Building Your Coilgun
Every Coilgun consists of four essential components that work together to create a functional weapon system:
Core Components:
- Chamber – The starting point where projectiles are loaded
- Modular Barrel – Acceleration segments that boost projectile performance
- Muzzle – The exit point where projectiles leave the weapon
- Magnetic Accelerator – An enhancement to the modular barrel that yields the greatest increase in weapon performance
Construction Rules:
- You can place unlimited number of Barrels between the Chamber and Muzzle
- Each Barrel can connect up to 4 Accelerators
- Shared Accelerators – A single Accelerator can boost TWO Coilguns simultaneously if both weapons touch it with their Barrels BUT it won’t boost two barrels of the same Coilgun.
Examples of working Coilguns: (Example number 1 is the most effective setup for two Coilguns with 2 barrels each in terms of damage and cost as it use middle array of Magnetic Accelerators on both Coilguns)
How Coilguns Work
New damage type: Piercing
- Coilguns bullet fly with such a power that it pierces through power shields and layers of armor.
- Every power shield it hit slows the bullet and take away nearly half of its damage (shield gets full damage so it won’t be working again for a while).
- It works similar with debris.
- When Coilgun bullet hit a spaceship it penetrates instead of exploding. Damage decreases depending on armor stat of block it pierces.
May physicists forgive these simplifications – Coilgun Physics:
- Exit velocity (and also damage) scales with √(ΣI²) where I is the effective current. Each Barrel segment contributes, each Magnetic Accelerator boosts that segment’s current
- Magnetic energy in coils is proportional to I². More Magnetic Accelerators = higher current = exponentially more stored energy converted to kinetic energy
- We assume constant projectile mass, magnetic susceptibility, and coil geometry for gameplay balance. Also for balance and simplicity damage is not the same as kinetic energy so it scales by the same multiplier that exit velocity scales.
Formulas, damage, penetration, and a lot of calculations:
- Base values: Damage: 50, Speed 50, Max penetration 0,8 (It nearly never reached as damage drop is main penetration blocker)
- Formula: Scaling multiplier = 1 + 0.5*√(Σ(1+4n)²) where n is Magnetic Accelerators per Barrel and (1+4n)² represents one Barrel.
- Example damage scaling:
1 barrel + 4 accelerators = 9.5× (475 dmg and speed).
2 barrels + 8 accelerators = 13× (650 dmg and speed).
4 barrels + 16 accelerators = 18× (900 dmg and speed).
8 barrels + 32 accelerators = ~25× (1252 dmg and speed).
16 barrels + 64 accelerators = 35× (1750 dmg and speed).
- Note that each additional Barrel increases the weapon’s firing delay (the time between pressing the fire button and the weapon firing).
The delay is calculated as: 0.1 seconds * the number of barrels.
Now, how damage is dealt and how it is reduced.
First, as mentioned at the beginning – Shields and Debris nearly halve the bullet’s damage and slow its speed (Shields and Debris receive full damage to their own HP), but they do not stop the bullet as long as it still has enough remaining damage and speed.
When a bullet hits the spaceship, it will penetrate and deal damage block by block, using the following formula to calculate the remaining damage after each block:
Damage * 0.9 – (blockArmor * 30 blockKineticArmor * 70 ).
To make it clearer, here are some examples: (Coilguns with 16, 8, 4 and 1 barrel. Every barrel have all 4 Magnetic Accelerators connected)
Here is the new armor type – Composite Armor. It is the best and the only effective counter (block / armor wise as power shields are good counter too) against the power of Coilguns. So, if you’re facing a Coilgun and you don’t have any power shields, you’d better have some Composite Armor between your ship’s interior and the enemy’s Coilgun fire.
No Imperial ships where damaged or destroyed during Coilgun development and testing
All values in this post can change in future due to balancing.
