Railgun Penetration Testing - Space Engineers

[@cosmicwolf4240]

The holes that Large one leaves are nasty… I’m just picturing going up to salvage some wreckage after a battle and seeing Swiss cheesed chunks of armor

[@LastStandGamers]

I am glad they have gone this route with the weapons design rather that it just exploding everything.

[@cosmicwolf4240]

@@LastStandGamers fax

[@Firesgone]

Makes lag from broken armor falling off better. It leaves the ship intact while destroying the systems

[@QueueWithACapitalQ]

@@LastStandGamers Yes, i was very worried when i saw the trailer of it just deleting %40 of an argentavis. now with this although it does seam a bit like you can just slap it on anything and fire it willy nilly you do still have to place your shots well to actually do anything meaningful.

[@bi0hazardxiii28]

@@LastStandGamers but all it has to hit is a full hydro tank or ammo container inside a ship to make things explode....so it still kind of does

[@Zero747_]

For large ships there's a practicality of "gyro armor" in that your ship turns like a brick unless you spam them somewhere in the first place. Putting them on the interior poses the risk of them popping off and tearing up your ship With only the single mounting point, there's a practicality in an outwards facing layer with a thin skin of light armor/paneling over top, being both a safe and aesthetically pleasing design

[@MediumRareOpinions]

I've been thinking about something similar with my older spaced armors ships, why not fill that layer up with something useful?

[@TheRezro]

That is how pros do the Battleships.

[@DC2022]

having a wild gyro wandering in my ship's guts and obliterating more stuff than the actual shot who popped out the light armor block where the gyro was sitting down, I know now the potential of mass destruction those fraking block can have.

[@TheRezro]

@@DC2022 It is actually why it is a good idea to keep them close to outside, instead in engine room. Two birds.

[@thefistofshadow7392]

Just turn them all on, put them all in a groupe and add them to your hotbar, so you can change their power and so you still move the same even if some are disabled.

[@Deathdealer]

Loving all the new weapons that KSH have been adding as of late. Very different compared to the weapons I'm used to using. After taking a break from SE for 2 years now is the time to get back into it!

[@LastStandGamers]

Excited to have you back mate !!!

[@TheRezro]

People using Weapon Core would be relatively familiar though.

[@-nightraider-1169]

Welcome future space engineer!

[@LvDalek]

I need to go to bed I read ksp and though wait that’s the wrong game sure enough I’m just sleep deprived

[@thomas.parnell7365]

@@LastStandGamers same just times the issue these days even 4 hours seems hard to get .

[@scarredFalconer]

I actually did some testing with just giant solid cubes of armor blocks yesterday. (I was only using large grid blocks at the time) Light armor is basically useless: The slug punched through 20 blocks before stopping. Heavy armor blocks it punched through 3 before stopping. I did not test small blocks or the small rail gun however.

[@soulsurvivor8293]

Should test a composite of layers using light & heavy blocks, half blocks and plating for the most space efficient ablative armour. Add the composite armour spaced off the outer hull to protect vital systems. Just enough to prevent a single shot penetration of the outer hull, even if the outer hull is damaged slightly. Make the ablative composite armour panels detachable, dump them when they are near useless or to shed mass. While your main vessel is still going to be targeted, the jettisoned armour can be used to obstruct fire and line of sight while also being an obstacle for your pursuer. They may even break off pursuit to salvage the armour too.

[@trolly4233]

i wonder if someone could develop a way to deflect projectiles using Gravity generators now that they added bullet drop

[@sethdrake7551]

light armor is useful for structure, pressurization, and protecting from small arms fire, but against any proper weapons its just not that good

[@ceilyurie856]

I figured this out just by doing math. ANd the MASS though....especially of gyroscopes....almsot better off goign almsot no armor and going for mobility.

[@randymotter51]

@@trolly4233 The only issue with that is that the projectiles move so fast that in the space of time it takes for them to cross the area of a grav generator, they would be deflected by at most a few meters if they are affected and that's being optimistic. Even the slowest projectiles generally spend less than a second passing through it, so unless you are in the tiniest of large grid ships then it will not likely make much difference, especially so with these hyper fast railgun shots that spend not even a tenth of a second going through that zone. That's not even enough time to deflect it by a single large grid block worth of distance. Best bet is to master the art of not being seen. --- kzbin.info/www/bejne/kHjZaaJ3fd2Yobc&ab_channel=victormariano

[@Bongus_Bubogus]

I love penetration tests. Weapons are kinda cool too, I guess.

