Sniper rifle / railgun
.ADHd
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146565Members
<div class="IPBDescription">I hope against hope.....</div>I played a lot of NS1, and I never really thought to myself, "This game needs more weapons". However, almost immediately after playing NS2 I started thinking about how nice it would be to have the addition of at least 3 more weapons. Those 3 weapons would be the HMG (Which is coming soon), hand grenades, and the railgun / sniper.
I think a sniper could be really balanced if done right. Maybe make there be a limit to how many people can use the railgun at once. I would say 2-3 players max. Damage scales with upgrades of course... it could be balanced to be ineffective against skulks early game. Id say weapons 0 it should take 2-3 shots to kill a skulk making it worthless in early game. At weapons 2 it would take 2 shots to kill a skulk and at weapons 3 only 1. Once fully upgraded the railgun could mostly be used to kill fades / lerks. A squad of 2 snipers could take down a fade in 3 shots or something. This game really lacks in long range attacks. A lerk flying out in crevice usually PWNS a marine or even a group of them.
The cost of the sniper should be steep, perhaps 30 pres. I would personally flip out if this was implemented. It add's a whole new dimension to firefights... forcing skulks to stay in corridors and use stealth... rather than wall hopping around at 30 mph killing everything in sight like they do now.
It's a bit silly to think that space marines wouldn't have a weapon like this. It would be useless against onos and too slow for skulks at low weapons levels.
Sniping does promote chuck norris style play... but that's why it would be limited to only 2 per team. If used tactically it could be a great addition to this game... one I would whole heartedly await.
I think a sniper could be really balanced if done right. Maybe make there be a limit to how many people can use the railgun at once. I would say 2-3 players max. Damage scales with upgrades of course... it could be balanced to be ineffective against skulks early game. Id say weapons 0 it should take 2-3 shots to kill a skulk making it worthless in early game. At weapons 2 it would take 2 shots to kill a skulk and at weapons 3 only 1. Once fully upgraded the railgun could mostly be used to kill fades / lerks. A squad of 2 snipers could take down a fade in 3 shots or something. This game really lacks in long range attacks. A lerk flying out in crevice usually PWNS a marine or even a group of them.
The cost of the sniper should be steep, perhaps 30 pres. I would personally flip out if this was implemented. It add's a whole new dimension to firefights... forcing skulks to stay in corridors and use stealth... rather than wall hopping around at 30 mph killing everything in sight like they do now.
It's a bit silly to think that space marines wouldn't have a weapon like this. It would be useless against onos and too slow for skulks at low weapons levels.
Sniping does promote chuck norris style play... but that's why it would be limited to only 2 per team. If used tactically it could be a great addition to this game... one I would whole heartedly await.
Comments
A minigun and a railgun are coming soon, with the exosuit. The plan is that the exosuit operator can choose the combination of both that they desire. For example, one minigun and one railgun, two miniguns, two railguns, or just one of either if PRes is tight.
Regarding additional personal weapons, it is unlikely we would add to the existing Rifle/GL/Flamethrower/Mine/Shotgun/Pistol/Axe/Welder list. A very strong gameplay case would need to be mind for an alternative weapon, and we absolutely do not want to add any weapon that is simply a 'better version' of any other weapon. For example, for the most part the HMG was a better LMG, apart from a longer reload. We want to avoid that. Some sort of personal sniper weapon would be unique, but we would need to have a very strong gameplay case for it.
I'd say the GL is simply a better version of the Assault Rifle (all you lose to gain grenades is the rifle butt so I'd argue it is just straight better than the LMG). Any plans to revisit the GL attachment?
The grenade launcher is the exception to the rule. We do not want people with grenade launchers to be unable to defend themselves in close quarters. As performance improves, we anticipate that not having rifle butt for 'close encounters' will become more of a tradeoff.
<!--quoteo(post=1926540:date=Apr 18 2012, 08:02 AM:name=xDragon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (xDragon @ Apr 18 2012, 08:02 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1926540"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I can understand the argument for not adding the HMG, which is essentially a better lmg, however look at the shotgun currently...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Rifle is tuned to do more damage per second against the Onos than the Shotgun. The numbers might not be quite there at the moment, but that is the intention. So no, the shotgun is not always the best choice for every job.
Maybe I am biased because I think the exosuit is kind of a silly idea in general. I see it as an answer to the aliens onos which takes away from the asymmetry but that's just me. Now the marines have their own onos instead of having to use teamwork and coordination to take the onos down... which stays so true to the classic natural selection formula.
