineguns in the last 70 years have been primarly used for suppressive fire. If railguns are the the equivalent of modern machineguns then the somewhat lame damage per round stats are justifiable because they can still serve their role as a suppressive fire weapon. Especially because they have improved range over energy weapons.

Well except for the lame damage. It'd be great for hosing an area and convincing some wild critters or untrained mooks to dive for cover, but properly trained soldiers in Rifts are going to know that suppressive fire from railguns packs very little punch. Especially since MDC armor rules are an all or nothing thing, so there's no such thing as being slowed down by injury until the guy who's hosing the area with railgun fire has gradually plinked away at all 80 or 100 MDC of your body armor.

[Noon]

The old conversion book had a knockdown table for railguns.

If you count knocking your opponent to the ground over and over, so he can't fireback for losing all his attacks, as supression, there you go.

It was an awkward table - compare damage rolled to a table, then roll again for an effect. Handling time was way more than what is fun. Or so I'd estimate.

[Killer Cyborg]

Hm. Come to think of it, RUE states (p. 189) that you have to shoot Wild if you're trying to shoot while under heavy fire.
And being under heavy fire keeps mages from casting spells (and/or interrupts them).
The interruption rules would probably work the same regarding interrupting Aimed or Called shots, too.

So actually that all adds up pretty well, I think.

[Killer Cyborg]

Machineguns in the last 70 years have been primarly used for suppressive fire. If railguns are the the equivalent of modern machineguns then the somewhat lame damage per round stats are justifiable because they can still serve their role as a suppressive fire weapon. Especially because they have improved range over energy weapons.

Well except for the lame damage. It'd be great for hosing an area and convincing some wild critters or untrained mooks to dive for cover, but properly trained soldiers in Rifts are going to know that suppressive fire from railguns packs very little punch. Especially since MDC armor rules are an all or nothing thing, so there's no such thing as being slowed down by injury until the guy who's hosing the area with railgun fire has gradually plinked away at all 80 or 100 MDC of your body armor.

The damage per shot is relatively low for rail guns, but the average per burst is 6d6 or 1d4x10 MD. That doesn't take very long to plink through 80-100 MD armor.

[Rallan]

Machineguns in the last 70 years have been primarly used for suppressive fire. If railguns are the the equivalent of modern machineguns then the somewhat lame damage per round stats are justifiable because they can still serve their role as a suppressive fire weapon. Especially because they have improved range over energy weapons.

Well except for the lame damage. It'd be great for hosing an area and convincing some wild critters or untrained mooks to dive for cover, but properly trained soldiers in Rifts are going to know that suppressive fire from railguns packs very little punch. Especially since MDC armor rules are an all or nothing thing, so there's no such thing as being slowed down by injury until the guy who's hosing the area with railgun fire has gradually plinked away at all 80 or 100 MDC of your body armor.

The damage per shot is relatively low for rail guns, but the average per burst is 6d6 or 1d4x10 MD. That doesn't take very long to plink through 80-100 MD armor.

That's not covering fire though, that's getting one guy in your sights and trying to nail him. Nobody's denying that railguns are reasonably good at killing individual targets (although the sheer weight, fiddliness, and cost compared to energy weapons with similar damage is kinda silly), we're just saying that the suck at doing for Rifts what machineguns do for 20th century combat.

[Killer Cyborg]

The damage per shot is relatively low for rail guns, but the average per burst is 6d6 or 1d4x10 MD. That doesn't take very long to plink through 80-100 MD armor.

That's not covering fire though, that's getting one guy in your sights and trying to nail him. Nobody's denying that railguns are reasonably good at killing individual targets (although the sheer weight, fiddliness, and cost compared to energy weapons with similar damage is kinda silly), we're just saying that the suck at doing for Rifts what machineguns do for 20th century combat.

Ah, okay.

[azazel1024]

Some of them have a cost for ammo in the price description of the weapon.

It varies, but I think tends to come out around 3-10 credits per round.
-Matt

[Shark_Force]

Some of them have a cost for ammo in the price description of the weapon.