[@LastStandGamers]

We only provide the best penetration tests here at LSG ;]

[@bluejacketergazu2447]

... hmm wording, and... "phrasing" is quite necessary here

[@Bongus_Bubogus]

@@bluejacketergazu2447 •• U

[@ventusprime]

@@LastStandGamers It dosent metter , if you dont disble my ship with the first shot, the 2nd will not hit because the reloding time, and the way my ship are buildet

[@jebkerman5422]

@@LastStandGamers nice video, but you forgot to mention a potential way to shield your ships against long range rail-guns. Let me explaine: weapons now have bulletdrop. If they have bullet-drop, they should be affected by gravity in some way. And if they are affected by gravity, then, theoretical, if you put enough spherical gravity generators on your ship, you should be able to slow, redirect or even stop a shell entirely before impact. (Also if it workes, you should also be able to super-accelerat a bullet using gravity generators to penetrate the shield.)

[@cron1807]

I feel that the new weapons will add more ship roles than just fly in, turn on guns, spin so most guns face target, with the new railgun being able to go through and hit specific modules like the reactor, or demolish the propulsion. However, I feel like Artillery ball turrets are more effective in terms of medium range, with autocannons easily becoming meta on fighters

[@kerbalairforce8802]

Make a 4 barrel autocannon Gatling gun and wrap a ship around it like a space A-10

[@zakarymoninger7845]

@@kerbalairforce8802 In space, no one can hear you BRRRRRRT

[@-nightraider-1169]

True, there will be a new competitive type of gameplay the space engineers combat now

[@joelmulder]

I feel like gyroscopes should explode with splash damage if they get broken. That might balance out using them as armor a bit more. Gyroscopes of course use heavy parts spinning it extremely high velocities, so it would make sense for those components to turn into shrapnel projectiles when the gyroscope is destroyed.

[@bi0hazardxiii28]

Well, if the armor that the gyroscopes are mounted on breaks, then they will rattle around inside your grid causing more damage. Since they have only one mount point, they are prone to this.

[@joelmulder]

@@bi0hazardxiii28 very true. Although for the armor underneath to break, the round will most likely have to get through the gyro first, in which case it’ll be gone anyway (unless SE is being janky ans the round phases through the gyro)

[@BastiatC]

@@bi0hazardxiii28 Ironicly this is a problem for normal gyro use more then for gyro armor

[@darkracer1252]

i don't play the game. but from reading comments i can say that it's already balanced out because of their weight. apparantly a ship covered in gyroscopes is so heavy it can barely move

[@TheByQQ]

@@darkracer1252 It's literally the opposite, though

[@Zeleharian]

I've been doing some testing of my own and found something interesting. Apparently none of the new weapons do any damage to voxels, so I think underground bases and asteroid stations will have a huge defensive advantage in this update when designed properly. Railgun and artillery turrets can take out attackers from a distance while gatling turrets and autocannons defend from ships that enter the 800 meter missile range

[@eldritchplayz51]

Oh boy, can't wait to see how many times people accidentally recreate the Last Jedi siege...

[@VME-Brad]

Oh man, all this new stuff makes me wish i had a team to play with. Just think of how potent a 3 man ship could be with a pair of large railgun turrets...

[@Kathrynerius]

At least you can let the AI run your turrets now!

[@hissingwalnuts1507]

you can make AI turrets attack lock ons if you use "copy target" from your helm/cockpit

[@KarmaQ3]

It would be interesting to test how much internal damage the railgun will do once it pass the armor. A gyro will stop the slug but how many batteries or cargo containers will it destroy before stopping? Can it one shot a jump drive?

[@LastStandGamers]

All depends on what components there made of.

[@weiserwolf580]

@@LastStandGamers Are you going to test for ricochets ? because I've noticed that if you hit the armor at a certain angle (including with railguns) the projectile bounces but it's a bit random when and how it bounces (or so it seems to me)

[@MediumRareOpinions]

@@weiserwolf580 I have also noticed this, struck a slope and instead of making a hole through the ship it deflected sideways and cut a trench across the surface of the ship.

[@norske_ow3440]

@@weiserwolf580 angled armor seems to be pretty effective against the small railgun, haven’t tested it with the big boy yet

[@thefistofshadow7392]

@@weiserwolf580 Omg this could be so cool, now you'll see big ships like frigates with angled front armor just like how tank evolved more angels after they realised they can put a slop on it to make it more effective. This railgun could change ship desing so that it forces you to use diffrent armor thickness at diffrent spots so your ship doesnt get too heavy but still has some protection against it.

