I'm going to come out and say it: prior to the patch, the sniper rifle needed a nerf. It was overpowered - its 5X crit guaranteed a critical attack, effectively doubling its base DAM to 124 (from 62). Factor in JSP ammo, it did 186 damage per shot, non-sneaking.

The patch advertised its murder of the sniper rifle as "encouraging people to use the sniper rifle as a sniper rifle." One of the things that patch did was to remove the 5X crit multiplier, which is most welcome. Unfortunately, the patch also cut base DAM by 20, down to 42. For a weapon that costs 4100 caps, this is way too much.

A common argument is that "you can still one shot things with sneak criticals." Well, of course you can, but that applies to all weapons with 40-50 damage:
Cowboy Repeater (+Cowboy) - 44 DAM
.44 revolver (+Cowboy) - 48 DAM
Trail carbine - 45 DAM or 56 DAM with Cowboy
12.7mm pistol - 40 DAM
Automatic Rifle (Dead Money) - 40 DAM
Shotguns

The majority of these weapons costs less - either in caps, AP, weight or all of the above. This list does not include weapons that do more than 50 damage, like This Machine, Hunting Revolver and the Brush Gun. A base DAM of 42 for a sniper rifle is frankly ridiculous when the Cowboy Repeater can do 44 DAM (while costing less, in everything, and having a higher HP).

If we were to compare the sniper rifle with the scoped trail carbine, the sniper rifle compares terribly. First off, the trail carbine has a higher rate of fire, and a larger clip. Second off, shot-per-shot, with all the damage applicable perks, the base DAM of the sniper rifle is 45, and the trail carbine is 60. Factoring in JSP and SWC ammo, respectively we get:

Sniper Rifle:
(45-DT)*1.5
= 45*1.5-1.5DT
= 67.5 - 1.5DT

Trail Carbine:
(60-DT)*1.2
= 60*1.2-1.2DT
= 72 - 1.2DT

Against a target with a DT of 10 and no DR, the Sniper Rifle+JSP would do 52.5 DAM, while the Trail Carbine would do 60 DAM (12.5% difference). Against a target with 20 DT and no DR, the sniper rifle would do 37.5 DAM, while the trail carbine does 48 DAM (32% difference).

The Trail Carbine also costs less in caps, weighs less, has a higher item HP, costs less AP and has the aforementioned higher rate of fire/clip size.

By now, the next common counter-argument is that the sniper rifle can be silenced. The thing with the silencer is, however, that it doesn't really come into play at long-range. Therefore, at long-range, having a silencer is not a "pro" for the sniper rifle. At medium/short-range, the silencer does come into play, but this is counter-balanced by the fact that the Trail Carbine costs only half as much to use in VATS (38 for SR and 21 for TC).

With the Trail Carbine, you can literally sneak up to a group of people and sneak attack critical 3-4 of them using VATS before anyone even knows you're there. This is a worthy trade-off to being not able to equip a silencer.

With the Brush gun arguably being the better weapon vs. the AMR, there is now no reason to go for a non-Cowboy character build if you're character is going to be using guns. There is also now no reason to use the Gobi Sniper Rifle. Why did the Sniper Rifle's base damage have to be nerfed to 42? If anything, given the dominance of the brush gun and the Guass/YCS rifles, and also the versatility of the trail carbine, they should've increased the base DAM of the sniper rifle after the 5X crit multiplier was removed.

EDIT: Things as they stand now

DAM vs. DT : Comparison of Sniper Rifle (JSP and AP), Cowboy Repeater (JFP) and the Trail Carbine (SWP)

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/2340/fnvy.jpg

I agree that they should lower the damage of all the other guns too. It wasn't just the Sniper Rifle that was overpowered.

Not picking but the silencer does come in at long range if you don't put points in sneak innto a build.

second the cool down from caution to undetected is far less.

3rd the sniper at longer ranges is more accurate.

4th, the lever action can screw up aim sometimes, the RoF is sometimes a hinderence.

5th the sniper has access to AP, AP rounds by far outweigh HP's and even hand loadouts on a few of the very powerfull creatures / npc's.
Use AP against certain ones robots and ranger elites, centurians you will most likely deal greater damage than a cowboy trail gun.