It varies, but I think tends to come out around 3-10 credits per round.
-Matt

pretty sure it's actually mentioned in RUE, same place as e-clips. regardless, i seem to recall it being something along the lines of 1 credit per 2 rounds (it's literally just a metallic slug, there's nothing special about it. i vaguely recall even the boom gun rounds being extremely cheap.

[dragonfett]

pretty sure it's actually mentioned in RUE, same place as e-clips. regardless, i seem to recall it being something along the lines of 1 credit per 2 rounds (it's literally just a metallic slug, there's nothing special about it. i vaguely recall even the boom gun rounds being extremely cheap.

Page 259 of the RUE, you are right about the rail gun slugs, and the Boom Gun Slugs are normally 1 for 3 credits, although many weapon dealers, operators, etc. will sell them for half off to a traditional GB Pilot, or be part of a payment to a GB.

[Killer Cyborg]

Hm. Come to think of it, RUE states (p. 189) that you have to shoot Wild if you're trying to shoot while under heavy fire.
And being under heavy fire keeps mages from casting spells (and/or interrupts them).
The interruption rules would probably work the same regarding interrupting Aimed or Called shots, too.

So actually that all adds up pretty well, I think.

Agreed. I wouldn't be opposed to coming up with a rule changing the RoF around some. Perhaps differentiate between rail guns aimed at anti-personnel and crowd control uses (ie, "machine guns"), and those intended for single target work that probably involve short bursts.

SAMAS Rail Gun:

• 1d4 MD per single shot
• 6d6 MD to a 10ft area. Suppression fire. 40 rounds. Costs 2 melee actions. Effective range reduced by half.
• 1d4x10 MD to a single target. 20 rounds.

FASSAR-30:

• 1d4 MD per single shot
• 4d6 MD to a single target. 20 rounds.

I like.

[Shark_Force]

sure, but the rail gun is a lot more expensive to buy in the first place, because you need the nuclear power supply. and truth be told, if you just bought a nuclear power supply, you could probably use it to recharge all your regular guns, and not have to pay the 1/2 credit per slug that rail guns do... thus, making the rail gun actually slightly more expensive

[azazel1024]

Frankly doing a little math the cost to charge an Eclip is about 8-30x more than the cost to the person doing the charging, assuming you were using a gasoline generator (should be 50-200 credits for the maybe 10 gallons of gasoline it would take). That is a pretty steep markup, even in the wilderness.

Honestly I think the costs to recharge an Eclip should be around 50 credits in the cities where there is ready access to a power grid run off hydro/nuclear and maybe around 300-500 credits in wilderness towns where they are probably likely to use gasoline generators to charge an Eclip.
-Matt

[dragonfett]

Exactly where does it say that it requires a nuclear power source for a rail gun?

[jaymz]

Personally I look at railguns and think....they aren;t railguns. If you look at how a rail gun operates I don;t think you could do what Rifts railguns can do with an actual railgun....however, you could, I beleive, do it with a coilgun. Similar premise but different application of factors to get a similar result as a railgun. Rai;lgun just sounds cooler

That being said I make all railguns in my games to be single shot, semi automatic weapons (at least for the smalelr ones like the Samas railgun, whereas the BIG cannon types, ala boomgun or spider walker, are only only single shot with no bursts available) as opposes to machine gun type weapons. Being semi automatic still allows for a burst of somekind to be fired increasing damage (typically a short semi automatic burst can do x2 damage) and I also apply the armour piercing rules from the RUE missile section. This makes railguns VERY deadly in my games.

[Killer Cyborg]

sure, but the rail gun is a lot more expensive to buy in the first place, because you need the nuclear power supply. and truth be told, if you just bought a nuclear power supply, you could probably use it to recharge all your regular guns, and not have to pay the 1/2 credit per slug that rail guns do... thus, making the rail gun actually slightly more expensive

In theory, anyway.
The books never go into the specifics of what it takes to recharge an E-clip. Some people rule it takes a lot, some rule it takes a little.

I look at the average recharging cost, and figure that it can't be all that simple to do.

[Killer Cyborg]

Exactly where does it say that it requires a nuclear power source for a rail gun?

