Make the Railjack a sidegrade to the Longshot with some disadvantages.

AS an NC there is no reason to choose a long shot over the latest version of the Railjack. As much as I would love a weapon this powerful it is a bit too much. Plain and simple.
With that said I think the high velocity sniper is the best option for NC, but if we are keeping the railgun high velocity idea, It needs to have some/ all of the following disadvantages to make it a side grade. Asterisks mark necessary disadvantages IMO.

• * This thing should take significantly longer to fire than a long shot. This fits NC's trait. Decrease the fire rate, the time to load a new shot after firing by 20% at least.
• Reduce the velocity by ~50 ish. (Not a fan of this one, but if it's too fast, it's too fast.)
• * This thing should NOT have access to a suppressor
• Should have a very obvious visual and audio effect.
• Take away the option for a straight pull bolt.
• Extends the range you are auto spotted on the minimap to enemies when firing by X% compared to other BASR's.
• Reduce mag size to 3.

All of these combined would make a definite side-grade, of course IMO I wouldn't combine all of them, leaving the longshot and this with separate capable niche's.
The longshot will perform better than this in the hands of a skilled sniper, can 2 hit body hit MUCH easier, and will be stealthier, while this will be easier to hit targets moving or at range.

So NC get a sidegrade and TR/VS get a unique weapon for infiltrator okay I understand.

The shade and trap are side grades too. If you want to call them more "unique" sure their mechanics are new to an infiltrator, but so are the mechanics currently in the railjack. They each offer different mechanics of firing.

If you mean the TR/VS are a tad more versatile I'll give you that.

Okay look at the shade and ask how is this different from a parallax. Now look at the trap and ask how is this different from the ram ? Now look at the railgun and ask how is this different from the long shot? Now tell me which are more different and which are extremely similar.

I agree that the shade and trap are different incertain firing mechanics. The word unique however still applies to the Railjack.

If you want to argue that being different is important to what you want in a sniper rifle, that's another point entirely, and one I am impartial to. It doesn't matter if I personally get a really "different" kind of sniper. I want one that works, fills my faction's trait, fills a niche, and is effective. If it's more "different" than great, if not, oh well.

The straight-pull bolt and suppressor *have* to go, the rifle is complete upgrade over all the others currently. With these accessory options gone its effective rate of fire vs the other rifles and its stealth will be noticeably worse.

Both options doesn't make any difference. This gun is designed for the longest range sniping. The common NC sniper already uses a Longshot unsuppressed and w/o straight-pull. So using a NC17 with your suggested "nerf"still gives an advantage over the Longshot. But I agree on the suppressor - 3 mildot bulletdrop (12x scope) with suppressor makes it a default option for every skilled sniper, so the suppressor should be removed.

Personally I would say, reduce the clipsize to 1, so you have to make a long reload after every shot, BUT a good long range sniper would turn this into an advantage (slow shooting pattern reducing the change to become revealed).

So the balance has to come from something else, like a very visible bullet trail or that your toon pops up on the minimap from farther away - something like that.

I would argue taking away the straight pull bolt would be a large disadvantage. that thing is really good.
otherwise though i agree with your post, particularly a single long reload per shot could be a cool way to do it, though it shouldnt be longer than 2.5-3s total, still needs to be a sisegrade to the longshot.
I also agree that part of the ballance should come from the rifle exposing you via auto spotting or very visual muzzle flash

Unfortunately I highly doubt guys that it's going to change now :/ a few of us were worried about this rifle being statistically superior to the other rifles after it's last stats update even without straight pull bolt.

We suggested ways for it to be a side grade, back when it lost the shotgun, reduced ammo capacity, slower firing etc, the devs knew of all of this and also knew the rifle would be getting attachments including the new straight pull, and at no point did they go "these might make the rifle an upgrade rather than side grade", let's reduce the ammo and fire rate".

