| Ability User: | Kol Battleship |
|---|---|
| Ability Type: | Active |
| Target: | Enemy capital ships, frigates and structures. |
| Antimatter Cost: | 75 (75) (50 -> 55 -> 60) [45 -> 50 -> 55 -> 60] |
| Cooldown Time: | 6 |
| Duration: | N/A (10) (10) [10] |
| Range: | 5000 (6500) (6500) [6500] |
| Effect(s): |
|
Fires a high velocity armor piercing slug at the target, dealing a high amount of physical damage.
Numbers in parentheses are for Entrenchment and Diplomacy, respectively. Numbers in brackets are for Rebellion.
In Rebellion, the Gauss Rail Gun damage ignores shields and directly does hull damage, but is affected by the target's hull armor.
Tactics[]
As of Rebellion, Gauss Rail Gun damage ignores shields and shield mitigation, but is still reduced by armor. It is therefore most effective against well-shielded targets with high mitigation and relatively weak armor and / or hulls, making it probably best employed against Advent titans and capitals. Failing that, any other capital ships are a good target as well. The ability is not powerful enough to one-shot frigates and, due to the relatively high antimatter cost, is probably wasted on them. The short cooldown of this ability allows the Kol to quickly fire the railgun multiple times, but it will probably run out of antimatter after the third or fourth shot. You will need some way to expand or refresh your Kol's antimatter reserves to use this ability effectively or use the Dunov's ultimate ability, Flux Field, which drastically reduces the antimatter cost of abilities. This ability is not particularly strong in early game, but in the late game, it provides the TEC with a way to consistently deal direct hull damage to high-value targets, provided one brings mutliple Kols to the battle.
The actual "slug" of the rail gun comes out of the same gun emplacement as the Kol's planet bombing weapons. It can be theorized that the design simply uses the railgun at full power (hence requiring matter-antimatter annihilation to provide enough energy) when used as a kinetic weapon, and at extremely low power as a launcher to deploy nuclear space-to-planet munitions.
Development[]
Gauss Rail Gun was improved in Patch 1.18, increasing its damage and adding its secondary speed-reducing effect. This change was not implemented in the original game, but was carried over into Diplomacy. In Entrenchment and Diplomacy the target is also slowed by 50% for 10 seconds.
This ability has been changed a total of three times, for Entrenchment, Diplomacy, and finally Rebellion, partly in response to negative player feedback regarding the relative weakness of the original ability. This makes it one of the most often-overhauled capital ship abilities in the game.
Trivia[]
In reality, a rail gun and a Gauss gun are mutually exclusive design concepts (though both in the electromagnetic launcher category), making a "Gauss rail gun" a questionable technology description.