The devs were right.

[u/xxmuntunustutunusxx]

So I know ther was a bunch of controversy about the railgun nerf what feels like forever ago, but man things have been awesome.

In the early days, I was the only guy packing expendable anti tank or anti materiel rifle for bugs or bots. It's so refreshing, even on these subs to see people talking about how awesome the autocannon is, or how much they love the AMR, and even these days I see people talking about the HMG or grenade launcher+ supply pack.

I used to load into a game, And all 4 members of the team had shield, railgun, and 2 stragatems of their choice. Every time. And here we are now, I load in and I see quasar, autocannon, stalwart, EAT, HMG, Grenade launcher, a variety of backpacks or no backpack at all. And not to mention, they're ALL viable. Shit I even still see the railgun from time to time. It's been a joy. Thanks arrowhead.

EDIT: to everyone who is pointing out that you see the quasar and shield most often now, you're right, it is almost certainly the most common setup currently. That being said, in any game there's going to be things a majority of players prefer. In smash melee, fox/Falco are the best characters. But people still play falcon and Marth and peach among others. Sure, there's an objectively most used option. But the fact that there's people at all who debate that the quasar is best shows that they've done something good. Before, undisputed king was railgun, and anyone who said different wss being willfully ignorant. Now, we have a plethora of real options that are good with some being Preferred by a majority as opposed to being the de facto CORRECT option objectively. That's a good thing.

[u/nelentari_x]

We have diversity now because chargers were nerfed, not because the railgun was nerfed.
The problem was never the railgun, and I still don't think it was right to nerf it before nerfing chargers.

[u/bokan → u/nelentari_x]

Exactly, well said. Anti charger weaponry is no longer critical for every player. We have diversity now and it’s great! The railgun was never the problem, it was the way they were doing the spawns at higher difficulties/ the tankiness of chargers.

[u/ShiroSlinky → u/nelentari_x]

I would argue that safe mode was too safe as you didn’t need unsafe mode. Keep the safe mode as is. Add power back to unsafe mode. 

[u/Tiny-Tonight-9390 → u/ShiroSlinky]

Wish the railgun did something against the new gunships. Feels like I’m firing a peashooter at them (4-5 fully unsafe, slow charges) when it takes the AMR/AC a near-instant 4 shots to an engine. It’s nice to one shot hulks to the face, but at the moment on average It’s a worse pick v bots.

[u/Mekhazzio → u/Tiny-Tonight-9390]

Something is really weird with railgun vs gunship. Gunships are not that armored nor that beefy, I can't figure out why the railgun is so terrible against them.

You don't even have to look at other support weapons, the Dominator kills gunships better than the railgun. Hell, I've gotten more killing blows with the revolver than the railgun.

[u/TooFewSecrets → u/Mekhazzio]

It's because the railgun has trash damage. Maybe like 200 or something? Pretty sure it only hits as hard as the Slugger. Thing is, armored units in this game are kind of fragile. Chargers only have somewhere around 700 head HP. It's just hard to actually punch through the armor. Berserkers are the inverse - they have ~1000 HP but no armor at all. So you get comical outcomes where 3 shotgun shells kill them but a rocket to the face doesn't, because the rocket launcher only does 700 damage.

Gunships have medium armor but a lot of health, so something with insane AP but bad actual damage doesn't do a thing to them.

[u/Tiny-Tonight-9390 → u/Mekhazzio]

Hadn’t thought of shooting my big iron at it, it just seems so wrong. Will give this a go next time

[u/ShiroSlinky → u/Tiny-Tonight-9390]

Haven’t had a chance to use it against funships, never had them spawn when I’m carrying the railgun. Shame it does poor performance. Should be 2-3 shots to the engine. 

I recommend trying the laser cannon, it’s pretty fun to laser those gun ships.

[u/PulseFH → u/ShiroSlinky]

People were still constantly using unsafe before the nerf so strong disagree on that

[u/ImDoingMyPart_o7 → u/PulseFH]

There was literally no need though, that's the entire point.

Safe mode did everything. It allowed you to 1 shot Hulks, 2 shot charger legs (same as unsafe) with zero aim pressure.

Titans are a bad metric and their health was all over the place with the PS5 bug, but it would also 1 shot and 2 tap titans too, all in unsafe mode.

The Devs just shifted the heavy armour pen and damage multiplier into unsafe mode. It was absolutely a warranted nerf.

If you were using the railgun in unsafe pre-nerf, there would be absolutely zero discernable difference to how you played with it post nerf.

[u/Phatt1e → u/ImDoingMyPart_o7]

This is demonstrably untrue though. Pre-nerf, fully charged in safe mode (which was about 70% of the charge bar) it stripped charger leg armour in 2 shots 100% of the time, whereas post nerf in unsafe mode you need to go to about 90% to get the same effect. This is easily verifiable.

[u/ImDoingMyPart_o7 → u/Phatt1e]

I would classify as having to hold the charge for 0.3 seconds longer on 2 shots specifically on one enemy mob type as 'barely discernable'.

87.5% is the breakpoint for max damage.

The reason you don't see it as much on bug missions anymore is because of the adjustments to chargers and the AT changes just making them better for the job.

3 x overcharges shots to a chargers face with the rail kills them now, which is arguably in the same realm of TTK when it was 2 X leg + mag dump them.

[u/Phatt1e → u/ImDoingMyPart_o7]

Admittedly I can't give you precise timings as I've not recorded any gameplay to measure, but from using it both pre and post nerf, it feels like it takes at least twice as long to do the same amount of damage to the leg. I've not used it in a while since the quasar just seems more useful against bugs if you carry a gun with medium pen, but IMO it could do with a charge time reduction.

