LC is SCREWED No more running away!

/me can't wait!

Just to see how it goes, I've changed the default firing visibility for all weapons to be equal to their base damage + 100 (meaning, you can see them from that many pixels away when they fire), and the firing visibility time to be twice the base recoil time. I'm also making it so that instead of getting a big chunk of firing visibility for a certain amount of time and then it all going away, the firing visibility fades out linearly over time. Seeing ships fade out should be a lot nicer than having them blink on and off.

Weapons can also specify exact firing visibilities and times, but so far I don't think any weapons have used this parameter. I expect to make some Seer and Sniper geared weapons that are "baffled", giving them less firing visibility and less overall damage, kind of similar to how stealth engines have less visibility and less power, though maybe not as crippled as the engines.

A PD-like weapon would have close to no firing vis for close to no time, I don't think that's a good solution.

Jeff STOP!

For petes sake! Do you WANT to screw over sniper more than it is right now!? Wtf!? Sniper is supposed to be the shoot from a distance class!! Wtf are you THINKING!? If a sniper shoots off a V2 rocket, they get THIRTY SECONDS of visibility!? And a SD with .1 recoil can fire his weapon and then dissappear practically instantly!? WRONG WRONG WRONG!

Right now, it works JUST FINE. There is NO need to change the way that works! The ONLY thing thats POTENTIALLY good is the fading off of firing vis, but even that screws over snipers if it makes their vis last ONE SECOND over what it does right now! On my sniper, i oftentimes find myself at 1000 shields, saved ONLY because i stopped firing at the right time! This would make even that impossible!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dont screw sniper over like this! Not again!

Wait and try it out before you start whining and bitching, this is all just a trial. It will be put on test for everyone to try out and then tweaked until it works well. Nothing is final yet.

Even if it Is a trial, its a Major step in the wrong direction. Any step backwards should be stopped before it starts.

admins may work by taking two steps forward one step back but they do make progress.

lets see what happens. then squeal if it doesnt work.

Wtf? We have come full circle. Years ago, weapons used to have individual firing vis, but admins changed them all to 10k because it was broken to shoot and not be seen. Now you change it back?

Also, you have not mentioned this, so I will point it out: You need to give a lot of extra vis to some weapons that are not just for pure damage. The gremcannon line and any parasite weapons are good examples. The shot itself does next to no damage, but they have some nasty effects.

So what if firing visibility time gets affected by stealth augs and stealth skills?

Sniper + stealth augs...

Jeff, let me ask you a question: Whats wrong with firing vis, Right now? It works perfectly fine as it is. Why do you feel the need to change it?

As soon as a Sniper fires, everything kills him. He's not like a seer, being able to kill in one shot.

A Speed Demon 'should' have a hard time with another SD or a Seer, yet pushes over Snipers easily because as soon as the Sniper fires once, it does not kill the SD. It takes (X amount of shot + 3 seconds) to hide, which is the time a SD can kill him.

To do the same damage as a Seer, a Sniper must fire up to 3 times more. A seer fires and 3 seconds later, is gone. A sniper requires 9 seconds.


What is needed is more sniper survivability, damage based on range and projectile velocity rather than low speed, more torpedos and long range mags, and more focus on hiding in plain sight...behind a dreadnought, than hiding with a cloak.

A sniper should be able to do at least 60k dps when kicking out dps at maximum power, like a combat focus class should do. However, SD and Zerker do the most DPS followed by Sniper and Seer as DPH.

Speed Demon should be focused on lots and lots of damage per second, being able to churn out maximum firepower within nano seconds, and able to exploit the behind of ships, but being unable to hold much shields, damage per shot, or hull. It should be given new SD only ship scanners for fly-by scanning and better DPS single bullet weapons able to push enemies(while not pushing the SD)

Seer should be the only stealth class, with a vast arsenal of high damage per shot, but extremely low recoil weapons, long range base scanners, and many grem weapons that all have 100% crit chance of various damage types.

Zerker is fine due to bank setups requiring an engineer, and or shm, and slow speeds.

Sniper should be able to do vast amounts of damage like a zerker with one bullet, but lack the powerful resists of zerker, nessicitating a form of cover(capship), making snipers more of support DPS(like Jey) with zerkers still as main hostile DPS. This would mean that zerker stays on top, but with enough defense, snipers can be used for dps'ing an uber.

Flares:
We've had this talk before, about it being broken and the bane of stealth classes, but how about it giving a massive buff to enemies. If used, you must be killed by owner's bases at least once, with a 24 hour timer before marking, as well as losing enough GG to equal the loss of a GG20 w/o CG before mark.

This buff would make a Seer 'almost' as good as before without the flare, with a massive damage boost, resist boost, and speed/thrust boost. Turning a seer into something almost as good as the best SDs with the resist of a zerker is not something you'd want to do unless under the cover of your bases.

This should virtually stop all flaring of stealth classes in their tracks. It's the Yin/Yang principle. If you beef your side, you beef the other side.

I second that, sniper is combat focus... but puts out little dps in comparison to the other classes and lacks any survivability. Alot of SD's are stating how snipers are fine given then some can kill them... the only reason for this is because sniper is meant to take on SDs. +Tracking/Range is the bane of SD's, but even now alot snipers (not many choose to be one now adays) cant take on speed demons... they should be able to kill them much easier in my opinion.

Sniper should be stealth. We dont want to have to hide behind a dread all the time. Thats like making a zerker that relies entirely on a shmonk and a engineer to keep it doing maximum DPS. As it is, even with stealth, if you want to do any decent DPS you have to have practically no shields. My alt in his jujuso'rka cannot take on a single pick tank and spank style, i have to stealth and use other strategies just to survive, and even with that a single radar augged pick will kill me.