Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC 1-12: Combat Roles; Rifleman
What defines theRiflemanrole in combat?
The rifleman is either the stealthy Sniper shooting things from LONG RANGE with HIGH ACCURACY, or the rapid rife machinegunner kneeling and blasting rapidly at the enemy. Look at real life. Real snipers are able to use dang near any rifle ever made. Not just long range boomsticks. They are just as capable of standing in cover and blasting deadly accurate full auto at the enemy.
What basic combat elements should they possess?
High accuracy. The ability to totally hide from everything in all situations while firing. The ability to do slow, but mass damage to a single pool of choice. (Do RL snipers shoot people in random body parts, or pick a single spot and hit it?) The ability at higher levels to dofast fire with good damage per shot (In other words, leave strafe 2 alone)
What offensive abilities?
Various rifles for different situations. One rifle with mediocre long range stats and decent damage for full auto firing, one rilfe with high damage, heavy armor piercing, and slow speed and more than a 65 meter range for sniping that does blast damage. (Cmon. Sniper Rifles should have more range than a CDEF pistol.) Rifles of differing damage types so we can damage different types of mobs. Right now, most rifles are energy. Even the Tusken, which fires bullets!
What defensive abilities?
Riflemen/Women should have NO melee damage mods. Lets look at history here folks. Lets look at RL FACTS. Most assault rifles can have big blipping knives attached. And ALL rifles have rifle butts. Ever since the rifle was invented, Rifle users have been beating the crud out of people with their rifles in melee using bayonets and Rifle buttstrokes, or just by grabbing it by the barrel and playing baseball with their opponents head. Rifleman, at medium to high level should get a melee attack like Low Blow or something. Also, at midlevel conceal, riflemen should be able to use Ranger camo packs to reflect their quest to hide. RL snipers use Ghillie suits right off the bat.
What unique abilities?
As for unique abilities, We should, at master get the ability to do single shot, mass damage to mind. Like headshot 4 maybe. And not for insane mind cost. It should have an X5 damage mod and should require using Aim, maybe even getting in cover. But if ya get in cover, you should not be targetable by the enemy cause youre supposed to be HIDDEN. You should drop off radar, and if possible, go invisible. I'd create a new kind of cover for this called advanced cover and make it a block 4 concealment skill.
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
In group combat, we should be able to do enough damage at close ranges to be useful. Not have to stand off so far we're in another nest and risk being chewed on by the critters from that nest while everyone else in the group sucks up all the exp.
How could/should they interact with other professions?
Interaction with other professions is simple. We shoot, they die 
Really tho. Mega combat professions like BH and Commando should still be able to gank us IF they can get close enough or find us. Melee should be dead before they get in range. I mean cmon. We've all heard the joke about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Or seen Indiana jones shoot the swordsman from 30' away while the guy was warming up.
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
Rifleman SHOULD NOT be dependant on anyone else. NO profession Should be dependant on another for anything other than money. I think if a profession is dependant on another, its flawed. Its not self sufficient and needs to be fixed. Forcing professions to work together is dumb. Making professions COMPLEMENT each other however is a good idea. Rifle/TKM is a deadly combination. The rifle takes their pools down as the target closes, and the TKM finishes them off once they get close. Ive seen this combination in action. Its deadly.
What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?
Rifleman in the GCW should be either assassins or foot soldiers depending on the skills of the character, and the wishes of the person playing. No role should be forced on a player. MMORPG's are about having the freedom to be what we want to be, be people we cant be in real life. Limitations on that cost customers through game dissatisfaction.
What Rifleman Should Have:
- High accuracy at ranges greater than 40 meters
- Specials that target each HAM pool
- Very high ranged defence
- Highest DPS of all non-elite ranged proffesions
What Rifleman Should NOT Have:
- Status change attacks (give them to carbineer)
- Melee Defence (give them to pistoleer)
- High accuracy at ranges less than 40 meters (pistoleers and carbineers)
Rifleman need a way to stop the forward movement of an oncoming Melee artist, and they need a /takecover that actuelly makes it worth it's ham cost.
