I just finished getting all 12 cakes and did not receive 12 containers. Do we need to wait until the event's end to claim our prize?

I calculated M7+. No further augments. It wouldn't be fair to count augments, as augments are found in crates, thus they are not the norm. M7+ railgun is something that every player can access, given enough experience and crystals. Whereas the epic & exotic augments are found by random. It's like comparing 2 cars and questioning the validity of the comparison because you believe that one of the two cars should be upgraded. To maintain fairness, all turrets were considered at M7+ and otherwise stock.

Okay, here are the numbers for those that won’t take my word for it: Starting with Smoky M7+ to have a nice control group that we can use for reference. 535 damage with a max crit chance of 50%. Crits doing 800 damage. With a pattern of -50% original crit chance and a 40% increase per hit, we can roughly estimate the average damage per shot with a 50% crit chance is 668. With 30%, we can calculate the average damage is 615. We could roughly estimate then that the average damage per shot is an impressive 588 damage, crits included. with a 1.4 reload time, we can calculate that the damage per minute for an M7+ smoky is a clean 25,200! Okay, now I apply the same mathematics to a few similar turrets and here are the resulting damage per minute, with crits included. Railgun: 15,625 (Rounded up a few stats in regards to criticals, giving the end resulting number a nice boost.) Smoky: 25,200 Thunder: 24,000 Shaft: 39,600 (Full charge sniping only) Gauss: 22,277 (Sniping only) As you can see, Railgun is significantly lower than all of the other medium to long range turrets. Everything was taken into account, including critical chances, critical steps, charging rates, the 1.1 seconds of the Railgun charging each shot, even the .5 seconds when you leave FPP after firing a shaft shot and the .5 seconds of returning to FPP when preparing to fire the next shot. I did the math, dotted my Is and crossed my Ts, and to me, the numbers speak volumes. You definitely can disagree and think Railgun is good where it is now, but the numbers suggest otherwise, sorry! If you’d like me to fully show my work, send me a PM or whatever you’d like and I’d gladly walk you through it in case you’d like to double check me.

Well, with thousands of hours logged over 7 different accounts since 2011 and regularly playing in high rank battles due to MM, yes, I’d say I know exactly what I’m talking about. This is of course after I’ve thoroughly read through all of the stats on the wiki as well and done some comparisons and cross referencing. Railgun and Viking were my primary combination 2011-2015. I’ve played it recently and was thoroughly disappointed. Switched to Thunder and Shaft as my primaries and both have been able to fill the role better. Disagree if you’d like, but I’m just calling it from what I’ve seen and read.

Railgun is definitely in need of a buff. Here’s why: Back in the day, railgun was the go-to sniping turret. It had the longest reload of the medium and long range turrets, the highest per-shot damage, and didn’t have any damage drop off. It was balanced. When shaft was introduced, it quickly took over the sniping role. Railgun was still able to be used effectively however as a mobile sniper, not having shaft’s long charge. Over time, things have been rebalanced and updated and now we have a new problem. Railgun only has marginally more damage than thunder, and a significantly longer reload. Thunder can easily outperform a railgun in most situations and ranges, due to it’s higher DPM and versatile performance, even when you consider thunder’s damage drop off. As it stands currently. At long range, a shaft can easily outperform a railgun. At medium and short range, thunder can outmaneuver and outperform a railgun, effectively making that “mobile sniper” role null. I don’t know what the solution should be- perhaps a harsher damage drop off for thunder, or just a damage increase for railgun. But as it stands, railgun users are few and far between, and effective railgun users are even less common- it’s simply getting outperformed in the field. Edit: forgot to mention gauss, which definitely further complicates the issue, but that’s a whole new can of worms.