01. Rail Cannon should negate shields, but do not negate armor, as all kinetic projectiles do.- That isn't how shields work in Aurora. Shields in Aurora are most akin to the Omnidirectional Barrier Shield found on the SDF-1 from Superdimensional Fortress Macross. I haven't played Traveller or Starfire, so I can't comment on their lore. Railguns cannot simply go through such shields. Another analogy to Aurora shield technology would be the Particle Shields from Star trek, albeit those have the caveat that energy weapons like phasors and such go right through them. That doesn't happen in Aurora, so it's a poorer analogy. Think of the shields as a solid object that is projected as a bubble around the ship, a force field so to speak.
02. Rail Cannon should have the same pattern as particle lance (not 100% sure if its like that now, never used too many railguns in ship-to-ship combat).- Railguns take chunks out of armor, Particle Beams grind through it by bombarding it with a constant stream of, well, particles. So the damage profiles make sense. No, they can't acquire the same amount of energy. Not at all, not now, not ever. Particle Beams are DEVASTATING in theory and would likely be far more devastating in practice. They just aren't comparable as the particle Beam can be seen as the penultimate evolution of ballistics weapons... in that it is technically a mass driver. Albeit a Mass Driver that drives extremely small, extremely hot matter at an extreme rate of fire with an even more extreme velocity.
03. Since Rail Cannon could acquire the same energy as particle lance, so damage would be at least the same if not bigger. However devastating to the internals, damage should be dampened by 1/3 or 1/2 to armor both for physics and balance reasons. (composite and ablative armors are made to absorb the shock of kinetic projectiles, and that would fit railgun slug nature)
While many Sci Fi tropes and modern real world tech makes rail guns work more like Auroras particle lances, there is a very simple work around to this I employ. Since Aurora doesn't care about the asthetics of most things in the game, you use this to your own ends. For my own campaigns particle lances are my rail guns, I achieve this by simply naming them so in the tech component design screen. My rail guns I rename to some other weapon thype that suits their function.
While I fully agree that if you remain inflexible on Auroras weapon system, rail guns are somewhat odd compared to their real world counterparts. Trying to change up the entire weapon tree in code is vastly more complex than just renaming them in your own campaigns.
Acceleration is abstracted out of Aurora... I am sure this is because it causes a headache for game stability. If you ever mess around with something like OpenGL, you will discover quickly that is very easy to make a simulation with realistic acceleration blow up rather quickly.
There seems to be a bit of confusion in the thread.
Degradation!=Dispersion.
A kinetic weapon should not suffer range DEGRADATION. That is, no matter how far away you are, the round has the same mass and velocity...so it should do the same damage.
Acceleration is abstracted out of Aurora... I am sure this is because it causes a headache for game stability. If you ever mess around with something like OpenGL, you will discover quickly that is very easy to make a simulation with realistic acceleration blow up rather quickly.
It is not directly abstracted as much as not used for simplicity so there is an in game explanation that means there IS no acceleration of ships, missiles for example. Ships don't use Newtonian movement at all to move larger distances. This is also why volume is the metric of movement restriction and not mass.
We all know that the mechanic around railguns does not make that much sense. But Steve have explained before that it is the mechanic that is most important not reality. You can imagine these weapons to be whatever you want that better suits the mechanics.
The most important thing is that the different weapons are different and interesting from a game play perspective.
I think it's a non issue. Whatever you do you'll always end up with a rock paper scissor system which is also realistic in the weapons world.
For the rest you have to Role play it otherwise as things are you always use Gauss as PD for instance.
I think the only way through it is to accentuate more than it currently is (and there is much) the difference in tech not only by kind but considering the level.
You may have very powerful and convenient Rails Guns but after the level 5 Lasers Would be much better etc, but as said that is already there and honestly, as Jorgen already said, unless Steve decides to change the whole mechanic I don't see any light at the end of this tunnel and I would leave it as it is.
There seems to be a bit of confusion in the thread.
Degradation!=Dispersion.
A kinetic weapon should not suffer range DEGRADATION. That is, no matter how far away you are, the round has the same mass and velocity...so it should do the same damage.
Unless the rounds suffer from Trans-Netwonain Drag and so will come to rest like Ships with no engines
You could either say the projectile is doing superluminal speeds because trans-newtonian space magic, or you could go with the option that the firing ship is holding onto the projectile with some kind of field and guiding it onto the target that way.