It would make a whole ton more sense to have a machinegun / flamethrower combo on an exosuit... seeing how it will be mostly used as a support for foot marines. Putting a railgun on it... that's some anime, metal gear solid, over the top unrealistic type stuff in my opinion. That's also going to encourage players to camp with the exo so they can snipe people... probably not what you want the exo people to be doing.
How would you be able to accurately aim a sniper rifle on a giant cumbersome robot? Traditionally in FPS games the railgun is for quick moving players with stellar aim. I would have to disagree quite strongly about limiting the railgun to only the exo.
"The grenade launcher is the exception to the rule. We do not want people with grenade launchers to be unable to defend themselves in close quarters. As performance improves, we anticipate that not having rifle butt for 'close encounters' will become more of a tradeoff." - Strayan
In NS1 the grenade launcher was for clearing out DC's, OC's and other chambers and required the team to cover the man using it. This promotes more teamwork and more teamwork = greater reward for the team. I think the grenade launcher attachment is pretty overpowered to be honest. I'd like to see it modeled after NS1 but I know things are how they are.
The Rifle is tuned to do more damage per second against the Onos than the Shotgun. The numbers might not be quite there at the moment, but that is the intention. So no, the shotgun is not always the best choice for every job.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
are you sure about that? point blank shots at lvl 0 weapons means the shotgun is doing 15 dmg/pellet and the LMG is doing 5 dmg/bullet...does the rifle fire 30 bullets in the time it takes to fire 2 shotgun shells?
Shotgun is a light damage type so it has more issues with heavily armoured targets like the Onos (most damage is absorbed by the armor) and it doesn't have the range the rifle has. The rifle is a normal damage type, pistol is also light damage type currently.
oh yeah, forgot about the armor. but shotguns really destroy onos once the armor is gone. you can get 3 shotted by shotguns at 600/0.
I always thought that the standalone GL excelled in structure removal at the cost of weakness in close combat. Without the weakness it pretty much a better version of any gun a marine could buy. You get to easily defend yourself, shoot whips, and then spam the place with grenades. Just like every player heading to a hive with a GL-attatchment does. It removes the teamplay dynamic caused by have a weakness. GL's shot structures and HMG's shot players.
And a marine does more damage with the switchaxe than a riflebutt.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/static/comm_manual/basic/marineWeapons.htm" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/static/com...rineWeapons.htm</a>
I think the sniper could be the anti-Shotgun. Shotgun is powerful at close-range, and horrible at long-range. I think having a weapon that's powerful at long-range and horrible at short-range could be an interesting option for marines. It always depend on the situation, but that's why you have different weapons.
The LMG can hit at long-range, but its not that effective, because at long-range, you need a strong weapon, since you usually don't have the time or the aim to shoot 30 bullets. Flame is short-range, shotgun is short-range, axe is short-range, mine is short-range, welder is short-range. Only the GL can't be use at short-range, because you can kill yourself.
The most efficient weapon for marines at long-range is the laser mode on pistol. And you don't have any zoom on any weapon, so it's more of a spray-and-pray.
Right now, with the maps we have, long-range is not vital. But we're not going to play in the 3 same maps forever. I saw that map the other day with the massive and immense central room in it, and I can't believe we're going to be stuck sniping with a pistol as a marine.
As far as the Exosuit's armament goes, honestly, more selection is better. If it's ONLY Railgun or Minigun, I'm going to be kind of sad. The Flamethrower, if nothing else, is such a natural fit for an exosuit it's not even funny. Some sort of close combat weapon option would be nice as well, but not required. A belt-fed grenade launcher would also be a nice fit for an Exosuit. The primary role of something like an exosuit is "carrying more armor and bigger guns than you can unaugmented." Not taking advantage of that to strap on something like a flamethrower with a huge backpack tank (Firebat, anyone?) or a grenade launcher more akin to the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=youtube+mk19&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest" target="_blank">Mark 19</a> seems a waste of powered armor :)
What if the lmg could be offered in a variant that allowed moderate zoom, maybe a reflex sight instead, and is rechambered to house a larger caliber round. Slow down the fire rate and lower the clip capacity from the lmg, up the damage a little and now you have a DM rifle. You can get the drop on skulks as long as the angle is good, but up close and personal skulk still has the edge, that's the trade off.
