Agreed Demiser. I switched to an Unholy Thruster myself. As Sniper stands right now i would be perfectly fine with it if engine vis did not fade away. but since it does it renders high vis engines quite dangerous to use unless out of ai range.

Meh you people who have no problem with seeing ais need to go hunt MF reavers, as seer this is possible as sniper its not. Advantage seer....

Time warp you really dont know what you are talking about. MFs have HUGE elect usage advantages. Its the main thing about this class its what makes it uber, the skill, aug and if you use a lion ship, makes the class.

Sniper on the other hand use MORE elect per shot than an mf does even if the mf just fires ONE gun. This is why an mf using 5 MDs have less elect problems than an sniper using 1. No dont get me wrong of course the mf use more energy BUT their skills compensate for this. If it where not for the uber elect people would not use MFs at all we woulld all be FCs.

The extra elect needs to go it was a stupid feature to begin with and its not less stupid now. All other classes have gotten HUGE beefs over the old system part from sniper. Even if sniper where made just as it was before the class rewarp it would still not be able to compete with any of the new classes.

have to agree most emphatically. i played sniper on my main since the DM nerf, (needed a break, figured 3 years of DM was enough for a bit) then switched to sniper.. my GOD its an irrational pain in the ass.. either the ai see you and get to your position before you can bash their heads in properly or you cant see the ai, (MF reavers for instance.)

remove the recoil, the elec doohickey and scale the speed from 50-150. and that is a crock of shit if you think you will see a sniper going 300.. use common sense man, my sniper went around 100 in a juju with no speed augs..add speed augs and you sacrifice damage and rof. then add projectile speed, and make it so that sniper is not as badly effected by knock-back of physical weapons, that is all kinda bullshit if their special weapon makes itself useless in just a few shots.

then test this and see how it improves. i do think that the recommendation of trying Sniper out in a DG is a good idea Jeff. taking words from experienced snipers is one thing but experiencing it is another entirely.

Personally (before actually trying the skill out) I feel that the extra elec usage might be a little too much so maybe remove or atleast reduce it. Scaling the speed from 50-150 sounds like a good idea, being forced to sit perfectly still must be annoying.
Judging from what the players say it seems that they need a radar bonus too, snipers are meant to hit from far away and to do that they need to actually see their target so that is probably the most obvious change that is needed.

So I would suggest starting with those 3 changes and see how it turns out.

i hunt MF reavers every day for levels Belli and it's still easy as hell to kill them from far away.

Voomy i believe removing the +elec temp from sniper skills is too much. maybe decreasing a tad but don't remove it altogether. The extra elec itself isn't so much a problem considering the +recoil allows a sniper to quite easily power all weapons with little to no problem. and if you remove the +recoil i believe the class would then be too good.

However i do like the idea of the new speed scaling. combine this with a stealth Sniper-only engine on par with at least a zebra engine would be satisfying.

Well then you either have 3 athena+ on your ship or you found the perfect place to hunt them spartan.

Mf reavers just kill me as soon as i fire my guns since i have to be close to them in order to see them. Yes i kinda fail as sniper.

The only thing i would add Jeff would be to see if including the radar beef for directly in front of the ship, that would seem appropriate. and not too broken.

maybe an etheral phys weap?

Well we have heard from those who care about the sniper change, though most of our views are conflicting. I'm awaiting the changes so I can test them. Thanks for the long awaited much needed attention for sniper issues.

Personally i would like to see, Damage scaled with speed 50-150 (50 being max, as others have suggested). As well as Damage scaled with range, the idea being the further away a sniper attacks from the more damage they give to the target.

This combined with a sniper detection bonus in a 130 degree arc from the front of the ship and with the other suggestions such as increased projectile speed, decreased knockback. These would make sniper a class able to compete with the rest

Not sure if the 130* arc bonus to radar is possible in the current client, but a reduction in radar in a 180* arc behind the sniper would fit in with the class to, the idea is that being far away and in front of a sniper would put you at risk, but being behind them and close would reduce their potential, adding some tactics to the game.

Also, some very low damage, high range, huge knockback beam type physical weapons would be very nice for sniper, helping them keep enemies at a distance whilst they can get into position or escape.

The damage scaled with range sounds good in theory... but then snipers would find it very difficult to escape because they generally do not have a very high max speed. If that was put in I suggest making that a minor bonus...

I think asking for more radar in some way seems reasonable on several fronts. First, it makes sense for sniper, second, there's the whole long range thing, and third it's a nice anti-recon class touch. What about a long range ethereal laser that puts flares on the target? Spotter beam?

I think giving Sniper +20% physical damage increases their total damage by a decent amount and it also increases their DPE. For me, one of the distinguishing aspects of sniper is they are supposed to have the highest DPE of any class, so really "one shot one kill" sounds nice, but that's not really the point of snipers. They are more about continuous long range punishment and stand off where other classes probably should be more bursty.

No comment to the scaling from 50-150? thats like the one thing we all actually agreed upon .

The only thing I dont like about adding the new damage to physical weapons is that there are not a whole lot of usable physical weapons in game (cata's fall short of desirable except a few, other than that there is only lion quick snap and zebra torp), not only that but you wont be doing your max damage in the new bana considering it is weakest to fire. Another thing I dont like about it is physical gives kickback and as snipers are suppose to be stealth you do not want to stack your engine visibility with weapon visibility.

Just make a sniper weapon that is physical damage and has a 1k projectile speed..

I don't want to scale from 50-150. I am willing to change it to 0-200 from 0-100, though. One thing I really don't want to encourage is sniper kiting.