Overview
[Updated 10-09-14] In this guide I will share with you all the tips and tricks I learned the past few months as a rail gun user.
Why do you want to play with Rails?
Update: 03-03-2015 Be aware, this guide is really outdated, If you want to learn more about rails read my newest guide:
[link]This is the fundamental question you should ask yourself before you spend money to build
a rail gun vehicle. Every MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game requires players to
choose a role in their team and according to their role, their gameplay is different.
As a Rail cannon player you are the support in the team. Rail cannons’ accurate long range
shots can help your teamates by damaging an enemy vehicle and make it easier for your
teammates to destroy them and win the game.
Rail cannon pros
– They have a really long range, their shots can be very accurate and can penetrate the
enemies armor
– They take the least damage in a fight since they can shoot down the enemy from a
distance. Less damage = More profit
Rail cannon cons
– They have low damage, especially in high tiers (9-10)
– They need 20 seconds to reload, while you reload you are defenseless
– Landing an accurate shot is difficult, especially when you aim a moving target
– They are useless in close combat
– They are really expensive
– They take a lot of space on your vehicle
If you want to take the supporting role in your team, hide most of the time and you do not
expect to get many kills in a fight then Rails are the best for you.
Bulding the right vehicle step by step
To begin with, as a rail gun user you will have to do a lot of running and hiding, so, you will need a small and fast vehicle.
-Do not try to fit more than 4 rail guns on your vehicle since you will need a really big vehicle
to support them which will make you easier to spot and destroy.
Also, with 5-6 rails you will end up having 2 rails really high which will not only make it easier
for your enemies to destroy but it will also affect the balance and driving control of your vehicle.
-One of the problems I had with rails is that they can’t go low enough to hit targets below me.
I found a solution though, after reading a really usefull guide made by SkyLight called
Advanced Building Tips, and that is rotated armor.
By building a vehicle with rotated armor you do not only make your vehicle harder to destroy,
but you will also be able to aim downwards cause your vehicle will have a downward inclination.
Here is an example:
– Since you can’t stack many rails on your vehicle, you have to protect really well the ones you already have, so, make sure you reinforce your weapon bases to avoid losing your precious weapons.
A really good Idea is to use the triforce building technique to redirect any damage to less important parts of your vehicle.
Triforcing example:
a few more shots from a different angle
-The black cubes are connected to the weapon base
-The orange ones are Prisms
-The Yellow ones are cubes
-The blue one is inner
and that’s how it looks on my vehicle
Since the cubes surrounding your weapon are not connected to the weapon base cude,your weapon will not be destroyed If an enemy shot hits the outer armor.
For more information about rotated armor and triforcing follow the link below
Advance building tips
-Finally, you can add extra thrusters or wings to turn your vehicle into a climber. A vehicle like that
will be able to go to places ground bots can’t go and give you better sniping opportunities and protection from them. Going to a higher ground though will make you an easier target for bombers or separate you from your team (something which I do not recommend).
Starting with the basics
Interaction with the team
-As a support, how you interact with your team will decide how long you will survive in the fight.
Since the rails have a really long cooldown you will need the protection of your team while you
wait. As a result, you should always follow your team and never wonder off and be all alone. One fast machine gun or plasma vehicle is more than enough to destroy you, so, If you are alone and use up all your shots without killing them you will die before you get the chance to reload.
Always keep your distance from the fight but make sure you are not too far away in case you need your team’s help.
-Try to find good sniping spots in every map. A good spot is the one that gives you a wide vision to most of the map and also at the roads the enemies are most likely to use.
Never stay in the same place for too long especially If you get spotted because It is very likely to get ambushed from the behind by enemies who saw you without you realising it.
– To aim at your enemy, simply move your cursor on them, wait about 2 seconds until the crosshair marks are as close as they can get in order to improve your accuracy, shoot once and wait for another 2 seconds to be able to land another accurate shot.