1. We need a way to stop melee's. Whether critters, npcs, or pcs, this is, of course, the killer of the rifleman class. I'd totally find it cool if this aility, call it what you like, perhaps our own working "Stopping Shot" was a rank 4 or Master level skill to keep it special, ut for the love of God. I can't rememer how many times leveling up novice rifle, then rifleman that encounters turned into my molesting some womp rat with the rear of my gun after it ran up to me. This is also a range issue of course. In real life, rifle users can kill stuff fore it gets to them, and here, we have this horride 64m limit to engagments. Give level 4's or masters an aility which slows or stops oncoming targets, and gives them more time to mete out our damge.
2. Conceal. It's the allmight of the proffesion right up there with Conceal shot, really holding true to the concept of a rifleman. You hide, you strike with impunity. I understand our ranged defenses are the highest of any comat class in the game, ut /takecover needs to e seriusly documented, and even then seriusly upgraded. If you're going to cut 115 points off my action every time I try to take cover, and I dont relialy take cover more often than 1 out of every 6 times fore I hit Sniping I, the least you can do is crank it up some. Do serius ranged damage defense, serius ranged damage to hit increases, give rifleman tons more pre-agro hits if they other taking cover. That alone would point up to numer 1. Youre in cover, ut somethings running at you. hit'em with "Stop Shot" and you wont have wasted the /take cover in the first place.
Those two changes alone would triple the usefullness of the rifleman, and make the entire experince much more enduring and fun.
I dont know what has been said before, but my suggestion would be to have the rate of fire attached to the firing position, ie prone gets 1s cap. kneel gets 2s cap and stand gets 3s cap. would help balance out rifleman DPSi believe
cPTmORGAN
I'M RICH BEYOTCH
Great idea.
although I am only 1 week into playing rifleman I see two major things that I believe need ot be addressed:
1. Fix the damage types on the rifles.
2. RIFLES shoudl have a longer range than carbines and even more so than pistols.
any of the other requested comments I don't feel in a postition to comment on at this point.
not logical....
rate of fire of rifleman concerns reload time acquired by a man who knows his rifle....
the reload time slows when you move....not on any static position
I would slow rate of fire on moving rifleman on 1,5 cap...maybe 2 for big rifles
3 secs is too much for actual balancing
obviously rifleman takes half second or one second more to start firing again at the max speed when he stops moving
Hi.. Just wanted to say thanks for these kinds of threads to the production team and all that.. This stuff makes me feel like I have a say in what SWG becomes.
I've been rifleman since the 3rd week of launch.. Never dropping it, I don't care what happens.. I went through the horrible 4.5 melee dmg multiplier and experienced the commando's 6k flames (when commandos were considered melee), man i've seen all the bad patches, the good ones, and i'm sticking with my t21..
So.. I would like to see the following changes to rifleman:
New guns-
The rifleman seems to basically have the 1 gun as his end-all, be-all weapon, the T21. And yeah it rules and its cool.. But there should be more. There should be a weapon for the long ranged attacks, and a weapon for the medium ranged attacks. Not just the same weapon.
I would like to see a rifleman get a long ranged weapon, say, 70 meters (so its within a turret's range still, but out of a player's) which isn't capable of using any special attacks OTHER then mind shots, head shots, or conceal shots..
Then give the rifleman another weapon, which is a regularly ranged weapon, but allows all the attacks, just lower in dammage, yet faster in speed.
Rifleman Crafting / camoflauge suit (gilla suit)-
RL rifleman / snipers use elaborate camoflauge to attack prey such as gilla suits allowing them to be virtually invisible. Riflemen in swg should be given the same ability since this ability to camoflauge and disguise one's self is so vital to a rifleman's motto of 1 shot 1 kill.
The rifleman should be able to craft a suit, which can remove the rifleman from the radar, and overhead map while taking cover and /prone. The suit should be planet specific, and made from natural items gathered from that planet. The suit should also experience decay with each use (every time you take cover, the suit takes damage, and when you get shot it takes damage).
As things are, rifleman equip some brandy, catch a mind buff, get ready to pop a muon and strap on some composite and go tear it up on the front lines.
They're supposed to be long range, distanced snipers picking off the weak from some place unseen, then move and rinse and repeat.
/agree with all of the good insightful comments above. There's not much more to add that hasn't already be said.
Regards,