Before addressing weapon roles in NS2 I think it's important to note how weapons were balanced in NS1. The shotgun and HMG had a great balance to the point where the both the public and competitive usage of each weapon was largely comprised of player preference. The shotgun is obviously great for structure damage, burst damage for surprise attacks, and a dynamic reload time(save the reload bug). An interesting aspect to the shotgun is that is is a high risk weapon for both aliens and marines. Marines very often have to gamble on their accuracy because its low rate of fire and were more susceptible to ambushes even with perfect accuracy for the same reason. This fire rate also allowed for a quick look/movement between shots to help survivability without sacrificing dps. Aliens playing against it will find it harder to judge how many shots a player has left and are more likely to bet their lives on the risks the marine faces, while also just being more susceptible to dying from being cut off in a surprise attack or in the midst of a large battle because of the burst damage and short/soft sound profile.
The HMG has the benefit of being higher dps and having longer range capability, but it is a lot harder to catch a fade off guard especially in a competitive situation, as a known player's tracking aim dps is very predicable and the damage is dealt consistently so it allows for some more fight/flight judgment at the start of an encounter. It's other attributes can be interpreted from what I wrote about the shotgun being different.
The pistol also played a prominent role of being highly accurate and having higher dps than an lmg, which made it great for picking off players and just a general alternative to the primary with the obvious clip size drawback.
When the jetpack comes into play the sg and hmg become even more divided. In my opinion the hmg is the obvious choice for jetpack combat, as it is all about staying in a pretty narrow window of distance from the enemy to prevent taking damage while being able to deal it. The shotgun is great choice for structure rushes with jetpacks and allows for players to be a little more nimble due to it being lighter, but is highly susceptible to skulks leaping in quick from out of damage distance after you fired a shot at another lifeform.
So that brings up weapon roles in NS2. I'm having trouble figuring out how well a railgun would play out in ns2. I think it might be taking the role of the shotgun an exaggerating it too far. The minigun (hmg) is a suitable exo counterpart to an lmg but I think the infinite range with high burst damage on a rail might play out to be too deadly. Aliens need a range where they can draw fire for low damage and gather intel for an ambush. Even considering a railgun would need some type of low rate of fire or long reload and teammates to be around (also doing damage) for that reason, it seems like sure death with that much firepower in a group and a long range burst damage to pick off a fleeing lifeform is a sure massacre. I haven't lost all hope in the idea though. I love the railgun in quake and other games and it might be really fun in NS2 if it can be pulled off. I just think that it should be playtested with a placeholder or very carefully designed before the devs take the attitude of "build now, balance later". Perhaps a flak cannon or something would work too. I'm not even sure this whole exo dual wield powerful weapons is a good idea. It seems like too big of a force and purchase. A suit plus two powerful weapons? Also, for the reasons I wrote before with ns1 balance, jetpacks seem like they're going to be useless in ns2 unless they unbind the minigun and rail from exo or they allow the lmg to be highly scalable.
Anyway, I have played this beta for quite few months already (and NS1 before that) and I still feel, that the game feels somewhat incomplete in the game mechanics design and weapons are part of that.
Weapons for aliens are feeling good at the moment, although I would still like to see one more lifeform being introduced (and not bigger / stronger than fade or onos, but rather something with different purpose) and gorge fixed a bit. Alien weapons can be also fairly well tuned without much trouble.
Marines on the other hand are (in my opinion) rather underequipped for the job.
The basic marine kit feels ok. You have flashlight which is necessary, melee weapon (which I would still prefer to be some kind of machette, but thats just personal preference), pistol and the pulse rifle. Its basic all-around kit without any specialized purpose. Then you have shotgun, which is pretty typical type of weapon for close quarters combat and its quite fine as it is (just needs some alt fire or melee on RMB). Flamethrower is more of an utility weapon in NS2 but feels quite ok as well.
Now we get to the changes.
First of all, I think the basic marine kit should have at least one grenade. It doesnt have to be too powerful (maybe upgradable?) or have too large effect, but marines need something to fight aliens in ventilation shafts in the early phases of the game. As it is right now, ventilation shafts are completely safe for aliens until the point of grenade launchers and jetpacks. Maybe make it into some kind of fragmentation grenade, so its effective against aliens but not buildings.
Mines are working alright as a defensive tool but it might be cool to add some kind of laser effect to them once they are placed (think old Duke Nukem had something like that) and maybe make the placement / trigger / effect mechanics somewhat more complex.
Grenade Launcher is ok in its current form, but the actual projectile needs to be tuned heavily. The flight path, bouncing, explosive radius and damage all feel kinda wrong. Also it looks somehow lagged when the projectile flies, even on my pretty okish computer.
I really do think as well, that sniper rifle / railgun needs to be added, as a form of long-range-marine-combat doctrine and also not be tied to the exoskeleton. There should be also experimental upgrade included, which allows marines to buy cloaking kit that does pretty much same thing as the alien upgrade, just cloaks them less (make them transparent or somewhat camouflaged, but not invisible). Alien vision could see through this camo though. The sniper rifle could be something like 5-10 rounds in a magazine, mid range scope, laser sight on alt fire, solid armor penetration, slower rate of fire and medium damage.
