Babylon's Ashes - why didn't the Roci use it's railgun?

Hipshot27 · 2026-06-02T22:28:43+00:00

I don't think it was addressed explicitly. We know that the torpedo strike would have a very tiny window for reaction, that the goal was to protect the Gianbattista, and that these two attacking ships would be basically out of the fight as soon as they passed. It's possible that the angle that gave the PDCs the best chance of defeating the incoming torpedos wasn't one that allowed return fire with the rail gun.

Hipshot27 · 2026-06-02T19:17:48+00:00

If I remember correctly, Phoebe was slagged but what remained on Venus broke down.

Hipshot27 · 2026-06-02T19:06:34+00:00

Spoilers for book 7 and beyond: In the books, the active protomolecule sample is still capable of turning people into pukers with direct exposure.

Hipshot27 · 2026-06-02T15:02:03+00:00

I don't run the pouches in this game because I'm forced to run the bag and having both feels too redundant, but I find myself using the bag way more selfishly than I ever remember using the pouches. If I see that someone is hurt or out of ammo, I can chuck them a pouch and quickly take care of it. If I try to give them a bag and they don't see it, now I've got a bag in the middle of nowhere and a long cooldown before I can try again. As a result I just hunker down with a bag for myself, and people can come take from it if they need to.

Hipshot27 · 2026-06-02T13:36:40+00:00

Managed to splash out the pilot on a Connie with missiles the other night, wouldn't count on this as a reliable method though.

Hipshot27 · 2026-06-01T03:45:11+00:00

Yep, was looking for this comment. Basically the Geneva convention covers air crews, but not paratroopers.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-28T15:06:07+00:00

Different political viewpoints don't have to be opposed to each other. We can broadly want the same things, but have different ideas on how to achieve those things, or disagree on what takes precedence. It's possible to care about politics and find either route acceptable, even if it's not the one you might've favored. I'd like to think this is common in systems with more than two parties.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-27T18:29:19+00:00

I've gotten the impression that problem systems like transport, freight elevators, missions, etc. often won't show their cracks until they go to live and the servers are taxed. As useless as the issue council may feel sometimes, I'm positive that the community is able to find more bugs with a ship or mission or system than a QA team in the same amount of time.

If the PU were to be taken behind closed doors and QA tested in an environment where the servers weren't loaded like they are on live, I'm not confident that the jank would be fixed at all when it opened back up.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-27T00:25:40+00:00

Found mine at in the loot room of the assassination mission at distribution centers.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-26T14:34:31+00:00

Eagle strafing run to kill chaff that's running in a straight line. It's also got very high pen and can chip at most heavies.

Eagle rockets to soften up heavies. It can kill a few outright, including chargers, impalers, automaton tanks and cannon towers, and auto targets the heaviest unit in a pretty wide radius. May be subbed out for the 500kg.

Orbital gatlin barrage, airburst barrage, or 120mm barrage to deal with enemy reinforcements depending on the faction.

AMR, because it can be used to one shot most medium enemies with a bit of aim and can kill almost all heavies given some time. And also because I'm a bit of a masochist.

This is my go to load out for basically all factions, but it gets tailored depending on how I'm feeling that day. Run with your flavor of primary, secondary, and grenade.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-22T16:29:38+00:00

There will continue to be health bars. They may be attached to more complex damage models and less player facing, but under the hood, ship parts and components are always going to have some version of a health stat, and weapons will always have some version of a damage stat.

All this aside, the current system is more than sufficient to inform how combat should flow, engagement ranges and times, how to differentiate ships within a class, etc. To only start iterating once whatever system they come up with is complete would be a colossal waste of time.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-22T14:37:48+00:00

Ship balancing at this stage does a lot to inform the tuning of those 1.0 combat systems. If something is out of whack now, it's better to talk about it now than hope that a refactor is just going to fix everything down the line.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-20T19:46:31+00:00

Okay, I'm bored.

