I was playing bw, and ive played it for a while and I still love it. But i also love sniping, and ive come to notice how when ever i decide on using the sniper on my friend when hes using the railgun, i seem to loose most often. This is ofcourse because of the amazing power the railgun has of killing its target whereever it hits. I know, I know, its a rail gun so it should be really powerfull and i like it being that powerfull, its just it kinda made me question the point of the sniper. I realized that the main, or maybe only advantage, that the sniper possesed was the fact that the shots dont leave a trail, so the person being sniped cant detect who or where the shot came from. However in most games i play, this advantage doesnt seem to balance out. Ussually Ill shoot my friend with the sniper and Ill hit him in the chest or leg area, my friend then tries to find me right away and ussually does very quickly. Before I'm able to reload and fire, my friend has shot me with the railgun and i die. Now I do get headshots very often so I wasnt too bothered. But then (this is quite embarrassing) I realized i had never assigned a key for all the ballistic buttons in Settings. When i did i got to see that many weapons had special abiblities such as the detonator becoming a trip laser(AWSOME!!!!). OFCOURSE, i then saw that the railgun had an amazing capability of seeing through walls and shooting ppl through them. I was amazed at the power of the weapon. I then ofcourse switched to my sniper and tried to see what special it had. But my dreams and hopes were crushed as i had to witness my sniper being the same old sniper . Now that I believe the rail gun is WAY more useful than the sniper, i was kind of irritated. Now to my point(sorry I tend to write a lot). I dont propose raising the power of the sniper, (as i love how it is now) but rather giving the sniper a usefull special. Since the advantage of the sniper is the stealth of not leaving trails when it shoots, i thought maybe taking the stealth further and letting it make your charakter fade or something. You know, kinda invisible but not really, like enemy ghosts in starcraft, but a lil more visible. One would ofcourse only be able to use this special when one is perfectly still, maybe once youve been still for 3 seconds then you can apply this special. It would also dissable and make you instantly visible if you decided to move or were shot. I thought this would balance things out more, especially since the railgun would be able to use its heatsensoring(if thats what it is) to see you while your invisible. I think this would make a good special for the sniper, some of you might disagree. If so, please post a suggestion of what a good special for the sniper would be, since this thread is about a sniper special, not the slight invisibility that i proposed. I dont know if such a thread has been posted before or if a discussion over the fact that there is no real advantage to the sniper has already taken place. If so, sorry for making you read soo much.

Ahhh, interesting problem. I don't know, I always seem to find the sniper easier to kill people with than the RG. It's faster to reload and the shots are hard to see. Te real advantage is that the RG takes 8 seconds to charge it's shot to full power. With the railgun, you get one shot, you can't miss. With the sniper, you can afford to miss. You should try getting your friend to use the sniper and you take the RG. See how it goes the other way around...

It has always seemed pretty fair when we play... BTW, are you using BW v1.72? Make sure you are, cause in the older versions, the RG's 'see through walls' power is too strong!

Oh, yeah and welcome to the forums! Glad you enjoy BW!

Welcome to the forums!

Hmm... interesting idea, it does seem to me like the railgun is a bit more useful than the sniper rifle, but I still prefer the sniper rifle anyways.

I don't think cloaking would be the way to go for it, though. It just wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense if a regular gun could give you cloaking, perhaps a bipod would be an interesting idea. Maybe not for the current sniper rifle, but for a later one.

I used to be a railgun man myself when I started playing BW... but then I started to use the sniper more often because it's faster in more ways than one (reloads faster, and you move around faster than railgun wielders).

The trick is to use it in-tandem with most of your current arsenal. For example, laying down mines on a field and then waiting atop of a building for bait. That way, if your target moves around too much, you could always shoot your mines instead.

As for the stealth option of the sniper, well, yeah, it could work that way... plus your character would be wearing camo-netting when wielding a sniper for added effect.

Yeah im starting to see the two weapons balance out now that ive been using the railgun a little. I do move slower, and i notice the bar needs to be filled all the way for maximum damage. But i also notice that two shots with about half bar full also finishes the job. The sniper also kills in two shots, but the rail gun has a better oportunity killing in the first shot than the sniper, so the railgun gets the first advantage. If that first shot misses, then the weapons are pretty even. Except for the fact that the railgun can shoot through the wall your taking cover behind. But i havent experimented fully with the weapon. I havnt tested if the bar needs to be fully charged for it to shoot through the wall or if it does less damage if it hits a wall first so someone please inform me and maybe tell me other stuff about the railgun that might not be obvious at first. I guess i would enjoy the railgun if it was a guaranteed 1 hit kill, but you would have to wait till the bar is full to even shoot it. Also, is the railgun more accurate when not in scope than the sniper when not in scope, or did my friend tell me that just to bother me. Oh and DK, i gave up on the mines a few days ago. I used to use mines all the time cuz I thought they were awsome. I would get sooo many kills by just droping mines in random places and filling the level with them. My friend kept telling me they were cheap and i didnt believe him. Then he said he would proove it to me by using the best counter for level filled with mines, which turned out to be a level filled with more mines. The whole match revolved on who layed the most mines and who got the luckiest. I tried using a different weapon but i would die instantly and regret not laying mines instead. I did win the match but it was pretty close, 90 percent of the kills were mines. I guess its good to use the mine in moderation and still be able to have fun in the game, but i find it hard to handicap myself and say "ok i dont wana be cheap now and fill this whole map with them" However me and my friend only find mines unfair in deathmatches, on ctf and onslaught anything goes. ShadowBlade, Id be telling the truth by saying that i probably wouldnt even play unreal 2k4 anymore if it wernt for Ballistic Weapons. I never really enjoyed the default weapons. But the main thing that keeps me playing unreal, is the fact that there is a loadout included. I love loadouts(maybe cuz im a former tribes gamer) . I just wish there were a way to include and exclude weapons in the loadouts. I downloaded Finalizer's Ballistic Weapons Patch to be able to use the new weapons in loadout, but there should be a way to edit this in Ballistic loadout configuration.

