I think SOE forgot the "Empire Specific" part in the new VS Empire Specific Sidearm

You're telling this to an entire faction who can sum up every new weapon we will ever see (And which 99% of which will be so bad it'll be useless like the canister) with one word.

Shotguns.


Hell, the NC's shotgun pistol is the first shotgun since the jackhammer was redone that may actually be useful.



But hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day....

The RailJack is commonly refereed to as the "FailJack" by NC, and rightly so.

It's actually out-performed by:

The tier 2 bolt actions:
M77-B
LA80
V10

and
The tier 3 bolt actions:
RAMS .50
EM4 Longshot
Parallax



The reason for this is two-fold.


First off, ALL the bolt action rifles allow for quick hit and cloak tactics.

You find a sniping spot,
cloak,
line up your shot,
decloak,
fire,
recloak.

When your bullet hits just a split second later, you're already invisible and moving around to find a different angle from the same area so they don't spot you.




With the FailJack though, it goes like this:

You find a sniping spot,
cloak,
line up your shot,
decloak,
fire,
stand around for a short period (If someone's looking for snipers, this amost guarentees a counter sniper will scope you, if not kill you),
the delay finally ends, your shot hitting where it was aimed (hopefully killing something, but you never know if your target will seek cover during the delay),
everyone near the target turns,
recloak (At this point, you better be moving on).


If you're unlucky-
You're dead, or at least the enemy already spotted you before your cloak engaged.
If you're lucky-
You get one kill, but now everyone and their mother know where to go or counter-snipe for an easy kill.
If they don't after the first shot, they absolutely will after a second.
You have at best two shots per sniping position.



As a sub-issue of the above-
The delay makes you every counter sniper's wet dream.



That's just the first issue.


Second is the delay's being longer than bullet travel delay (By an incredible margin).
That's a whole conversation in itself, but luckily it's already been had.

Here's a thread with an amazingly detailed stat sheet showing a comparison of the NC Tier 3 sniper (The EM4 Longshot).
In it, it decisively proves that the EM4 is far superior to the FailJack at ranges from 0m up to 418m.

That means the longshot is better against any target til the target is at 418m, at which point they are both equals.

Unfortunately, the max distance any person can kill an infantry from with a gun is 300m.
Past that, the infantry they aim at won't render.

Hit detection being client-side, if you don't see a person to hit, there's no one to hit.



Even if you shoot and hit him, while he's still standing there perfectly still outside your render distance, he'll just see the bullet pass straight through him without doing a thing.


So the Railjack is terribly inferior against anyone who you could possibly hope to hit.

The only time the RJ is better is if you're trying to snipe light armor vehicle (Which I have had the pleasure of doing -only once so far- from quartz ridge on a harasser at ~550m!) while it's burning to snag the kill before the owner can hop out to repair.








Now, the fix is effortlessly easy.

Cut the Delay from 0.2 seconds down to 0.075 seconds.
(Just barely over 1/3rd, at exactly 37.5% of what it was.)

Now:

-You're delay is only a moderate inconvenience over other rifles while sniping from an unsuspected location.
-You're death sentence of a disadvantage to counter-snipers is down to an acceptable level.

And most importantly, it's now a side grade to the other 1,000 cert (Tier 3) snipers.

It's now inferior against targets at 0-150m, about even on targets around 150-175m, and steadily better on targets at +175/200m.

Now you have a weapon that is an extreme range sniper.


It's sub-par for close ranges, but it's advantages lie in keeping you as far as they can, without risking you exiting their render distance.



Now we have a unique, range suited weapon, well balanced as a sniper and with a specific (But not practically nonexistent, or worse, entirely nonexistent like before) niche.

I still don't understand why people want a charge pistol and how they think it's going to be viable. What the hell are you gonna do with 100 DMG in a tiny aoe with a tiny mag? Commie already does 450 direct dmg without any ******** charge. You are just setting yourself up for yet another POS like phase shift and lasher and then vanu will ***** about their es weapons being useless. Just pure wtf.



TL;DR If you don't want trash stop demanding trash.

Clearly. The current pistol was largely incomplete, it was intended to be capable of both normal fire, and charge AoE fire. AoE fire was supposedly capable of oneshotting someone if it hit them in the face, so clearly it had a decent bit of damage. So based on the actual AoE and amount of charge time, you could have a secondary grenade launcher that does half someone's HP a pop and infinite ammo.

Really, the mechanic isn't the issue, it would be tweaking the numbers. But vanu cannot see this, vanu can only say "OMG OTHER FACTION HAS X, OUR STUF IS BAD"

There is absolutely no source or validation whatsoever for the claim that it was supposed to be able to OHK anyone. No dev or patch notes have at any time claimed it to be able to.

Nor did it, at any point, say that it was going to have infinite ammo. All it ever said, was that it was going to be a chargeup pistol that could fire explosive charged shots, something that nobody would ever want to use at any time.

Don't believe me? That why don't you take it, and give us your borderline OP shotgun pistol?

So yeah. Keep bashing the VS for **** you know nothing of.

He's kind of right though, you know.

The Vanu love to think they're super UP.

Because a chargeup pistol would be complete **** compared to a full-auto SMG or a mini shotgun.

And it's not the first time the VS got screwed over. The Lancer, the Vortex, Cerberus, Phaseshift.

Time after time after time, newly released VS weapon have proven to be absolute **** and needed massive buffs to become even remotely competitive. There is a reason these weapons users are lagging behind the TR/NC equivalents in the thousands.