5th not everyone power plays, if I want to play a sniper I use a sniper rifle, not some lower tech gun just because it deals a tad more damage per hit.

6th a high velocity rifle round tends to go in and out, a pistol round tends to cause more internal damage.

7th, there are 2 allready open threads, one discussing in detail this and other sniper - stat issues.

Irrelevant - almost everyone who specializes in the sniper also specializes in sneak.



Far less than what? You can't make a comparison without making explicit what you are comparing.



Not appreciably so. Certainly not worth - having less DAM, having less DPS, less item HP, cost more in caps/weight/AP points, etc.



Does it matter at close range?



No, you will not deal greater damage with AP ammo UNLESS your target has very high DT. If you looked at my math, you would realize that the Trail Carbine with Cowboy deals 48 DAM against a target with 20 DT. The sniper rifle with AP ammo NEVER deals more than 38 DAM (AP has a 0.95X DAM multiplier).

At 50DT and no DR:

Trail Carbine
72-1.2DT = 12

Sniper Rifle
40*0.95-(DT-15) = 3



Then WTF was the point of the patch? If this argument was actually legit, then why was everyone whining about the sniper rifle's OPness?



True in some cases, false in others. To generalize like that is a mistake.

Silencer is particularly useful when the party (but not PC) is discovered or going for "friendly" banditry.

But in full drawn combat, Trail Carbine>Hunting Rifle++>Sniper Rifle

Not me but that's just cause I'm weird and like marksman rather than sneaky sniper.



At medium close to close range a loud gun will cause a detection, followed by danger mostly 75%+ of the time against any group even with high sneak, against certain creatures with high perception like cazador' and deathclaws this very bad.
Silenced however will allmost after roughly 15 seconds cool down if playing a lone PC.
At longer ranges silencers are less needed, but the chance of caution dropping rapidly increases with one and raises without.
Hence the chance with a sniper at range even without a silencer to cause multipule sneak critical raises due to range, with a silencer even more, far exceeding the trailgun imo.



Both are tied together so.
1. Yes as certain builds favour accuarcy and penalise closer combat, and you discount spread and zoom distance, both of which th trial suffers from 0.02 sniper, 0.035 on a trial.
Not a huge difference but combined with two.
2. Close range... really we're discussing whether a sniper should be a close range gun?


I can't argue you're right, this does show that SWC is superior and compared to .308's ammo types is just wrong.
I will point out that you need to either milk the system with perks like comprehension and drugs or play to role to get that ammo type however.


( calmly ), the F of the patch was due to some people taking the math of the game and exploiting it turning a weapon for sniping into a high powered semi automatic battle rifle.
Which led to other fixated people who spend too much time divising power builds to get gnarly that it was too easy.
Which leaves role players F'd by both groups.


This is a forum, not everyone is an expert, it's also a forum about a game in which not everyones an expert, it's also one where often people generalise others opinions becuase it does not suit their views sadly.

Still, this generalization was a little too far

Rifle Rounds do Enormous internal damage due to the energy they impart on a target and induces a Huge amount of hydrostatic shock energy to the victim. A rifle round with 2,500 ft./lbs of of energy versus a pistol round with 500 ft./lbs of energy is highly significant. A .40 or .45 round travels at ~950 ft/second, where a rifle round can go between 2,000-3,000 ft/sec. depending on the round.

A high-powered rifle round will not only induce huge hydrostatic shock but also can take your arm or leg clean-off. A pistol round will never do that.

Generalizing is great, but this one was way, way off.

Cheers!

Miax

Are you saying that the other guns are too powerful compared to the Sniper Rifle? If so then what I said was true, they should lower the damage on all guns. All the high level guns can kill in 1 shot, scoped or not. Why even use a scope when the brush gun can super zoom anyway. How the heck do guns even zoom in without a scope? Focusing on a target does not magically make my eyes zoom in 40 yards.

Are you complaining that the price of the Sniper Rifle is too high? Well it is harder to find than the guns you mentioned so why shouldn't it cost more? If I find a good piece of loot I would like some good return on it.

