Gauss cannon buff

[Savior20061]

In both my first and second playthroughs of Terror from the Deep, I equipped some Mantas with dual gauss cannons to see how they would do against an assortment of small and medium subs to see their performance. I knew they certainly wouldn't be better than sonic oscillators, nor should they be.

But holy crap.

I don't see how it was possible that someone could make a weapon that was worse than the extremely short range laser cannons from the first game, Jesus Cthulu on a rolling donut.

Let's count the features.

1. fifty rounds instead of 200.
2. The firing rate is appallingly bad for a "cannon type" weapon. It seems like there's a two-second gap between shots.
3. You have to manufacture ammo whereas the laser cannons recharge on their own.
4. Damage and range and accuracy are about the same, which makes the gauss much slower to kill because of its very slow firing rate.

I think it needs maybe not a damage buff, but an accuracy and range buff. I can't help but think that the gauss cannons should really utterly replace your tier-1 craft weapons, same as the gauss (should) do for your gas tech weapons.

[Solarius Scorch]

The very idea of using Gauss weapons underwater is unholy. It's like using torches underwater.

Gauss bullets are ultra-fast and quite small, which gives them limited range on land because the quickly burn in the atmosphere. Of course, water is way worse. So I don't think they could have made a worse choice for a weapon type than this.

Why am I writing all this? Well, if I were in charge, I would come up with some other weapon type and depending on choice, I'd give it logical stats. For Gauss cannon as it is, sure, we can give it a better range or something to increase its gameplay value, but that's still unsatisfying.

[Dioxine]

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Sub_Armaments

Apparently there was a disagreement on how the craft weapons should work... Or simply a bug, impossible to tell.

You still get +40% dps compared to gas cannon, but the Oscillator is infinitely better... the whole Gauss weapon line seems like a newbie trap...

[AMX]

3. You have to manufacture ammo whereas the laser cannons recharge on their own.

More importantly, you have to manufacture ammo one shot at a time - it would be much less of an issue if it was "Gauss ammo (x50)"
I suspect that "second Gauss ammo" in the data was supposed to be something along those lines...

The very idea of using Gauss weapons underwater is unholy. It's like using torches underwater.

Gauss bullets are ultra-fast and quite small, which gives them limited range on land because the quickly burn in the atmosphere. Of course, water is way worse. So I don't think they could have made a worse choice for a weapon type than this.

Why am I writing all this? Well, if I were in charge, I would come up with some other weapon type and depending on choice, I'd give it logical stats. For Gauss cannon as it is, sure, we can give it a better range or something to increase its gameplay value, but that's still unsatisfying.

Strictly speaking "Gauss" only tells you what is used to accelerate the projectile - it usually comes up in the context of "how to build a gun with a higher velocity than gunpowder weapons", but there's nothing that'd prevent one from building a magnetic accelerator launching heavy, slow projectiles.

Arguably, such "slow" Gauss weapons are more suitable to underwater use than traditional firearms, because they don't care about external pressure.

[Mackus]

More importantly, you have to manufacture ammo one shot at a time - it would be much less of an issue if it was "Gauss ammo (x50)"
I suspect that "second Gauss ammo" in the data was supposed to be something along those lines...

Actually, this is not that important at all. Openxcom allows to schedule manufacture of hundreds units of ammunition with few clicks of mouse button.
Producing and storing Gauss ammo in batches of 50 like gas cannon ammo would meant that every time that craft returns to base after firing few shots, remaining ~40 rounds would be wasted.

[AMX]

Actually, this is not that important at all. Openxcom allows to schedule manufacture of hundreds units of ammunition with few clicks of mouse button.
Producing and storing Gauss ammo in batches of 50 like gas cannon ammo would meant that every time that craft returns to base after firing few shots, remaining ~40 rounds would be wasted.

Hmm.... right.
Was a bit stuck on the original there, with its "no more than 1 item/hour"...

[mrxian]

The very idea of using Gauss weapons underwater is unholy. It's like using torches underwater.

Gauss bullets are ultra-fast and quite small, which gives them limited range on land because the quickly burn in the atmosphere. Of course, water is way worse. So I don't think they could have made a worse choice for a weapon type than this.

Why am I writing all this? Well, if I were in charge, I would come up with some other weapon type and depending on choice, I'd give it logical stats. For Gauss cannon as it is, sure, we can give it a better range or something to increase its gameplay value, but that's still unsatisfying.

Actually, if I were to create an underwater gun, a high speed small caliber one sounds like a good idea.

Just use a high powered laser beam to evaporate a thin tube of water and shoot the bullet through that. Due to the high speed and low calibre, you only need to vaporize a thin tube, which can be quite straight.