This would also fix the old kiting issue sniper had, Im just trying to help Jeff... sniper is very underused due to the fact that its stealth class and you must sit still, so your a sitting duck in PvP.

Lawl, silly idea: level one of sniper gives +1 aug slots

yeah, silly idea, but it had been bugging me, and i had to get it out.

sniper subskill;

blah blah blah,,, (+5% aug slot per lvl)

Kanga

Ah, but that makes endgame snipers too powerful

Much better to have it like DM, where level 1 gets you an extra drone slot.

Awful idea

Just give them stats relating to their class, damage, range, etc. increases to compensate for the lack of the extra aug slot.

Admins are to cautious to do this or the aug idea with the way sniper was before.

SD is the new sniper anyways (in terms of PvP dominance as compared to 2005-2006), Id like to see snipers actually rivaling SD's and actually being able to kill them before they escape. With the insane amount of bank many SD's put into their setups while managing to squeeze out all dps possible its highly unlikely though.

I like the idea of a flare laser gun to be honest. That would fix problems with the radar.
On the rest something has to done still. Now that the radars cannot detect that well we will see how that effects now.

Is it just me that thinks sniper doesnt need to be stealth?

Sure, in the literal meaning of the term sniper, you think of a prone man in a Ghillie suit. But that is only one popular aspect of a sniper. A sniper can also be part of a small team, in which he can pick off the difficult targets with accuracy.

I see no point in forcing the aspect of stealth.

What i would expect from a sniper is a high damage, low rate of fire ship, that has the option of using stealth but with the option of ignoring the stealth ability in favor of other bonuses.

What i propose for this is a sub Specialization of sniper, in which you can choose either stealth, or visible combat. Im not sure about the finer details of this arrangement as i havnt thought about it in great detail.

As a side note, this could also be done for other classes. They would have 2 more sub skills, of which they could only choose one.

Raven, AKA Zetax

I like Daves idea too^
Class diversity is very good
I never really saw sniper as stealth class even though many snipers use stealth to their advantage. I would love to be able to choose but both should be balanced well.

That wouldn't come out to +1 aug slot, that would come out to DOUBLE aug slots. 10-augged BSphere, anyone?

Lol, i missed that. That would be epic

As for visible sniper, its very viable as it is, without bothering to have different skills for it, if you're a visible sniper you can use ROF augs, heck, you could use a lion or whatever. It would probably work really well, you'd have epic range and good DPE to power whatever weapons you feel like powering.

People talking about stuff they dont understand amuses me. If a sniper dont stealth he dies to ANY ai. He cant outrun them and he cant tank hence all thats left is stealth.

Visible sniper has been done before, and done quite well. Iirc, ERMAN was one of the ones with an uber visible sniper.

Visible sniper needs a pet monkey to survive, its better to use a zerker then.

I used a visible sniper before. one vs one it could handle ai well. only swarms above 25 proved to be problems. DC aggro and finding 100+ DTs wasn't fun.