[@aurenian8247]

Apparently sloped armour can cause projectiles from the new railguns and cannons to deflect. So that might be worth testing in a controlled environment. It will be an interesting meta going forward because now protection and speed will be even more mutually exclusive. If you can tank railguns and cannons then you are more likely to have to do so repeatedly.

[@GamingOnABout]

I did some testing and didn't see any benefits to sloped armor, and projectiles didn't have any reactions that you'd expect. I think shell ricochet is just a visual thing

[@stefanknauer7180]

Sure light armor wont stop as much of those railgun bullets, but they dont explode etc. so you need to hit vital areas to make the railgun super viable. Considering you are shooting on a lightly armored ship, it should be more agile to close the gap... I wonder if there is any way to play around the target lock so it's possible to build a sort of stealth ship (power it off, being small etc.)

[@commanderz9848]

A small ship will take more time to lock on and distance also plays a factor, theoretically a small torpedo boat/fighter of some kind with great speed an some decoys could evade the target lock long enough to place an important shot on a larger ship.

[@foxtrotunit1269]

I love these tests. Pls test the *"Railgun gatling"* concept. That could be a game changer as it gives the user continuous railgun fire. If you just have a bunch of railguns stuck next to each other, the dmg is *spread out* so it's balanced - but if you have a gatling type weapon - what then? :)

[@LastStandGamers]

Decently worth testing but will be power hunger, but if you can feed it the destruction will be insane.

[@nobodx]

@@LastStandGamers reminds me of the vulcan-artillery-cannon from Total Annihilation - if that game rings any bells that is...

[@kerbalairforce8802]

Rail Gatling gun would be great for base defense, as the base doesn't need to power thrusters and gyros.

[@Slovflyer]

@@nobodx I'm 41, so I'm guessing you must be close to have remembered that nugget haha

[@aaronbarthel6509]

​@@nobodx Very few people know that name. Nothing beats the Arm artillery

[@Horesmi]

One of my ships had a command center protected with heavy armor, blast doors, gyroscopes, and heavy armor against. Good to know that's enough to stop a rail slug.

[@warbrain1053]

But not 5 slugs!

[@geronimo5537]

Good luck firing 5 slugs into the same spot on a moving target. Everything breaks with enough continuous firepower. Good design protects for the first few hits.

[@Horesmi]

@@geronimo5537 yeah the ship had a merge clang drive giving it 5g acceleration in every direction. Hitting it in the same spot is... Challenging.

[@warbrain1053]

@@geronimo5537 there are rail-gattling gun designs now. Those can.

[@herlescraft]

I haven't played space engineers since the graphical update and now all of the suddenly I'm getting bombarded by videos on the update... not that I'm complaining tbh quite interesting seeing all the new stuff...

[@splatoonistproductions5345]

I imagine the best way for ships that aren’t ridiculously massive and or shielded can deal with this large rail gun is prolly going to be about placement of key assets and even spacing. if a ship is big enough that you can place important bits of the ship far enough away from each other and move at roughly just before it shoots, then it’s possible it’ll just go through empty space and or corridors at the most, maybe clipping a few important areas by a slight bit. This’ll make things like most vanilla combat at its highest level being somewhat similar to the expanse, and god I’m ready for that challenge

[@kerbalairforce8802]

Redundant piping is important

[@splatoonistproductions5345]

@@kerbalairforce8802 that is true yea

[@shamasmacshamas7135]

The only hope of a light armor ship is to either be so maneuverable that you don't get hit, or be so large with your internals so spread out that there is a good chance that a railgun hit will pass through without hitting anything important.

[@aidanmatthewgalea7761]

redundancy is key: why one reactor when you can have two? why one battery rack when you can use 4? several command rooms, different thruster types etc. look to biology for answers to physics

[@aidanmatthewgalea7761]

@@shamasmacshamas7135 *laughs in invertebrate*

[@zerogrey3798]

The effort you put into your testing platform/base/whatever is more impressive than the weapons themselves.

[@LeafseasonMagbag]

Now I want to make a ship with loads of large Railguns like an Age-Of-Sail Ship of the Line. So cool to imagine two massive spaceships pulling along side each other and seeing the trails of lighting arch between each other

[@warlockd]

Man you were right about that gyro armor, I can't unsee it now. Its like always going to be there in the back of my mind. Even simply useing a few for bridge protection.

[@dwerp8]

Now battles will be interesting considering that the engagement range was increased to 2km Now you better make sure your ships low profile never pointed at your enemies rail gun. Heck i might join the lsg server again, hope you guys manage to get the new weapon restrictions ready by the next iteration, gl!

