Which gun is better

[someone else]

This applies to rpgs as well.
Lets say you are driving a mech. Your typical opponent has 100 hit points. The game is in real-time.
You have 2 choices:
A) Railgun that does 100 points of damage and has a rate-of-fire(ROF) of 6 shots per minute. 10 damage per second.
B) Autocannon that does 10 points of damage and has a ROF of 60 shots per minute. 10 DPS.

Assume both are equally accurate, ammo is irrelevant, which gun is better? Or are they the same?

 

[SoupNazi]

Assuming outside factors don't apply (i.e. the accuracy will be the same no matter what) they're the same. If user skill matters, a rookie marksman would be better off with the autocannon as they'd get a bigger chance to cause more damage. Assuming both weapons are stats-wise the same when it comes to accuracy, one missed shot with the railgun is a devastating loss, while missing once with the autocannon doesn't much matter.

 

[curry]

Depends on the combat system.

If the enemy has an armor that reduces, lets say 5 points of damage, then the Railgun is better because it does a total of 570 dmg while the Autocannon does 300 dmg.

If you can prevent the enemy from shooting back or reloading shield or something, then Autocannon is better.

 

[Kraszu]

Railgun is better because the first shot has no cool down, so you will kill your enemy with 1st hit before he will be able to damage you much, you can also hide behind a wall or box or whatever while railgun is recharging.

 

[torpid]

Not accounting for player skill, the railgun is better because you kill him with the first shot, while using the autocannon means your opponent has time to shoot back.

 

[mondblut]

Railgun is one-shot kill. Also, what's "missing"?

 

[Papa Môlé]

Railgun is the correct answer, and why it's correct is also part of what's wrong with hit points in general.

 

[DraQ]

Assuming reasonably high accuracy of both weapons Railgun is clearly better, because it can kill typical opponent in 0s, while autocannon requires 9s.
It also allows for popamole tactics (if you excuse the wording), while autocannon requires exposing yourself continuously to return fire in order to inflict damage.

This is basically my logic behind favouring pulse lasers to beam ones in Frontier, just replace "exposing yourself" to keeping your ship pointing at the target, while pauses between pulses allow for free reorientation and actual usage of main thruster.
If you can ensure hit and the choice is between dealing necessary damage in parts, or in single neat package, the former is a non-option.

With high likelihood of miss or numerous low-HP targets, autocannon would have been better as railgun would be an overkill weapon with effective DPS possibly as low as 1/10 autocannon's DPS.

 

[torpid]

Railgun is the correct answer, and why it's correct is also part of what's wrong with hit points in general.

Keep your realism out of my FPS.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Railgun is better if you aren't being swrmed by enemies. Otherwise, the thing that shoots more and faster is better (even for real life, I think - supressive fire, cover fire), because huge damage per shot seems like overkill for most enemies.

 

[Cassidy]

I always preferred weapons that trade rate of fire for firepower in FPSes, but I like auto weapons more in turn-based games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Railgun, for reasons Draq mentioned. Also, in a situation with an enemy that won't die in a single hit (Say they have 160 HP) and they can heal themselves, railgun is better for forcing the enemy to heal up to a higher 'safe zone'. Or even if they can't heal themselves, forcing them to retreat in a strategic/tactical situation. It's the same reason having a 5% chance to critically hit for quadruple damage is much better than a 15% chance to critically hit for double damage, even though the total dps is the same. The guy with the higher damage spikes can poke at the enemy until he gets a damage spike then follow up while he has a big lead, and just retreat while he's still safe if his attacks are missing/not scoring criticals and he falls behind in damage even slightly. If you think about combat as a game of chicken, having more sporadic bursty damage is like making the other guy's car go faster- you're taking away his ability to safely stop.

 

[Renegen]

Both are fun for different uses. Autocannon is probably preferred for an average action game while the railgun is better as a serious deathmatch weapon.

 

[Papa Môlé]

Keep your realism out of my FPS.

Why so aggro bro?

Besides it's not realism per se, although if you want players actually using different weapons, modelling them on real life effects is not a bad idea. The reason the railgun is almost always superior is that HP is usually a 1+=you're fine and 0-=you're dead thing. Taking out the biggest chunks at a time with the least actions possible is therefore almost always superior to anything else you could be doing. A wound system can help make rapid fire better but even then a bigger shot is more likely to cause a wound. The "you could miss with the big gun argument" doesn't really work that well either. Essentially, what you end up saying is that the autocannon-type weapon is just for noobs and people who know what they are doing use the railgun. For a real benefit to a rapid fire weapon you'd have to have some sort of morale effect, where getting shot at continuously stops players/enemies from moving or shooting and/or imposes hefty penalties if they try to. Basically, if the only argument that the autocannon really has in its favor in a generic HP system is that missing risks less you're admitting the railgun is better on its own, it's simply human error which would make anyone consider using the former. Ideally though, at least to me, any weapon should be something a skilled player would want to use.

 

[SoupNazi]

I was, for some reason, thinking of boss battles (I guess) where you're facing one enemy that will take over a minute to kill.

 

[Average Manatee]

You would have to know the distribution of enemy health and enemy group size to know which is better. A mean enemy health of 100 means nothing if 50% of enemies are 50 and the other are 150. Railgun's overkill would greatly work against it vs multiple enemy situations there.

