@pilot: Thanks, I might take a look at it to check the strings.
@Dioxine: Sorry, I have not yet played with the sniper rifle since the update. I restarted my game since I had missed pogroms and the only sniper rifle I have encountered so far has been destroyed by the brainers so I could get a scoped rifles. I just looked at their report and was surprised to see the snap shot.
For sniper rifles, I think two philosophies work:
- No snap shot, high accuracy bonus: It's a weapon that requires careful aiming and positioning. This incarnation is bad for NPCs though, since they don't shoot from outside of sight range which means they lose out on the main aimed shot benefit, and they don't have snap shots for reactions which means you can rush them without fear.
- Snap shot, min range with heavy penalty and either aimed shot with really high accuracy or high damage. If you tweak snapRange, you can create a band in which the rifle is effective. The hunting and scoped rifles could have lower min range, but slightly lower snap ranges too, whereas the sniper rifle could get a higher values, so both are effective at different things. For the sniper rifles, I think it is possible to go further than even 20 for min and snap ranges. It allows reaction shots while still not being great at it because you can only react within 20 tiles.
Also, it's ok if the sniper rifle is a better weapon than a scoped rifle since it is a more advanced weapon. But in this incarnation it is pretty much the best early gun. Good damage to hurt even targets in personal armor, ability to react, impressive accuracy as well and light to carry too (unlike say, the boarding gun which I also use often).
In general, I tend to dislike the large accuracy bonus idea because it makes every soldier off the street a decent shot and sniper should be a niche role. However, I think your previous sniper rifle was pretty much perfect for the first sniper philosophy and it was the first time I saw the large accuracy bonus and did not think it was a bad thing.
Even a 50% accuracy soldier gets a quite reliable 75% to hit when aiming which is quite good if they can still move around, but was compensated by the fact you were left totally exposed on the enemy turn. In vanilla XCom, shotguns and autoshot weapons at close range should be the guns for the rookies. Unfortunately in Piratez close range fire is hard to balance against melee and giving hammers is usually the best solution (except when the enemy is flying! As I discovered in my first pogrom, you can only swing that hammer so high).
Anyhow.. you did a great job with the weapons in general (especially differentiating all the melee options, which are all conceptually so similar). I'm sure you will find a good solution. Just some thoughts I had from working on the XAE with both laser and gauss rifle.
