Sniper rifle's suck 50% of the time

Locke355 said:

And you said the others complicated?

It causes the weapon to be unpredictable. Unless I am misunderstanding you, it also limits valid use of the rifle on offense. People do use the weapon while at the enemy base. The problem is o-sniping, not using the rifle on offense.

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It's not all that complicated when you think about it.

Sensors protect against sniper fire up to 1/3 of the way across the map. That's it.

The rest is just small details, different ways to implement it and repitition for clarity.

And no, you misunderstand me. It does not make the sniper rifle unpredictable. Those were different examples of how to implement the sheilding idea. Not random effects.

Locke355 said:

People do use the weapon while at the enemy base. The problem is o-sniping, not using the rifle on offense.

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Wait wait... isn't that the same thing?
Unless you are referring to the difference between OOB-sniping and O-sniping...

How about making it a thin barrier that, if you are on the inside of the enemy sensor net (and therefore easily detectable) you can fire the rifle normally, but if you are on the outside fireing in, your shot is disrupted?

Neek said:

Wait wait... isn't that the same thing?
Unless you are referring to the difference between OOB-sniping and O-sniping...

How about making it a thin barrier that, if you are on the inside of the enemy sensor net (and therefore easily detectable) you can fire the rifle normally, but if you are on the outside fireing in, your shot is disrupted?

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because then if you are chasing a capper, and he goes through the net and you arent through yet, it would still effect it, no?

o-sniping and using the rifle on offense are different. O-sniping is SNIPING.. where you are hiding on a hill at 20x zoom taking pot shots at the defense. If i am standing on the enemy base (lets say SB for example), and some enemy is there and i shoot him 20m away.. that is not o-sniping.

Locke355 said:

because then if you are chasing a capper, and he goes through the net and you arent through yet, it would still effect it, no?

o-sniping and using the rifle on offense are different. O-sniping is SNIPING.. where you are hiding on a hill at 20x zoom taking pot shots at the defense. If i am standing on the enemy base (lets say SB for example), and some enemy is there and i shoot him 20m away.. that is not o-sniping.

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Ok, but doesn't the thin barrier idea adress that?
you just can't snipe at short range when the enemy is on one side of the barrier and you are on the other, but if you are both on the same side of it, it's the same as it's always been.

As for the capper thing, yeah that is a problem. Perhaps if you had the flag produce a counter-field that nullifies the barrier and allows you to snipe him from long range.

Ok. i admit. It is getting complicated now. But balancing a game as complex as tribes is no easy feat as the developers will readily remind you.

For the record, your recharging idea is very sound, but something about it does not sit right with me. I can't seem to put my finger on it though. maybe it has something to do with making the laser rifle an ammo based weapon for long range sniping. I dunno.

here's an idea
the farther away from you base you get the less you can zoom in with it

FalseMyrmidon said:

here's an idea
the farther away from you base you get the less you can zoom in with it

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Hey that's a pretty sound idea. Simple too.
Now all it needs is some sort of bullshit explanation as to why it works that way.

Locke: I'm just throwing ideas out there in the hopes that they will evolve into better ideas. My idea came from exogen's idea, for example.

By no means is my sensor barrier idea bulletproof (pun intended) when it comes to close examination.

exogen said:

Also Lucius I don't know how much feedback you've had on your Honor Points idea (none in this thread yet), but I support it. That combined with laser sight would be a pretty good deterrant without changing functionality.

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If I knew how to script I'd do it myself

It could even just be a hidden variable (no need to cluter up a player's tab menu).

Yea, like I said before, none of us are really going to agree upon a single direction of weapon evolution, so I think we need to find a solution outside of that. O-sniping isn't an effective tactic, it's just annoying. There are a lot of ways to be annoying in game, but it doesn't mean you should change the weapons. I can teamkill, do you turn off team damage? I can blind spam, do you limit the range of the mortar? I can go run someone down in the middle of no where and pester them, do you make the middle of no where an immunity zone?

We used to just ban the people who didn't play by the house rules, but that requires an admin to be present. Why require an admin when a script can do it on its own. In the end I think it makes everyone happy

Well, I suppose there might be a few slip ups script wise, but it'll probably be a lot more fair than some of the nazis we hear about. Besides, you don't make it auto kick first time offenders, I think the message comming up "Stop o-sniping faggot, or you will be banned" should get the true offenders to stop after their first attempt.

are the rules that you should be working under:

1. Simple - The user shouldn't need a reference manual for the rifle.
2. Consistent - Every time it is used it should be the same. Adjusting it's use depending on location is asking for confusion and cheating.
3. Fun - it should be fun to use, and when possible fun (or at least not suck) to have it used against you.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled insanity.

you should be able to snipe mortars

Within those guidelines, Thrax, I believe the only items mentioned in this thread that would fit would be the following:

1. Charge-up, time to be determined
2. Pre-shot visible effect from the rifle
3. Laser-type rifle, but limited by cells (ammo, non recharging)
4. A bullet-type rifle, with ammunition
5. (I have probably missed one)

Personnaly, I wouldn't mind any of the above, but that's just me.

