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.

I am getting OHK's with a militia fit but with damage mods.

Train the skills that affect sniper weapon damage, fit damage mods, hit them in the head. Does enough damage to OHK assault suits.

This game is not CoD where every person does the same damage with the same gun. Learn your support skills and train them that way. Then fit your suit for max damage, sacrificing tank to do so.

Thats the way it works and as far as I can tell, it works well.

I am simply pointing out that SR now have more cons than pros.
Top level SR is weak against low level heavy: 2 headshots needed to kill the low level heavy.

This is not a matter of personal opinion: this is pure math.

Do you know how many headshots we have to make to kill a militia heavy with the militia assault rifle?
19 headshots.
And to kill a prototype assault with militia AR?
8 headshots.

I have focused all of my attention to the Sniper Rifle and how I can fit into an agenda based game style with a kill kill kill type of weapon. I have the best prototype weapon and most of the skills and let me just say the Sniper position is just fine. I get plenty of one-shot love and plenty of them are not even head-shots. Center Mass is very do-able and I tend to think that there is even more forgiveness while shooting some one in the back of the head, neck or shoulder blade region.
Our job also includes looking for the square dancers and to take out/down the shield of the RED one so our friendly assault specialist can whittle down the armor and then we can steal the ki....err uhhhh I mean "let him finish his job"
When I play this game at launch I sincerely hope to find a good group of guys so that voice chat actually has meaning and can be used for tactics and timing. Our vantage point will seldom be seen by heavies and assault players. We can actually SCOUT and have meaningful input into the outcome of a battle. One-shots are cool and fun and make the target mad as Hek, but let's face it they are not the ONLY reason to play a Sniper.


-Cheers
Hazma Dictace

To be honest, if I'm the guy dancing with a red and you "steal a kill" from me, I'll probably thank you. Genuinely thank you. You probably saved my ass, my assets, and now I can move on to other tasks.

I actually gotta comment on the headshot idea.

We have shields. Shouldn't they block bullets equally in the face area as they do elsewhere?

If they're in armor, fine. Plating doesn't move itself to stop a projectile. The only time we see shields pop up is when they stop a bullet.

I think the intent is for the DUST mechanics to still be a bit like EVE... instead of like CoD or other FPS typical non-scifi games...

The troops have armor and shields - kinda like a ship. The weapons types have alternatives; sniper rifles have more alpha-damage and longer effective range. That doesn't necessarily translate directly into "must always be a OHK" because what you are shooting can have all kinds of different hp (not to mention the headshot variant).

And on going prone --- that discussion has flown, peeps. I wanted to link to one thread in particular on the subject, but it turns out there are a dozen... do a search on it and you get 10 pages!

Pone is terrible why?

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

#Edit#
Maybe put in place a system where we earn war points for good shots, I.E. a shot made whilst the target is moving... then more points if they are running and then to top it all off a nice range bonus for example a hit at 100M+ earns 25 points. To account for the fact thats its easy to shoot someone in the face when you are running around with an assault rifle 10 m from them and somewhat harder when you have 1 shot, and 100M+ to content with let alone there movement and possible terrain.