Scout Rifle Balancing

I'm not drawing any conclusions about the Scout rifle as it is right now, I'd like some community feedback before I do so. In my own opinion, the scout rifle is rather useless right now- frustratingly powerful on that lucky shot in close, and useless at long range, and the SMG is generally a far safer and better choice of weapon when a scout. I know nobody wants a sniper rifle, but the gun should at least be a decent alternative to the SMG in SOME situation. Currently, it is not. If it's going to remain a poor choice for a Scout to use, why put it in the game at all? (Some people have called for the removal of the rifle altogether.)

The current incarnation is weaker then previous versions because of improved balanced weapons and the fact that you cancel your zoom after every shot, which effectively halves the rate of fire for long range shots. (In all previous versions you stayed zoomed, like that auto-rifle in CS). One of the main complaints with the previous scout rifles was the extreme power up-close via one hit kills, and this change only reduces the long range or even medium range capabilities, making people rely on this cheap one-hit ability even more. Vote time!

This is just ONE idea for changing it, I'm sure there are tons of others out there. Granted, I'm a little biased, I really like the semi-automatic or slower firing rifles, which is why I always use the NF Heavy Rifle, and which is why i would like to keep the scout rifle in the game.

I may be incorrect in stating that it's worse then the SMG. It's just that I've tried some medium to long range firefights with it, and have a LOT of difficulty. I tried going back to 1.07 lately (b/c no one was on the RC) figuring I was just rusty at sniping, but I can get kills in 1.07 MUCH easier then in 1.08. I'ma hold off on voting cause I still haven't quite decided for myself (I'm leaning towards change it)

 

I think the scout rifles are perfect right now. Don't need to change a thing.

 

Rifle should have significant amount of kick, and zoom out after each shot to force the player to find his target once more, if it's going to stay as a sniper rifle.

 

I think it should have inverse range dampening. As in, 300 feet away it does 100 DMG, while 10 feet away it only does 5. And make it's damage max out at 120 or something so that it doesn't do 100000 damage from across the map. It is a RANGED rifle after all.

 

there's actually a weapon developed in the 60's that had similar properties. Gyrojet Guns actually fired tiny lil rockets. Of course, they had all sorts of issues, the ammo was expensive, and they were generally total pieces of shit. But one of the interesting properties of the weapons was that they reached their maximum speed at like 150 yards, instead of decelerating once they left the barrel. They left the barrel SO SLOWLY you could stop the bullet/rocket by plugging the barrel with your finger. Crazy, completely impractical junk, the project was abandoned. But something like this DOES exist, and in the Empires universe, it could work just fine.

That's the plus side to stu's idea. The down side is one hit kills from across the map. I honestly have to completely disagree with stu on this one-- it should take at LEAST three shots at range, or a total time of like... 3 or 4 seconds, from first shot to re-cock to last shot that hits the target.

I don't mind Thor's idea, adding more recoil to it, my only objection is that you have to re-zoom in... but I guess that's essentially the same as what's happening if it kicks a bunch. idk. something.

 

But if a rifle takes 3-4 shots to kill, people can simply run and hide easily, if it is 2 hits, at least they will have a chance if they react quickly, and it will punish players for standing out in the open

 

I just say make it a static 40 damage or something. Nothing too earth staggering, but with a pinpoint-accurate rifle, more than enough.

 

I said this to lobster in-game, and I'll say it here as well. Would you enjoy dying in 3 hits from some guy on the other side of canyon?

 

Well, it's three times better than dying in one :D

Anyway, decent point. I only preferred static above dynamic damage because the dynamic damage dropoff is rather idiotic right now. One-hit kills up close and 5-hit kills after 200 ft or something. Maybe nerf the damage to 40 (for up close) and gradually make it lower and lower (like now, but not with such a dropoff) until you need to do 5 shots again to get a kill (for very long ranges).

 

Just remove the gun, there's no way to make it actually useful without people whining about how unbalanced and unfun it is that they got sniped by someone they couldn't even see with binoculars. And they'd be right too.

 

I think the best solution to the zooming problem is to make it stay zoomed until you release the trigger. I find it very frustrating to lose my target every time, I'd rather watch them fall than be forced to zoom out straight away.

I have no problem with it killing in two shots, especially when the mortar is capable of this too. A skilled player with the mortar can hit spot on just about every time, and he doesn't even have to be standing still to get pin-point accuracy! Crouch-fire-move, by the time you've crouched and fired, you don't have enough time to get out of the path of the shell, leaving only the option to run.

