Then you haven't been looking. Machine guns have been using tripods since the very beginning of their use as weapons of war.

Here's an example of an Italian gun with a tripod, used in the First World War.

Again to stabalise the gun, but for a different reason. When you're firing a sniper rifle you want to keep it from shaking as you take the shot, with a machine gun you're more making a "platform" that holds the heavy thing first of all (most machine guns being 50+ pounds easily plus ammo) and to give it the equivalent of a level. Its easier to try and control a gun bouncing around on the ground than to control a gun flying around in your arms with nothing to brace against.

Think of it like a cat. When you pin a cat to the floor and hold it, its pretty easy. When you pick that cat up and try and hold the angry little fur ball in your 2 hands, its much harder to control and keep in your grasp.

Hope that helped you understand it.
=)

Heh, nice analogy.

Thats what I figured, but the way you described the use of a bi-pod originally kind of seemed to contradict what I thought they were used for in MGs. Just wanted to mke sure I wasn't wrong all along.

Since you guys are throwing things out I have to throw one out..
Bullpup??

Now that is something I would like to see.

As for the bipods and the like, a "realistic" bipod mechanic wouldn't be very useful at all with the current aiming system. Even now, they're not particularly useful with the mounted MGs, as you're sacrificing mobility (very important in this game), for less recoil, which you can easily get with bursts.

I don't really like the way the BW machine guns work. They're just bigger assault rifles with a slight movement penalty and larger magazine. My ideal machine guns would be very powerful damage-wise (M353 ought to do the same damage as the M50, firing the same size cartridges) but nearly useless on the move due to recoil and the general weight of the guns. More accurate when crouched or standing with the scopes, but most deadly when mounted, with less recoil (I know that's not realistic but that'll have to do with our current aiming system) and less chaos when firing.

The M925 in particular needs work. It's very weak for a .50 machine gun. I mean the thing fires what looks to be .50 BMG rounds (the kind you fire from .50 Barrett Rifles) but do less damage than the AM67 (which also fire .50 rounds, but with a smaller powder charge). And at 333 RPM, it's also got the 3rd lowest firing rate of every full-auto weapon in the game, with the lowest being the A42 at 240 and second being the AM67 at 300 (those handguns need better burst fires). This is just wrong. Crank that fire rate up to maybe 400 RPM.

Wow, I'm getting way off-topic with these posts.

As in what is it? Just a gun with the magazine mounted behind the trigger so that its more compact. Same overall barrel length because the barrel is basically "sunk" into the stock.

And yes, a bullpup design would be sweet for BW! The shorter length would mean it would be a really deadly close combat weapon (like the tactical shotgun) and it would have pretty decent accuracy as well.

Well call me a monkey.

Monkey.

Thanks ever so much Bjossi.

I meant.. A ballisitc weapon style in the way of a Steyr Aug but ballisitc-y and future-y
But that might eliminate the usefulness of the battlerifle..
Maybe only have a large burst on the bullpup, like 5 shots?

*Cough* *Cough*

Well.. my opinion doesn't matter I guess.. but..

I would love to have a huge, maybe one-hit kill sniper rifle. It's just.. just..
I would simply love it. It would be awesome. Even if there are only 1-4 bullets in a clip. I don't care.
I would accept all those things if I just get my huge, armor-piercing, kickass sniper rifle.

And no, the current sniper rifle, how great it may be, doesn't fit in that category.

Everyone's opinions should be heard. If you have suggestions to make, post them.

As far as your suggestion goes, we already have a weapon like that. It's called the M75-TIC Railgun. And it's even better than the one you suggested, as it's got 7 rounds per clip (It really ought to be 5 though), and sees and shoots through walls.

And the R78 is a one-hit kill if you hit the torso on a 100 hp unshielded guy. It's terrible compared to the Railgun though.

EDIT: Holy crap, Raven. I edited this post and then that eye was there staring at me. Creeped the shit out of me.

Well, my point is, the Railgun is a Railgun, a sci-fi weapon. Now what I want is a "oldschool" kickass sniper rifle.
I'll try to come up with some concept art and ideas, even if I'm crap at drawing weapons
Maybe I can achieve more with that ^^

Oh, sorry about the eye, I just uploaded the Avatar I generally use

[edit] scatch that, had a question then realised i knew the answer. feeel free to delete this one

I'm gonna guess the topic is now about new sniper rifles and such.

I think we should probably get a Super Long Distance Sniper Rifle (SLDSR from now on). Think about it, what stops us from a longer distance on shotting with Sniper Rifles in large levels? Yep, fog.

How about the scope is able to remove fog through the use of thermal vision, and then it has no limit on the distance for the bullet to go? The idea could be that the gun needs to be mounted to be able to use the scope, and the scope is unable to be used when just standing or crouched.

Hopefully player models are actually rendered behind distance fogs. If so then that is a sound idea. The railguns thermal scope can be used for that without limiting its range.

I am more enlightened by the idea that anyone who deploys this weapon will be so easy to sneak up on and skewer with a katana.

I'm pretty sure that the whole point of fog in games is so that the engine doesn't have to render anything hidden in it. I could be wrong though...

I think the new sniper rifle should be like this one in the mvie "shooter"!:P....this is the one and only sniper rifle:D
In addition the rifles could have different camouflages, so you can choose ine for different maps, like the real sharp shooters!

Indeed, although in some cases I have noticed player models in particular not unrendering when they should. Either they do or they dont but if you want to be able to see players past fog then you must hope that they dont.

It may be possible to "force" anything behind the fog to render if the scope is pointing at it. That would work, but it sounds complicated...

And the distance itself. For this to be effective the sniper would need to launch a bullet that goes multiple times faster than normally.

Railgun...

EDIT: Although its effective range is limited by the odd pulsing twitch.

I think it would be good to have an infared scope for the sniper rifle one that u can change like in real life from normal to infared simmaler to the one on the rail gun but without the radar wave effect cos its irratating and it hurts my eyes whada yall think ?

I'd like a new type of scope, or at least a new style, since the railgun and sniper wouldn't be the same brand nor made by the same company. (though that isn't impossible)

I'd like the Railgun to have a more different function from the Sniper Rifle. The Rail gun is essentially just a bigger, badder version of the Sniper, which is kinda lame in my opinion. Give it more of a unique flavor.

Perhaps give the Railgun a manual charge-up like the Hellbender's rear turret, while only automatically charging to say 30% (I've tried this and I think it works pretty well).

Or give it a delay between the mouse click and actual firing, to give the capacitors a chance to charge up. Give it weapon modes that determine how powerful your shot will be (and thus, determine how long it takes to charge up and cool down, and how much recoil and knockback you'll experience). Like the Rorsch guns in BF2142, only mobile and more versatile. You could set it to 40% if you're only expecting infantry, so you'll only have a half second of charge. Or bring it all the way to 100% for ultimate tank-killing power (although you'll only really be able to hit tanks with it due to the massive delay you'll experience.

Does it have to?

Consider: if a sniper rifle could shoot that far and kill in one shot I can emagine complaints from people playing the BS card on anyone who snipes them from the other side of the map and remain untouchable unless somone can sneak up on them, it could be considered more balanced if the projectile did not move fast enough to make a hitscan instant hit, thus forcing the super-long range sniper to put some prediction skills towards his shots

Makes for less cheap kills from the safety of your base to theirs.

I think giving the bullet velocity would make the sniper nearly impossible to use, at least it'd take a whole damn lot of practice to get even remotely good at it.

It could still be fast enough to be useable at medium and long ranges, just hard at super long ranges.