[@DC2022]

considering the distances, this will render the missiles launcher totally useless. People will spam your ship @1500m and considering missile speed, they will be as dangerous as a flying block.

[@dwerp8]

@@DC2022 i think they will still have a use because if im not wrong in order to engage from such distance you need the heavy artillery weapon since the rest by default are limited to 800m so i guess missile will still have use on faster ships designed for fast engages

[@neddavies4358]

btw gyro armour is great untill the pmws start being used i recomend using heavy gryo and them a kinetic shield this can be blast door, heavy armour, or wheels if you dont mind the pcu or a mix anything to stop the gryos from breaking as they are verry weak to kinetic damage

[@warhammerchieftain9795]

How about angled armor, since there is deflection ingame now, it could make a difference.

[@davidmartensson273]

I heard some other video saying that it did not, but it would bi interesting, making for even more to think of regarding design.

[@tael3081]

A lot of what I've observed in playing with rails suggests that projectile deflection is possible, but extremely difficult to use at best. More often than not all it does is ensure the round skips off the inside of the armor on a length-wise shot and continues on through the rest of the target ship.

[@jalakor]

I actually don’t mind that the Railgun is a hot knife to butter against the light armor. You get much more maneuverable craft with light armor, so you at least have the option of keeping your movement high and making them miss. For smaller large-grid ships, that’s fairly easy, but the bigger ones you should have heavy armor anyway.

[@Gaookami]

To be honest I find the setup of the weapon testing ground the most awesome part of this video. The design is so ingenious

[@geronimo5537]

Gyro armor has been a long time thing by now. It does work very well however it is very very expensive to build a wall of them and requires special design to cover a box within a working ship for complete protection. Another downside is, it is very lag intensive as well. Great armor but it comes with limits. Im surprised we did not see a refinery armor test since we went this far. Good test video as always Aaron.

[@MrIrdatlan]

What i got from this is that this is very good againdt fodder ememies and not too stupid enemies. You cut a hole through the middle of a smaller ship and its dead and if you can somehow figure out where the core is of a bigger ship with heavy armor is then it will fuck that up too. Going straight through the energy core and disable it or blow it up.

[@goodtown3258]

I love how scientific you are on your approacht to testing methodology as well as your explanation of the damage stats. uve never seen anyone take such a detailes approach as you have. id like to see 2 otger tests with Rail guns. 1 is your sloped armor test, lime was done with gatling and no sales earlier. second is my mainstay- refinery armor.

[@bigbrainenergyguy]

For those who were wondering, the large railgun should penetrate EXACTLY 20 layers of light armor. Here's the actual data from the video: 1. The large railgun does 6.25 times as much damage as the small one 2. The small railgun penetrates 3.2 light armor blocks or 0.49 heavy blocks 3. The large railgun penetrates 3.04 heavy armor blocks. Based on this we'd expect the large railgun to penetrate exactly 20 light armor blocks, and after looking up the numbers in the wiki this adds up perfectly. EDIT: Holy crap, large gyros have over 60000 health. WHAT? That's almost as much health as 4 blocks of heavy armor!

[@Logan-dk8of]

havent played this game in a long time cause I don't have enough time for it, but I still remember the homemade railguns using gravity generators and artificial mass blocks that would rip through entire ships with like 10 layers of heavy armor.

[@theojibwalovapewpewpew5068]

I shot one of my ships on a bit of angle where the top layer is blast blocks on its side. It looked like it "bounced" off and destroyed the 1st block then destroyed 2 blast blocks beside the 1st leaving the heavy armour underneath undamaged. That was cool

[@andrewchapman2039]

Looks like the next big innovation for ship design is unorthodox internal layout. Massive penetration is only good if it hits something important after all.

[@user-gd5tr7gw7s]

Maybe a balance feature of the railgun is that it's small hit radius makes it unlikely that a small area of the ship is hit more than two times. But I also thought that maybe the devs wanted us to build armor more straightforward for certain parts of the ship, not all parts. Anti-Railgun measures on a not to bulky ship may require to build hydrogen tanks further apart and hull on certain sites thicker and on other sites smaller so that we get a a strong and a weak site of the ship. The weak site could be vulnerable to fighters manoevering around the strong one.

[@chev_FTeam]

Just fitted this to my capital ship for some pvp fun, thank you!

[@artistx8512]

You should do some tests on angled armor I've seen some people deflect shots rather than the typical penetration.

[@OrigionalCigarette]

I had fun with this new update. First vehicle i built was a Artillery truck to remove the nearby AI installation, worked like a charm. All this update is missing is sights.