Why are we even talking about VATS with long range weapons? If you need to use VATS to snipe then you are doing something wrong. Read below for close range combat.

Silencers DO matter when the targets aren't sitting pretty all in a row for you. Guns can alert enemies in other rooms or around corners.

It is true, why are my best long range weapons (arguably) also my best close range weapons? Long range weapons are supposed to be powerful and slow (AMR). Close range are supposed to be weak and fast (10mm SMG) OR like a shotgun and be strong, slow but have a bonus of hitting multiple targets (Sawed off). Look at the Riot Shotgun and tell me that's even fair? Give that gun to all the NPC's and see how much people complain. Cowboy weapons are too fast and too strong, the Sniper Rifle isn't the messed up gun. The Sniper Rifle is probably one of the most balanced guns now.

That's not true. With a silenced sniper, enemies will revert back to CAUTION whenever they (re)encounter the dead body - essentially, all the time. At least from my experience. The AI is stupid that way. And because of this stupidity, the silencer is not all that great unless you're picking off targets spread far apart (almost never).



I meant "closer range." From far range, obviously people would be taking the time to line up their shots (ROF doesn't matter). However, you mentioned that "lever action guns throw off your aim," from which I said that if you're firing fast enough for it to throw off your aim, then you're close enough where careful aiming wouldn't matter anyway.



Whatever it was, it was a terrible "fix." They "fixed" the sniper rifle in the worst way possible, by giving it Cowboy Repeater class damage and essentially forcing people to use JSP ammo.




I personally don't believe that a .308 rifle round from a sniper rifle would ever cause less damage than something fired from a pistol/revolver. That's my generalization.

Fine, we can do it your way - lower the DAM on all guns to 40 because any weapon with a DAM of 40 can one-shot most enemies with a sneak crit. What is the point of any weapon (energy, melee, etc.) having more DAM than 40?

I have no idea what you are talking about with regards to zooming. Seems to be a one-person conversation, so I'll wait until you can reply with something more coherent.



Bad argument. The cost of something is dictated by supply AND its demand. Who would "demand" a gun that is outperformed by almost every other mid- to high-level gun? While costing 4100 caps? It's ridiculous.



You do know that people rush you when they (eventually) find you sniping, right? VATS is an awesome way to cripple people (either by shooting their arms or their legs), buying you time to pull out some other weapon. Also, for multiple target engagement with a high sneak character, you can use VATS to rapidly dispatch two to four targets in quick succession with sneak attack criticals.

So yeah, the cost of using a weapon in VATS does factor into this discussion. Especially when the trail carbine costs 21 AP compared to the sniper rifles 38, while dealing more damage and having a higher rate of fire with less weight and a slower weapon deterioration rate.



Wow, you JUST made the argument that people shouldn't be using the sniper rifle in VATS because that means targets are too close, then you justify the SILENCER on a sniper rifle mattering because enemies are around the corner?

Really? Did that just happen?



How bout you play your game your way and I'll play my game my way? Firstly, my definition of "balanced" is not the same as yours. Secondly, even indoors, I like starting combat with the silenced sniper rifle (such as the NCR/Legion's end-game missions), despite the ranges being medium/close. I get to kill a couple enemies quickly, and cripple as many others as I can with VATS until I pull out my med/short range weapon.

Fallout is about choice, no? I had choice before the patch. Now after the patch, I like HAVE to use the trail carbine/brush gun as opposed to the Sniper rifle/AMR, to stay alive, in some situations.

And no, unlike you, I don't want the other guns to be nerfed as well. I simply want the base DAM of the sniper rifle restored. And maybe a buff to the AMR.

I have being notice sneak critical quite often while my companion charged in and status reads [Danger] (and flashing). And as long as you kill outside of AI's field of view they wouldn't even notice the dead bodies; Hell, you can even get sneak crit under [Caution] as long as AI is not actually in "Alert mode".

1. Agreed the A.I can be awfull with caution.
A few things help, don't move at all, don't shoot in the open.. stay in shadows and behind cover.
They will revert back to undetected even after flashing on and off and at close range I've found with decent sneak and silenced guns.
However certain creatures have such a high perception / spot radius it's not allways likely.
Although the legendary deathclaw can be fooled I've found quite easily.