To toss out another idea, why not leave the rifle as it is now, but when someone aims at you with it, your radar HUD pings as if you were being picked up by pulse sensors? Perhaps it could show up as a different color, say purple for instance.

'Aiming at you' == laser rifle in hand, reticle placed on your body so they can see your name/health.

You could explain it through the older technology--leakage from the energy cells, not-quite-up-to-snuff optiks. Perhaps it could even be a good thing, back in those times of honorable combat--an electronic version of the sniper's dick he could wave around and love-tap people with before he put a hole in their skulls.

I belive the result of such a HUD signal is that an attentive player would have just a hair's worth of warning more than someone just cruising along, and it would promote a little dodging skill too.

I don't know, however, how it would address the o//oob-sniping problem. Certainly the defenders could check their HUDs and go 'that bastard is o-sniping us again', but this wouldn't stop Mr. Rank Offender from actually doing it. *shrug* I think you need an admin for such things, myself.

*edit* wording *edit*

Animosity torwards snipers in Tribes is art imitating reality.

Ban the sniper rifle from pubs!

i think there have been a lot of good ideas in this thread, but the problem always comes up that when you are chasing a capper and have no hope of catching them, you can snipe them and manage to retrun your flag. this is going to be very hard to distinguish from o snipeing, as it is long range snpeing at the enemy. unless it was something about the flag that made the person just as suseptable to laser fire.
i honestly dont mind the o snipers, sure they are annoying, but i would prefer haveing someone try and pick off the defence from a long way away than a HO come flying in dropping mortars everywhere, at least one LD should have a rifle in their loadout, and most of the time there are inv's placed too so you can just go and repair yourself. just my opinion.

the only thing that really pisses me off about o-sniping is if I have the flag, i'm not turtling, i've had it for a little while at my base so they're not chasing me, and i get sniped.

This still happens on pubs sometimes.

Hmm.. yeah it's not fun getting sniped from far away.. and oob snipers are a pain... that said, I like the weapon as is.

The hud indicator sounds like a good idea, except when you think about it, the laser shoots after the trigger is pressed and by that time you're usually dead anyway... though if you combine it with a laser pointer for the sniper it would work.. since the target would have a visible pointer on their armor, and the hud would pick it up and let the target know they were being aimed at.

A better idea could be reducing the amount of zoom (removing that last 20x period..) as it would discourage sniping from too far away.. you could still do it, but it would be a lot harder to pull off a headshot (don't reduce the range, just the zoom)

Other than that- I don't think there is anything that can be done except to not allow firing from outside the oob grid.. but as far as regular o-sniping, it's annoying- but so is getting your flag capped?

How about we leave the rifle like it was in T1, as these sensor/area of map limits are just way to complicated. And the only thing we change is add a pre-shot faint laser line. That way when your flying along, instead of just getting poked for 90 damage or so, you see a faint line quickly come toward you, that way you can see and at least try and dodge the shot. While good snipers still won't miss, it at least gives the snipee more of a chance to dodge.

So a faint laser line-of-sight thing would promote offense, be incredibly simple, and give more options to the snipee's. It should even be toggle-able to where you can or cannot see it in first person view, but in world view its still there. It just seems like a good idea to me.

when would the pointer/giveaway come on though? when they're zoomed in on the target's head? I like it because it would keep the o-sniper moving (which, if they're good they'd be doing anyway), but it could make it difficult lining up a good headshot if you've got this floodlight spouting forth from your weapon everytime you switch to the rifle..

dunno though, maybe you could blind/stun the target with it?

there were no headshots in tribes 1 cs.

commonsense said:

when would the pointer/giveaway come on though? when they're zoomed in on the target's head?

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Right when the gun is whipped out. We could also make it so the faint line of attack becomes more and more opaque the more energy the player has in its banks. Like if you dont have any energy there would be no directional pointer, but if you have full energy the pointer would still be faint... but more recognizable.

And getting headshots would probably be more difficult, but good snipers will still be able to attain them. Makes the laser rifle even more skill based.

as far as i can tell, the big deal about the laser rifle is the effective range. the combination of the 1000m range and the instantaneous travel of the laser makes for a larger sphere of effective influence than any other weapon by far.

the fun factor is low when someone can hit you and you can't hit them back - or sometimes even see them. it plummets to a game-ruining low when it's not just one untouchable firing at you, but a whole posse of them. in my experience, this is true anywhere on the field. if anything, i've had my fun ruined more by excessive defensive snipers than by offensive ones, so i would concentrate on blunting the enormous difference in the effective range between the laser and all other weapons rather than worrying about a change that favors defensive use.

changes that could reduce the difference in effective range:

- reduce the damage of the laser over distance; that is, the further the laser travels to hit the target, the less the damage it inflicts.

- remove the instantaneous travel. make the laser rifle fire a very-high-speed laser burst, so that long distance shots are still possible and damaging, but they are more difficult to hit. it would also be barely possible in this case to dodge the laser, as opposed to the current laser rifle, for which an on-target shot cannot possibly be evaded.