[@Coretide660]

Interesting to see how the railguns work and it's actually nice to see slugs being used which makes large ship battles quite more intense. On an interesting note about the large round going through blocks in close range, it should be noted that yes the block closest to the railgun won't take damage BUT the rest will take damage as shown with the test as well as actually having the "Gyro armor" setup completely point if the rounds can simply go through the blocks in the first place (further tests will be needed in order to see how effective this "phase through" effect goes on for) thus giving a real danger in ship to ship combat, particularly up close with these large railguns but if it does get fixed (and probably gyro armor in the near future) then it would be slightly safer to do close ship combat but as how it is right now, would be quite dangerous to both ships if such an example were to arise.

[@QualityPen]

The reason people still use blast doors is they are significantly more resistant to grid on grid collisions. In other words, a layer of blast door armor will stop grid projectiles that would burn through multiple layers of heavy armor. Well, that’s the idea, in theory. In practice, grid on grid collisions are seriously bugged and it’s possible for large grid blocks traveling above 70 m/s to phase through blast door armor without damaging either the projectile or he armor. Sometimes this will even happen against normal armor as well. In some tests I have done, my ships were gutted by kinetic grid weapons without even destroying every layer of armor. Rarely, this bug happens with small grids, too.

[@bi0hazardxiii28]

Really like the fancy platforms you have been using in your videos lately

[@randallvolk8437]

Next, you should test it against the different types of shield mods!

[@billwilliamson1506]

I would love for some sort of mini game in designing your own projectiles. A little ui screen to design your own shells will let you decide what type of performance you’d like. Designing things such as AP, HEAT, or Fin stabilized rounds will change how each gun can perform

[@micheallinne3159]

I like the idea of guns that make you rethink your armor on your ships, before you didn't have to devote too much, now you can't be small fast and safe all at the same time, you have to compromise on size speed and armor more for different purposes.

[@ForwardKinematics]

Love the testing environment you made, one recommendation i might add would be the ability to move these targets back and forth, like something at a range.

[@TheJaguarthChannel]

To keep the same distance, I'd do a rotary system to spin different armor plates into range. Could even time the rotation to match fire speed and maximize test efficiency

[@entrippyZ]

railguns will be dangerous everywhere, but i predict them being most dangerous on planets. out in space you can just make a behemoth, but on a planet gravity really constrains how much heavy armor you can use based on your thruster capabilities. im sure im not the first guy to make a heavy armor ship out in space and come down to test it only to find out that its really heavy

[@budthecyborg4575]

I love penetration weapons. In most games it's a boring idea because shooting through targets adds nothing to combat, but here you're able to target sub-systems within ships.

[@tinysandwich4686]

I would love that range, yes please put it on the workshop!

[@nicholash7226]

I would like to see some more composite armor tests. Layers of heavy plate on light armor, etc. With the other new weapons too!

[@herlescraft]

Quite interesting, I could see a small ship design using the large railgun as a one off bomber being quite effective in a skirmish role.

[@MediumRareOpinions]

You would have to aim well. A single shot could pass entirely though passive armor blocks and the enemy ship gets to retaliate with all systems fully operational

[@herlescraft]

@@MediumRareOpinions well the mental image i had in mind is how bombers are used in aurora 4x, basically get in shoot at max range and get out before you are either detected or in range, from what I saw the range on these guns should be larger than the 800m automated AI engagement range and with some dedicated ship design you could manage to not enter it, leaving a relative small target to be engaged manually from far away.

[@NarutoMagicCyclops]

@@herlescraft I think the only issue you'd run into is anyone using a drone or small strike craft to quickly close that distance. Especially if the design is meant to be as light as possible.

[@herlescraft]

@@NarutoMagicCyclops oh, are they common now? back when I still played the game most players holed in medium sized ships and small craft were not used belligerently

[@MediumRareOpinions]

@@herlescraft I think that could work but it could struggle to really hurt a big ship significantly, unless you get a lucky shot on their critical systems. In order to turn and burn your ship will either need a lot of power or your turning that Railgun off so it doesn't drain your grid power (I tried fitting small railguns to my bomber for testing and it left the ship dead in space when it tried to recharge) , i can only see it getting off a single shot. If its a player controlled ship they're most likely going to attempt closing the gap, if they can't accelerate fast enough they'll jump away before you can get a second hit. You might be able to hit their jump drives with the first shot but I think if players weren't already putting in multiple jump drives behind armor they will be now that the railgun is on the scene.

