Sniping stance style

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Yet another wondrous(ly dumb) idea. A sniping style, you can learn from finding a military book on sniping. It would have recipes for helmet netting and Ghillie suit, but only teaches the style. Might also need some sort of conversion kit for adding ghili features to power armour and survivor armour, if you want.

The style would include basic self defense and pistol/smg use, and quieter movement tactics, but would focus mainly on rifles and concealment. Mainly, trading speed and mobility for faster/more efficient aiming and recoil mitigation.

The style could be based on perception and minor dex, and use the marksmanship or rifles skill.

I’m not too good at coming up with equations, so I’m just going to be vague in the hope that someone who’s a lot better at game balance can come up with something intelligent.

marksmanship (or rifles)
rank 1: You have a chance based on your perception and dex to move quieter, regardless of your terrain/surroundings. You have basic block, and +1 dodge while wielding a knife.

rank 2: Your speed at precise aiming with pistols and smgs is buffed by your perception and minorly by your dex.

rank 3: While wearing helmet netting and a Gilli suit, whenever you stand still next to furniture or walls or wilderness terrain features for more than a few turns, you temp gain the innocuous trait and have a less strong scent. You also get +2 dodge instead of +1 dodge while wielding a knife.

rank 4: The rank 2 bonus applies to rifles now, and on top of that, if you’re in the hiding state from rank 3 and holding a rifle, you can “support your rifle on the terrain” while aiming to use your perception and dex to reduce your dispersion and recoil. While doing this though, it’s very difficult to defend from melee attacks and you get a temp debuff to your dodge and melee skills inverse to how much of a bonus you’re getting for aiming. (If there’s a way to check if you’re shooting over the object as opposed to shooting away from it, then that would be a useful check to use here.)

rank 5: While wearing a Ghili suit and helmet netting, you move silently through stuff that would normally cause noise (like bushes), and your dodge bonus tops out at +3 while holding a knife. You also gain a bonus to view range when you have binoculars.

rank 6: You can use the rank 4 stabilization mode even without being next to terrain features or buildings or whatnot, but you get half the benefit unless you actually go and stabilize next to something. This is an approximation of the sitting sniper stance,
aka: http://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/judgementstrikes/snip2.jpg
http://www.army.mil/e2/-images/2010/10/19/89082/size0-army.mil-89082-2010-11-01-111147.jpg

Rank 7: While wearing a Ghili suit and helmet netting, if you spend an ingame half hour in the rank 3 state while wielding a rifle and without getting attacked and hit, the first shot you make has an incredible accuracy and crit rating. This bonus resets after the first shot. You also gain +4 dodge while wielding a knife.

2

While I appreciate the enthusiasm, I kinda meant to open it as an issue on Github, IF it has not already been opened there.

This has been suggested on the forum itself a shitload of times, I’ve seen maybe half a dozen within the past year. In contrast, I can’t recall seeing this suggestion on Github, where it’s more likely to get useful feedback.

Your post here does present the general ideas of it, at least with respect to shooting (sneaking is another frequently-mentioned use for this concept), so it could be useful at least.

3

Now see, I’ve gotten admonished for posting feature requests on github by Kevin and KA, which is why I didn’t make it an issue.

4

Ah, I see. Sorry to hear. I’ve been admonished for mentioning bugs or feature requests in unrelated PRs and issues, but not for opening suggestion issues, far as I can recall.

Then again my wishlist has been small enough that I haven’t opened many issues.

5

Iunno. I think it’s a grey area, where Kevin wants people to keep issues on github focused and singular, and if you have multiple concepts you might want to make a forum post instead. “Add a grip slot to 50 calibre rifles” is a lot different from “Add a style that might involve a few complicated src changes and here’s my uneducated ideas for it”

6

True. I kinda wish we could just snag all the ideas that have come up with respect to the concept as whole, then conpile them in one set thread, issue, or other place for it. >.<

7

You can, there’s a search function after all :slight_smile:

I agree with the current level of detail a forum thread to hash some things out is a good place for this, github issues really do need to be specific enough for someone to just get to work on it.

The premise (martial style for gun use) is reasonable, but you might want to narrow down what the style gives you, currently it’s all over the place, knife bonuses (assuming a gun in an off hand?) + pistol/SMG bonuses + sniping bonuses? It’s the whole gamut of ranged weapon usage in a single style. A style for snipers is going to be all about rifle handling, if they switch to a SMG or pistol, they’d switch styles.

Sniping is a kind of weird angle to approach it from, unless you make things somehow mystical, sniping just boils down to “hide, shoot something at long distance, hide again”, there’s nothing really “martial art style” going on there.

8

Well the reason I approached it as a style is because it’s a way you could put it into the game without too much fuss. I mean, it still definitely needs some hard coding, but I tried to write it in a way that could be mostly json softcoded.

As to all over the place, yeah I agree sorta? I also disagree.

