ahh the rail gun i love the rail gun. It really is a good weapon, I would like to see the speed go up by 25 or 50 m/s tho, just to see what effect that would have on it. Right now it is just a hair underpowered for the energy it uses and I am against upping the damage any because that would make a trirail valk or a quad rail hornet an even worse first strike weapon than it allready is.

I know it's probably been suggested before, but... What I'd love to see is a sniper rifle, that has an insanely fast shot velocity (i.e. 3000 m/s) and does a ton of damage (i.e. 50,000). However, it'd have a bunch of downsides, so it isn't an uberweapon. The user would be unable to move while aiming, making them a sitting duck. The reload time of the weapon would be gigantic (i.e. a full minute), and it would only carry a tiny bit of ammo (i.e. four shots). Also, the ammo would be insanely expensive (i.e. 50,000 creds), so it would only be used to kill extremely important targets. It'd be a great weapon to see, though... Maybe have it look like the dev gun?

I'll have to be against this. I still think it would be an uber weapon. Vendetta's environments are so open that it would be quite easy to rack up kills with a "sniper rifle" while camping almost out of radar range. It would be very frustrating for the poor victim to even find this sniper with all the space around you. The fact that you're nearly out of radar range sort of negates your proposed balance technique of locking the person in place. The reload time would still be far too quick for that person to locate the sniper and hunt him down in time.

And lastly, it just sounds goofy for a ship to be armed with a sniper rifle. Is this a 3D FPS game we're talking about or a space combat sim? Even if sniper rifles were theoretically developed for spaceships IRL, the slighest fraction of a degree off would make you miss your target by several miles. It would be a very impractical weapon. Instead, guided weapons such as missiles would probably be used.

"I know it's probably been suggested before, but..."

Well its been awhile, but we can probably scrounge the archives for 50 variations on this theme. I'll go hunting for the threads in a bit.

UPDATE: Well, I said I'd collect some threads for your purusal, so I guess I should:

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=2328

Then there was the whole 'sniper weapon period we went through were sniper weapons seemed like they were in every third thread.

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1676
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1647
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1611
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1607
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1517
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1494
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1455

And if you want a little light reading on weapon balance...

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1507

Pyro it's normally a bad idea to have one weapon that is completely unlike anything else we have in the game, because of balance issues. The first strike factor of this weapon would be huge, guaranteeing an instant kill on any ship, and with a velocity of 3,000 m/s it would be very hard to miss. I like the idea of a "sniper rifle" type weapon, but the one you are proposing is just wayyyy too uber.

As a matter of fact, we already have one "sniper rifle" in the game: the rail gun. It does 1400 damage, has a velocity of 400 m/s, and a range of about 1.2 km (I tested this). If anything, perhaps we should talk about balancing the rail gun to make it more of an effective sniper weapon rather than introducing a new weapon. For example, I would be in favor of increasing the speed of the rail gun so it's possible to hit targets at a greater distance, say to 450 m/s or 500 m/s.