Possibly one solution is to make the scout rifle use projectiles, rather than hit-scan (is that what insta-hit is called?). This way leading would be essential, making it a more skillfull weapon to use. If you can hit somebody from range like that, then you deserve the kill. Equally, if they're standing still out in the open, they deserve to die.

 

Trouble with fast moving small projectiles is that there could be quite a bit of delay between firing and _actually_ firing. This would make it harder to use at close ranges too. I'm not saying its a bad idea, just that there may be some problems :p

 

I agree, get rid of it

Give the Scout something better than an SMG (with lower firing rate)
and Something worse than the AR (but with better range than an SMG)

I'm thinking auto carbine or something, and the scope is still there to get a better look at the battlefield

 

Halleluja \0/

 

how about giving the scout rifle to the rifle man class and make it a sniper rifle,
to compensate the strength a rifleman needs a special skill for beeing able to select it as loadout and it could probably use realistic projectile physics to balance it even more ( maybe another special skill would be auto calculating the point to aim at for hitting a target ). I already thoght about coding a realistic projectile physics system for long range rifles and atillery shells for the source engine, maybe, if it's not only me thinking this is a good idea, i could explain my ideas a bit more in deep and probaly even code a bit to help ( note: this won't need krenzo to give me the empires-source code as i could just code an own mod consisting only of my realistic projectile physics system and then give him my source for allowing him to include it in empires )

So much to say, the main point of my idea, which differs from the simmulated bullets project at sourcesdk-wiki is to implement it as a new thread inside the game.dll so that the bullets can be processed in real time and independent of the normal entity calculation cycle.

NOTE: I don't have much time right now so it whould take long to finnish that, but the complete september is free for coding and fun, so maybe then -- if u want

 

Well I think all we need at this moment is an end-goal for what the ranged rifle should be, and a change in scripts to make that happen

 

Big-Ass Dissertation on Scout's RR-- sorry

If the settings revert to the BSID test server that intended to be used in RC 1, that would describe the carbine perfectly. It didn't do TOO much damage, it was able to out-shoot smgs at range, but it usually couldn't take a rifle at medium-long range, and it had a decent ROF. Beerdude, you wanna throw those numbers on this thread for reference?

As I said in the thread introduction, the current forced re-zoom app. halves the ROF for this rifle at range, making it even MORE useless at range and ONLY effective as a hit-or-miss one hit kill close range weapon.

Back to the first idea-- if rifle remains a bolt action, I propose the following idea. Don't cancel the zoom with each shot, treat it like it was in 1.07. However, drop the damage down to 40, and adjust the range dampening so it's less severe. Here's how I see range/damage relationship, current and intended.
________________________Base Damage: 110____Base Damage: 40, app.
Range___________________Current Damage______Intended Damage_____Shots/Kill (Intended)
Point-Blank_______________110________________40__________________3
SMG range, app. 30 ft._____80_________________33___________________3
Rifle Range, app. 100 ft.____40_________________25___________________4
Scout Range, app. 200+ ft.__15 (app.)___________20___________________5 (and no MORE then five)

The numbers are all super-duper rough and i have no idea about the calculations for the real range dampener. But from what I can tell, the range dampener decreases damage at an exponential rate, dropping off quickly at X range. Ranges are all estimates, obviously.

The numbers I propose lower the damage but make the range dampener drop off damage at a linear rate, or at least a lower exponential rate, with a minimum damage of 20. Bear in mind that the time between these shots doesn't involve time to re-zoom on target.

I don't know programming and I don't know the official scout rifle numbers. If this stuff is way off or really stupid, idk, I can't help it, just explain to me why.


My opinion is, for each incarnation of the rifle:

A. Revert to the 1.07 carbine settings- low damage but decent rate of fire and constant zoom. I like this idea best.

B. But if it should remain a bolt action, revert to 1.07 normal zoom (no re-zoom to locate target) at reduced damage and a linear range dampener. I like this idea a little, b/c the rifle is harder to use close range and still kind of effective at long range.

C. If it should remain bolt action AND retain it's kick-back/zoom cancel function, increase the damage at range accordingly. As I said before, the reduced ROF b/c of target aquisition time and the difficulty it presents make the current incarnation of the ranged rifle useless at range. I like this idea the least, because this would make the rifle powerful at all ranges and most like a sniper rifle, something that should be avoided at all costs.

Also, I'm sure the animators worked hard on that new scout rifle reload--- I'm sorry my main suggestions make the player ignore this reload animation while zoomed, but if it's any consolation, it's still viewable at close range.

 

you do know that up close and personal, there arn't one hit kills, unless they get a headshot which you can do at any range.

It's fine as it is <== my £0.02

 

I don't see anything wrong with it either.

 

Nuke <filler>