Imperial Hammer

A burst variant of the rail gun[sic] that sacrifices per shot damage to achieve a three round burst that overall is more effective.

— In-Game Description

The Imperial Hammer is a Railgun variant that fires a three-shot burst. This weapon is a merit reward in Powerplay.

Usage

Unlike the standard Railgun, the Imperial Hammer is less of an all-or-nothing weapon and fires a burst of three shots rather than one before it reloads. This may allow it a possible advantage where hitting the target every time is not assured. Each shot does considerably less damage than a Class 2 Railgun, but landing all three can be extremely effective due to the higher DPS potential.

Similarly to a standard Railgun, the damage type is a combination of thermal (66.6%) and kinetic (33.3%), and shots also ignore Armour Hardness, as their armour piercing value is 100 and no ship has an Armour Hardness value greater than 75. It has a magazine size of 3 and maximum ammunition capacity of 240, compared to the single-shot standard Railgun with its maximum ammunition capacity of 80. Therefore, since the Imperial Hammer fires three rounds at a time, both weapons may fire 80 cycles before ammunition stores are exhausted.

Compared directly to the standard Class 2 Railgun, each individual round in the Imperial Hammer's three-shot burst does 36% as much damage. If all three shots impact the target, however, then its damage is 114% of the Railgun's. Notably, while the standard railgun requires a charge-up for each shot, the Imperial Hammer only requires a charge-up on the first shot; holding down the trigger will allow ensuing shots to be fired automatically, free of charge, allowing for dramatically higher rates of fire and, accordingly, damage per second. While a standard Rail Gun can fire about 1 shot every 2 seconds, a Hammer can fire closer to one burst every 1.5 seconds, giving it around 33% faster fire rate. Combined with the higher damage per burst, this gives it a total of around 52% higher DPS than a railgun - so long as the trigger is held down.

In exchange for this advantage, a single three-shot burst generates 165% of the heat of a single standard Railgun shot. Given that heat generation is already problematic when using standard Railguns and often forces a pilot to deliberately limit their rate of fire, the additional heat from an Imperial Hammer is even more of an issue. Pilots who have attempted to field multiple Imperial Hammers at once in combat have frequently ended up overheating and badly damaging their ships as a consequence.

For Commanders with access to the appropriate Engineers and sufficient resources, the Super Penetrator Experimental Modification is highly recommended as it significantly offsets the Hammer's monstrous heat generation. The weapons can also be paired with Thermal Vent-modded Beam Lasers and Heatsink Launchers for heat control.

Imperial Hammers can broadly be considered a superior Railgun, but with equivalently higher costs and significantly greater skill required in aiming. In addition, it is also around 3x more effective at triggering powerplant detonations, thanks to its much higher rate of fire for individual rounds.

Specifications

Class	2
Rating	B
Mass (T)	4.00
Integrity	51
Power Draw (MW)	1.63
Damage	15
ROF/s	4.09
DPS	61.36
SDPS	23.28
Thermal Load/shot	11.00
Distributor Draw (MW)	2.00
Armour Pierce Rating	100
Damage Falloff Range (m)	1000
Maximum Range (m)	3000
Value(CR)	619,200

• Thermal load and distributor draw are for each shot. Therefore for the three shot burst, thermal load and distributor draw are 33.0 and 6 MW respectively.
• Notably, Coriolis's damage per second calculations are significantly inaccurate when it comes to railguns.

Purchase Locations

System	Station	Discount
LHS 145	Finney Settlement
Djiwal	Thompson Dock
HIP 39470	Song Orbital
HIP 21455	Crook Terminal
Ostyat	Rucker Enterprise
HIP 113980	Grimwood Gateway
HR 1475	Barnes Beacon
Kamadhenu	Shajn Market
Vitra	Linteris Dock
Nut	Babcock Gateway
Krinbea	Meinel Dock
Shoribelu	Johnson Dock
Buriges	Bass Vista
Regir	Davidson Penal Colony
Shomanjia	Alexander Holdings
Nagi	Bolkow City
Rangur	Xuesen Dock
Mool	Gasparis Terminal
Zoelati	Hinz Base
Rugabaruwa	Wright Landing
Damoorai	Allen St. John Station
Baroo	Hampson Hub
HIP 13129	Carsono Terminal
Exphiay	James K Winston

Videos

Imperial hammer - the essentials