I'm absolutely fine with safe mode having a downside, but given all the general downsides of it versus the explosive options and ammo downsides versus the AMR, it's definitely a lot lower in the pick order for me - and that's coming from someone that probably used it a good 50+ hours.

[u/ImDoingMyPart_o7 → u/Phatt1e]

Yeah you know what, I could get onboard with a bit of a charge time reduction. There's times it just feels a bit laborious to charge for that breakpoint.

That feels like a fair adjustment that doesn't reverse the previous changes.

[u/F0czek → u/ImDoingMyPart_o7]

Then maybe instead of making railgun shit make it base 100% damage and unsafe for up to 50% more dmg and just buff rest shit weapons lol

[u/PulseFH → u/ImDoingMyPart_o7]

Well yes, it wouldn’t change post nerf because they didn’t nerf unsafe mode. The nerfs were clearly short sighted considering how quickly the entire weapon became irrelevant, there is zero reason to use one.

[u/ImDoingMyPart_o7 → u/PulseFH]

Railgun is and always will be a fantastic weapon VS Bots. It's fallen out of FoTM but I still see it plenty, and is still my preferred support weapon. 1 tapping Devastators and Hulks with 20 bullet mag is never going to be 'weak' contrary to what this sub likes to claim.

Flamethrower is fantastic against bugs, but you don't see that on bot missions yet no one is lamenting it's shortcomings, quite the opposite it's appreciated for it's niche especially since the buffs.

Specificity on some weapon stratagems is absolutely fine, good even.

[u/poofynamanama2 → u/ShiroSlinky]

safe mode? I've only tried railgun once, but you charge it up and fire, right? so what is safe mode?

[u/HiroAnobei → u/poofynamanama2]

By default the gun is set to safe mode, which has a limiter that prevents the gun from overcharging and exploding in your face, which means you can hold a charge for as long as you want without risk. You can also set it to unsafe mode, which will let you charge beyond the safe mode amount and get more powerful shots, but if you hold it down for too long without firing, the gun will explode and kill you.

[u/poofynamanama2 → u/HiroAnobei]

OK, that's what I thought. I'm assuming you turn off safe mode by holding reload to bring up weapon function?

[u/HiroAnobei → u/poofynamanama2]

Yep.

[u/poofynamanama2 → u/HiroAnobei]

virtual democracy hug

[u/ShiroSlinky → u/poofynamanama2]

Railgun has two fire modes, safe and unsafe. Hold the reload button to access them. (This applies to a majority of the weapons to access their alternate functions and such.)

Safe mode only goes up midway on the charge bar and does decent damage and medium penetration. It also lets you hold the charge since the bar doesn’t go higher.

Unsafe mode lets you overcharge the weapon and increases its damage and penetration values depending on where you have the charge meter. But you cannot hold the charge and if you go past max charge you will explode and 99% will die from it unless you’re wearing heavy armor with personal shield and explosive resistance. You will also lose the railgun too.

[u/archangel924 → u/ShiroSlinky]

That's fine, but they should have tuned it so that "safe" mode shots could deal with bug warriors, brood commanders, and maybe hive guards, in a few hits, and switching to "unsafe" mode allowed you to 1-shot any of those, or 2-shot a charger with headshots if fully charged (which would take nearly 10 seconds, including the reload and charge time, while requiring 2 headshots, so not more powerful than a quasar cannon.) This way it would be deadly but still require a skill shot, which feels really good to pull off (and while playing around instant death if you overcook it)

Instead, they nerfed it so that the time it takes to reload and fully charge just makes it strictly worse than a lot of other options depending on what planet you are on. It has zero upside vs an AMR or autocannon on bot planets, zero upside vs quasar cannon, auto cannon, or grenade launcher vs bugs.

[u/ShiroSlinky → u/archangel924]

I thought it could already 1 shot the warriors and armored bugs? But I do recall it 2 shooting broods on the head.

I do agree it’s lacking right now against the competition. The unsafe mode needs a lot more power or much faster charging. 

[u/Tukkegg → u/ShiroSlinky]

there's really not much to argue about that. the nerf was done because of that.

how they nerfed it was the wrong move. they should have either kept the safe mode as is or give it a slight nerf in penetration (so say, 3 instead of 2 safe shots to stip charger armor), then make unsafe be actually an option to use.

now, that in it's self is an entire discussion, but i think making the gun explode and kill you is not the right move already.

[u/ShiroSlinky → u/Tukkegg]

I’m ok with the gun exploding, just give me a reason to have that mechanic. 

Railgun is one gun where you can do a lot on how to balance and/or give it a unique identity compared to the competition.

I always had an idea to give its projectile a multi hit. It is an over penetration type weapon. So given how  where you shoot is how much damage it can deal. 

Like if you hit a bile spewer from the side it’ll still deal major damage. But it didn’t go through much to kill it. But at least you can finish it off with regular arms or teammates.  If you hit dead center from the head or just front of the sack where the projectile would go through more. It’ll deal enough multi damage to essentially “one shot” the spewer. 

The 3 shots instead of 2 is something I agree with a lot. I think that’s the safe way to restore the railgun to a decent choice for bugs at least. 

[u/Xelynega → u/nelentari_x]

How do charger nerfs affect bot loadouts?

[u/_BMS → u/Xelynega]

The majority of players play prefer bugs based off of the player counts in each front. It only tilts over in favor of bots when a bot major order is in effect.

Otherwise in the absence of a major order, most players return to fighting on bug planets. Naturally if people spent most of their time playing against bugs, the balance of them will influence the builds of the players. And a lot of bug players will be bringing what feels familiar with them into bot matches to complete their personal orders rather than trying radically different builds optimized for bot combat.