DUST Search - Sniping in 1.8

Alena Ventrallis wrote:

Snipers expecting OHK is ridiculous unless balanced out by only being able to be fit on a weak suit that is able to be OHK itself. Glass cannons. As it stands, a heavy with a sniper would be OP if snipers could reliably OHK a fitted suit.

That said, snipers need a role beyond killing from very far away. Making them more about recon than about killing could solve a lot of problems. Perhaps buff their damage and nerf their ammo capacity. Refilling one sniper round could eat up a lot of nanites from a hive, meaning a sniper would need to have a lot of nanites on him or have a lot of buddies supplying him. In return, he can mark individual people to show up like they were scanned by a scanner. They are scanned for 5 seconds. Tie the scanning ability to a suits scan precision. if their dampening beats your precision, they cannot be scanned. This makes the CalScout the best sniper, since it will have the best precision possible.

Perhaps tie scope sway to the suit size wielding the sniper rifle. The lighter the suit, the less the sway. Heavies would always have sway regardless of skill in snipers (reduces scope sway by 25%) Mediums could remove scope sway at level 4-5, and light suits could remove scope sway at level 1-2.

Whatever the case, make it behoove the sniper to fit a light or scout suit to go sniping with. Then countersniping will be that much easier, since we aren't dealing with brick tanked suits from the redline. Then a sniper will want to move to different positions so as to not lose their Thale's to countersnipers, and militia sniper rifles will be useful to pick off redline snipers.