In other words they knew full well the state it was going out in as soon as it had its last update and didn't change it

this weapon ( like most sniper) is hard to balance, they couldn't really make the weapon along NC trait of big dmg, or it would one shot at body, i agree it need some modification, but if you get same visual as Lancer only a few will play the weapon outisde big battle.

we could make a charge like the VS but then , let just steal the shade.

Nothing new... NC has stolen most of the Vanu technology, but unfortunately for them, they made crappy pieces of junk out of it

That is a good point, they did know the state it was already in. We will have to see if they plan anymore changes.

This gun seems very easy to fix to me.

Increase damage to 800 (up from 750)
Reduce velocity to 750 (down from 850)
Reduce ammo capacity to 3 / 30 (down from 4/40)
Take away Suppressor
Keep Straight Pull Bolt

Simple

Better question: How would you change the railjack unique? I'm not trying to be a smarmy ***, I'm actually asking.

I think reducing velocity by 100 would be a bit too much. diminishing returns wouldnt make 100 more velocity that noticable, and it loses what made it unique in the first place, rediculous velocity.

If I had to choose from the list I would choose to reduce mag size to 3, remove sup, reduce fire rate a bit, and your auto spot on the minimap range when firing is increased.

There are many ways to make it unique
1.Fire mode that let you do large damage to maxes or tanks 1 round per clip 5 second reload.
2. Unique scope that let you change from x7 to x10 etc
3.a fire mode that give the same effect as concussion grenade if it hit the target does very little damage.


But those are just random idea I just though of them once I read this but that what kind of unqiue im looking for not no longshot 1.2 or something that does exactly what a longshot does and isn't different. If they decide hey .... we will add 50 more velocity and 50 more damage can you honestly say that okay after looking at TR/VS ES snipe rfiles?

I'm not saying you were wrong, or that the TR/VS rifles are not unique in their own way, I was seriously asking.

When it comes to your ideas

1.) recall that the VS rifle had plenty of problems with having too long of a reload. A 5 second reload would make the weapon Totally useless in the eyes of most people (Me included) because that downside is just too great
2.) Adjustable scope could be nice
3.) I would say it should still do pretty considerable damage, OHK on headshot at least, but if it doesn't Kill, it concusses. I'd put that WITH the #2 option to make a Really good rifle.

Another thing, would be to make it so that it would punch through targets and hit other targets, causing less damage per person it hits... but that would only be -really- effective against clusters of people.

Maybe it could fire through a wall?

Honestly, what I would love, is if you had a series of guns that could hit the drivers out of vehicles. If they implemented that, then something like this gun would work.

1. OP. Shouldnt have to explain why long range invisible av is a bad idea for a faction specific sniper rifle.
2. borderline useless, not trait specific
3. That is a unique function. I honestly like the idea, but think about it there are no weapons like that for a reason, the downsides would have to be catastrophic to be balanced, at which point youd be better off just shooting them to kill them. if you can destroy your enemy with one well placed shot, why hinder him with a shot which would alert him before you shoot?

I have to admit finding a more functional and trait fitting idea for the nc is indeed challenging.

To be honest O_O it really hard to think of ideas for the railgun lol.

Yeh #1 was just something I just threw in there same as #2 which came from TorokF idea. I agree with you trying to think of a functional trait for the railgun is actually hard lol.

LoL, trust me I know. Hence why I was asking.

Having put some thought into it: While not... Scientifically all that sound, what if the rifle does -More- damage the further you hit your target?

So at 10m, it'd plink against someone's armor and they would ask if you were trying to give them a massage... at 300, it'd spread their brainpan over a square mile. You could combine it with that concuss on hit, with the concussion effect working only at shorter ranges, so that at short ranges you can concuss someone harder for longer than a grenade (Say at like 10m) but it becomes less effective out to about 50m, where the damage from the round starts to accrue killing power, until at about say, 100m you can OHK a heavy on a headshot. I'd say at that point, you could even put in something where you OHK infils on bodyshots at 300m.