So my first Rail Tank was an experiment in compactness and exactly how small I could make something with as many railguns as possible as cheaply as possible while still being structurally solid. Only two treads, one railgun mounted between them, than two mounted on both ends of a thick "wing" behind it, than a fourth mounted on a tall, thick pillar behind the pilot's seat in the rear. All the guns barely fit and were pressing up against each other but the firing arcs were decent, if not perfect, thanks to that back pillar and the leveled approach I took, and occasionally shots were eaten. On top of that two treads side by side turn weeeeird, way too sensitive and fast. Interesting for an SMG maybe, but more trouble than it's worth for a Rail, so eventually it got another pair of treads for stability and redundancy. Eventually I added screen of prism blocks to absorb shots going for the "wing" from the front and channel damage down into the fore treads and chassis.
Initially it was made out of tier 1 armor because weapons are freaking expensive and its what I had lying around. Needless to say it was nearly made out of paper. But I gradually replaced them with quarterback armor (because blue is better than orange) And it turned into a reasonably solid, compact sniper. That ruined quite a few peoples day in its brief time in the sun.
Still, I was unhappy. The rear tower and layered structure gave it a large vertical profile and made taking cover difficult, enemies could still hit the rear tower distressingly frequently, as well as losing shots to awkward angles in-scope. So after I saved up some more RP I dismantled it and am now rebuilding it as flat and low hung as possible to allow my guns a full firing angle aside from when they block each other, as well as giving it a shorter profile, albeit a wider one to accommodate railguns, which need ludicrous amounts of space to what amounts to one of the weakest overall weapons.
Also, I'd kill for lower tier legs about now. You can get in some pretty weird places with treads but most of the time the enemy knows exactly where people are gonna be and it turns into a game of peekaboo, except rail-gun lasers/tracers paint a pretty perfect picture of where I'm sitting while invisible SMG bursts from nowhere peck me to bits.
Also, to other newbie builders out there, don't build your robot out of lightweight blocks at tier 4. One more gun or a massively over-tiered gun isn't going to matter if I can one-shot you from damn near anywhere on your robot the instant you're in visual range. You can under-tier your armor, sure, but don't build it out of that white crap, it makes you such a juicy target. Even if you're a medic 7/10 some flanker or plane is going to see your pearly white ass from low orbit and go FREE HIGH-PRIORITY KILL, YUM. When choosing targets raw color comes into calculations well before people take in your armor, and weapon icons.
We had a three or four person platoon on an enemy team once, they came barreling down one flank none of my team mates went down, and I popped three of them with one hit kills and crippled the last the instant they came into visual, one right after the other like a series of skeet, because they were dinky little white cruisers with lots of guns who thought surprise and numbers would win them our cap. I laughed my ass off because like twenty-five seconds into the match and they're down four players and a whole side of the map. That crap just doesn't really fly past tier two, there comes a point where it doesn't matter how many guns you have if they're supported by a material the strength of Swiss cheese.
/thesis end