[@the1ultimatet1u49]

tbh i found them to be quite useless against my heavily armored ships. they do manage to punch thhrough the armor with ease, but fail to destroy any components since the first shot already dealt all of its damage and its incredibly hard to hit a follow up shot into the 1 block wide hole against a moving and rotating target.

[@NarutoMagicCyclops]

Imagine though someone who has a few turrets they're set up for volley fire or a decent broadside style set up. Weaking armor is just as effective as punching straight through, allows for the weaker weapons or even artillery/assault cannons to really do some damage much sooner while the rails charge up for killing or cripple blows.

[@hashtagrex]

@@NarutoMagicCyclops precisely the point. it makes for way more interesting ship and weapon designs. people are being overly whiney just because they actually have to start thinking tactically about their ships

[@topgunsss1]

i believe distance from the railgun will also play some role in it too coz the closer the target is the more energy there will be behind the impact but not to close that the railgun just goes straight thru without damaging it ofc

[@kerbalairforce8802]

3 layers of heavy armor will slow your ship down so much that they can run circles around you.

[@-nightraider-1169]

You might as well be a station at that point

[@sgtrpcommand3778]

From my own testing with the large railgun only(because go big or go home :) ): Light armour - 20 blocks Heavy armour - 3 Spaced (1 block spacing) - No change Composite (1 block thickness alternating) - slightly worse than Heavy.

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

IMO ball turrets with small grid assault cannons and railguns will probably be the new meta. A ball turrets with 6 small railguns does more damage then the large grid railgun and recharges in the fraction of the time. The small grid assault cannon has good range, near pinpoint accuracy, and the ammo is dirt cheap.

[@jonathanbedard3900]

how about penetration in terrain voxel?

[@juddk1338]

Great showcase. Well done on putting it together.

[@TacComControl]

3:33 "Ten pieces of heavy armor" Light armor, you derp.

[@asdf7219]

Kinda hoped it would be like it is in the expanse, penetrates the entire ship with ease. That any ship out of reaction speed range can easily dodge shots, and ship design would be heavy influenced by this.

[@BRla86]

Would love to see a retest on Gatlings against light/heavy/glass/composit since the rebalance

[@andybraid4263]

Great video it is a shame the small railgun is so poor but vs turrets it is deadly. Artillary is more op in my opinion especially on a custom turret I can't wait to see the video on that! Yes we use blast door armour to deal with rammers /voxels accidents or secondary deformation protection and then behind that we use gyros on heavy armour layer walls.

[@GusCraft460]

I think this will create a clear division between ships that are just designed to protect themselves from drones and pirates, and ship’s designed for battle. You can no longer just slap some heavy armor and a few weapons on a cargo ship and call it a battleship. Battleships will be very heavily armored with tons of power generation to move their massive weight and to recharge railguns. Now the difference between repurposed light ships and battle ships will be like the difference between a fishing boat with some machine guns and a naval destroyer. I honestly can’t think of a single blueprint that I have that could stand up to a large railgun.

[@-nightraider-1169]

True Lightly armored ships should relay on turrets and a abundance of decoys to escape attacks because their armor will not hold up to a properly designed combat ship. The small grid cargo ship I designed has 6 droppable decoys on board, 2 Gatling turrets for close range protection and 1 auto cannon for long range protection and also has 3 auto cannons on the front to attack fighters who are coming from a distance

[@keeganolsen1616]

Maybe some sort of composite blast door and heavy armor blocks could be effective?

[@DC2022]

it's already working like a charm. External layer of heavy armor to have protection AND nice looking ship, and being, one or two layers of blast door, each layer of armor being spaced by one block to increase protection against deformation and explosives. Drawback, that's insanely heavy and turn your ship in a blackhole heavy monstruosity quite rapidly.

[@vulnerax3595]

just discovered your channel and love the content keep it up man

[@CMDROldDuck]

Love these brilliant videos of yours!

[@QuantumRads]

Holy shit. I haven't watched a lsg video since I was a teen.

[@Ghent_Halcyon]

Wait a second, so your telling me that if I have a block too close to the rail gun barrel, the shot can just go through without doing damage?! Hmmmm, surprise railgun ship, since it will be fully enclosed.

[@backupplan6058]

Even better you will be placing them behind armour so harder to take out once they even realise what’s going on.

[@LastStandGamers]

I need to do further testing to confirm this but it looks that way.

[@Ghent_Halcyon]

If this does work, then the people I play with are in for one really nasty surprise…

[@neddavies4358]

@@LastStandGamers there was a graph i saw of internal damage and explosions turns out that because of how the explosions are raycast there are some mildly exploitative ways to reduce internal damage significantly.

