Revamped the stats a bit but that's my general opinion on how sniper skills should go down. The one problem I find with a "spotter beam" is the fact that you need to be able to see your target in order to pin a flare on it - and if you can't see it, you can't flare it.

Going into gear and missions - we definitely need both. I find it odd that the Stygian Fist requires sniper class 20 to build, but doesn't need sniper class 20 to actually equip (according to hearsay) - fix this?

As for the UrQa Suqqa Ukuk, bump its hull up to 400 (on par with your average BSS), drop one augmenter slot, add a weapon slot (for a total of three), and give it some inbuilt bonuses. Like, shield +5%, and damage and range +10%, or something of the like.

I also propose a few more sniper ships along with Orb's promised player-usable delquad, like the Executioner or Qokuji'ki. I believe I mentioned those in Jeff's gear suggestions post.

Mhmm, Nice.

Do you have any idea how powerful sniper would be with those stats? It would be so uber effecient, it could power allmost literally ANYTHING. And fully powering a zebra torp is not funny. Im all for powerful, but take into account DPE when you're suggesting your stats, i dont want the class to get overbeefed and then nerfed.

The damage only makes one fire the equivalent of 2.7 bullets, less than Zerker. And only 2.7 bullets if you use a physical weapon. 2.3 bullets for any other damage type.

The -elect temp? One Zerker Mastery beats it up with AT0.

sniper gets +414% damage from skills.

and +50% elec use.

that comes out to +207% damage per elec, roughly...

100 damage per 100 elec, 1.00 DPE wep

100 damage becomes 414 damage
100 elec becomes 150 elec

divide by 2/3

100 elec for 276 damage

SD gets 140 damage for 100 elec.

Zerker gets 120 damage for 80 elec, devide to put elec at 100 and you get 150 damage for 100 elec.

Sniper is far more effecient.

The trouble with this is that physical weapons are too effecient as well. And the damage boost for them will only make them more so...i allready have no trouble powering my seige cata(absolute endgame cata), with a yallow. What would be nice is, say, +80% physical damage, +100% physical firing elec. They would still be uber effecient, but at least not so much that they are crazy impossible NOT to power...

Eh, another problem is that catas do NOT have enough range. Even a sniper cannot scrape by with 257 range on their cata...I find 300 to be pretty much my absolute minimum, and i MUCH prefer the 500 on my zspitter, and i could still use more. And its really strange that a normal cata has 400 range, and a seige cata has 257...and a giga cata has 200...

Thanks everyone for your input. From the discussions here and our discussions on the admin board, we've come up with these concrete changes to sniper:

* +20% damage with physical weapons in the form of +1% per level for the sniper skill

* Remove the +1% range per level of sniper skill and increase the range bonus for the Range skill to 6% per level. Make the range from the range skill scale with your speed from 0-100, but make the damage and crit chance from the range skill not scale with speed.

* New sniper only physical weapons with faster than normal projectiles and speed debuffs; new sniper "spotting laser" with a visibility debuff

* Lower weight on Jujuso'rka

* Add more low vis engines, energies and shields

* Change the sniper only capital ship auras to give +damage +recoil so that your friends will do more damage with less shots fired

* not just for sniper, but it might help them -- a new short range physical weapon that shoots 6 large bullets in a circle with high impact force to knock enemies away that get too close

I'm pretty sure most people would still prefer the FC's damage aura. Would it be possible to make that aura stackable with other auras?

No, damage aura's won't stack. Maybe you have a good point as to why we shouldn't change the sniper's aura. The thought was that the current one isn't very useful.

Maybe if it added some range or something as well as the +recoil?

or else as you say, the FC aura will still be much better

From my experience, the only "usefull" aura is the one that has the highest DPS multiplier. DPE is nice, but the current FC+Engineer aura setup is far superior. I think the problem is that all ubers ingame can be killed with the same setup (ShM, MF, Engineer and occasionally a FC if you want the uber to die in 10 seconds instead of 20). Giving the sniper aura a huge range boost as only stat and introducing an uber which forces you to shoot him from a distance would make sniper capships very common. Another advantage of the aura only giving range would be the possibility to use multiple capships with multiple auras without loosing bonuses due to non-existant stacking

If no FC is available the Sniper aura will become a good choice though. As it is currently it's not a good choice even if there is no FC available

Range simply isnt a factor when fighting any of the current ubers.

The problem still remains that a FC in a capship can do damage, while a sniper in a capship can't. Another problem is that sniper currently is underpowered (that's what this thread is about), means there are a LOT of FCs around and almost no snipers, means the situation where a sniper is available and a FC is not will be very rare

Of course FC will be better in a capship, the class is designed to fly cap ships and use auras. Your problem with FCs being better than Sniper in capital ships is pretty flawed. All the aura beef is designed to do is give snipers a bit more versatility, not make them a capital ship using class.

And to be honest the current beefs dont exactly sound that bad, of course we will have to see how the new gear handles before passing judgement on it.

Remember than changing it to 6% constitutes a nerf to the class...

As it is, with 5% and 1%, they multiply, giving a boost. IE;

1000 base rangex200%=2000 rangex120%=2400 range

thats how it is right now.

What you'd change it to would be 1000x220% , or 2200 range.

thats about a 10% range nerf. Is that REALLY what you intended?