[grevierr]

Originally Posted by Trajan

Pretty crazy that the first railgun they create is a light machine gun. It would be easier by an order of magnitude or two to cool the barrel and rails of a railgun with a lower rate of fire.

Its not just the heat of the barrel, but the heat on the whole feeding mechanism caused when the rounds move through to the breech that cause friction, as there is no back blast to account for in a electromagnetic impulse driven firing system. The barrel itself should be relatively cool as the projectile is held in between the rails by the magnetic dead zone as it is accelerated down the line.
And in any case, if they lower the rate of fire, they would still also have problems with the power fluctuation control, which is actually what real world railguns have, on top of having a big enough fuse to control the electrical surge.
I'm interested to see why the hell is there a flame plume coming from the mouth since its not explosive driven, even if its the independently propelled rocket rounds (BOLTER ROUNDS!) that should ignite outside of the barrel, giving considerably different thermal flares. It should act more like a laser pointer or torch light.

Originally Posted by Trajan

Pity though that this world never developed airburst rounds. Why bother shooting through Destroyer armor when you can just go around it?

Laser class. :\

Originally Posted by rafael1932

A railgun is not a weapon that uses electricity ? this means that you can put more energy than a normal bullet that uses gunpowder. The more energy you put in the bullet the better are the speed, range and penetration – that why the raingun rate of fire is very slow making them more like a sniper rifle than a machine gun
I don’t know what is worse, seeing a burst railgun or seeing the guys killing the aliens face on. It would make far more sense if the railgun was used to snipe the laser class so the others mecha can be safely killing the others from the air like always.

I believe you are referring to the traditional class of basic railgun design called the coilgun, which is the system the US navy was working on as released on news. As you can read up, there is a very real concern in controlling the electrical impulse energy such that it does not 'burn out' the mechanism, as real world materials currently do not have a 100% electrical efficiency conductor.
Other electromagnetic impulse designs for projectiles (railguns), using properly controlled heavy impulses of electricity in rapid succession, like electroplating methods, but in a linear form, can allow rapid acceleration of multiple projectiles down a liner path. However the trick is to get it done without any changes or 'vortex energy' in the path from previous firing or external sources, and reliable efficiency of the mechanical parts.

Originally Posted by DoomRavager

As things stand the level of penetration they have rips right through Destroyers head on like tissue paper. They're putting plenty of energy in. I mean the design's got input from the research department of a military base that was set up for the purpose of dealing in BETA tech and all, so they're probably not restricted by real-world railgun design sensibilities in terms of the kind of power they can pump out for rapid fire. While lasers are priority targets, thinning out BETA charges is also pretty important considering the ridiculous numbers they can throw at humans.

Besides which, the idea of sniping Lasers instead of just laying down heavy blankets of artillery fire or using other BETA as cover to close in opens up the issue of presenting multiple Lasers with line of sight directly to your high-tech ass if you try to set up in a position that gives you a reliable view of the rear end of the BETA formations.

Yup, the Type-99 is meant as a front-line direct fire support weapon against charging destroyer class, much as the HMG and MGs in WWI was used against mass charges of enemies with more bodies than tactics.
For laser class, as they stay behind the lines of charging enemies, indirect fire is best used, as can be seen by the use of the Type-87 support assault cannon in episode 2, though the ranges (1200m) seem more like standard rifle caliber trajectories rather then 36mm rounds. The projectiles are fired making use of the convex flight path to go over the terrain covering them from line of sight before curving down to hit the target. Someone still has to spot the target in range first though.
Still, beyond line of sight direct fire is the best, which was why the OTH 1200mm Bus Driver Cannon was created against laser class at a Hive.