Example: You know something that krav maga in RL does that cataclysm version doesn’t? There’s a whole subschool centered around disarming your opponent and using their weapon back against them, and to be flexible with what you’re re-utilizing no matter what it is.

Focus in an ability is good, but some minor diversity can get you out of a sticky situation. “Just focusing on rifles and sneaking” would be detrimental and short sighted for an ability like this, when you could also have some CQC and shortarm sprinkled in there for when a rifle isn’t applicable but setting up for another style might be disadvantageous. (Example: if you were to switch to taekwondo or tiger style, you’d want to have tough armour on your arms and knees at the very least, possibly even moreso, whereas when you’re sniping you’d want to be light and agile and mobile despite the bulky Ghillie suit. Admittedly, the Ghilli suit idea itself is a bit oversimplified to fit the game. Ideally you’d want to adapt it ahead of time to your surroundings before you go magically blending into the surroundings, and have a lot of setup and recon time, but that sort of thing is kind of unreasonable to expect in a game.

In the end though if you were to refocus, you could probably reduce the number of ranks and focus mostly on sneaking and rifles, and still encompass the spirit of the idea. Possibly replace them with bonuses for not shooting more than a few times in the same spot?? It’s hard to represent the advantage of a sniper in a situation where most of your enemies are going to be dull and mostly mindless, and where aggressive NPCS (the only possible direct targeted benefit from the move and shoot mentality) means jack diddly because they’ll just home in on you anyways. At which point do you give up trying to be ultra realistic so you can actually make a game-relevant mechanic? Idk I’m not a game designer.

9

Adding a style wouldn’t make the ‘crouch/prone improves aiming’ any easier to add to the game.

Your example either contradicts or is irrelevant to your argument, ‘krav-maga is missing capabilities it has IRL, therefore my made-up sniping style should include non-sniping abilities’. It is likewise irrelevant whether having certain abilities ‘would be useful’, the question is if the style itself is consistent, it’s up to the player to use it properly.

10

And even then, technically you can do that Krav Maga trick in-game. Disarming is a technique that works on NPCs, so… >_>

Back to the actual idea, I still think making it an actually game mechanic instead of a style would be the saner approach.

11

It’s pretty simple, though you need to be careful about a few things.
basically you’d add a ‘crouching’ and/or ‘prone’ effect that you can use an action to acquire. the effect would prevent normal movement, move commands would most likely cause you to spend moves to stand up. While you have the effect you’d have some bonuses to aiming.
That’s pretty much it, though I’m sure we’d add some more features to the effects over time.

12

Stopping movement would prevent using the same mechanic for slower stealthy movement, though.

13

No need to stop movement completely. Ideally it would tie in nicely to the camo system proposed way back. If we could just have a standard stance mode that could handle everything.

Standing – max mobility, low to average accuracy. Enough for low to mid range work. Main advantage would be the ability to run the hell away.

Kneeling/Crouch – med camo bonus, enough to hide behind cabinets etc. movement speed to 0.5/ 0.75? Accuracy would gain a decent boost out to medium range and if you could rest the gun on something like a windowsill/table/cabinet or tie the barrel to a tree with some twisted bungees or paracord, even better.

Prone – if you ever actually intend to hit something at long range, this is the position you’ll be taking. Maximum camo, max accuracy, minimum mobility, although if we could get some speed figures for a leopard crawl that would be great.
There’s many variations of the prone position but mostly it comes down to comfort, personal preference and your terrain – legs crossed, legs open, one leg up etc.

There’s also the sitting position, but to be honest that always seemed like an emergency stopgap measure to me.

Don’t see any reason for a sniping style (or even a combined marksmanship style) to gain dodge from wielding a knife tbh.
Besides most riflemen are trained to use it as a spear (With the bayonet) or a club rather than discard the rifle and switch to a bayonet only.
Even a rifle without ammunition has a reach and force advantage over a lone knife. A blow to the face or solar plexus would be enough to incapacitate most people for long enough to finish the job.

Rather than dodge, pretty much all rifle-type weapons (and shotguns-- and the non machine pistol SMGs such as the MP5) should get an inherent block though. Should be pretty easy for even a novice to block slashing/bashing attacks with one, although piercing/stabbing would be more troublesome. Also there’s durability to consider. Wouldn’t really want something lightweight like the MP5 or M16 or a ruger/marlin getting hit too much or you’ll really be chancing on a misfire or blockage.

14

That sounds a lot better than what I had.

15

What if crouching/prone actually was the style, and you turn the style on and off every time that you want to go prone or move again. As I understand it, sniping is a pretty focused activity, so a big song and dance, such as activating a style, seems appropriate. Are any of the current styles practical to initiate when you are prone? As for pistol training, that could be a different style, obtained from the same source but requiring separate activation.

You could have a shotgun style that adds a tiny delay to critters when they come into view so you are more likely to get the first shot going around corners- And at this point I realise that I am trying to convert this suggestion into gun styles…