Longshot vs. Railjack: Some Numbers

I don't understand why the shot delay wouldn't be a consistent value. I think the shot delay is an interesting way to still require leading the target while not having to worry about bullet drop. I'm ok with that, since you're essentially still getting a better sniper.

I think people on here are blowing this out of proportion because they thought they were getting the best sniper in the game, and now they are disappointed. However it still may be the best for sniping at long distances. I'm surprised people actually thought they weren't going to nerf it.

Look at the Phaseshift, it has all kinds of factors in place to limit it's abilities. It has a charge-up mechanic, a heat mechanic, a slow velocity, and a pretty short ohk range(or at least it did, I don't know if it still does). You guys are crying about an incredibly small shot delay, which is literally the only thing keeping the railjack from hands-down outclassing every other BASR. And it probably still does outclass everything else, it's just not as easy to use as you'd hoped it would be.

I'm not even concerned about the weapons statistics. I'm more concerned about the way this transaction was handled. This is as close to bait & switch as it gets. The product advertised for the past several weeks & still being advertised on the PTS is completely different from the current Railjack. Its one thing to tweak weapon damage/velocity etc & but to change the function of a weapon moments before its available for sale, with the only indication being 1 sentence in the patch notes is a very controversial marketing strategy.

Any delay on a weapon firing pretty much makes it worthless. Remove the delay.

Releasing an untested on a whim last minute feature without testing ... When the rifles were delayed for two weeks for further testing ... Not sure there is a face palm Gif big enough

Thanks for the analysis; it's about what I assumed after testing it.

Although your advantages are now down to just "relatively quiet firing" and "badass aesthetics". I agree with the second, but the quiet firing? Tracers and minimap dots are going to give you away anyway, unless you have a suppressor, which kinda cancels the noise benefit as well. So it's just an audio and visual aesthetic, which is reason enough for many people I guess to get it.

I just don't see any reason myself to get this after already owning an auraxiumed longshot. Based on your numbers, It's a sidegrade at best to the longshot, and offers nothing "fun" or even different to play with. You hit them in the head and they still die the same. Just a very slight change to shooting mechanics. I didn't expect an upgrade, but I was hoping for some sort of compelling reason from a gameplay standpoint to get it. It's just a slightly different gun than the longshot, but different in no meaningful way.

No problem, and yeah. The 10 bullet magazine was kind of a big deal for me and now it's gone. :'(

I just repeated the experiment and got the same results; the shot delay didn't change at all.

4 ******* bullets per magazine. Sigh...

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RJ is pretty good, but I don't think it's better than the LS. Not overall.

Seems fair to claim that RJ is the best extreme long range SR, however. It's the king of the 12x.

I now have an ideal BASR for each optic:

Railjack - 12x
Longshot - 10x
LA80 - 8x
Bolt-driver - 7x
SAS-R - 6x or less

Haven't done much testing with the RJ's suppressor, though it seemed to do 8x ranges with little drop.

It's situational. If you have a dug-in nest of snipers or engineers repairing a sundy/turrets...then bring out the railjack and mess em up.

If you have mobile targets where the delay would cause you issues in taking them out reliably, then use the Longshot (or a semi-auto sniper even).

It's situational and it should stay that way. We don't (and shouldn't) want straight upgrades to existing weapons. That would make the game pay-to-win. We don't want that. We want new guns with interesting mechanics (think jackhammer, lasher, mini chain gun...the essentials of "different but situationally balanced")...we want guns with interesting mechanics that create new fun ways to play that are situationally sound.

Right now, the RailJack is situationally sound. It's cool, powerful, but has an interesting mechanic that makes it *really* good in certain situations...not *really* good in ALL situations.

It's because of the amount of "Rail jack OP" posts that happened on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1ycul8/nc17_railjack_you_will_regret_this/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1yjlxl/pts_interestingnc17_railjack_is_clearly_the/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1z3m6t/on_the_topic_of_the_af8_railjack/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1yjzvi/honest_question_what_are_the_downsides_to_the/

I'm not judging either way and it may well of been OP in it's PTS form but it seems the developers tried to make a last minute change and released a gun that a lot of people are dismissing as inferior to the Longshot at it's intended job which is unfortunate. I dont think I've ever had a situation where I lined up a static head shot with the Longshot and had someone move before the bullet arrived so I really dont see the niche for this weapon.

Velocity has 2 main advantages. A, Less drop, and B, less time to hit the target once fired. A, They nerfed the drop to the longshot level. B, By the OPs math,even the low delay estimate means that the longshot hits targets faster up to render range(300m), which is all the range that matters.
The devs removed both the advantages that velocity gave. This weapon has no advantage now.
This thing has no advantages over a longshot. I am extremely dissapointed the devs stealth nerfed the delay in to make this worthless from PTS to live.
The op himself said the only mechanic that it had going for it was the 10 round mag.
Anyone who tries to defend this weapon has not used it comparitively to a longshot or hasnt used it at all.

Name one situation where taking longer to hit a target, with longer rechambering, less ammunition, and with no straight pull bolt is better.

Longshot and the LA80 are still better by a mile there's no reason to buy the RJ for anything unless you like style

It's hard to argue against this after they completely destroyed the magazine size.

Except if the target switch direction which mean you'll miss because you won't be able to make an appropriate correction.

If the person is running in a predictable enough way that you can constantly keep on target, you wouldn't be having problem killing with a Longshot which is the point. You don't gain any real advantage. You are just changing the problem of place.

The velocity might be extremly high but it isn't hitscan like people want to believe. You still have to lead at long range aka render range. Seems to be the only place it might be "useful" considering at closer range (under 150m), a T3 sniper hit will be near instant and without requiring you to stay on target.

See, that's why I dislike people without any kind of real experience sharing their "opinion." It got a 200m OHSK. 200m is pretty far.

I almost never fight farther away than 150m (because it's not efficient) and that's with a Longshot. The reality is that people are just awful at guessing distance. With a 8x at 300m, people are smaller than a single milldot.

Devs add a weapon that performs slightly better than the current ones available.
Players call it bullshít/Pay2win.
Devs add a weapon that performs as a sidegrade.
Players call it bullshít, cráp, bad design.

See a trend here? Exactly.
Higby, Clegg and the rest of the dev team: You will never win. You can't satisfy everyone.
This is why we can't have nice things.

A fallacy called 'begging the question': you ask people to accept your initial premise that FJ is indeed a sidegrade without proof. It's not, so the reasoning falls apart.
FJ's supposed advantage comes into play at ranges impossible in this game due to the rendering distance, so in practice it has 0 advantages and a bunch disadvantages, thus a pure downgrade.

You would have still bought the striker or the vulcan then if you played TR. It's better to wait a few months sometimes.

Or if you snipe without stabilizing your scope, which makes the delay a pretty big deal then (try it in the VR, it's fairly noticeable).

When the target is standing still, distant, you don't want to deal with bullet drop (the Longshot has very little of course, but still).

It's a damn railgun, you want it to be a regular gun? Just ask SOE to make the Longshot better. Not to mention it has cool factor.