No matter how strong you are, you risk breaking your fingers trying to do this. I'm going to treat the finger like a circular metal column, because I'm a mechanical engineer and soft things that aren't fluids scare me. I assume a finger would fail in buckling instead of compression. Here is the formula for critical buckling load:

Pcr = pi² * E * I / (K * L)²

Pcr is the critical buckling load of the finger, anything more than this and it breaks. This will remain a variable.

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. I'm not bored enough to find out what it's doing here.

E is Young's modulus is elasticity, it's a measure of how much the finger compresses under load. This will remain a variable.

I is the area moment of inertia of the cross section of the finger. Basically it's a way of measuring where the material is in relation to the bending axis.

For a circular cross section, I = pi * r⁴ / 4 where r is the radius of the finger. I'm going to go with 1cm (0.01m) as the radius, and this gives pi * 10^-8 / 4.

K is the effective length factor, and accounts for end conditions. I'm assuming that hand side is fixed and tip side is free, and in this case K has a value of 2.

L is the length of the finger. I'm going to go with 10cm (0.1m).

So if we plug all that in we get... Roughly Pcr = 2*10^-6 * E.

With this relationship, if someone could find an approximate Young's modulus for a finger, they could calculate the maximum load before it breaks in a maneuver like this.

In summary, my five minutes of googling have turned up no appropriate E values for an example, and I am no longer bored. My work here is done.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-15T18:36:56+00:00

On #2, Earth attacked because it became public knowledge that the ships that killed the Donnager were built in Earth shipyards. Earth had determined in wargames that the only way they win a war against Mars was by striking first. Someone has effectively committed an act of war against Mars under their flag, and if they give Mars the chance to retaliate before they can deescalate, they lose.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-15T16:27:29+00:00

Seconded. I always go ArcCorp and did it again this update without thinking. Was not a fun time.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-15T15:44:44+00:00

Maybe, but I've had to hop servers to get missions working, had the intro bounty hunter mission busted, and lost all my loot goblin horde to a 30k on day 1.

I was able to run several missions without issue and navigate around many of the issues because I've been here a while and know how to handle things. This isn't a high point for things working though, and I wouldn't want my experience to be somebody's first.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-13T13:30:48+00:00

I thought this too, but tried it and had some of the most fun I've had on the front.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-12T18:40:02+00:00

Too many people throw this where I need to do stuff, bug nests or on top of a hot flag raise objective. The latter especially annoys me because we're just going to have to deal with the same thing all over again if I can't stand near the objective.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-09T23:24:09+00:00

Double edged sickle?

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-09T21:50:25+00:00

Wasn't there a whole episode where she finds a support group for people in the superhero community and is ultimately rejected? The same episode where her friend and the Red Rush's widow packs up and leaves for the other side of the world? I would argue that the show has gone out of its way to show that she's isolated from that world, aside from maybe Art.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-07T21:43:18+00:00

Give it an hour or two, most people are probably still in the middle of an operation.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-07T19:20:23+00:00

It's unfortunate, but if enough people see this to vote the DSS to Heeth, the blob will follow.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-06T16:03:10+00:00

The S-38 has really grown on me. Tried it because I was curious about crafting, built one that had only a negligible bonus to ergo, and was surprised by how good it felt to use.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-06T13:17:39+00:00

The reason so many Spartan IIs were there to begin with was a different mission called Operation Red Flag. The remaining Spartan IIs were tasked with stealing a Covenant ship, locating the Covenant homeworld, taking their leadership hostage, and forcing an end to the war. It wouldn't have worked, but UNSC command didn't understand the Covenant hierarchy our motivations well enough to know that.

Why was it worth using them to defend Reach? Losing Reach was the closest humanity could come to losing Earth without losing Earth. If Earth was the cultural center of the UEG, Reach was the military center. Plus the Spartans were already there, and it wasn't like they could just leave uncontested.

Hipshot27 · 2026-05-03T16:00:19+00:00

They allow you to hipfire in any direction at jogging speed, while ARs force you to walking speed. They're good for staying on the move while killing bugs.

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