NationStates Jolt Archive

I know what Rail Guns are, and what they do. However, I'm clueless as to what is appropriate when using them.

Are they generally smaller weapons used in large numbers (Such as my Laser Turrets) or are the larger weapons used sparsely (Such as my Beam Cannons)?

Do they fire huge rounds or small bullets? Do they fire rapidly (many shots in a short amount of time) or slowly (few shots over a long amount of time)? Does it vary depending on each guns purpose (small rapidly firing ones used for anti-fighter work or large ones for anti-capital ship work)?

Any help would be great.

Small Note: I'm a space tech nation (which explains my ability to use rail guns) with a large history of energy weapons (which explains my ignorance of rail guns).

I guess it depends which science fiction universe you reference. I personally enjoy Star Wars, Battletech, and Honorverse. Rail Guns are not predominant in either Star Wars or Honorverse, but they are found in Battletech.

There are multiple types of rail guns, or Gauss Rifles, in Battletech. There is a light version that weighs twelve tons and has a range of 1,200 meters. The normal variety can weigh either 12 or 15 tons, depending on whether it is superior clan technology (the 12 tonner) or inferior Inner Sphere Technology. There is also a heavy version that weighs 18 tons, if I remember correctly. It has the shortest range, but the biggest punch.

I personally love rail guns. The idea of a large nickel-aluminum slug being propelled at supersonic speeds by magnets just appeals to me. An upside to conventional ammunition-based weapons is that the ammo can't explode. However, if the guns were hit the capacitors could

If you are planning in using rail guns on your ships from now on, I think you could use them for whatever purpose they were needed for. I.E. using large single-projectile guns for capital ship combat while using smaller flack-like rail guns for fighter combat. You can do whatever you want to do with them. Rail guns can be just as versatile as laser weaponry. May the fuzzy bunny be with you all.
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This is all about Railguns as they stand in the present day...

Currently railguns are highly experimental. They're massive space-based weapons to shoot down ICBMs with projectiles going about 36 miles a second IIRC. They fire metallic projectiles (that i assume are pretty small) that are accelerated to mind-boggling speeds by a series of electromagnets switched on and off rapidly. Huge amounts of power are needed and the projectile produces so much heat as it travels down the rail that they can need to be replaced after each shot.

And thats it so far... have fun translating that into the future

Gauss guns and Rail guns are actually different devices. Rail guns use a pair of like-charged magnetic rails to propell an object. This requires a large amount of energy in exchange for a relatively poor speed and distance.

Gauss guns use electromagnetic coils to generate the needed force to propell the object. Gauss guns use less energy and generate a higher magnetic force, giving the projectile greater speed and distance.

Current theoretical applications of rail and Gauss guns include missile defense, and orbital insertion of durable satellites.

Gauss guns and Rail guns are actually different devices. Rail guns use a pair of like-charged magnetic rails to propell an object. This requires a large amount of energy in exchange for a relatively poor speed and distance.

Gauss guns use electromagnetic coils to generate the needed force to propell the object. Gauss guns use less energy and generate a higher magnetic force, giving the projectile greater speed and distance.

Current theoretical applications of rail and Gauss guns include missile defense, and orbital insertion of durable satellites.

Right. Also, gauss guns are known as coilguns.

Railguns today are too inefficient. And the rails need to be replaced after each use (in fact, the whole machine usually does). You can forget about railguns ever being used to move large objects at high speeds.

Coilguns are far more likely to be used by a future tech military.

This is Skeelzania. I would post as them but I don't trust the forums enough to log out and back in.

Many of my ships use railguns almost exclusivly as armament, so I have some expirience with them. My corvettes mount double-barrled railgun turrets firing 25kg slugs at around 20km/s. Battleships carry several triple-turrets firing 140kg projectiles at a somewhat slower speed. Both charges are shaped so as to crater enemy armor instead of punching right through it. There are also plans for a slug with an anti-matter or atomic core, but these are far in the future. A railgun slug of sufficient size can also be used as a planetary-bombardment weapon. It would need to be larger enough to pass through the atmosphere with enough of it left to cause a good deal of damage (basically a man-made meteorite).