Make sure you do not move your cursor too fast or too much ’cause it will ruin your accuracy
Do not rush it, make sure your accuracy is at 100% before you shoot otherwise it will be a sure miss.
As a beginner try to aim at vehicles that are not moving and practise untill you feel confortable enough with the new gun.
– Reloading and Spotting
You should not waste the 20 seconds you have while reloading. In those 20 seconds you can do the following things:
- Change your snipping spot and go to a better one.
- Spot enemies which will give you some extra cash and inform your allies about the enemies’ position.
- Study your enemies and find your best next target which will be the easiest to cripple/kill
Do not just hide and wait!
You can also reload your weapons, even If you haven’t used all of your shots, by pressing R.
The less shots you have to reload the less time you need. Make sure you are clear to reload
though, do not press R when you are in the middle of a teamfight.
With 3 rails on my vehicle I need:
8 seconds to reload 1 shot
12 seconds to reload 2 shots
20 seconds to reload all of my shots
So, I usually use 2 of my shots and then reload to save time
How to be the best… Part 1
How to be the best… Rail gun user or Teammate? I say both. Among other things I will also talk in this section about how to make good judgment of your enemy’s strengths and weakenesses and how to support your teammates the best, cause If the rest of your team goes down you are done for as well.
– I can’t stress this enough but no matter how skillfull you are with any weapon, always stay close to your team and make sure you play your role well. Especially with a wepon that needs such a long time to reload, skill means nothing If you are alone cause If they find you you will die as fast as a beginner would.
You also need to know how you can help your teammates. Shooting randomly at an enemy will not do much, especially If they use black armor. Make sure you understand how well built is your enemies’ vehicles and If you realise you cannot kill them then you need to change your strategy and try to cripple them giving your teamates a better chance to survive.
The first thing you should destroy is their weapons so you can reduce their damage and straight after that their wheels, so they cannot escape.
That way your teammates will get a kill and you will get an assist and destroyed CPU added to your score which will give you a lot of money.
– Many people complain about the rail lack of accuracy especially when aiming moving targets, a skillfull sniper player though can take down any vehicle no matter how fast it moves.
The trick is simple to understand but needs a lot of practise to master. You need to predict your opponents’ movements and aim at the place they are gonna be 2 seconds later. That way, when they are at the center of your scope, you will have already gained enough accuracy to make a good shot.
Since the enemies can see your laser they will change their direction once they know they are driving towards their death, so, one way to deal with it is to aim a bit below them or left, right, not directly at them. That way you hide your laser pointer and you will only have to move your target a little bit to hit them which will not ruin your accuracy. Your accuracy is only ruined If you move your cursor too fast or too much. Small and slow movements do not affect your accuracy too much.
I will talk about laser pointers in more detail below.
It does not always work though, I would give it a success rate of 80% either cause of the unpredictable behavior of the human players or because they quickly changed their direction sometime due to taking damage from your allies.
you can also track your enemy movement without ruining your accuracy by moving your cursor slowly without making any sudden movements. That way when you are about to shoot you will need only 1 second to get your accuracy back.
Either way this is the best and only way to do accurate shots to moving vehicles.
– I mentioned in my introductory post that rails do not get many kills and this is mainly true cause of the low rail damage and really long cooldown, If you are a good judge of your enemy’s weakenesses though that might not apply to you.
After many hours of playing rails, I realised that one of the most vulnurable spots on a vehicle are the wheels. The wheels are usually connected to the base of the vehicle which is the same place most of the people put their seats. One good hit at the right wheel should be enough to oneshot kill the enemy since the damage is spreading to the surounding blocks (look at the advance building tips to understand how damage works).
Like everything else though this trick doesn’t always work and it usually depends on how how big their vehicle is. With my experience I realised that most of the players with big vehicles do not connect their wheels directly to their base therefore the damage can’t destroy their seat.
