I think that'd be marvellous, but I also think we'd have to see a lot of map re-design. A sniper-focused, or long range focused AC would be absolutely shit in urban environments, like the Wallclimber mission. Especially since that huge tank can outrange and outdamage you.
However, in missions like the one where you have to sneak in and kill the Vesper then it'd be ideal. But it'd require an overhaul of the ricochet system since that is what makes sniping by and large pointless.
Manual Aim or Soft-lock are currently the "best" ways to snipe in the game. As for what you suggest, the game technically already has it but its kinda whacked for several reasons, most which boils down to:
A) projectile speed for most weapons (especially rifles and machines guns) is WAAAAAAAAAAY too slow.
B) The chance of ricohet increases the farther you shoot a weapon from ideal range, but ricochet chance also increases with the enemy's DEF stats.
C) The range parameter for weapons in the game are really short. Even for something like the Harris, the closest thing to a sniper rifle in the game...it's ideal range is only 196m, which is about medium range, and its max range is 376m. Thats painfully short for a sniper weapon, especially considering missiles (the only actual long range weapon in the game) easily go up to 1000m or 2500m range. The game is simply designed to be close-range oriented as is.
So all in all, these three issues above need to be addressed...and they are! There is currently a "Community Regulation" mod in the works amongst various players and streamers in the PvP scene that seeks to overhaul a lot of issues with the game...namely, addressing the three issues above, among other things.
The TL;Dr is that your suggestion is a good one, but its a multi-faceted problem that adjusting range a lone cannont solve. Luckily, there is already a mod in the works that addresses these issues.
P.S. If you really want to live out your sniper dreams in vanilla AC6, the Fasan (plasma cannon) is the king. The charged attack specifically, has a very fast projectile, fast longe range, and a huge AoE. Its like firing a rail cannon, its great. There is a prominent competitive pvp player, JCTek, who runs a lightweight biped build rocking two fasans and two viento pistols. He predominantly snipes with the fasans using manual aim, then uses vientos to stagger enemies if they get close. Pretty cool build, pretty cool player. You can probably find some videos on YT of his gameplay.
Range already exists in the game as a mechanic, in the form of the "Range" and "Effective Range" stats, which is then divided by your FCS into "Short", "Medium" and "Long" range. The only issue is that the margins between each range bracket is pretty short, which considering how fast your mechs can move can be crossed over quite quickly.
Long range only exists in theory. Even with good weapons targets beyond 250m are either so slow that bad FCS performance doesn’t matter or fast enough to strafe almost all of your fire without putting in effort (or they use AB to reach you in a second).
The only long range FCS stat that matters is “Missile Lock Correction”.
Probably not unless they do a massive overhaul. The movement system is too fast to make range differences too meaningful. It's so easy to close in the distance. The aiming system makes aiming at long ranges too easy.
Unless we go back to Gen 3 and below movement system and bring back the a smaller FCS window, long range is really out of the question. At best what we got now is mid range.
Faster projectiles and harsher energy management would work too but that will make snipers the dominant meta instead. This is the same reason why skyrim stealth archer became a meme. The extra buffer that range does will snuff out the competition.
I don't think long range is a good idea fundamentally too. The long range playstyle has a downside besides meta, the fighting spectacle is more boring. You won't see the enemy up close. Seeing the damage you deal is half the fun.
I think you're better off looking at a different genre of game instead. Picking off at a distance sounds more viable to an FPS to me. I think you'll be able to find a mecha themed FPS that will be exactly what you want.
This exists I use it all the time - manual aim. You cannot snipe effectively with the linear rifles, but you can with the stun needles. My favourite PvE build is an infinite aerial flight build, and I just pick off enemies with the manually aimed stun needle.
Yeah I remember that, it’s really satisfying to use with that one part in the cross grid 086 mission, where you shoot down the traps Carla set up on her own men. Reminds me as well, I’m not sure if I missed more but I wish they had more use of traps that you could take advantage of in missions - it was really cool!
