Would anyone slit their wrists if sniper shots were made visible?

[Forboding Angel]

Snipers have 900 range, jam radar in a radius of 10 around them(Edit: Not anymore), can cloak, reload every 10 seconds, and deal 2500 per shot (less to comms but that's a sidenote). In BA, 900 range is pretty massive. Even if you have radar it wouldn't help (Even advanced radar won't see that far). Your base will start exploding, and frankly with all the battle sounds already going on, you're assuming that the sniper sound effect isn't getting culled. Anyway, your base will start exploding and you could be easily forgiven for having no idea why because you don't happen to have los out to where the snipers are. Even worse, if you send units out to scout, there is a decent chance that they will die before spotting the snipers. Additionally, you're assuming that if the player does happen to have los on that area (unlikely because anything that close will probably die instantly), you're assuming that the player would be looking at that specific area as well. Dealing with snipers currently involves a lot of assumptions.

Let me repeat this as it's own paragraph, just so that people are more likely to see it. It is not only possible, but likely for sniper shot sounds to be culled due to the amount of concurrent sounds the player has allowed in springsettings. When battles are going on, there are TONS of sounds being played, so the possibility of a sniper's sound effect never actually playing for the player, is unreasonably high.

Does any player send out just one sniper (I don't play arm unless under duress, but I wouldn't send any less than 2 myself, one is too vulnerable. If I'm spending that much resources and time making them, I want them to stay alive.)? I can't imagine sending one by itself. Where 1 is good, 5 potentially becomes unstoppable if your opponent doesn't immediately figure out what is going on and know how to properly counter it.

[sprunk]

Additionally, a firing sound in many cases can sound more or less the same as an explosion, as a result "Make the sound louder" provides even less input for the receiving end to process.

Use a unique sound.

Edit: urgh, the sound-culling note was on the other page. I think there was a way to specify sound priority but I'm not sure.

[Forboding Angel]

It's still a very bad solution though.

[Floris]

Also the fact that a lot of people disable sound because on its horrendous quality

[sprunk]

One advantage of a sound is that you can hear it from other places while visuals require you to actively be watching when something happens. Compare with Starcraft "nuclear launch detected": if there was no announcement but the full targeting reticle was visible, newbs would be worse off because they don't usually look at their side bases.

ZK snipers have a very hard to see bullet but a fairly visible and unique hit effect, in addition to a loud and unique noise (on both the shot and the hit) and I think it's easy for newbs to discover what is happening.

[gajop]

I think sprunk is right, ZK makes it pretty visible, but I came from BA originally so it was a known concept to me. Would someone new to the genre be able to guess what's happening? How do WW2 games represent snipers?

[Forboding Angel]

I think sprunk is right, ZK makes it pretty visible, but I came from BA originally so it was a known concept to me. Would someone new to the genre be able to guess what's happening? How do WW2 games represent snipers?

In my experience, ww2 games generally use a long tracer effect.


Side note/rant(because gajop touched on it):
One of the prevailing issues that I keep seeing recurr with the ba community is that they are very hostile to new players, all the way down to basic setups. They will complain that xyz widget is on by default because it helps newbies but it interferes with their extremely specific setup (apparently disabling via f11 is super difficult). This is not sustainable.

As I have repeatedly said to floris and others, if you're developing a game, any time you test it you have to use default settings (unless you're testing something specific ofc), this is so that you catch the things that will screw over newbies or catch the parts of your ui that are utter crap.

So the default setup needs to be fully functional and set up for newbies (if this isn't fully attainable, do your best). They should never HAVE to adjust the ui in order for the game to be properly playable.

[qray]

Even if you have radar it wouldn't help (Even advanced radar won't see that far).

Not true. Sniper can usually be spotted by radar quite well (depends on terrain). And in case a mobile jammer is used, you have the intrusion countermeasure system. So no LOS needed. You could place a few dragon's eyes a bit outside your terrain or use cloaked spies (the option I usually choose). As mentioned earlier: scouting and overview are essential.
Yes, often they get one free shot. And maybe a few more if you are too slow to react or busy elsewhere. But often enough they die before you even come in the range of the stuff you actually want to attack.

5 potentially becomes unstoppable if your opponent doesn't immediately figure out what is going on and know how to properly counter it.