[@Ghent_Halcyon]

0_0 I can indeed confirm that it works, if you are standing still. ‘‘Twas a really good surprise and laugh for the person how experienced it XD

[@RinnzuRosendale]

Damn, I havnt watched LSG in years. You still covering this game? Thought it was long dead.

[@gamingsasquatch3357]

Just started a Space Bismarck which will have Railguns in main turrets, for total of 6 Twin Rail Turrets. That said, Sasquatch “Smiles Maniacally in German”

[@Firesgone]

You forgot refinery armor, it's even tougher than gyro armor for less metal and can greatly increase difficulty in breaking up a ship. It takes at least 3 shots for a railgun to break one and it can be easily repaired with steel plates with an especially simple auto repair system. The welders won't even take explosive damage from missiles with the 2 thickness of refineries.

[@geronimo5537]

Yep they make great horizonal armor. Im guessing Aaron didnt want to show the game breaking stuff. I have been using refineries as armor for a long time. No capital ship is complete without these lag saving large blocks when turned off. On the plus side they give a ship dual utility and function as well. On the last stand server refineries are limited to like four per group. So it wouldnt work on their server.

[@dreadedjay1323]

Come back, we miss you!!!!

[@Hellucard360]

2:10 that's why I put my railgun a bit inside the ship. Both for protection and being able the shoot at point blank range

[@DuxGalt]

I think the conclusion I've come to is large ships need to be built with "citadels" in them like old WW2 battleships but using gyroscopes on all sides, i mean you needed 100 gyro's anyway. And instead of putting ammo in them, we have to put critical systems and reactors.

[@rottenmeat5934]

Definitely staging my gyros around vital systems now!

[@nathannash7136]

It looks like the railgun is a long range precision weapon, similar to a sniper rifle. With that penetration, it's great for taking out key systems such as reactors and hydrogen tanks. Especially coupled with the new turret control block.

[@MatthewSmith-sz1yq]

It would be interesting to see a fight where you can't use heavy armor, only light armor and railguns. You'd need to plan on becoming swiss cheese, and build crazy amounts of redundancy in (a lot like how combat aircraft are designed).

[@fangthewarrior]

The gun going through the armor, feels like it might be a bug? Man imagine encountering a ship you had no idea had one of those on board until it was too late

[@zamba136]

heh, the way i already use Gyros makes my ships tankier than i thought they did...i tend to lump them with my reactors, and hydrogen tanks. i did it mostly as a way of compartmentalizing the "engine Block". i had no idea that they made my explosive parts indestructible, lol

[@Aetrion]

The reason blast doors are better than heavy armor for bits of your ship you expect to get hit is because they are pure steel and therefore extremely cheap to repair. I really feel like they need to do something about Gyroscope and Refinery armor. It's just silly.

[@AstraOG]

im wondering: do components themselves have a specific amount of hp they take up?

[@op-physics]

Yes, i believe thats how the HP of essentially every block is calculated, you just add up the HP values of its components. If you wanna check, look up HP on the Space engineers wiki, it goes into detail how this works.

[@sethdrake7551]

each component provides a certain amount of HP and mass which determines both how durable and how heavy different blocks are

[@sylisshade2913]

I suggest limiting up to four railguns for small grids on turrets otherwise you can make a railgun version of a Gatling gun.

[@TheMrSeagull]

Some things worth testing - How bad does the recoil effect ships? How well does the weapon fire on moving targets? How about mounting the large one on a small grid ship for giggles?

[@mrp782]

The little ones are good for turret builds, then set it to shoot the propulsion systems.

[@UrbanArmada]

These rail guns are interesting, with proper aim you can disable ships pretty handedly, I think pvp oriented players will need to redesign their vehicles to better protect power/fuel. That, and maybe they'll finally add vanilla shielding systems.

[@cyansorcerer6491]

gyroscope armor may be more practical, but as it is very ugly it is really only useable as an underlayer of armor or to protect your ships reactor

[@jessblues848]

I think Refinery armor is underrated. Much easier to weld mid-combat and bleeds mostly steel plates

[@topgunsss1]

personally i would have tested this rail gun the same way but on 3 differnt runs where all block types are used but in differnt orders so u would have heavy armour blocked the far away like u have and then on the next run the heavy armour blocks at mid range and then the heavy blocks at close range to see if its the same all the way thru

[@joshua211111]

I might Join the LSG server to get a bit more of a Vanilla style to the normal servers I play on.