 

[Destroid]

Frontloading damage is almost always better, everything else being equal. These weapons would maybe be equal if the autocannon dealt 20dps, allowing the AC user a good chance to kill if they avoid the first rail hit or ambush the rail user. I can't be bothered to do that math for a %hit based RPG system.

 

[DragoFireheart]

A) Railgun
Damage: 100
RoF: 1 RPS (Round Per Second)
DPS: 10

B) Autocannon
Damage: 10
RoF: 6 RPS
DPS: 10

They're both equal for killing over time. The railgun being better against a single target since it kills the target immediately while the Autocannon requires a 1.4 seconds. However, if headshots are instant kill, the autocannon can pull ahead since it can score more head shots (up to 6 times as many). On the other hand, armor can negate damage to the point that rapid fire weapons are very weak against armor (Damage Threshold from Fallout for example). In that case, the railgun wins again.

tl;dr the Railgun is slightly superior since it kills faster than the autocannon on a single enemy.

 

[chzr]

pretty much depends what accuracy are we talking about and how much stuff can happen during 10 seconds (ie: how fucked are you if you miss the rail)

 

[Damned Registrations]

Note that auto fire weapons actually do have an advantage in most modern shooters (aside from helping shit aimers): they cancel health regen. A rough analog I can think of is in the armored core (mechwarrior did this too, didn't it?) series, being shot raised heat levels in your mech, and going over a threshold would cause additional damage and fuck your energy generation. Single heavy hits weren't effective at doing this unless they triggered it in a single shot, while a weapon like a machinegun or missile spam could do it much more easily, because the constant fire didn't leave any chance for the heat to completely wear off.

 

[someone else]

pretty much depends what accuracy are we talking about and how much stuff can happen during 10 seconds (ie: how fucked are you if you miss the rail)

You can compare 2 guys fighting against each other, one with the railgun, one with the autocannon, who has the advantage? Assume 100% and 50% accuracy, who has the better odds?

Did the Deus Ex thread spawn this?

It's better to use the railgun for the player, and better to face the railgun on enemies. Then you can time their hitscan and strafe slightly to the side when it starts and you're invulnerable to it. If you use real collisions or lots of shots it can be much harder to dodge.

No, this applies to non FPS games like Diablo, even RTS like Warcraft 3 with special attacks with cooldowns. Just replace guns with spells or swords. I wonder if this would remained in RPG forum if I have use spells instead of guns.

 

[Damned Registrations]

A good way of examining it is to simply do the odds:

Assume 50% hit rate, 10 dps. Auto is 10shots/second 10 each. Railgun 1/second @ 100 each. If both have 100 HP, the railgun gets to make 2 or 3 shots before dying to the auto (Unless the auto lands every shot, which is ~1 in 1024.) 2 shots gives him 75% chance of winning. 3 gives him 87.5% chance. He'll get 3 shots if the auto has to make 21 attacks, or rolls even slightly worse than average. So the actual win rate is between 75% and 87.5%. About 81%.

So what if both targets have 200 HP instead? The railgun gets to make 4 shots most likely, giving it slightly less than 50% chance of winning. The chance it doesn't get to make at least 4 is pretty neglible (Auto needs to land 20 out of 30 shots. A 5 miss differential from average is still a longshot, 1 in 32, or ~3%.) So we'll call the railgun at ~45% chance to end things after 3 seconds (when it gets it's 4th shot, and the auto gets it's 31st) in victory.

The auto has a little under 50% chance of hitting at least 20 times after 40 shots. The other outcomes that make up the other >50% are that it hits under 20 times. So just before 4 seconds are up, when the railgun is about to make it's second shot, the auto has a ~45% also of winning. But this is lowered further by the 45% chance it already lost. So it actually has about a 45% of 45% or ~20% chance of winning.

So so far, at 3.99 seconds, we have 45% chance the railgun has won, and a 20% chance the auto has won. 35% chance of outcomes left. At 4 seconds, the rail gets it's 5th shot, and if it lands (50%) and it has already landed at least one shot (87.5%) it wins right here. So 50% of 87.5% = 43.25% chance the fight ends. 43.25% of the remaining ~35% outcomes = ~15% added to the overall chance rail wins. So rail is up to 60% win rate. The chances of the railgun getting to make a 6th shot are really slim (auto has to hit less than 20 times out of 50 shots, so only slightly higher than the chance it doesn't even get to make 4 shots) so I won't do the actual math there. Call it another 1%.

TLDR: Vs a 100 hp target with 50% accuracy on weapons, railgun wins 81% of the time. Vs a 200 hp target, railgun still wins ~61% of the time.

 

[MetalCraze]

Railgun.

Because it's a realistic weapon.

 

[Destroid]

 

[RK47]

Same concerns. Playing most FPS, I gotta say ROF is quite important, if the damage over time is the same. Reason being, you can't expect to hit 100% of the time. And you may not have the time to wait for the 2nd shot if you miss.
Then again most FPS has quicker to draw side arms to finish off weakened targets or when you're out of ammo with primary.

That said, I'm not as skilful as others and prefer higher rate of fire to compensate and correct my aim in real time like in Battlefield 3.
In turn based, none of the tension of missing is there, it's just a chance to hit that is shown clearly. Hence Rail gun would be my primary choice over the Autocannon.