No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is indeed a Gatling Railgun, I believe it’s the first of it’s kind on the SP Website. A five-barreled heavy brute of a turret, it’s caliber isn’t as high as most of our other toy- i mEAN WEAPONs, but it still packs quite the punch; Capable of sending five 250mm. APCR Tungsten Spikes at over 6,000 meters per second of initial muzzle velocity every two seconds, it revolutionizes the normally low fire rate of the traditional Railgun. In our weapons department, we’ve created a difference between Railguns and Railcannons; If it’s caliber is 120mm. or lower, and uses conventional electromagnetic energy to fire a projectile, then it’s a Railgun. Alternatively, if it’s caliber is higher than 120mm, AND it utilizes electromagnetic shock-blast energy instead, it’s a Railcannon.

The main problem in terms of increasing rate of fire on a weapon like a Railgun or RailCannon is barrel heating. If the barrel overheats, it may damage the interior of the weapon, therefore decreasing it’s effectiveness in combat. Of course, when we’re not actually fighting, we play the age old game of “How many watermelons can ’insert-force-to-be-reckoned-with’ vaporize?” Getting back on track, the issue was barrel overheatage. The solution? Give the gun more barrels! This worked out surprisingly well, as each barrel fires once every two seconds, which is just enough time in between shots for the RailCannon to cool down slightly.

The auto loader mechanism inside the turret was extremely complicated for Pyrhpan to create, as it had to feed each barrel it’s own round; seeing that we couldn’t just make a single Railgun module with five barrels in a Gatling Gun style, we soon figured out that each barrel had to contain it’s own Railgun module, each of which would be individually fired to spread out the heating much more effectively. Similar to the “RailPiercer” Double-Barreled RailCannon we released a while ago, it too has two different Railgun modules, so that the barrels heat up by themselves and not at the same time, allowing each other to cool down before the next one fires. Getting back to the autoloader, it waits for the current module to fire, and then, through perfect calibration and dead-accurate timing, it loads the next barrel with another shot as it’s spinning, which proved to be a very effective, yet equally difficult task to accomplish. A technological marvel among Pyrhpan’s arsenal, it certainly proves what can really be done with enough ingenuity.

Now of course, we couldn’t just leave the turret as is. Sure, a 250mm. Gatling RailCannon is terrifying enough, but we had lots of extra space inside the turret, so we added 8 Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Silos, each with an MMT Module for an infinite amount of missiles per silo. (of course, this can’t really be done in SP, so you’ll have to be satisfied with just 8 lol)

You may be asking yourself, “Pyrhpan, what in the ever loving christ would anyone in the right mind ever need to use this monstrosity of a weapon for?” Well, to answer this question as honestly as I can:

We don’t know. All we can do is be prepared, and until threat comes, you better believe those watermelons are getting ionized.

Here’s some screenshots:

Controls:

Yaw to rotate the turret, TRIM to elevate and depress the barrel(s). AG-1 activates missiles, 8 Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles for long range targets that the RailCannon can’t quite hit. Do note that the missiles are launched upwards first, and then their rocket engine is ignited mid-air, so don’t be alarmed at first if it appears that a missile hasn’t fired correctly.

This RailCannon Turret would typically be mounted on massive BattleShips, as that’s the only thing that can really hold it. There is a possibility that we could make an off-shoot of the SHMT-1000 that uses this turret instead of the Dominator Turret, although we’d need to test it first. Much like the RailPiercer, this turret can also be mounted at a stationary site in the ground, as a point defense gun. What we do with this weapon is our own business, but whatever you want to do with this weapon is fair game. This is SimplePlanes after all, you could probably mount this on an Abrams M1A2 if you’re patient enough with SP Physics.

One last thing to note is a strange bug/glitch with the beacon light; I used a FT code that makes the beacon light shine every time the cannon labeled as GRC-65 APCR fires a shot, which works great, as I wanted to use this for a cool Muzzle Flash effect. But there’s this weird problem where when you pause the game, the beacon light stops working entirely. Seriously, try to fire it before pausing, and you’ll see the blue flash of the beacon light. Pause the game, and then unpause afterwards. Fire the gun again, and you’ll see that the beacon light no longer works. This is incredibly strange, I’ve never encountered a bug that involves pausing the game to make it happen. If anyone knows why this may be happening, it would be greatly obliged if you could offer some help!

Oftentimes with modern technology, I like to think about whether or not their original creators would be proud of our accomplishments today. For instance, would the Wright Brothers be proud of our advances in aviation, or would they revolt, seeing how we’ve used our technology for war purposes? Alternatively, would Edison and Sir Humphrey be proud of our advancements in electrical lighting, or would they find it unnecessary for society?

To ask this question one more time, would Richard Gatling be proud of the technological advancements made from his original Gatling Gun, to know that weapons like the M-61 Vulcan and the GAU-8 Avenger exist today because of his ingenuity? If he were here today by some means, and got to fire an M-134 Vulcan Minigun, would he feel accomplished for what he brought to the world?

That is my question, which goes out to every inventor of significant technology from the past.

Have Fun!