[@steeljawX]

A nitpick more towards keenstar rather than this video is that their ammo name/design for the railguns don't make sense. At least in the region I'm in (US) they're called an are shaped as "Railgun Sabot", but that kind of defeats the purpose of the thing being a railgun. A sabot is supposed to help fit a smaller projectile into a larger barrel so when the expanding gasses from the propellant are set off, the round is then sent out of the barrel instead of just left clanging around to then tumble out of the end. If these are actual railguns, in which they seem to be, then the round shouldn't be touching any barrel. It should be accelerated down a pair of inducting rails and literally be yeeted via electromagnetic pushing and pulling. Contact with any barrel (which would have the electromagnetic induction in it) would just make the projectile stop and go really weirdly and it wouldn't have it's maximum potential exit velocity. You could use one to put the round into the rails to start the process, but you wouldn't have one for the full ride. Also the sabot design they have for them is for something like a tank sabot round with the satellite dish cone nose. That'd be one that is there for the full ride. It's a nitpick, but I'm still kind of baffled as to why it's supposed to be the logical decision. An assault gun sabot would make more sense. However on the subject of the actual railgun performance, I think that the railgun is the "scalpel" of the weapons while artillery and missiles are the "foreceps" and "endoscopes". The railgun makes the incision and the arty and missiles go in and see what's happening (explode the inner bits). The railgun is too precise where you'd have to hit a hydrogen tank or ammo toting cargo container directly (not that the large ones are particularly small targets) that you might end up spending 5-20 rounds trying to get that direct hit on larger ships when after penetrating the armor, making it bigger with arty, and then using splash damage from missile to just get everything. I'm not saying it's the "better" method, but using the railgun as the killing blow, you need to have mad sniping skills and incredible luck.

[@georgea5991]

The "Build Info" mod is a good one for seeing how much integrity a block has, and it correlates with HP. You'll see gyros have ridiculous integrity. So do batteries and jump drives.

[@wookieboycot7302]

can we get a test to see if gravity generators also affect bullet drop and if so how manny are needed to be affective

[@nemesiskapn2406]

Absolute Devastation

[@srg08]

LSG for your next showcase here something your gonna enjoy exploring “Frontier” Scientific Research Exploration System(No Mod) it's a rare find enjoy

[@irontemplar6222]

I mean... Gyroscopes are more effective, but by comparison they are way way way more expensive then 3 layers of heavy armor, and they are only more efficient in the case of saving some volume to your ship. Not to mention your going to need a large resource base to get the rest of what you need

[@adamleddy9894]

So… just for future posts a Sabot has a dart, not a slug :) A dart is normally fin stabilised and is only really effective after certain ranges so the test is somewhat good… one thing these new rounds do not seem to do is separate or dissipate the energy… an interesting test could be against sloped spaced armor Would be cool if they release ERA

[@Coconut-219]

This problem with lacking this 'dissipating energy' seems to plague the implementation of purely-kinetic weapons in many other games like this too, and it really detracts from the feel of the weapon and actual combat efficacy. They don't feel like proper impact just a glorified 'hole puncher' although to be fair in SE's case their damage mode is not well optimized to handle breaking that many blocks at once.

[@adamleddy9894]

@@Coconut-219 the issue is, the round needs to deform on impact too… and not actually ricochet as suggested but change vector and state of energy… a round that is Frangible will cause area effect as well as thermal despite not having explosives… a rigid rod or dart also needs a distance to stabilise and they don’t shoot straight either… but have predictable mathematic trajectories…now that’s in atmosphere… In space without friction or gravity they should shoot straight… hmmm So there is a lot you probably can’t programme in… but this is a good start

[@SMmania123]

So, I guess Gyro-Heavy Blast Door type armor is the best vanilla game armor huh

[@VallornDeathblade]

The railguns also penetrate voxels like nothing else. Building underground isn't as safe as it used to be.

[@jamesfoland5072]

You armor light the outside and then protect all conveyors and important components on the inside with tires and Gyroscopes.

[@delph4272]

We’re going to need a lot more flex tape

[@capt_ocean1885]

Blast doors are not so much better as that they have insane kinetic resistance that actually stacks with the more blast doors connected together oddly enough, try ramming a 100 block connected blast door into anything and witness the results.

[@Ben_Kimber]

Do you do ship build videos based on ships from other games or shows? I'm new to this channel, so I don't know much about what kinds of Space Engineers content you do. If you do build recreating certain ships, might I suggest any of the ships from the Homeworld games, such as the Hiigaran Destroyer from Homeworld 2, or any of the other capital ships, frigates, or corvettes from those games?