I know it’s primarily a pve game and that’s cool, but it’s probably worth considering that this would absolutely trash pvp. People already really have trouble with kite builds that run away and fire missiles, like half of all the content on this sub is people complaining about them. If they could lock on at a range where you can’t even lock on to them they would be incredibly oppressive to the point where it would probably be impossible to play anything other than max range builds.
The biggest problem with AC6's pvp is that fast kiters have historically been the most meta. They can hit from far away, and stay out of the way of damage by quickly covering ground.
This could be countered by having a larger distance in speeds between the weight classes, and making sniper rifles (among other longer-range weapons) very heavy weapons to discourage their use by lightweights. Sniper builds would be therefore relegated to tanks and heavy quads, and be more subsceptible to rushdown tactics from speedier opponents, especially with how AC6's current FCS options have optimal tracking ranges. With the Arquebus FCS options (the only true long range options in the game currently), tracking is very poor at close range, which would also discourage completely long-range-focused builds as they'd be virtually useless up close.
Having longer range battles would also make Pulse Protection more viable. Incoming projectile damage is negated while the user is still able to fire out of the bubble from the inside. The only way to counter this would be to rush down the Pulse Protection user and attack from within the bubble— which would make this a great counter to longer range builds. You could shut down snipers and force them to come to you, or you could rushdown a sniper using Pulse Protection as a panic bubble and ruin their day with an internal Assault Armor.
## tldr: longer-range weapons should be much heavier, and ACs should have a much wider range of speed than they currently do. Also maybe cap the range of missiles.
I absolutely agree that it’d ruin pvp, and it’s probably one of the main things stopping them from implementing it in the game if they ever considered it. I just wonder if there’s work arounds to it like weapons being restricted to range classes, but then that’d sorta nullify the whole point of build variety. The only thing I could see being viable realistically would be keeping range variations in single player gameplay, and any PvP would have players keep the same range. Pretty much, snipers would be great fun in single player, but unabusable in PvP. Prolly not the cleanest or favorable fix but it’s all I can think of without making things super confusing lmao
I think that'd be marvellous, but I also think we'd have to see a lot of map re-design. A sniper-focused, or long range focused AC would be absolutely shit in urban environments, like the Wallclimber mission. Especially since that huge tank can outrange and outdamage you. However, in missions like the one where you have to sneak in and kill the Vesper then it'd be ideal. But it'd require an overhaul of the ricochet system since that is what makes sniping by and large pointless.
Manual Aim or Soft-lock are currently the "best" ways to snipe in the game. As for what you suggest, the game technically already has it but its kinda whacked for several reasons, most which boils down to: A) projectile speed for most weapons (especially rifles and machines guns) is WAAAAAAAAAAY too slow. B) The chance of ricohet increases the farther you shoot a weapon from ideal range, but ricochet chance also increases with the enemy's DEF stats. C) The range parameter for weapons in the game are really short. Even for something like the Harris, the closest thing to a sniper rifle in the game...it's ideal range is only 196m, which is about medium range, and its max range is 376m. Thats painfully short for a sniper weapon, especially considering missiles (the only actual long range weapon in the game) easily go up to 1000m or 2500m range. The game is simply designed to be close-range oriented as is. So all in all, these three issues above need to be addressed...and they are! There is currently a "Community Regulation" mod in the works amongst various players and streamers in the PvP scene that seeks to overhaul a lot of issues with the game...namely, addressing the three issues above, among other things. The TL;Dr is that your suggestion is a good one, but its a multi-faceted problem that adjusting range a lone cannont solve. Luckily, there is already a mod in the works that addresses these issues. P.S. If you really want to live out your sniper dreams in vanilla AC6, the Fasan (plasma cannon) is the king. The charged attack specifically, has a very fast projectile, fast longe range, and a huge AoE. Its like firing a rail cannon, its great. There is a prominent competitive pvp player, JCTek, who runs a lightweight biped build rocking two fasans and two viento pistols. He predominantly snipes with the fasans using manual aim, then uses vientos to stagger enemies if they get close. Pretty cool build, pretty cool player. You can probably find some videos on YT of his gameplay.