Minigun makes sense as a kind of end-of-all-warfare dps tool and it probably sense to make that one exclusively bound to the exoskeleton. Exoskeleton should also probably have the option to combine pretty much any weaponry the player wants (double welder exoskeleton, yeehaw).
Besides all this, I would love the game to go even bit more out of the box and do more interactive maps (control points battles, huge sealable / lockable doors, elevators, choke points, gas chambers that can be activated etc.). Pack that together with solid game performance and players will be orgasming.
My idea for the HMG was that it was late game support hi cap weapon with some serious drawbacks that required it to be used in a squad i.e
* Very high cost
* Very High weight penalty where unless you have a jet pack you can only move very slowly
* Very High reload time. Again you would need a squad to cover you whilst you reloaded
Sounds totally different to a Light assault Rifle that you get for free.
It's unique function was that it had a longer range than the LMG but the High Powered Bullets basically ignored Armor so it was more effective against late game higher lifeforms.
I think alt fire is 0.2 right now? increase to 0.3 per shot, then dps stays the same.
I think alt fire is 0.2 right now? increase to 0.3 per shot, then dps stays the same.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I like the idea of zoom for the Alt pistol...
+1
Introducing a one shot, one kill gun goes against this in my opinion. Even if players struggle to simply reflex kill a skulk with one click, its what the weapon encourages, which seems off to me.
I think (I'm not sure why) that the proposed railgun fulfils a specific role which is not direct damage against alien lifeforms.
why do you think a railgun is a sniper rifle? they're generally oversized heavy weapons, not sniper rifles
I agree on the flamethrower bit though, exosuits should be able to choose between minigun/railgun/flamethrower
The reason why armies switched from full powered rifles to medium powered automatics is because battles tended to be more close quarters and distances where battles taking place began to grow shorter. That being said, a sniper rifle is long and cumbersome, unweldly in close quarters, and used at a distance of 800m. To put it into context, in Summit, from Marine start to atrium is around maybe 500m? A Designated Marksman rifle would still be a horrible choice for the quick close quarters combat in ns2. The assault rifle is 95% accurate and good at any range, while the shotty has a trade off for close quarters.
Plus, if you miss with a sniper rifle once, that skulk would have torn you a new arse! Granted, a few of us have 100% hyper pro aim and never miss, but the majority of us don't. Even if it was a semi auto, it still wouldn't a difference.
+1<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1
A "pocket" sniper could be interesting in this situation. I agree with saltybp53 that a real sniper rifle is not really appropriated for the environment where NS2 is based. But a semi-automatic zoomed weapon with some power would be appropriate.
At least, for the beta, it could be an interesting experiment. No need to create a new weapon, the sniper already exists. Taking on what ogz said, just make the pistol auto-zoom(something like 1.5x) when you turn the laser on, give it more power and add a little longer delay between shots. That way, the pistol could alternate between the normal mode (like it is currently) and sniper mode (with zoom, stronger and slower). The clip size is already great.
Weapons stay the same and the pistol becomes an interesting alternative to the LMG, instead of being only the backup weapon when you deplete your ammo. In a group of 3 or more marines, the marines behind could provide cover with their pistol for those in front. Sniper pistol when alone would be risky, if you consider that sniper mode is auto-zoom and slow to shoot. Also, if a lone sniper is ambushed by a skulk, the time to switch to the main weapon is slow, so the best would be to switch to pistol mode. But fighting a fresh skulk with 10 bullets of the pistol is not that great, so it creates a great risk-reward situation.
The more I'm thinking about it, I believe it could also help for the Onos balance problem we have right now. 3 or 4 marines switching to sniper pistol when an Onos is running away could probably help marines kills them.
hit aliens between the bone plates to do more damage - hf @onos, fade and gorge ^^
Also, instead of a railgun for the exo why can't the exo have an automatic drum-fed shotgun? The minigun is the range weapon already so there's no real need for a railgun on the exo.
Ranged: Minigun
CQC: Auto Shotgun
Melee: Claw
If marines are getting picked off my a lerk, then its up to the marines to close distance or move somewhere they can't be. This whole design in my eyes forces the game into medium/close quarters, which is great.
If marines are getting picked off my a lerk, then its up to the marines to close distance or move somewhere they can't be. This whole design in my eyes forces the game into medium/close quarters, which is great.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah but not for everyone.