DUST Search - [Opinion] Sniper Rifle Parity

Templar XIII wrote:

This, my friend, was a wonderful piece of read, but how do scouts fit in? They all get bonuses to Caldari tech cloaking devices, where the Amarr variant better be off if played w/o it altogether if we wanted to stick with doctrines - visibility. The other bonus: scan precision is not one that seems to correlate well with this doctrine either, it rather suits the Gallente. So how, if scouts as a general, and cloaks as a general do fit every doctrine, does a sniper rifle not? Am I to assume, the scout is to be regarded as a breach of doctrine, at least concerning the Amarr? But what would be a good alternative take then? New eden has black ops ships for all factions you might say, and I agree on that
If we look at sniper rifles inside the EVE universe, we find the Tier 3 battlecruisers like the Omen (Amarr), the Tornado (Minmatar), the Naga (Caldari) as well as other, more battleship-bourne platforms (see here).
What is of note here, is that all factions sport these...all...factions, no matter the doctrine, which has me appreciate your effort and excellent writing, but seems to void your argumentation on sniper rifle exclusiveness.


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MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2792	Posted - 2015.04.25 20:14:00 - [1] - Quote This is diversity just for the sake of needless diversity. Not every race needs a 'sniper rifle', nor does it fit every racial doctrine. The only 'true' parity I feel races should have among infantry is [pistol], [smg], [rifle], [light av], [heavy ai], [heavy av]. Beyond that I certainly feel that every race should have a [long range] weapon, but not every [long range] weapon needs to be a sniper rifle. Just like I feel every race should have a [short range] weapon, not every [short range] weapon needs to be a shotgun. To give every single race a shotgun or a sniper rifle or a knife, etc presents a horrible misinterpreted caricature of what the races are. Each race should have their own unique weapons that fill various niches, for example swarm launcher, plasma cannon, and mass drivers are all classified as 'launcher' weapons (as confirmed by ccp) but they all do different things and have different niches. And really, taking the sniper away from caldari? go fist yourself. The only thing I'd agree to is a 'renaming' of the sniper rifles - With the charge being the 'standard' variant, the tactical being renamed to the 'assault', and the current 'standard' variant being renamed to the 'tactical'. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2802	Posted - 2015.04.25 21:59:00 - [2] - Quote Joel II X wrote: Doctrines are just a fairy tale when Caldari are the ones who's made the Nova Knives. Why wouldn't a race try to create weaponry suited for every occasion with their own flare and available technology? Well there's two things to that. Nova knives were made because of the martial traditions of the Raata empire (that later became the caldari state) and minmatar use them for a few reasons 1) there's parallels within their own tribal societies. 2) minmatar are outside the box thinkers that will do almost anything if their hand is forced. 3) Minmatar favor reliable, conventionally low-tech solutions to problems. 4) The Ishukone corporation (which are caldari liberals) have an incredibly strong relationship with the minmatar - having previously given extremely large quantities of insorum for free to the minmatar republic, insorum is the cure to the previously thought 'uncurable' vitoc 'poison/mutagen' used by the amarr to control minmatar slaves. Ishukone make nova knives and SMG's for the minmatar at extremely low costs because of that relationship and the forward looking mentality of the liberals. Templar XIII wrote: Please elaborate: how do you think does the sniper rifle not fit every racial doctrine? After all it is a tactical, waylay ['snipe'] long range weapon, which makes it a good complement to scout suits, which do fit - I want to believe - every racial doctrine. Caldari racial doctrine is 'siege warfare' this is what their gang links and command ships get bonuses to in eve. This is represented in dust best by nanohives, injectors and incredibly long range weaponry - the caldari take a position, fortify it and bombard you with long range weapons until you submit, when they advance someone covers them. Snipers fit this as it's a very patient and stationary playstyle that fits the caldari methodology. Hell in space caldari fleets tend to drop out of warp at 200km, the admiral lights his cigar and then missiles and rails start firing at everything - if something gets close the caldari either warp off & back in or activate micro jump drives and move 100km away. Gallente racial doctrine is 'information warfare' this is what their gang links and command ships get bonuses to in eve. This is represented relatively well in dust by their scanners and scouts - they see you, you don't see them. They then use this information to pick off high value targets and move in with their preferred short range blasters to brawl at short range. Snipers tentatively fit information warfare in theory, but with the gallente's heavy preference for short range engagements of high armor / mobility superiority it's unfeasible. Amarr racial doctrine is 'armored warfare' this is what their gang links and command ships get bonuses to in eve. It's hard to say this is particularly well represented in dust simply due to lack of amarr content, but in general amarr engage at medium to long range with suits that just don't ***ing die. They're not afraid of getting up close and should any individual actually drop they can immediately come back due to the short reinforcement lines provided by drop uplinks. Furthermore war to the Amarr is incredibly psychological, they have a high preference for visibility and visibly breaking their opponents will either through the belief of 'IT WILL NOT DIE" presented in their sentinels or weapons that you go "Oh god, that thing* just killed four people with one sweep of his laser". In fact the laser rifle is incredibly psychological everyone knows what pre-heated lasers do to any suit and they'll frantically scramble to find cover if a laser is trained on them. The Amarr want you to know what killed you and where it was. Minmatar racial doctrine is 'skirmish warfare' this is what their gang links and command ships get bonuses to in eve. Plain and simple, Minmatar are a blitzkrieg on legs. They come in lightning fast with explosions, walls of bullets, loud noises and before you know it it's all over everyone is dead from knives, bullets, grenades or other explosions. They're relatively versatile and pragmatic in their loadouts, but the patience and immobility a sniper requires in no way fits the minmatar doctrine as they operate entirely on shock and awe. In short the sniper rifle is a specialty weapon that only really fits the long range & patient style of the caldari, other races would have entirely unique 'long range' specialist weapons. Variant weapons are created largely to go 'This is what this weapon would be if x race designed it' which is why I'd be okay with renaming a few sniper rifles but not okay with just doing an oprah "EVERYONE GETS A SNIPER/SHOTGUN/KNIFE!". Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2803	Posted - 2015.04.25 22:39:00 - [3] - Quote Racial doctrines are very much a guideline to how the races 'prefer' to do things, but within eve there's a lot of simultaneous invention and responses to emergent threats. Every race makes their own missile lines for example but only the caldari and minmatar prominently use them, though khanid do have some robust missile ships. Every race also uses drones (though it's really the gallente and amarr that specialise in them) or has electronic warfare ships and stealthy cloaky ships. Scouts are something that would technically be ubiquitous. The Amarr scout would use a cloak because they do want to avoid 'bigger' dropsuits but if you look at its scan profile it's actually rather high - most scouts can scan amarr scouts, but the real thing there is if you know it's an amarr scout, you can be damn sure it's hunting you. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2809	Posted - 2015.04.26 14:27:00 - [4] - Quote Templar XIII wrote: This, my friend, was a wonderful piece of read, but how do scouts fit in? They all get bonuses to Caldari tech cloaking devices, where the Amarr variant better be off if played w/o it altogether if we wanted to stick with doctrines - visibility. The other bonus: scan precision is not one that seems to correlate well with this doctrine either, it rather suits the Gallente. So how, if scouts as a general, and cloaks as a general do fit every doctrine, does a sniper rifle not? Am I to assume, the scout is to be regarded as a breach of doctrine, at least concerning the Amarr? But what would be a good alternative take then? New eden has black ops ships for all factions you might say, and I agree on that If we look at sniper rifles inside the EVE universe, we find the Tier 3 battlecruisers like the Omen (Amarr), the Tornado (Minmatar), the Naga (Caldari) as well as other, more battleship-bourne platforms (see here). What is of note here, is that all factions sport these...all...factions, no matter the doctrine, which has me appreciate your effort and excellent writing, but seems to void your argumentation on sniper rifle exclusiveness. To respond a little bit more in depth than my previous post. "How do scouts fit in" Well, plain and simple - the gallente would have likely been the first race to create the scout (and IIRC they were the ones who initially created cloak field technology, but it probably got stolen by the serpentis, who sold it to guristas and then the caldari stole it from them or other races came up with their own brands roughly at the same time - this happens all the time), because it most fits their doctrine. They then go to the minmatar and say "Hey, you said you needed a fast electronically oriented suit to do things here's our initial designs" which the minmatar then modified heavily. The caldari start going 'man it'd be awesome to have a suit that provides recon for our long range strategies" and the amarr go "screw these stealthy new things - we need some **ing slasher film villain style dropsuit to hunt these goddamn minmatar twinks". Thus every race creates a scout suit that helps with their racial doctrines. This all happens over a period of a few months or so where the first race gets their scout suit out and others create their own to respond to it. Now the scout suit itself in general goes with the mentality of "I want to avoid sight to do the things I'm going to do". The siege warfare take on it is "I avoid sight and provide recon data". The information warfare take is "I avoid sight and pick out high priority targets at short range". The skirmish warfare take is "Whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to do it fast - I have inherently high movement speeds, my knives are a brutal assassination tool and my hacking speed allows me to flip things and get back on the move". The armored warfare take is "We're going to deploy an incredibly high HP scout hunter - that while it wants to avoid 'bigger' suits, doesn't care about other scouts knowing it's there" Speaking of the 'Attack" battlecruisers in new eden. They are not 'snipers', that is simply a choice in how to fit them. Their design goal was prettymuch "We need a support ship with above average size guns, but more maneuverability than battleships, we don't particularly care about how durable they are - what can we do?" and the answer was "We take conventional battlecruiser designs, and strip out a lot of the 'durability' in order to mount guns that were meant for a larger ship size". So while Naga's like to snipe and Oracles (not omens those are cruisers) can perform quite well at range, Talos' prefer to get up close with their speed and oversized blasters, while tornado's have a choice between autocannons and artillery (artillery being notoriously hard to fit). Plain and simple these are supposed to be 'heavy hitters' that punch above their weight class. It's also worth noting that each races definition of 'long range' in eve can vary wildly. Gallente (even though they share all hybrid tech with caldari) tend to have optimals of only around 45-70km based on ammo. Minmatar artillery ships have optimals of around 50-90km IIRC. Amarr beam laser ships can have optimals of around 90-140km based on ammo. Caldari rail snipers can have optimals of 130-250km and long range missile ships 100-250km, caldari 'short range' torpedos can hit 60km, whereas gallente 'short range' blasters are about 4-5km. "But if every race has scouts, why wouldn't they have snipers" Well, this is a false equivalence. There is a useful role in every race for a 'scout' the same is not true of a 'sniper'. What would be correct is that there is a useful role in every race for [long range weapon], but as I stated earlier, not every [long range weapon] is a sniper rifle just like not every [short range weapon] is a shotgun look back to that eve example - gallente short range = blasters, caldari short range = torpedos, range difference? ~15-55km based on ship & ammo. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian.** I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2830	Posted - 2015.04.27 18:11:00 - [5] - Quote Iron Wolf Saber wrote: sir RAVEN WING wrote: Caldari = Sniper Rifle Gallente = Shotgun Minmatar = Mass Driver Amarr = Laser Rifle Why can't the Caldari have our own Mass Drivers, Shotguns, and Laser RIfles? No mass drivers are in the same support weapon class as Gallente = placon Caldari = Swarm Launcher Minmatar = Mass Driver Amarr = laser rifle But all of those except the laser are 'launcher' class weapons. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.