Oh, you've done your reserach. A sniper was originally used to recon and take out enemy sentrys and special tragets like world leaders. A sniper's duty is in infiltrate, shoot the target, and leave or die trying. Infiltration could take weeks at a time and if you were found, you were as good as dead or being tourtured till death. I see how DI thinks that being able to take over territoires would help this. lets say you have some 100 sectors. 15 sectors and currenlty controlled by each nation, your nation decides to take a sniper and send him to a border sector of your enemys to shoot down the ace in that sector, after complition of the mission, the rest of the nation pours in and you take over the sector. As it currently stands, yes a sniper weapon would suck. Also the way the map is being branched out right now, we might have more then one way into home sectors after awhile. There is space behind 1,2,3 ya know? Also giving the rail gun a one shot kill and only 2 ammo would be nice. and you could only have 1 of them on your ship, your ship is required to be a light ship and requires a heavy batt. to fire it. Something insane like that, you can't carry any other weapons but the sniper weapon, due to it's massive barrel to make it more accurate.

Actually, that would be neat. I'd love to see a ship that looks like the one below flying around...
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Okay, so I'm not that great at ASCII art... :P

Well I just tried out the new "rail gun" in a cap run. It's impossible to kill anything now. I had tri rail on valk and I didn't kill anything, even after 9 hits, most ships didn't fall to the ground. I can see how you all say that it should not be a oneshot kill weapon, but if I can't kill anything with 9 bullets from a gun that requires so much, and energy weapons kick it's ass. After all of it's cons, it comes out in the end with very little pros. The weapon is already hard to shoot casue you can't aim fast enough close range (the ship is to slow) and it requires more energy then any other weapon. One shot: 110 energy. Tri: 330 energy. Damage total: 3300 hp. 1.6 seconds recharge to shoot antoher shot, that's assuming that your batt is charged too. Considering that it's almost imposible to hit anyone that is aware what is going on with the gun, I have to say that we are getting jipped.

Perhaps make it so that the one gun takes up two small slots, make is faster, since you can't boost and hope to hit anything with this gun due to spin torque, most likely you are going 80 when you are shooting this gun aren't you? Bullet same size. Vapor trail so that people can see where the shot came from. 5000 damage. Requires 500 enegry to fire. 4 second reload.

Two comments sparked my interest enough to reply, even though I'm drunk as a skunk and not making much sense:

1) "Sniper weapons have no place in a game with noncombatants. They work in games like Quake because in those games you always have to assume that you're under attack."

and

2) "The other problem with the rail was its first strike capability, which Arolte rightly cites as a potential problem with any 'sniper weapon'. If in the hands of a reasonably competant sniper it is impossible to avoid getting hit and thereby destroyed, the whole game suffers. So the other big problem I had with the weapon is that it did more than 2000 damage. Too many ships have hull points totals that are multiples of 2000. So multiple rail guns tended to kill many ships with single hits, before the target could respond evasively or otherwise."

my inebriated responses:

1) This is only a semi-valid argument because Vendetta is a test. In the full game (we hope) there will be more clearly defined factions, safety zones (friendly sectors and bot-defended sectors), and of course more team-play. In these environments, sniper rifles make PERFECT sense. Go into a war zone, prepare for the worst. Travel a hostile route, and your begging for an ambush/snipe.

2) I think the real problem is that there is no way of detecting a weapon lock or otherwise identify a threat. If a lock (whenever anyone get's you into the "yellow cursor" position) is made, there should be an alarm. you hear the alarm, you start evasive manuevers and thus potentially dodge a snipe. Maybe not the *first* one (depending upon how good you are) but most liekly the second one.

...ok sleep now. Viva las Vegas!!!

Something that would be nice is a cannon that charged itself, i.e. you press fire once and it starts charging, you press fire again and it fires, that way you wouldn't have to hold down fire for ages, and possibly you could switch weapons while its charging.

One thing I want to know, how can you think of the word 'inebriated', let alone spell it while drunk?

"One thing I want to know, how can you think of the word 'inebriated', let alone spell it while drunk?"

Answer: Practice :-)