I'm not seeing it myself
It would have to be powered by something, and internal too, its not always attached to a nuclear powered suit of death, perhaps a self-recharging power source.

I don't have RUE handy right now, but the description of rail guns on p. 225-226 of the original book.

When used as a machinegun, the person transporting the rail gun must have a minimum strength of 22 and is often assigned to a two or three man team with a combined strength of 42 or higher. One carries the tripod and huge case of ammunition (sometimes on wheels), awhile the other carries the rail gun and nuclear power pack.

There are railguns in later books that are much lighter, and can run off of e-clips, but they specify those cases. The norm is that the railguns are powered by a nuclear power pack or generator of some kind.

[azazel1024]

Exactly where does it say that it requires a nuclear power source for a rail gun?

I'm not seeing it myself
It would have to be powered by something, and internal too, its not always attached to a nuclear powered suit of death, perhaps a self-recharging power source.

I don't have RUE handy right now, but the description of rail guns on p. 225-226 of the original book.

When used as a machinegun, the person transporting the rail gun must have a minimum strength of 22 and is often assigned to a two or three man team with a combined strength of 42 or higher. One carries the tripod and huge case of ammunition (sometimes on wheels), awhile the other carries the rail gun and nuclear power pack.

There are railguns in later books that are much lighter, and can run off of e-clips, but they specify those cases. The norm is that the railguns are powered by a nuclear power pack or generator of some kind.

Correct on all counts.
-Matt

[Sureshot]

I think the problem with Rail-guns besides the sameness of the damage values for most is that like many of the weapons in Rifts it suffers from being all the same. Say I were to gy the Triax railgun for a character I make. No reason every again to buy any other since the effects are all the same. With the exception of a very few rail guns. Then again a lot pf weapons suffer from the sameness factor too.

[azazel1024]

I think the problem with Rail-guns besides the sameness of the damage values for most is that like many of the weapons in Rifts it suffers from being all the same. Say I were to gy the Triax railgun for a character I make. No reason every again to buy any other since the effects are all the same. With the exception of a very few rail guns. Then again a lot pf weapons suffer from the sameness factor too.

Its a little like real life though. Sure, weapons have somewhat different characters to them, but pretty much all 5.56x45mm guns have the same kind of hit down range and the same approximate accurate range, etc. All 7.62x39mm weapons are about the same, 7.62x51, etc, etc, etc.

Sure there are a few dozen different calibers, but when it comes down to it for main infantry weapons they pretty much come in 5.56x45, 7.62x39 or 7.62x51mm varieties and within those classes they are all pretty much about the same "damage" wise.
-Matt

[Sureshot]

Its a little like real life though. Sure, weapons have somewhat different characters to them, but pretty much all 5.56x45mm guns have the same kind of hit down range and the same approximate accurate range, etc. All 7.62x39mm weapons are about the same, 7.62x51, etc, etc, etc.

Sure there are a few dozen different calibers, but when it comes down to it for main infantry weapons they pretty much come in 5.56x45, 7.62x39 or 7.62x51mm varieties and within those classes they are all pretty much about the same "damage" wise.
-Matt

Good point yet they need to do something to beef-up rail-guns. Not necessarily more damage more secondary effects. I was reading through SA1 book the Argentiana rocket psitol does a 3D6 damage without needing a high PS to be used. Sure it is only a 9 round gun yet it does 1D6 less damage than most rail guns. Not to mention it's not like Rifts tries to be realistic in the first place either.

[azazel1024]

Well the whole damage/weapon system needs revamping.

Frankly pistols need to do from 1d4-2d6 damage, rifles 2d6-5d6 damage, heavy plasma ejectors and particle beam cannons 6d6-1d6x10, rail guns 5d6-2d6x10, PA level energy weapons 1d4x10-2d6x10 and robot vehicle and vehicle weapons from 2d6x10-3d6x100 damage (not including the anti-infantry stuff, which would be more rail gun/PA level damage). Increase missile damage by 100%.

Increase PA armor by 50% and vehicle armor by 100%.
-Matt