I could try to go indepth about the inner mechanics of railguns, but others can do it better than I. But basically, they all work by propelling the bullet electromagnetically down the "rail" and out of the gun. This requires alot of power to do, but not as much as your standard laser cannon.

I would imagine railguns would have a good success rate against standard plate armor. As for shielding, I have no idea. IMHO, a shield designed to counter energy attacks would do nothing against a railgun slug, but since I don't use shields I wouldnt know.

To put it simply, all rail guns are slow to reload, quite powerful, and VERY heavy on energy drain.

Capital ship rails are large (beam cannon sized) that are used on other capital ships or stations, etc. Fighter rails are standard fighter armament sized and used both to attack capital ships and to take out other fighters.

OOC:

The Rifts RPG by Palladium Books uses Rail Gun technology extensively.

So far is it advanced, that rifle units for Cyborgs and Beings with Supernatural Strength can actually tote them around, not just power armor or armored vehicles.

If you're going to go into Rail Gun tech, that's the RPG system I'd recommend you'd use.

DGNT uses a form of railgun to launch certain fighter types, sort of like launch catapults on Aircraft carriers 'today'.
In the future though, people have super lubricants, that sort of thing :)
If you dont have them, we'll sell you some.

Guanyu, thank you (that's pretty much all I wanted to know).

Everybody else, thanks as well. Up until my knowledge of Rail Guns has been pretty much nothing and my knowlegde has now been expanded. Doesn't really help me in the RP I'm in, but I have always loved just learning information. Hell, I read the entire Iliad just for some info on Hermes (Read the Odyssesy as well, but that was just for fun)

A little history:
The first railgun appeared in Arthur C Clark's "Earthlight." It didn't have a name yet, but in this book, a ship is destroyed by a solid beam of metal travelling extremly fast. (launched from a ground-based station).
personally,I think railguns are defensive weapons only. The power needed to run both a spaceship AND a railgun would be too great.

AH, but what if the power source was equivelant to that of an entire star?

I use Jimathon MiniStar Engines which are essentially just tiny stars. I got energy up the ying-yang. :wink:

A little history:
The first railgun appeared in Arthur C Clark's "Earthlight." It didn't have a name yet, but in this book, a ship is destroyed by a solid beam of metal travelling extremly fast. (launched from a ground-based station).
personally,I think railguns are defensive weapons only. The power needed to run both a spaceship AND a railgun would be too great.

That's not a railgun. The weapon used by the Earth forces to defend their Lunar station was a jet of molten metal.

BTW, railguns have a lot of drawbacks for an ubertech RP.
* They can't travel faster than C unless FTL drives are installed on each projectile, at which point they become guided missiles.
* They rely solely on kinetic energy to cause damage, so ubertech shielding that prevents solid matter passage will probably completely protect the shielded target.
* They take up a lot of space and weigh a lot.

For starship combat, the only practical weapons are some sort of energy weapons- particle beamcasters, blasters, lasers, phasers, whathaveyou. With these weapons, your ship will never run out of ammo unless the powerplant is destroyed. The ammunition does not itself take up space. In this sort of environment, carrying large rocks around to attack other ships is fairly silly (although I can think of several tactical situations where it might be a good idea).

Carrying a lot of big rocks around to bombard planets, on the other hand, is far more probable. Most planets cannot flee at FTL speeds. In most planetary systems, there are lots of extra rocks floating around which can be converted into ammunition. If the target planet is shielded by some sort of force field that deflects all high-energy beam weapons but permits solid objects to pass, you can orbit for a very long time, dropping Dinosaur-killers on the helpless people below (it is nearly impossible to stop a rock from falling).

TEO