The pellets at least used to last for 3 seconds, so at 400m/s, that's 1200m. But, if you're closing towards the bot at 100m/s, the pellets relative speed towards the bot is 500m/s, meaning it'll live for 1500m.

Rail IV velocity: 480m/sec. Decent human reaction speed: 0.28 seconds. Let's say you're in a Vulture, facing your opponent to minimize your cross section. 2m's is a fair estimate of height. A Vulture can displace itself 30m away off it's current trajectory over one second. That is a pessimistic estimate. Therefor, one would need 0.35 seconds in advance from the time he noticed it to change his trajectory enough to dodge a perfectly rail shot in a Vulture, a distance of 168 meters. To dodge a glancing shot would require about 0.28 seconds, or 134.4 meters. That being said, Trail Guns are the solution.

Yes, because seeing a trail on the end of that rail pellet is going to give you faster reflexes \o/

Shuddup it will too!

Close, zamzx zik; not seeing a rail gun pellet will give you slower reflexes. I realize how double negatives can be a hard concept for some people to grasp, but try to understand.

Sorry MegaMynt, that isn't good enough. Not seeing something is a great reason to be hit by something. Come back when you actually have a reasonable reason for making a sniper gun easier to see.

Because for all guns, even for a sniper gun, being able to see the bullet makes the contest more skill based, and less dependent on the target's graphics card. That being said, it's not exactly sniping if you're target is facing you, and can shoot back. The only situations where enhancing the visibility of a rail gun is a detriment is in dog fighting situations at distances from 300 to 100 meters, where, to quote the opening post, "This wouldn't be a problem, except in twitch based combat I have this little problem of needing to see the weapon spread to strafe away".

Once again, a new comer posts his humble suggestion on how he thinks the game might be improved to suit his needs. He goes as far to ingratiate himself to other veterans. Yet once again, he is rampaged by the usual snot flinging, demonic horde of logical fallacies such as "No. It's a sniper gun that isn't even a very good sniper gun." (Then what makes it a 'sniper gun'?), Miharu's oh-so-reasonable sounding "When a railgun is fired, there's very little (read: almost nothing) that you can do to prevent it hitting you unless it was not going to hit you in the first place." (Then it wouldn't hurt them if they had trails, now would it?), and the most ferocious of all, "Not seeing something is a great reason to be hit by something."!

But of course! Such genius! Why, all this time we've been arguing to make rails more visible, when in fact they should have been completely invisible all along... now that would make a good game, amirite? You sir, win the forums.

Mynt, adding a trail to a sniper gun in any case is stupid. From a real-life perspective, it is detrimental because it shows exactly who fired the shot and where it came from. From a gameplay perspective, it's useless.

It'd make more sense for the devs to increase the gun's weight but increase the speed by at least 50m/s (if not 200 or so).

I think I'm having deja vu... oh well; "being able to see the bullet makes the contest more skill based, and less dependent on the target's graphics card."

Yeesh! "From a real-life perspective, it is detrimental because it shows exactly who fired the shot and where it came from."

Let it be an artifact of your ship's camera. Why does your high-tech spacey computer simulators bother to paint a trail for this weapon?

"It would make dodging rails easier (you're almost always looking at the trajectory at an angle)."