Other players use triforcing technique and the damage is absorbed before it reaches the seat.
With good judgement from your part though you can get a lot of kills that way since there are many players who do not protect their seat well.
– There will be many games though were you will not get kills and that should not dissapoint you.
In Robocraft there are 2 things you care about, RP (Robot points) and TP (Tech Points).
You can easily get TP just by capturing a base, get some assists or win the game. Getting enough RP can be tricky though especially when you do not get kills, well that does not always apply to rails.
In order to get about 80% of the max money you can get from a match you just need to destroy enough enemy CPU and to be precise, If you destroy 400+ CPU you will get the same money you would get with 1 or even 2 kills.
In this example I didnt get any kills but I still got 80% of the max money just by destroying enemy CPU
– As a sniper you need to give yourself some time to study your enemy’s weakenesses and you can’t do that If you point your lasers directly at them because they will immediately know your position and either shoot you or hide making you lose a potential kill.
When you use your scope make sure you don’t look at your enemy directly but aim left or right from him or If he/she is camping on a hill aim below them and take that time to study their vehicles without making them aware they are in danger.
How to be the best… Part 2
– In most of the fights you will have to Deal with those nasty electroplates. Electroplates will absorb all of your damage and you will lose one precious shot, but there is a way around that.
Like I said before, give yourself some time to study your opponent and while you do that do not point your lasers at them. The electroplates can protect the whole vehicle so find the tiny areas that are not protected and shoot there,
Here are some examples of the best places to shoot:
If you shoot exactly at the middle of those electroplates your shot will bypass them and hit the blocks behind them therefor the plates will be destroyed since their support blocks will be gone.
In this example you can destroy 4 plates with one shot using the same way of thinking
– Lights, the number two most annoying thing for rails. There are not many advices I can give you other than “let your team deal with them” except one. If you really want to shoot them aim at the middle, you might hit an electroplate but you also might hit the light and destroy it. Also, like in the example below you might make them turn and If they don’t have lights at the rest of their vehicle you will be able to see them clearly.
– Lately the number of bombers has increased dramatically, especially in higher tiers and that is a problem for snipers since they can spot us easily and destroy us since we cannot hide from them behind clifs.
The best way to deal with planes is either try to oneshot them by guessing where their seat might be or cripple them and drop them from the sky (which is safer).
Plane users usually put their seat between the center and back of their vehicle since the front is more vulnurable, especially when they climb or drop. Try hitting them there and If the plane is not very thick you will either get a kill or damage them really bad.
If the plane is way to thick you should consider crippling them by hitting their wings first, then their weapons and last, their thrusters. Also, make sure you spot them and your teammates will do the rest.
– Finally, there will be moments when an enemy will outsmart you and come really close to you and well, you are most likely to die, here are some tips that might save you (only works if you have any shots left)
- If the enemy uses a hover vehicle: Quickly aim at the bottom and center of his vehicle and fire all of your shots. The fact that they really close to you can work on your advantage since you will not miss even If your shots spread. I have either destroyed my enemies like this or crippled them bad enough to make my escape, but the chance of this happened is really small.
- If the enemy uses a ground vehicle try to destroy one or more of its wheels or If you can’t aim at them, aim for their weapons. Destroying some of their wheels might give you the chance to escape since it will be more difficult for them to follow you and less weapons = less damage = more time to escape
- If the enemy uses a plane just spot him, run and try to go close to your teamates, If you can reach them they can protect you. Do not try to shoot them since they are way up and you will need too much time to do an accurate shot (that does not apply to light weight planes, you can just risk an accurate shot with them).
Enemy snipers and DOOM vehicles
Dealing with an enemy sniper
When you are fighting an enemy rail gun user you should not use the same tactics you use when you face an enemy of a different weapon class. Usually a fight like that ends with the winner being the one who spotted the other faster and made the first move, but there are a few steps you can follow to avoid getting one-shoted or heavily damaged by enemy snipers even If they spot you first.