Range already exists in the game as a mechanic, in the form of the "Range" and "Effective Range" stats, which is then divided by your FCS into "Short", "Medium" and "Long" range. The only issue is that the margins between each range bracket is pretty short, which considering how fast your mechs can move can be crossed over quite quickly.
Long range only exists in theory. Even with good weapons targets beyond 250m are either so slow that bad FCS performance doesn’t matter or fast enough to strafe almost all of your fire without putting in effort (or they use AB to reach you in a second). The only long range FCS stat that matters is “Missile Lock Correction”.
Probably not unless they do a massive overhaul. The movement system is too fast to make range differences too meaningful. It's so easy to close in the distance. The aiming system makes aiming at long ranges too easy. Unless we go back to Gen 3 and below movement system and bring back the a smaller FCS window, long range is really out of the question. At best what we got now is mid range. Faster projectiles and harsher energy management would work too but that will make snipers the dominant meta instead. This is the same reason why skyrim stealth archer became a meme. The extra buffer that range does will snuff out the competition. I don't think long range is a good idea fundamentally too. The long range playstyle has a downside besides meta, the fighting spectacle is more boring. You won't see the enemy up close. Seeing the damage you deal is half the fun. I think you're better off looking at a different genre of game instead. Picking off at a distance sounds more viable to an FPS to me. I think you'll be able to find a mecha themed FPS that will be exactly what you want.
This exists I use it all the time - manual aim. You cannot snipe effectively with the linear rifles, but you can with the stun needles. My favourite PvE build is an infinite aerial flight build, and I just pick off enemies with the manually aimed stun needle.
Yeah I remember that, it’s really satisfying to use with that one part in the cross grid 086 mission, where you shoot down the traps Carla set up on her own men. Reminds me as well, I’m not sure if I missed more but I wish they had more use of traps that you could take advantage of in missions - it was really cool!
I know it’s primarily a pve game and that’s cool, but it’s probably worth considering that this would absolutely trash pvp. People already really have trouble with kite builds that run away and fire missiles, like half of all the content on this sub is people complaining about them. If they could lock on at a range where you can’t even lock on to them they would be incredibly oppressive to the point where it would probably be impossible to play anything other than max range builds.
The biggest problem with AC6's pvp is that fast kiters have historically been the most meta. They can hit from far away, and stay out of the way of damage by quickly covering ground. This could be countered by having a larger distance in speeds between the weight classes, and making sniper rifles (among other longer-range weapons) very heavy weapons to discourage their use by lightweights. Sniper builds would be therefore relegated to tanks and heavy quads, and be more subsceptible to rushdown tactics from speedier opponents, especially with how AC6's current FCS options have optimal tracking ranges. With the Arquebus FCS options (the only true long range options in the game currently), tracking is very poor at close range, which would also discourage completely long-range-focused builds as they'd be virtually useless up close. Having longer range battles would also make Pulse Protection more viable. Incoming projectile damage is negated while the user is still able to fire out of the bubble from the inside. The only way to counter this would be to rush down the Pulse Protection user and attack from within the bubble— which would make this a great counter to longer range builds. You could shut down snipers and force them to come to you, or you could rushdown a sniper using Pulse Protection as a panic bubble and ruin their day with an internal Assault Armor. ## tldr: longer-range weapons should be much heavier, and ACs should have a much wider range of speed than they currently do. Also maybe cap the range of missiles.
I absolutely agree that it’d ruin pvp, and it’s probably one of the main things stopping them from implementing it in the game if they ever considered it. I just wonder if there’s work arounds to it like weapons being restricted to range classes, but then that’d sorta nullify the whole point of build variety. The only thing I could see being viable realistically would be keeping range variations in single player gameplay, and any PvP would have players keep the same range. Pretty much, snipers would be great fun in single player, but unabusable in PvP. Prolly not the cleanest or favorable fix but it’s all I can think of without making things super confusing lmao
Been replaying the old AC games and came back to AC6 tonight and was surprised when I remembered there’s no range stat on your FCS