Balance: Heavy rail rifle

Game Talk The Bunker
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Umm… Hi all, new here…
Is the heavy rail rifle balanced and/or realistic? I couldn’t find any older discussions about this item, but it seems to me, to be a glaring inconsistency that should’ve been brought up at least once before?
The rail rifle, as it stands (ver. 0.E-2):

  • Is built by a lone survivor
  • Has an auto learned recipe
  • Is built from somewhat easily available materials/scrap
  • Has low/no recoil
  • Does damage comparable to an antitank rifle
  • Is handheld (no vehicle/turret mounting required)
  • Is as accurate and as far reaching as a sniper rifle

The only real ‘drawback’ I could find was that the ammo (ups+rail) is somewhat heavy and voluminous, although that too is kinda easy to craft.
Comparing this with the other weapons in the game, it makes the ultra high-tech research facilities and its administrators look like fools to not have invested almost entirely in this kind of technology for weapons. Even the best Rivtech weapons in the game were handed to my survivor for free, I think she’d probably pass it up in favor of the heavy rail rifle.

P.S: I recall several other things being scheduled for removal (like drop-in auto sear) but are still in the game, I’m starting to doubt if I have my game configured right and apologize in advance if that is the case

P.P.S: Unrelated to this, but if I may do this in the same post, I would like to question the naming and/or construction of kevlar hulks. Is kevlar really able to take multiple shots from an AT rifle…? Seems more like titanium or maybe some next-gen carbon nano-fiber tech

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Yep it’s long gone for many of the reasons you outline, but mostly because a handheld railgunnthat fires rebar is roughly speaking, impossible

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The rail rifle is “still in the game” because you’re playing the stable version of the game - which only gets updated around all 6 months (give or take). If you want the “cutting edge” versions (including all the new cool stuff and changes, but also usually a lot of bugs), you might want to take a look at the experimental versions.
The drop-in auto sear is still in the game, even in experimental, by the way, but atomic cars are not (they got moved to a mod, last I know).

With “it’s long gone” kevin.granade means it got removed from the game on the 16. of April this year and is out of the game since experimental build 10535 as far as I can see and tell.

Eating bullets is a quality of Hulks on their own, less of the kevlar part on them.
There’s a topic discussing the spawn rate of Kelvar Hulks in which their designer explains some base ideas s-/he had in mind while creating them.

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That clarifies just about everything… Thank you @Valase

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some basic things that could be used to balance it
-you made it so the construction is probably pretty bad expect extremely frequent repairs
-you made it so the chance of it backfiring or otherwise missfiring is probably pretty high fact of the matter is a weapon could be as awesome and terrific as you like if it’s got a 1/1000 chance to leave you going home with one less arm at best or in a pine box at worst you won’t find a single soldier willing to wield it
-scrap guns tend to be very heavy much more so than any properly machined gun
-I may not know much about ferromagnetic acceleration but I know that the gun would be a pain and a half to make it accurate in any regard (you can hand any sniper a smoothbore it isn’t going to be skill that holds them back)
-very heavy power draw at a certain point the ease of making the ammo becomes secondary to the size and weight of the ammo
what I’ve seen of rail guns currently they aren’t that impressive. we can’t feed enough power for the massive beasts that turn the ferromagnetic slug into a molten metal shot to work right, the ones we can make that aren’t that big are pretty much silent and suffer zero recoil but are pretty pathetic in damage dealt
also yeah it’s less about the quality of material and more just the sheer bulk kevlar hulks are hulking masses of kevlar you could stop a bullet with dirt if you had enough but these things get to be mobile and powerful too

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I would love to have a nice unbalance mod. That gives me all these nice over-powered items and features which make it a lot of fun to play aswell.

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in the old experimental build, the CRIT mod was pretty much that, i remember really enjoying it.
I could (probably) reinstall it but its a massive pain to do it on android.
I recommend it tho. if you looking for semi balanced overpowered items