Sometimes I've found the Lever guns have a hair trigger, their spread also due to this effect can go wild even at closer ranges.
Also the cocking anim throws off the aim, making it far better at close range than longer for me.

I can't say that I've found it too bad on normal hardcoe tbh, even with rapid shot and currently poor aiming on my part it still does the job with JSP.
Without them and BC's the deathclaws are still a bit of trouble, but tbh without SWC rounds so would a trail carabine imo.

Honestly it's not that I'm disagreeing with you, it's just I can't put myself in your place.
I play too much to role and then find strengths and means to overcome flaws.
You are very correct that the sniper was heavily effected, and that cowboy is truelly powerfull, as is my favourite the Hunting shotgun with shotgun surgeon.
If we're lucky no one reads this and changes them too.

Edit: thanks to Maximus for his answer, I now know how far I was off the mark :foodndrink: .

I use the Ratslayer when I want a scope, a fully modded cowboy repeater for medium range, and the brush gun for power. Brush gun + Cowboy perk = deadly.

More like Brush Gun'='Why is the 50cal here?'

On Very Hard, which is what I play, if I understand things correctly....the sniper now does 21dmg. It still worked ok, but for me that wasn't good enough. And no, I don't use the sniper as close-range semi-auto weapon, nor do I use a maxed out sneak (my sneak is usually at 50 or less). Luckily, I'm on the PC and could find my own balance that suits my playstyle - I also think it was too strong before, even on VH, but that it was toned down too much. People who bought the game on console don't have editor ability, so of course there's going to be a lot of debate on things like this, even if it is a single-player game.

The problem, imo, is that 'balance' is quite subjective, dependent on playstyles and preferred builds and whether one thinks 'self-gimping' should/shouldn't be required to do what one wants etc. You can't please everyone all the time.

Something more coherent? Do you play this game at all? Do you look down the iron sights when you aim a gun? Still don't know what zoom is? Sawed Off has no zoom and any pistol has a lot. Go ahead, go get those two guns and come back to me with a "oh, that stuff".

My point about the silencer, which for some reason I guess you don't understand, is that I don't HAVE to use vats. They WON'T hear me around the corner with a silencer. With a non silenced gun they WILL hear me. I don't know how else to explain that I'm sorry if you still don't understand. You are talking about close combat and Cowboy guns being better so I have to compare the Sniper Rifle close combat don't I?

Well I would hope you don't play the game the way I want you to? What kind of silly comment is that? Guess what I will 1 up you though with an equal whiny comment to the one you made, prepatch "I like HAD to avoid using the super overpwered and silenced Sniper Rifle".

Sure you can put yourself in my place. Imagine, in the next patch, that shotguns would have their base DAM cut by 1/3, and also the shotgun surgeon perk is removed "so as to balance the riot and hunting shotguns with the hunting rifle." There, imagine that world, and you can put yourself in my place.

Again, I would like to stress that I'm not advocating the nerfing of other guns. People should be given a choice to play how they want to - I made the choice to specialize in the sniper rifle with my (main) character. Now, one patch and 100 hours later, I'm like being forced to use the trail carbine on some parts, and may even revert to an earlier save where my guy isn't level capped so I can pick up the Cowboy perk.

Or I can lower the difficulty. Either way, this is stupid.

Really, I don't know what your problem is. Whether it is with the zoom (honestly, why are you talking about zoom in the first place?) or whatever you're on about, whatever. Pretend I don't understand, or do something that helps you find your calm center.

Point is, I think you should relax. Also, I don't really see a point in replying to your post without this thread degenerating into something more confrontational. I showed you the math, that the patch puts the sniper rifle somewhere between the cowboy repeater and the trail carbine (despite costing more than both), and how I think that is probably the worst way to "fix" the sniper rifle. All you've done is...what?

If they did that I would be PO, but then move onto a service rifle, then a 10mm, then a 9mm, all depending on the role...
If they made every weapon weaker than a rolling pin then I would use them still.

As unless I mod the game, which I don't wish to untill after all / any dlc, and or patches, but I love playing the game no matter the rules.

It does svck when things get changed heavily so, especially if they're your favourite and you can't make changes because of the system you're on.

