Now, which of you fine industrialists wouldn't love to rain tungsten rods down upon your enemy? who wouldn't love to fire objects at supersonic speeds to the brainpan of a nemesis? I give you the Railgun and Coilgun, the solution to your problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun and, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_gun I'm might sketch a few concept sketches for you fine folk if I find the time. Here's a little thing to leave you with: This was a test done by the U.S. navy into the matter. You know what's behind it? Hmm? It's plasma.
The idea is good, but what kind of gameplay impact would it have? what kind of mechanics would we see? how would these weapons function? would they be stationary? handheld? perhaps mounted on a tank? What would make a railgun different from a rocket launcher?
Well that's a very good question. I was thinking perhaps a cooldown for the smaller shoulder mounted version (Read: Coilgun) and the larger version (The Railgun) could be mounted on a tank or a form of mobile firing platform, or even a space platform of sorts. The possibilties are endless.
You know you've got my vote on this one. Both of the handheld variety and something on a much larger, much more destructive scale. Limited use, of course!
Can you elaborate further then that, you have to remember in a video game you can just call a weapon a Railgun, but in-order for it to feel like one you have to have unique mechanics unique to a rail gun
Unique mechanisms? You really can't express the fowarding of a projectile through electro-magnetic propulsion through a video game. The only way to express it would be slow firing, hard hitting and costly to fire.
It doesn't have to be ferrous, Magnets affect other metals too (but not all metals), Tungsten is the only kind of bullet I've ever heard of being used in a railgun
Sure you can you just need to be creative, if all it is is a slow firing heavy hitter we can call it anything, an example of a mechanic unique to railguns could be the requirement of an electrical power source, such as a battery or generator, requiring a large amount of power be drawn when charging and firing.
Coilguns and railguns require large amounts of power to shoot, and commonly use capacitors to store and rapidly output the huge amounts of energy required, and they have to recharge after a shot. Also, railguns can fire more than tungsten.
Have it drain your personal battery heavily when you fire it. I always imagined a sort of heavy shoulder mounted railgun with an underslung submachinegun for use while your battery is recharging.
This might be a little silly, but why not have the railgun be a stationary howitzer like cannon that you can get into, and blast things to pieces from afar. Complete with a screen scrolling zooming capability like the one sniper rifles are going to be using. Perhaps even another idea would be to use it from your spaceship.
I would open the wikipedia pages... but it is already a dream of mine to own these... in real life... and it will happen!
im building a coilgun atm .10 capacitors at 350v 440uf each.will be fun to shot it in some days.I like the idea,but you the coilgun can be a bit like the one from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series so its 2 handed(starbound is a bit in the future so eventually they found good energy sources like fusion batteris or something)and the railgun would be fired from your shoulder.and they are really accurate and drain energy and ammo(you can use screws,wrapped aluminium foil or something else like bullets that are made for them)also the railgun needs its rails changed all 20-40 shoots because they get damaged every shoot.
