RoF is in shots per second, so 0.5 is 120 RPM. You can see the explosion impacts with "di expv" and "di expr" that will show the voxel mapping of damage and the rays of each explosion. An explosion can hit multiple sides of a block, but the damage cannot exceed the maximum blast damage value as damage is calculated as a whole first, then reduced based on the number of voxel impacts vs distance from the explosion. Explosive damage will pass through destroyed blocks that are in contact with the first layer, depleting the total blast damage output with each layer. Example: A zirax rocket deals 4000 impact damage and 4000 blast damage with a blast radius of 3 meters. If it hits 5 layers of SV steel blocks (e.g. 75 hp) it will deal the impact damage of the projectile first (266 after hardness calculations) which does not propagate; then generates an explosion at the same location for another 266 damage to every exposed block within the blast radius from the impact point. Each exposed block will take 266 damage and transfer the remaining damage (191) into the block immediately behind in the same direction from the explosion, which will repeat (116, 41) until the explosion reaches its maximum radius or it runs out of damage. Thus, a zirax rocket against an SV will blow through 4.5 layers of steel blocks before it stops.
Forgot to mention too, the max RoF of a fixed weapons (for both players and AI) is 0.1. For tools like drills and multitools it's 0.5.
@Vermillion Thanks this helped a lot. Each rocket actually hits a block 17 times if you hit the face. This explains the discrepancy with the listed tool tip damage when considering the damage reduction. Given this information I can't see a reason to utilize rail guns in Vanilla other than the range and possibly ammo composition. It's way heavier and costs way more CPU and while the DPS looks good on paper it's actually poor in practice.
I recall playing a similar kind of game many years ago. I wont mention the game, it's still going in it's 4th itteration now, but each version had a mini encylopedia online where the stats data for races and materials, prices and ships all got listed. Wonder how big the community was or why that happened, but the propellerheads really loved it and reduced the need to ask continuously and then wonder which ship/sector/trader/race was the most lucrative - all with never taking the fun of discovery out of it even though the mechanics were published for all to see. That said, it's not hard at all to change most of these stats yourself, at least for your own play fun, experimentation, learning and storytelling.
I've noticed that the mass of the Railgun ammo is quite high. Does that increased weight have any effect on the damage it delivers?
Some specs of real rail guns: Typical military railgun designs aim for muzzle velocities in the range of 2,000–3,500 m/s (4,500–7,800 mph; 7,200–12,600 km/h) with muzzle energies of 5–50 megajoules (MJ) A small RailGun: 3.2 kg (7 pound) projectile to hypersonic velocities of approximately 3,390 m/s (7,600 mph; 12,200 km/h; 11,100 ft/s), or about Mach 10, with 18.4 MJ of kinetic energy.
P.S. 18.4 MJ is equal to about 8 lbs of TNT, but with a railgun projectile, almost all the force is directed in one direction.
