I agree.
We also need to have a "one hit kill" (OHK) sniper rifle, at lest on non-heavy.

Now the Militia SR damage is 160hp; a basic scout/assault has 322hp = 3 shots are required to kill...and this IF the shield doesn't recharge.
Way to many bullets to kill anyone and the result is that Sniper Rifles are not appealing.
The most powerful SR now is the Charge SR with 224hp of damage, which still requires 2 bullets to kill an assault/scout...better then the militia but still not OHK
Now how do you balance a OHK sniper rifle?
Well the key parameters to balance a SR are: fire-rate and damage.

We can divide the SR in two categories: Bolt-action and Semi Auto.

• Bolt Action SR have intrinsically low fire rate, you need to reload after every bullet, so to balance this penalty they usually deal more damage: higher damage + slow fire rate = balance.
In Dust this doesn't happen: the Charge SR has the same Fire Rate of the Militia SR.
Now having to reload after every bullet is something that belongs to this era but Dust is sci-fi shooter so what to do: IMO we should have some sort of cooldown to simulate the need to reload/wait after every bullet.


• Semi Auto SR have higer fire-rate, they are faster and you can shoot in rapid succession, so to balance them they must deal less damage: less damage + higher fire rate = balance.
The Tactical SR in Dust is like this: 136 dmg but twice the fire rate of Militia SR - 0.6 seconds instead then 1.2 seconds.

So a good OHK SR could be something like this:
Damage: 350hp.
Fire Rate: 1.4 seconds.

1) Two headshots will kill pretty much any non-heavy, some suits with less tank fitted can die in one shot. Heavies die in Four headshots, or five to six normal shots.
2) The tactical sniper is easily the best one to use at lower levels, because of the near nonexistent recoil and ease of followup shots.
3) - Prone is terrible and people need to stop asking for it.

Sniper dmg is fine
My prototype suit got killed in ONE HIT to the head from my clan mate running a prototype sniper + dmg mods

its surprising most of you havent gotten the memo that snipers play more of a support role by making targets weaker and "softening" them up.l.

The point of headshots is to kill in one hit: it's a consolidated mechanic in every shooter...almost a rule.

Really "4 headhsots to kill a heavy" is so ridiculous.

Wrong: there must not be a "best weapon to use" but "right weapon to use based on my playstyle".

I you want an assault rifle that fires more quickly, because that's the way you like it, then you should have it: the cons of course would be that the AR does less damage.
I want a more powerful SR, it's there: the cons is that is very slow.
With a great balance there's no limit of what we can have.

Pone is terrible why?

It's a very basic mechanic; a very, very minor thing that in no way makes the game worst.

My main issue with the rifles is that they are extremely hard to use, they swing about to a ridiculous degree...

Why? OHK's may be satisfying, but as said here and in many otehr threads - OHK can leave a very sour taste if not handled well. CCP does a good job here where it is possible to OHK but it's not a surefire thing every time. It's not exactly hard to chain 4 shots with a tactical sniper to a heavy. They are slow as hell, they certainly aren't going anywhere. If someone makes their fit so that they can survive a lot of punishment, you're not going to OHK them with a standard infantry weapon, period.



So, what you're saying is that you want something to be better, because it's what you want to use? That's the kind of selfish feedback that can seriously harm a game still in beta. I've gone out of my way to personally try everything people complain or bring issues up about, so I can personally weigh in on it as objectively as possible. "Something for everyone" to paraphrase your post, is inaccurate. You can't cater to everyone's playstyles, no matter how hard you try. The most you can do is find a gentle median that everyone except the people who simply must beat their chest are going to accept.

There is no arguement here though. At lower levels when your sniper skill is not giving massive damage boosts, the tactical rifle is simply the best. The standard charge rifle is possible to do it, but you're going to have a hell of a time OHK'ing, and you're going to have much more kills if you can get that second follow-up shot rapidly. Tactical is the best rifle at lower levels, like I said.. Any gun that can OHK any time, is going to be used by pretty much everyone, which ruins the diversity of the game. Situational OHK's are the best way to do it, and the game is pretty good about snipers in this regard.



What? Prone massively changes gameplay, and introduces a whole host of things that break the game, both physically and as aspects of gameplay. Prone mechanics can cause massive clipping/falling through maps, moving partially through walls, etc. Worse still : It makes snipers want to be 'Mister Hides-In-Bush'. Hiding in prone ruins snipers in FPS games. Most often people who are off hiding in prone while sniping are in somewhere remote, not caring what their team is doing so long as they remain hidden and their precious KDR slowly rises. Lack of prone in dust forces snipers to be more out in the open, which generally means they are closer to their team and actually helping... Or much further out being even more useless. The latter are usually the people who are the worst prone offenders, so I'm happy to run around with my team earning points while they sit far away being useless :)

I disagree with this post, prone will not break a good sniper, infact, it would help alot, because you can prone behind certain points as enemys go by, bam, through the back of the head. theres been times if i would've been prone, i wouldn't have been noticed, so just saying brah.

I agree.
We also need to have a "one hit kill" (OHK) sniper rifle, at lest on non-heavy.

...
It would make it so that even if I have full T4 sheild mods, and armor mods, a rookie or veteran sniper can one-shot kill me? I think that is pretty unfair. I think a OHK system shouldn't be implemented but more damage to headshots perhaps.
...

...
I read a lot of posts about snipers in this thread but the "snipers" are called "Recon".. i.e. overwatch of the battlefield, assisting allies...

If shields and armor got better in the future so did weapons so stop thinking that no weapon should be able to do any significant damage.
Really a bullet shot at 7000 m/s can go through a wall easy so what can an helmet do agist that much power?

Also please read what I said I never spoke about standard OHK SR!

Atholos.
Maxed out Charged SR can OHK a standard assault with a body shot.
All this time you have been playing in a game that has OHK SR: was it so terrible? Did you felt the necessity to leave?

Dewie
Standard AR have 30hp damage so it takes 30 bullets to kill a standard heavy which is decent considering that heavies are relly strong.
25 bullets instead than 30 could work though.