Dang it, my internet goofed. Sorry about the double post.

Gyah!!! I can barely read your post! Please, please hit the enter key once in a while, for all of our sakes...

So anyways, the sniper rifle takes two hits to kill someone witha headshot? That seems a bit odd, and you are sure they are direct headshots?

The railgun is la lot less accurate without the scope than the sniper rifle.

The sniper rifle can go through walls too, it just looses momentum faster than the railgun, and yes, going through walls does decrease the damage.

As for the mines, if you want to use it without spamming it, try putting them inplaces that can't be seen and such. You might not get nearly as many kills with the minres alone, but trust me, its a lot more memorable seeing your friend avoid a dummy land mine only to fall victem to the real trap you set up for him.

As for your friend spamming the level with them, just whip out a handgun and shoot them as your friend puts them out. Nothing discourages land mine use more than getting killed by your own land mines.

@ pzea

The mines are not cheap IMHO... If you see your friend setting up a minefield, just chuck a grenade at his direction. If that doesn't kill him, his own mines will, and the humiliation will haunt him for days on end.

And you gotta learn the virtue of "cleaning up" after someone else's mess. Just crouch over the mines and press the action key to pick up the mines. Risky? Yes, but effective when your enemies aren't around to detonate 'em at your face.

the sniper rifle is very much the better weapon for antipersonel sniping, it really shows its stuff if you're the designated sniper in a ctf match, overall as mentioned by others it is much faster and more accurate, damage is pretty much equal unless you're getting limb shots, but a sniper should always be hitting the head or the core of the body anyway. the railgun tends to be better for vehicles, with full charge and one good shot it can take out a goliath, bear in mind too that the railgun has quite the tracer trail and will always give away a RG sniper.

if you really want to even things out try looking for the bloodloss mutator. that way if you dont kill them on the first shot and they go below 75 health or w/e you set it at they will bleed to death and slow down as they do so. it changes the whole game because you can stratagize by choosing the headshot kill or wounding your opponnent to slow him down or force him to take cover and find health. RG snipers loose out on this because they pretty much kill in one hit

Possible solution: Make railgun chaos and recoil much hugher while standing, encouraging people to crouch, and thereby making them into even slower moving targets.

Also, the thing about the mines brings up a serious issue I've complained about before. Especially in Loadout, spamming mines has become a ridiculously effective tactic. Something should be done to limit their use. Possibly a per-player limit of mines on the order of 5 to a person, with the oldest detonating/dissapearing if a sixth is placed. Or the mines could have a 2-3 minute timer after which they explode/disappear. Or we could just severely limit how many mines can be carried and how many are picked up at a time from ammo pickups.

I think a limiter on the amount of mine out would be good, because if you do it right you only need a couple to cover the major parts of a map.
I think a configureable limit would work.

Yeah mines are annoying as hell i'm betting, it should be configurable like maybe a maximum of 10 per person.

If its configurable, it wouldn't have to be 10 max, y'know.

I'm down with configurable mine settings... so as long as it doesn't become too ineffective.

i know it was just an example, a really badly thought out example at that.

Xavious sorry for making you read soo much. I dont think i said that two headshots r required to kill someone, but if i did post that, I didnt mean it. I just meant two shots in the chest.

YES!!! a limiter was one of the things I was thinking. However i thought maybe another idea would be to make it so one can only plant a mine as long as its within a distance from another. Or maybe a mix of both.

The reason i think the mines r really cheap and annoying, besides the fact you can put infinate in the game, is that what me and my friend have figured out to be quite useful is to plant the mines inside of ammo and health pickups. It gets to the point where we are soo paranoid we shoot everything before thinking about picking it up.

I didnt know snipers could go through walls too. Thanks for that info.

As for "cleaning up someone elses mess", dont think i dont do that because me and my friend both do it. The thing is that instead of taking the mines and walking away, we take the mine and replace it with another one so that the other person gets confused(VERY EFFECTIVE). Yeah we could Not do that, but so far its the most effective move.

and since Ive already gone way off topic with the mines, does anybody think the lightning gun is maybe a lil overpowering? Just wondering if anyone feels that way.

ok... i do think the two sniper weapons are balanced.. and it helps combining their abilities with other weapons, like DK said..

mine spamming.. ahh yes.. we'll see if we can figure out some limiter somewhere along the line

Thank you Pzea, much easier to read.

Guess I just misread that part then.

I tried the part with hiding the mines in the pickups, never gave me the same sense of satisfaction as miding them in a tall clump of grass or in a dark corner...

Yep, I think a configureable limit would be great, but of course, and if you don't have to have one would be the best.

Arrgh no I to much of a mine monkey. I like using mines and also have learned to sweep on the go somebody who throws them every where is easy to deal with. A couple shot into thier feild of dropped mines solves the problem. thrown det pacs I just grab up and reset in more cunning nasty ways. Also mine spammer have to take the time to place the things so it is way easy to catch em in the act and kill em. WHen I set up traps feilds I make sure that some one guards me and have been over the terrian to figure out where to get the most kill value for the mines I place.