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Appia Vibbia Ostrakon Agency Gallente Federation 1426	Posted - 2014.03.13 01:53:00 - [1] - Quote Only problem I see in this thread is the OPs damage calculations. Shield body shot does 90%, Shield head shot does 175%, armor body shot does 110% and armor headshot does 214% If you want to calculate raw damage you need to use 194.5 as they headshot multiplier. Though Effective Damage varies do to shield and armor values of different suits. So 1.7 Raw damage on a charge sniper rifle with prof 5 and 5 damage mods is 950 with max stats, minimum damage is 855 while ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM damage a prototype sniper rifle, with prof 5 and 5 damage mods can do is 1045 damage. so 1154 is the absolute max damage a thales can do in 1.7 Is this reasonable? To make 5 damage mods, proficiency 5, and an officer weapon. So lets say I have a basic heavy. atm 480 shields, 480 armor. I add 1 basic shield extender, a basic armor plate and a basic armor repairer. base shields and armor increase to 504 because of armor and shield upgrades to level 1. shields become 527 because of basic shield extender and shield extension level 1. armor becomes 570. The basic heavy now has 1097 total HP. To calculate EHP we do HP/modifier 527/1.75=301 while 570/2.14 = 266. So, our basic heavy suit with 1 basic shield and 1 basic armor plate has an EHP of 567 against Sniper Rifle Headshots. Thale's = 355.3, proficiency is +15%, 5 damage mods is +31.34% or so, 355.31.151.3134= 536.65 damage. Is... is there a problem here? That's not even 500,000 SP invested versus the absolute maximum damage the most dedicated sniper can possibly do with a weapon that you can't restock. I think I'll just go make a whole EHP chart about this. The Sniper Rifle is not balanced. Poor hit-detection, teleporting infantry (from lag), useless from within 100m, and lacks the DPS or high-alpha damage to do anything but annoy players like mosquitoes or steal a blue-dot's kill. Not to mention the terrain errors and **-poor rendering on surface installations and hills. ** that's where you see pub-snipers gravitate to, the places where they can glitch into the terrain to ignore damage from CQC, or blend into it so they can't be counter-sniped. Appia Vibbia for CPM1 AppiaVibbia(at)gmail(dot)com (checked every Monday/Wednesday/Friday)
Appia Vibbia Ostrakon Agency Gallente Federation 1434	Posted - 2014.03.13 21:46:00 - [2] - Quote CRNWLLC wrote: CRNWLLC wrote: Consider the following: as it stands now, the best you'd hope for is Proficiency 5 (+15%) and three complex damage mods 26%. That puts you at about 41% possible increased damage** at present. But with the new stats for complex damage mods (+5%, for a total of about 13% if you stack three), the max will be about 28%. A proto commando suit (+15% to racial weapon damage) with Proficiency 5 on a relevant racial weapon (another +15%), *** with the ~13% granted from stacking 3 complex damage mods (the most it can stack) will receive a cumulative damage bonus of about 43%**. That's about a 15% difference between the maximum potential damage output of commando suits vs all others! Considering that complex damage mods now only give a 5% bonus, that's flippin' HUGE! In other words, the difference between max potential damage output between commandos and every other suit is greater than stacking 4 complex damage mods after they get "rebalanced"! Just to add to the controversy, I say that sniping is fun, especially hitting moving targets in the head from 400m away. Sniping is what it is, and what is it is is a long-range role. Cowardly? Unfair? Moral judgements are irrelevant--this is a game and it's an enjoyable and strategically useful playstyle. Bravery and courage IRL are only possible when one is scared, has a reason to suspect things will end badly. Unfortunately this is not the case for a video game, nor the numerous frontline vets that engage in the oft-bemoaned "protostomping". It's actually 44.9%. You don't add percentages but apply them 1 after the other. so 11.151.26=1.449. * to get an approximation you can half proficiency's values because it now only applies to shields or armor ** 39.7% is a better approximation/average. Or you can just say it has a range of 29.95%-49.44%. A difference of 16.95%-14.54% depending on armor to shield ratios. Appia Vibbia for CPM1 AppiaVibbia(at)gmail(dot)com (checked every Monday/Wednesday/Friday)
Appia Vibbia Ostrakon Agency Gallente Federation 1435	Posted - 2014.03.13 22:12:00 - [3] - Quote Alena Ventrallis wrote: Snipers expecting OHK is ridiculous unless balanced out by only being able to be fit on a weak suit that is able to be OHK itself. Glass cannons. As it stands, a heavy with a sniper would be OP if snipers could reliably OHK a fitted suit. That said, snipers need a role beyond killing from very far away. Making them more about recon than about killing could solve a lot of problems. Perhaps buff their damage and nerf their ammo capacity. Refilling one sniper round could eat up a lot of nanites from a hive, meaning a sniper would need to have a lot of nanites on him or have a lot of buddies supplying him. In return, he can mark individual people to show up like they were scanned by a scanner. They are scanned for 5 seconds. Tie the scanning ability to a suits scan precision. if their dampening beats your precision, they cannot be scanned. This makes the CalScout the best sniper, since it will have the best precision possible. Perhaps tie scope sway to the suit size wielding the sniper rifle. The lighter the suit, the less the sway. Heavies would always have sway regardless of skill in snipers (reduces scope sway by 25%) Mediums could remove scope sway at level 4-5, and light suits could remove scope sway at level 1-2. Whatever the case, make it behoove the sniper to fit a light or scout suit to go sniping with. Then countersniping will be that much easier, since we aren't dealing with brick tanked suits from the redline. Then a sniper will want to move to different positions so as to not lose their Thale's to countersnipers, and militia sniper rifles will be useful to pick off redline snipers. That'd be cool if sway was like the apparently described cloak's shimmering. It was said to have less shimmer on a scout than other suits that use it. What if scope sway was tied into movement speed? It would give bit of inherent difference to the different role suits but also penalize the use of stacking armor plates. I loved the concept of that the uprising 1.0 trailer had about sniper. They showed a scout sniper, called them a glass cannon, and he got killed form behind. Then they showed the same location with a heavy suit, said you could tank it out, the sniper got shot, turned around and killed the AR user with his SMG. The idea that there are are wide variety of different ways to build a sniper suit would be great... but right now, the scout doesn't have the high-slots to deal enough damage, the only glass cannon is the Minmatar Assault, While a Caldari-Logi can get 3 complex plates, a CPU extender, and 5 damage mods. Or a Gallente Logi can get 3 damage mods, 4 complex plates and an enhanced plate to get its EHP above that 1056 max damage threshold. Or a heavy can use 2 damage mods and innately have the HP to survive a head shot from Shield & Armor upgrades without any HP modules I really think the sniper is in a bad place, it's not viable in competitive play without a tanked out Logi suit and a Thale's. I understand that snipers are going to take out the best weapon they can fit with the most damage mods possible in pub matches too. But by protecting pub players from snipers has crippled PC snipers. Suits without 3+ high slots just aren't good for sniping because they can't do enough damage. I can still have fun in a Scout suit with a sniper rifle, or my C-1 'Covenant' Assault with 'Covenant' Sniper Rifle (yeah, I dropped $50USD on this game in a single purchase because my love for sniping in any and all games) I can quick-scope for lolz or I can depend on my trusty SMG or Scrambler Pistol ( I miss my flaylock, I don't care about damage, I just want an AV sidearm to stop Pythons and Incubuses from shooting me and other dropships from trying to land on me) I loved running recon with my sniper rifle. If a sniper rifle had Target Painting abilities that would be sexy, however as long as the rendering system is in its current form a sniper is more dependent on an ally using an Active Scanner to get the enemy players to render. Which negates the ability for Recon. "oh darn, I'm out of ammo!" or "lot's of guys over here!" are calls to get my attention. I love helping my squad-mates out by killing those guys harassing my buddies but I miss being the one to warn them of incoming enemies. I miss the sighs of inevitability or the curses of frustration when people saw my name because they knew I was sniping, not just "oh great a pubstomper from [current corp]" regardless of the fact I use basic suits in pubs. Appia Vibbia for CPM1 AppiaVibbia(at)gmail(dot)com (checked every Monday/Wednesday/Friday) AKA Nappia AKA Mathppia
Appia Vibbia Ostrakon Agency Gallente Federation 1447	Posted - 2014.03.14 03:52:00 - [4] - Quote dsadfghfdf wrote: Tyjus Vacca wrote: Appia Vibbia wrote: I miss the sighs of inevitability or the curses of frustration when people saw my name because they knew I was sniping, not just "oh great a pubstomper from [current corp]" regardless of the fact I use basic suits in pubs. I know what you mean I miss the counter sniping attempts or the shotgun scouts coming to kill me, I miss the ability to take out adv or proto suits with headshots, I miss quick scoping my way to the top of the leader board but the problem is not that dmg mods are worse its the sniper rifles themselves I shouldn't need 3 dmg mods and a proto sniper to be effective in pc ............... the biggest fixes snipers need is a hit detection fix and an increase to the headshot multiplier its 195% (175.5% shields, 214.5% armor) should be like 275% imo More chromosome nostalgia? You weren't the only ones. OHK made it easy to pull 60+ kills. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REQMexPYjmE Adapt or perish. I adapted, I took up the Scrambler Rifle for its charge shot. I took to the shotgun because it is fun. Then I had 30M SP so I went FOTM because everything else was maxed out Appia Vibbia for CPM1 AppiaVibbia(at)gmail(dot)com (checked every Monday/Wednesday/Friday) AKA Nappia AKA Mathppia