First, you're shooting railguns at people with shielded, advanced body armor. How many shots it should take to kill has nothing to do with the "realism" behind technology that doesn't actually exist, and everything to do with gameplay.

You can shoot at pretty close ranges just fine using sniper rifles.

It doesn't have hip crosshairs because they don't want you firing from the hip. It's also wildly inaccurate, so crosshairs would be pointless.

One shot kills shouldn't be in the game as far as I'm concerned. You can achieve this with body shots using a charge rifle sometimes currently. That's as far as it should go. Bullet drop should probably be in.

Weapon modifications are coming soon. Sniper rifles make very little noise anyway, so a silencer would probably be pointless.

The recoil is to prevent you from being able to instantly land two shots and kill whoever you were aiming at. It's to give your target a chance to run to cover. You're firing from 600 m away or more, at times, and the people you're shooting can't shoot back. Exactly how many advantages do you need?

If you're being shot by someone with an assault rifle, you're doing it wrong.

You are proposing to make the Sniper Rifle OP, when it can already OHK people from across the map?

I have SP invested in the Sniper Rifle and I don't want it to become OP, then too UP because nerf hammer came down.

bullet drop is not something to be considered with small soldier rail guns, since the slug, or plasma charge would disintegrate going that fast after a certain time anyway. even with the one railgun made by a military [took an entire ship btw] the shot did not slow down enough to show even a slight drop.

though on the other points of fairness, i actually agree.... there are ways to prolong life on the battlefeild against snipers.... oh how i love my armor repair mod

It isn't a railgun, it's a thing in a video game. It can do whatever they want it to do, because it isn't real.

Maybe they could mix it up a little. Say, add more variety of Sniper Rifles that would have some fire standard ballistics, and others that would be based on Rail Gun Tech. The standard ballsistics could do more damage, but have bullet drop and lead times that the Sniper would have to compensate for. The Rail Gun Tech Rifles would do less damage but have a longer range.

You misunderstand me, that's my fault. I don't mean that the Rail Guns should be 2-hit kill weapons. When I said less damage, I was thinking more like 3-4 hits, even against a Scout Suit. And you missed the part about the damage drop off at range. So that's 3-4 hits against a Scout Suit at optimum range. The heavier ballistics Rifles would do more damage but take greater skill to use, and have less range. The hitscan should absolutely go, though. I agree with you 100% on that.

I like the idea of multiple types of sniper rifles, and there will be. But for right now, we have a rail tech sniper rifle. And as per the concept given it's working fine. It actually under performs in many ways in order to be more balanced in game. All the weapons do. The Sniper Rifle you want will be the Minmatar variant when it comes. It'll most likely have the properties you're asking for as Minmatar use chemical propellant slug throwing based weapons.

By concept, the flechette travels four, or more, times the current usable range in one second. Travel time of .25 seconds or less will have little to no noticeable effect. Flechettes also have ballistic properties more closely related to the flight of a crossbow bolt than a bullet. It'll be flatter and more stable with greater penetration. Once again, at range limits, ballistic drop will be negligible.

Now before anyone comes at me about demanding too much realism... If the current Dust Sniper Rifle had realistic properties, it would have massive recoil. It would have an effective range of over 7500 meters. The transfer of kinetic energy on impact would knock mercs off their feet and dismember easily. The flechette would create a shock-wave that would deafen, disorient, and possibly nudge any merc it passed close to.

Now, outside of concept, Dust is still in beta. We're testing. Dust doesn't host matches client side like other games I won't name here, it's on CCP's New Eden servers. So they have to build Dust keeping in mind that their systems will have to continuously track all the Dust activity as well as Eve activity, activity that can potentially span multiple planets in well over one thousand star systems Dust side. There's a lot more to come in Dust and CCP will make adjustments where necessary to keep from overloading their servers while giving us the best gaming experience possible for the server technology available.