[TC] Ion Shard Railgun

[Jezmond40]

Hi have eight of these mounted up front on my Deimos, often when I fire they just appear to bounce off my target even fighters. I know I should put IBL there but easier said than done.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Jerry

[maphys]

Switch them for CIGs - better weapons in just about every way IMO. Except the annoying way they spin ships around. Less useful in an M6 weapon than it was in an M3 weapon!

I was using ISRs and seeing little return for the energy I put into them. CIGs did help a bit, even though the stats say the ISRs should be very slightly better IIRC.

M

[Jezmond40]

Cheers will try that me thinks

[plawolf]

CIGs are nice on paper, but are near useless against M3 and M3+ fighters in real life because they 'tend' (read effectively always) to knock a fighter-size target right out of your line of fire, so most of your shots are wasted unless you take control of the guns yourself and only fire in tight bursts.

If I am understanding you correctly, it would seem that you are a bit too close to the target when firing for the shots to appear to 'bounce' off. The guns might also be spread a little too widely. Try arming fewer slots but group them so the guns are near each other and so can give nice tight fire patterns.

I think it ultimately depends on how you plan to use those weapons. If you want to load up the forward guns of your personal ship, then CIGs might be an option as they do more damage per shot, and human control can minimize the problems with it. OTOH, ISRs are perfect for turrests.

[pjknibbs]

I'd disagree with that...ISRs are terrible whether manually fired or turret controlled because of their excessive energy use. They only do a tiny fraction more damage than CIGs but use more than 50% more energy!

[RedLeader]

Damage isn't everything, the fire rate and projectile speed also makes a difference. (too bad I have no excel sheet on my hands at the moment...)

[Mugenjin]

I'd disagree with that...ISRs are terrible whether manually fired or turret controlled because of their excessive energy use. They only do a tiny fraction more damage than CIGs but use more than 50% more energy!

true for m7, but on most M2s energy usage is nearly negligible =)
Never ran out of energy, even after litererally minutes of non stop fire by the MARS Script of nearly every turret with PPCs, ISRs, Flaks etc.

Actually those are the only 3 weapons I use: ppc anti capital, isr anti fighter/long range, flak anti fighter/close up

[pjknibbs]

Damage isn't everything, the fire rate and projectile speed also makes a difference. (too bad I have no excel sheet on my hands at the moment...)

The in-game Encyclopaedia already lists damage per second (although it doesn't say it does), so I was taking that into consideration in my post. ISR does 10.2k shield damage per second, CIG does 9.8; hull damage is 3.7k for ISR, 3.2k for CIG. Range is about the same, speed of shot is slightly faster on ISR but not by enough to make it significantly more accurate at long range...

[hsung]

The manual also describes the ISR wreaks havoc on your target's weapons, but this does appear to work for me as my target keeps firing back with full weapons until I destroy it

[pjknibbs]

Please don't post essentially the same thing in multiple threads--it's considered spamming round here.

Anyway, ISRs *do* decrease a target's weapons energy, but it's not a huge amount (say, 25 per ISR shot or something like that), so against a ship with a massive laser generator like an M2 you won't see much effect. The ISR is draining your own ship's laser generator at a far greater rate than it ever does the opposition, so chances are you'll run out of laser energy before he does!