A friend of me uses to come with groups of 20+ snipers and mobile jammers. Does a bit damage but can be stopped if you have the right units at hand - of course 5 zippers don't help then, you need more like 40-50, peewees more since they are a bit slower. Or one(!) nuke bomber. Or a tactical nuke. Or a bertha, jammed rocket bots... many ways to deal with them, they can't take much damage.
And without the right defence also other units are plain deadly: planes -if you have no/little air defence-, krogoths and juggernauts seem barely stoppable at first, nukes if no antinuke at hand, crows if you don't have flaks, berthas if you don't have plasma deflectors etc.etc.
It's at learning process

Regarding sound: you're maybe right, some visual effect for the explosion might help in addition. But from experience also in busy games I could hear the plop. Could just be a bit louder and obvious so you really get it.

[Floris]

Not true. Sniper can usually be spotted by radar quite well

It's a little bit confusing, but he means the LOS of a radar, not the radar functionality itself

[qray]

It's a little bit confusing, but he means the LOS of a radar, not the radar functionality itself

Ah, ok, I misunderstood this. Thanks for clarification.

[Forboding Angel]

Until yesterday, the sniper had radar jamming.

[qray]

Until yesterday, the sniper had radar jamming.

Have to admit that I didn't notice this change from BA 9.46 (either it did not have it there or it didn't work properly). I always wondered why it didn't have radar jamming in earlier versions - since then you have to use radar jammers which kind of make the cloak feature seem kind of superfluous.
Under these circumstances: with build in jamming, they are potentially much more dangerous - and I begin to see your point of the visible weapon trajectory.

Apart from the trajectory visibility: Just a proposal for consideration. Either automatic fire (with less accuracy) to units detected by an intrusion countermeasure system - which at least in earlier version didn't lead to automatic attack of your defence line - or jamming.

[Floris]

Until yesterday, the sniper had radar jamming.

I feel the need to clarify this....

It had defined "radardistancejam = 10" which didn't seem to do anything in practice. Probably some leftover from BA 4.7 - 5.1 when its stealth was removed.

You stating it like this seems like you removed some actual functionality. Please don't mention trivial things like this, or when you do, at least go into detail about what it actually affected. Now its just confusing for others.

[PicassoCT]

Speedholes.. they make the metal speed.



PS: Forb why discuss this at all? Make it a opt-out via Mod-Rules and add visualizers..

[Forboding Angel]

Snipers have 900 range, jam radar in a radius of 10 around them(Edit: Not anymore), can cloak, reload every 10 seconds, and deal 2500 per shot (less to comms but that's a sidenote).

Not true. Sniper can usually be spotted by radar quite well

It's a little bit confusing, but he means the LOS of a radar, not the radar functionality itself

Until yesterday, the sniper had radar jamming.

The direct relationship of statements. And no, it didn't do anything in practice.

At the time of writing I didn't realize that though. I was looking at the unitdef and thought it was really strange that the sniper would have stealth. But from looking at the unitdef, the jamming should have stealthed the unit, on paper. The fact that it doesn't is somewhat coincidental. Honest mistake. I've never liked them so I haven't used them since AA was a thing. That and I play arm about once per decade (core4lyfeyo).

--

Picasso, Unitdefs don't have access to modoptions, and I'm not dedicated enough to make a gadget simply for fluff.

--

Here is another thought (that I haven't really put any thought into fleshing out)... Would any object to the sniper also having it's own unit icon? If you've never had los on the unit then it will still show up as an unknown radar dot, but if it had entered los, on radar it would appear as the sniper unit icon. Put some thought into the ramifications of that before answering.

[very_bad_soldier]

Forb, maybe you should play the game you are modifying from time to time?

[Forboding Angel]

I do. That doesn't mean that I constantly use every unit in the game, and I can't think of one time in the past 15 years that I have used a sniper in spring or even ota.

8v8 DSD and the people that regularly inhabit those games holds zero interest for me.

[sprunk]

Picasso, Unitdefs don't have access to modoptions

They do.

[Ares]

Seems like trying to get out of a hole by digging?

What about reverting some post 9.46 changes before adding new ones.

[Bigfonzie12]

Why do Snipers need to be changed from how they are now?

They sound good, they move ok, and they shouldnt be these invisable silent killers, or they become way too op.

They are expensive yes, but Why change something which does not need changing.