My suggestion would be to try using the UT2004 Classic Sniper rifle with 1 second fire time, it feels awful
The q2 rail has a realllly small delay from pressing fire to shooting. It used to (when q2 was a topic, so perhaps up to early ql) got commented on fairly often as “feeling really nice, the best quake rail!” yet it had built in lag. The players that made these statements often did not realise there was delay.
(+10 per 100ms) and firing is way too long for a weapon to be effective with faster pull out speed. Want to dink that guy after hitting him with a rocket? This weapon won’t do that. Maybe the ut4 LG is fun to include somewhere (personally I think it is garbage but whatevs) but this isn’t rail, or a sniper weapon in ut context.
People seem to dislike rail/sniper for whatever reason – see the discussions about projectile sniper during ut4, see the continual toning down of rail in quake since quake 3 – ql 70, qc lower with extra zoomed?
At any rate I agree with controlling the use of the long range, instant hit weapon. Mainly because when other weapons stop being effective at 50m (or whatever) and one other will go to infinity, and in some ways become easier to use at longer range, it creates a vast gap in maps where only one weapon is viable. This gap is either not considered or specifically concentrated on like in sniper specific maps.
Projectile sniper is trying to fix this aspect by making it harder (or “more skillful” depending on your point of view) to hit the target. Zoom sniper in QC is trying to add a layer of.. what is best described as clunk.. on top of normal rail use to deal a small amount of extra damage.
Ultimately they are both trying to achieve the same thing, pull rail back under control so it is less powerful, meaning it infringes on other weapons use less.
Anyway enough rant, back to the “charge up” idea and q2 delay.
I recently got hack to add a delay to the rail in his game, glitch arena. This was “inspired” by memories of q2 rail being loved. In short what we ended up with was horrible as wail says – however this was in part due to the length of the delay. I think it was 3-400ms when q2 is much lower. I did not pursue polishing this particular aspect because.. he hated it.
Why a delay? A small delay lessens the effectiveness of flick shots and forces the player to track the target for a split second. This, combined with a fast moving target adds controllable variance that the player can over come by being better at tracking the target when it is under the crosshair, or timing the shot to go off as it crosses under the crosshair.
Ultimately what I got hack to try in glitch was too long and I couldn’t hit squat. However when I did hit? It felt very satisfying. Similar in feeling to hitting air shots using slow ROF projectiles. But overall it was bad because it was too long.
Headshots play in here as well, and while headshots could be done well (see OW), ut historically has not done them well. This is a combination of factors; netcode, hitboxes, player visibility, etc. In order to add flavor to the sniper weapon, instead of headshot have charge up damage – but limit this heavily. Charging from zero to 100 over 1000ms feels horrible and changes the weapons identity too much, at least for my taste. However having a weapon that has a ~100ms delay but can fire instantly if released adds depth to the weapon. So we could say that base damage is 70, and with 90ms we add 10 damage/30ms, capping at 100. or 99, or whatever. The number isn’t important. When fully charged the weapon automatically discharges, no saving it to plink people.
So base damage is 70. Fully charged, which takes 90ms is 100 but the charging makes it more difficult to hit. We have no headshots but introduce another mechanic that removes the random aspect of headshots while still rewarding a type of aim.
There is a problem here, as you want the base 70 damage to feel snappy on discharge – there is some way to achieve this as it is similar to how mario jump operates (I believe).
Why would you just not shoot twice for 2*70 if it is easier? If we are talking about a rail style swap off (superior way to manage long range weapons in close) the refire gets in the way. There may not be enough time for the second shot (target leaves the area/gets to close range/etc during refire). Have the charged time refunded from the refire time so shooting charged shots is higher DPS. The charge time is short enugh that this shouldn’t interfere too much with things.
To further differentiate have damage numbers for other weapons that play well with both the low and high end here. So if shock deals 40 damage then charging for followup shot on a player that has no armor/additional health is wasted time/potential lowering hit % for no reason. On the flip side hitting a direct rocket for 100 on a player with 100h/100a means that a charged followup shot is the way to go – and advised if you bounced them for maximum sytle points. Pulse balls dealing 15dmg means 2 is 30 and then an uncharged rifle would finish a fresh spawn. Having a batch of these mix ups adds some interest and things for players to remember.
The goal here would be to make it not feel like garbage and always have a delay before shooting. The charge amount would be open to testing but the damage should cap out around 100, rather than the much higher headshot damage that ut has historically given us. Graphically this could be done as a laser – when you start shooting the beam is “wider” and deals less damage. As it charges it narrows until it goes off. This may feel nasty with would need testing.
FPS