And when we get something good, like ZOE, Magrider, Comets, Light PPA. They always get nerfed into the ground to the point where they are barely usable anymore.

So, no. He is not right. He is assuming that the weapon will be good based on completely made up facts, and he is completely ignoring how the VS gets screwed over time after time after time.

Because the VS ***** about everything being UP and can do nothing constructive aside from this. If you've got your mind dead set that you get screwed over every time, clearly that's what's going to happen (in your mind).

You have the best ESF. You have the blueshifts on the max. You have the best AI secondary, you have the lancer which is AMAZING in organized groups. Literally no time to react especially out of draw distance. You have the orion, several others really that are damn near the best or only slightly lagging behind.

And you gnash and wail that everything you have is so weak and useless and so-on and so on, etc. When really the statistics don't lie, performance is relatively even amongst MOST (not all) of the weapons and vehicles and yet you complain about what others have rather than make some constructive criticism on what you would rather have.

And this is why no one takes vanu forumsiders seriously.

The Scythe being the best ESF is purely subjective. I prefer the Mosquito 10x over the Scythe.

Blueshifts on the MAX? I know a ton of VS would gladly swap them for your Shotguns.

Best AI-secondary, but objectively worst Primaries at everything. And the PPA is nerf just around the corner.

Yeah. But when the Lancer got released it was a worthless piece of **** and have had to be buffed several times after that. And it requires that you get a group of players together and coordinate fire, or it's useless.

Because so many of our **** is worthless. The Cerberus was ****, the Vortexes were ****, the Lancer was ****, the Phaseshift is ****, the ZOE is ****, the Magrider is ****, the Lasher is ****. The Orion is great, but every other LMG in the VS arsenal is ****.

The VS have more worthless **** than the other 2 factions combined.

The reason you don't take it seriously, is because you don't play VS so you dont see just how ******* pathetic our weapon selection is.

This is not Halo. Just because something worked in Halo, doesn't mean it works in Ps2. It's a stupid comparison.

Beg to differ; It's proof a charge mechanic can work.

Also, we have the Railjack, SO MANY SHOTGUNS, the canister, the slowest ESF, the biggest ESF, and so forth.

Everyone's faction is lacking, to be frank. The biggest issue is the magrider for the Vanu.

Yep, magrider is the only glaring issue. But then it's due to it not functioning like a traditional tank, and not being able to capitalize on what it can do. Omni-burner would do wonders.
Otherwise they have 2 amazing faction secondaries compared to the marginally effective enforcer (halberd is almost invariably superior) and the utterly useless maurader and meh vulcan to slap on their tank OR harasser.

I don't see PPC harassers often, but when I do, I-PEWPEWPEWPEWPEWPPEW-

My next plan of operation in my stream of suggestions thread is a comprehensive Vanu thread.

I think that's the best way to get the three-part faction revamp kicked off

You are comparing weapons between two games when in one you can shoot your whole Mag with a assualt rifle into an enemy and only there shields are down. (halo) While on the other game an assualt rifle takes 7-8 shots to down an enemy. This alone shows the two games have completely different mechanic. In Halo the TTK is so long that you have time to charge up a weapon. While in PS2 where weapons kills in half a second no you don't have time to charge.

Then you scale it down. So you know, the Plasma Pistol allowed for almost instant kills, using a magnum in tandem. The charge time would take less than half a second, for example.

BUT, still give the pistol an option to fire rapidly and still be an above-average pistol. That way you get a cool pistol AND a charge.

What about a BURST-CHARGE option? Pull the trigger once? Fire 3 rounds. Hold it down? Fire a shot that uses 3 ammo but does AoE damage.

AW YEAH THAT'S HOW WE SOLVE PROBLEMS IN THIS HOUSE!

They would be an easier target for my tankbuster.

I don't want another phaseshift..

Yeah but you know, it would be cool if you could send an InstaGib charged up disco ball in a straight line at a target regardless of distance, at a reasonable speed. Especially if it had some AOE effect.

They need to make one of VS' existing pistols a burst fire. Then they need to come up with a new VS mechanic that isn't charge up because it's neither fun nor effective for any kind of close-mid range infantry gun.

All factions suffer from such limited faction specific mechanics though. You can't keep slapping the same mechanic on completely different types of units/weapons and expect them to be balanced on all of them. A shotgun on a tank is almost as bad of an idea as a charge up on a pistol for example, or locking in place in a MAX suit...

Plenty of those could be balanced around and actually work.

Traits of the VS, one day or another, were:

Tactical Mobility/Flexibility (Hover Tanks, in PS1 flying Maxes, shorter reload times and sometimes lower recoil where other factions have damage or magazine size, and an ESF with the best air brakes)
No bullet drop (on small arms)
More damage dropoff (That was actually a great trait, and made their carbines interesting; 2 levels down over x, or 3 levels down over 2x, until 1.3 x it's actually better)
Charge-Mechanics
Unified Ammo (PS1)

The whole theme of flexibility could be used way more, and better.
If, for example, you could switch between semi-Auto and charge mode on the Phase Shift, it wouldn't feel so awkward to fire semiauto, and you'd effectively have an SA-Sniper that trades Ammo capacity for a regenerating magazine and an optional charge-up Snipe-Mode.
Charge needn't be inherently bad.
Not MAX lockdown or a Shotgun on a tank; Canister shot existed in real life, after all, there has to be some way to make that work...