Step one – Make sure you build a smart vehicle not a heavy armored one
As you very well know, lights and electroplates are the worst rail gun enemy in the game, so, use them to your advantage. The enemy sniper will go for your weapons first so, make sure you reinforce them with electroplates to cancel their damage.
Also make sure you surround your vehicle with lights, to make it harder for the enemy to see your weapons, forcing him to shoot blindly at you.
You should also reinforce the rest of your vehicle with electroplates to make sure you don’t receive too much damage from the enemy’s random shots
That’s how I protect my weapons
Step two –Spotting and shooting at an enemy sniper
First thing you should do when you see an enemy sniper is to spot them and reveal their position to the rest of your team.
Spotting a sniper first though will not give you the advantage unless you know where to shoot first. Like I said before give yourself some time to study your target and use the two seconds you need to gain better accuracy in order to do so.
If the enemy doesn’t use electroplates, lights and has a lightly armored vehicle then you can just aim at the base or wheels of the vehicle and get the easy one-shot kill.
In case you are dealing with enemies with sturdy vehicles with loads of armor and electroplates making them impossible to destroy even with 4 or more shots, go for their weapons. Unlike other weapon classes, rails need a lot more space, so, you will not find a sniper with more than 4-6 weapons making it possible for you to incapacitate them just by destroying them one by one.
If they use lights and you cannot see them clearly I would recommend you to just spot them and leave the rest for the bombers in your team. In case you want to engage, you can use the same tactic I talked about above about how to deal with vehicles with lights and hope for the best.
Video example
Explanation: I went for his weapon first to reduce his damage in case he shoots at me, then, I tried to one-shot him by shooting at the base of the vehicle but I underestimated his vehicle and I couldn’t kill him so I destroyed his last weapon with my last shot to incapacitate him.
Thruster sausages of doom
If you play in high tiers then you have seen them and you hate them more than anything else in the game. They are the unkillable thruster monstrosities who need the entire team to focus on them for a long time in order to destroy.
I did manage to one-shot them a few time though and after studying them in depth I realized how I was able to do so.
In order to survive as long as possible, they put their seat at the top of their vehicle so your team needs to destroy the whole bottom of the vehicle in order to reach it.
As a sniper though, you can land an accurate shot directly at their seat by targeting the upper body of their vehicle. That way you have a good chance to one-shot them saving your team a lot of valuable time and CPU.
Take a look at the structure of these vehicles (I have only built the upper part of the vehicle where the seat is located).
If you do not have a clear view of their seat like in the examples above try shooting around this area of the vehicle.
Some other players use a building technique called vertical building in order to hide their seat completely like in the example below (check the “Advance building tips” guide for more info).
A shot like that is really tricky and you should make sure you have a good sniping position in order to find their weak spot. Missing all of your shots would possible mean your destruction since they tend to focus snipers the most, so, take your time and make sure you make your shots count
Conclusion
Playing with rails is easy and can be very profitable, but being able to use them to their full extent and aquire the skill to do so is really difficult. You have to consider many things before you take even a single shot but If you succeed you will be rewarded with regular wins, a lot of RP and TP, plus you will help your teamates get more money since your good support action will save them a few hundrends of blocks.
So this is it guys and gals, I hope this guide will help you improve your rail gun skills and give you ideas to became even better. If you liked this guide make sure to rate it as well!!
If you have any tricks and tips to share that were not included in this guide feel free to do so in the comment section.
Here is a video with some good moments as a sniper, I only recorded these games for this guide so unfortunately I don’t have more video material to show you, nevertheless, Enjoy!
Guide update info
Update 10-09-14
– Minor spelling mistakes corrected
– Updated the “how aiming mechanics work” section to be easier to understand
– Updated the bomber one-shot kill video
– Added new section “Dealing with an enemy sniper”
– Added new section “Thruster sausages of doom”