100% free suit or a MLT Gallente with 3 basic plates?

I'm pretty sure most starter outfits that are 100% free are OHK to the head.

I would have much preferred to see a scout suit become the ultimate sniper. They should be glass cannons not semi mobile turrets sitting in the redline.

People were worried about scout cloaks. I said they should be worried about the next generation of heavy snipers who cannot be one shot to the head. They will be in the redline, head just visible and will retreat behind cover if hit.

Someone did not do the calcs when they created the new generation. So which heavy will get resistance to sniper rifles.. Thy will be the most popular (anti)/sniper on a hill.

You do know that's what snipers do in real life, right? Shoot people from hundreds of meters away. It's not meant to be fair, but in terms of game design, maps will have to be reworked to have closer cover as well as changes in sniping mechanics in order to see snipers work effectively in medium range engagements as well as long range. That's only part of their role. The other part is intel.

You can refer to this post https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1926856#post1926856 on my suggestions to improve the class and role. The top part is about Infiltration and Recon tools, while the bottom half is about sniping. On this character I plan on going Cal Commando to counteract the dmg mod hit, while on my alt, I plan on going Cal/Gal Scout, hence the post on my Scout.

As for sniping within 400m, I went 28-1 just yesterday with back to back kills shown on the K/D chart. My farthest kill was 143 meters away, well within range of anyone's optimal range of fire, and yes, we did win the match. I'd say that's a fair distance. With current map design, it really depends on the map atm. Just be patient my fellow snipers. More racial SR variants are in the pipes. Our time will come.

Real life comparisons are not relevant, this is not real warfare if we attempt to duplicate war no one will play. Most of the value of a sniper you list can be done by a scout. I have no doubt that there are snipers like yourself who are an asset to any team, the problem is the many more who are not and those wishing to enhance the features that contribute to this.

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, 355.3*1.15*1.3134= 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.

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"!

Good. The useless role of a sniper is further diminished.

Sorry, you asked.

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 1*1.15*1.26=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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I just want an AV sidearm to stop Pythons and Incubuses from shooting me and other dropships from trying to land on me

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 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

Aren't shield regulators a type of shield module?

To clarify: by "shield mods" I mean "shield modules"; by "damage mod" I mean "damage modifier", which is a specific type of module.

I think the idea that a player should have to skill into a particular suit to use a whole class of weapon optimally is ridiculous.

Ya at this point I can't even keep count of how many dropships (non-assault mind you) have tried to simply crush me on high towers. Which is why in 1.8 with the new commando suits I'll create a fit with proto swarms an av grenades along with my sniper rifle when on towers.

but at least it is possible to approach a viable, consistent OHK build with the current complex damage mod bonus, and there were a number of options for doing this. That's definitely not the case after 1.8.