By the same argument, I wonder why people don't like the current single-shot railgun. Yes, its high DPS was unintentional, and it just 'outclasses' all other beam weapons in terms of DPS per tonnage, but in Aurora it is okay if not every weapon or option is as widely useful as every other
On one hand, you can argue a bit of inertia, plus multishot weapons are arguably more flavorful than single-shot even if the net effect is not too different. The goal after all was not to replace multi-shot with single-shot railguns, the goal was to add a bit specialized option for small craft to have more variety in weapons choices.
However, I would argue that the single-shot railgun as it currently is has too great of a power level. Railguns are already a quite strong beam weapon, demonstrated in several AARs by now, and along with lasers they are the only "all-purpose" beam weapons capable of
effective defensive (anti-missile) and offensive (anti-ship) use both. Driving up the DPS of what is already positioned as a very good DPS weapon by a factor of ~3x, at the cost of only a ~25% reduction in alpha strike capability (which, I'd note, is even less impactful when you have ROF 5) is frankly not good for balance - and yes, I know, "Aurora isn't balanced", but I think we all know the difference between balance in the sense of general playability (good for Aurora) and balance in the sense of making every option equally viable for competitive purposes (not good for Aurora).
Really it boils down to introducing a big power spike into a game environment which was already reasonably well-balanced around the existing options, which is a different ball game from just introducing another specialized option as was originally intended.
As I said in my earlier post, I like to see Aurora providing more options rather than limit them. Put RP reasons aside, the current single shot railgun is less efficient in all terms in smaller caliber (when the recharge rate can recharge a 4-shot version in 1 or 2 ticks), and in large caliber, they provide a higher DPS at a higher cost. This provides an interesting tradeoff to consider. But the proposed changes make them always less efficient compared to the 4-shot version, thus the choice becomes uninteresting: the single-shot version is always inferior in terms of DPS (per BP or per HS) compared to the 4-shot version, it also doesn't provide a single huge alpha strike as the reduced sized lasers do. So its purpose is really questionable.
I'm not sure I'd say that its purpose is "questionable" - besides the various comments about uses for these made by others in the thread, Steve himself has said that the intention was to give fighters and other small craft more options, and this at least is accomplished by reduced-shot/size railguns. So the purpose may be more or less narrow, depending how much credence you give to the various comments others have made, but it certainly is not "questionable" - the
intended purpose is clear and is accomplished reasonably well.
The current single-shot railgun also doesn't 'just outperforms the full-sized version'. The outperform is only true when the caliber is large enough that the best capacitor recharge rate cannot recharge the full-sized version in 1 or 2 ticks. This to me is a more interesting choice than the case when the 4-shot version is always superior in DPS, and the single-shot one does not provide anything other than a smaller size for its higher cost.
While true, I would argue that in most practical cases the caliber is large enough for this to be true, or else the caliber is 10cm, maybe 12cm and the weapon is intended for point defense. Which actually brings up another issue with the current single-shot railguns - they in practical terms tend to make point defense rather unnecessary in the context of a whole fleet since you can end up putting out the same volume of shots per 5/10s increment to kill missiles using solely anti-ship weapons rather than having to deploy separate PD and anti-ship weapons/ships in your fleets.
Box launchers or reduced-sized launchers trade DPS for a bigger alpha strike per HS. But where is the tradeoff in the nerfed single-shot railgun compared to the 4-shot version? Its cost is higher but it doesn't provide higher DPS nor alpha strike per HS or per BP, nor longer range, nor better penetration, nor better RoF.
I think the issue here is that when we think about box launchers, we are comparing two forms of missile launchers only - there is no other weapon besides missiles which offers the mechanics of missiles. When we think about railguns, we are considering not only 1/2/3/4-shot railguns against each other, but also against every other class of beam weapons. In that comparison, there is not really mechanically a place for an alpha/DPS split for railguns, as railguns are simply not the first-strike weapons generally speaking.
Not quite sure what 'design space' you are referring to. The current implementation of the single-shot railgun can be put on every single design that the nerfed one can. If you feel its current state limits your design, you can simply give the single-shot version a lower recharge rate when designing the weapon.
Making the argument that "if you think the feature is broken, do not use it" is not a valid argument when discussing whether or not said feature is, in fact, broken.
If single shot railguns clearly outperforming multishot railguns means they don't expand the design space, then the converse would also be true - multishot railguns clearly outperforming single shot railguns also wouldn't expand the design space.
It is not an equivalent statement, because smaller railguns expand a specific design space - small craft weapons - which large railguns do not. Conversely, there is not anything about large railguns that somehow expands the design space of large warships compared to single-shot models. If we say that four-shot railguns are superior, reduced-shot railguns still retain this design space, whereas if single-shot railguns are (generally) superior to larger models, there is no design space which is preserved for the larger railguns aside from specific edge cases.