You've supplied evidence, as to why the effects make no sense, and quite alot including myself agree.
Opinion is against such extreme changes, but trial and error and general opinion will most likely see a resolution to this ( I hope ).

Well I feel that way too and I'm not getting upset and just because we don't agree doesn't mean we still can't discuss the topic. If you want someone to agree with you then I will just stop posting because I'm not going to.

My point about zoom was that you don't need a scoped weapon. The normal zoom on a lot of guns lets you see basically just as far as a scoped weapon. The Brush gun, which is non scoped, is 100x better than a scoped Trail Carbine, Sniper Rifle or AMR. It lets you see a super distance at great power and great damage per second. My whole point of this was that ALL the guns are balanced wrong. You are saying the Sniper Rifle is when it is the complete opposite. From a post you made a few up though I see that you just want the game to be balanced for you and not for everyone though so it doesn't really matter what I say.

You think just because you say "well then people are going to say you can silence the gun and blah blah blah" that it doesn't make it a valid point. Silenced weapons are game breakers in New Vegas, can't you see that? It has nothing to do with skill if you can just stand at one end of the screen and shoot a whole camp of people at the other with a silenced pistol and they don't know where you are. Really? About 20 people dead with a high spread pistol and not one discovered me when I was standing right out in the open? And silenced weapons don't make a difference?

The sniper rifle has a max range of 3548 feet the trail carbine has a max range of 1500.

It does matter what you say - I get your point. But if we follow your logic, then the brush gun will then logically be nerfed. And face it, people who use the weapon aren't gonna like it, so in the end, you have the brush gun users and the sniper rifle users all complaining.

Contrast that to my approach (I can be convinced otherwise), which is to restore the sniper rifle DAM to 62. Then everyone is happy (um, happier), though the brush gun is still OP. It's just I don't feel like you should nerf something carelessly for the sake of balance. The sniper rifle SHOULD have been nerfed prior to the patch. But not murdered as a weapon.



But (at least to me) it *isn't* a valid point. The problem you state (personally, it was never that bad for me, I would get off 5 shots at most with a silenced weapon before I was found) applies to all silenced weapons, not specifically the sniper rifle. Therefore, by nerfing the sniper rifle only, you further imbalance things.

Reducing base DAM of a weapon to "fix" the silencing issue is ridiculous. The proper fix would be to fix silencing, not nerf the damage. That's worse than a band-aid fix.

That part of your post I could not agree more with. It's one of those things where they would have to change a lot more than just the damage of one weapon to fix the problem. For the record I love sniper characters, it's what I use 99 percent of my playthroughs so don't think I am bashing snipers or anything.

The funny thing is that when I heard they were going to balance the Sniper Rifle the very first thing I thought of and I think I posted it on a patch thread was... "they will probably just lower the damage to 47 and give it a crit multiplier of 1". I was pretty close I guess.

The brush gun has a max range of 1000 feet the cowboy repeater has a max range of 1500 and again the sniper rifle has a max range of just over 3550.

You said that twice. Considering most character builds cannot even perceive that far (I don't know exactly how long a "3550 feet" is in the New Vegas world), and most battles take place at ranges comfortable for a brush gun user (I have never sniped at anything and exceeded the range of any gun I was using), I don't see what your point is?

Are you saying that the sniper rifle should be nerfed, and that this is justified because it is still the most effective weapon in highly situational cases where we can target/shoot things from 3000ft away? Are you serious? How does that justify reducing the DAM to 42 when other, shorter-ranged guns (on paper) can do 60 DAM or more?




As bad as things were balance-wise prior to the patch (not just the sniper rifle, as you point out), I think it was better then. Because the weapons were imbalanced in a way that guns just did a lot of damage. Nobody is going to complain about guns doing too much damage, except people who don't really use guns.

The sniper rifle might be balanced now with reference to gameplay (I don't think so but I'll run with it for now), but its not balanced with reference to other guns. There's no point in using it when you can pick up the Cowboy perk and suddenly the Cowboy Repeater does more base DAM than the sniper rifle. And it's not like JSP ammo is free - you need its perk as well.

That's just my opinion.