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[S1mancoder]

This is a part of upcoming sneak rework concept I was working on and those changes will probably be in game in few weeks. I'm posting it here to hear some thoughts from people who played sneak for long time, since my experience as a sneaker is quite limited. We discussed that suggestion with balance team and it seem to be legit in our opinions.

1. How sneak skill is defined?

Base sneak skill equals to character_sneak_skill - 50, so its 150 for 200 skill character.
Then it is modified for:

- armors:
Leather Jacket +30
CLJ, CLC: +20
Leather Mk2, FLA: +10

-conditions:
stealthboy Ghost perk if you're next to wall: +20
stealthboy Silent Walk perk if you're walking: +20

-character perks:
New character perk for 18-24 lvl - Shadow, giving +30 sneak skill for sneak calculations

After that skill is reduced by weight penalty, which is a skill multiplier for each carryweight calculated as:
1 - 0.98
2 - 0.97
3 - 0.96
4 - 0.95
5 or more: (100 - carryweight^1.1) / 100

Here is the spreadsheet for quick refrence:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Well, lets look at some examples:
1) Light sneaker: 200 skill, CLJ, 10 weight, Shadow perk: 150 (skill) + 20 (CLJ) + 30 (Shadow) = 200 base, multiplying for 10 weight: 200 * 0.87 = 174 final sneak value.
2) Heavy combat sneaker: 200 skill, CA, 25 weight: 150 (skill) = 150 base, multiplying for 25 weight: 150 * 0.66 = 99 final sneak value.
3) Medium weight combat sneaker: 200 skill, FLA, 20 weight, Shadow perk: 150 (skill) + 10 (FLA) + 30 (Shadow) = 190 base, multiplying for 20 weight: 190 * 0.73 = 138 final sneak value.
4) Sneakest waki user: 200 skill, LJ, 5 weight, Shadow perk: 150 (skill) + 30 (LJ) + 30 (Shadow) = 210 base, multiplying for 5 weight: 210 * 0.94 = 197 final sneak value.


2. How detection range is determined

Front detection for 150 sneak value is calculated as sightrange^0.6 * 2, here is the examples for specific sightrange:
- 39 sightrange: 18 hexes;
- 50 sightrange: 20 hexes;
- 75 sightrange: 26 hexes;
- 100 sightrange: 31 hexes;
- 130 sightrange: 37 hexes.

For any given sneak value detection range is calculated as (sightrange^0.6 * 2) * 150 / sneak_value ; so it is scaled from a base value of 150 in indirect proportion.

For above examples 1-4 of sneak value calculation lets check detection ranges for sightranges 39, 66 and 130:

1) Light sneaker 174 sneak value:
- 39 sightrange: 15 hexes
- 66 sightrange: 21 hexes;
- 130 sightrange: 31 hexes.

2) Heavy combat sneaker 99 sneak value:
- 39 sightrange: 27 hexes
- 66 sightrange: 37 hexes;
- 130 sightrange: 56 hexes.

3) Medium weight combat sneaker 138 sneak value:
- 39 sightrange: 19 hexes;
- 66 sightrange: 26 hexes;
- 130 sightrange: 40 hexes.

4) Sneakest waki user 197 sneak value:
- 39 sightrange: 13 hexes;
- 66 sightrange: 18 hexes;
- 130 sightrange: 28 hexes.


Some additions I forgot to add initially:
- System above implying comeback of sneak bypass penalty, which will be based on your skill value: the higher the skill the severe the bypass. It will be needed to add some drawbacks to rolling sneak all time on any combat character.
- Sneak bonus from armors will be reflected in new armor trait Stealthy giving +10 to skill per level.
- Battery capacity planned to be 30 minutes * weight_multiplier, so about 15 minutes at 30 weight and about 30 minutes at 1-10 weight.
- Stealthboy warmode planned with separate hotkey and next effect: -30% sightrange, +15% sneak, no battery drain change.
- At first simple stealth/reveal system to be used, then probaly will be suggested more elaborate system based not on reveal time but on dynamic change of sneak value.

[RazorRamon]

edit: its weird shit


i still think most of these changes favor boring snek snipe and nerf the fun

[SnowCrash]

Good to see more sneak rework in progress

Thinks i dont like at first sight:
-Leather jacket giving better bonus than higher tier versions.
This favor all or nothing behaviour, take leather armor a waki and stealth boy and go try to kill some bastards, you dont have much to lose…
I get the point of having lesser resistances while better sneak bonus, but i suggest to instead of lower tier armor have better sneak, to make a new T3 jacket that have better sneak bonus while less resistances than CLC

-Same problem comes from using weight as a penalty: the less thing you bring to combat better you will be.
I understand this have lot of purposes like avoid sneak looters and limit potential of sneak chars. But also makes more profitable to go PvP with a low equipment value.
For now, and to not complicate things too much, weight its fine to determine penalty, but would be more easy to balance if each item have a stealth value that is used for sneak penalty instead of weight, so you can balance certain drugs and support items to be allowed for sneakers with lower penalty while make other items almost forbidden (like less penalty for stun grenades but higher for plasma ones)

-Sneak detection related to sight range instead of PE
Is easy to have high sight value without much sacrifice, even for low PE characters. Maybe make a combination of both so detection range is affected by PE and Sight range. i.e: sight / 2-(PE*0.1)

-Armor by pass penalty: this is a form to cut sneak survivability. But the greater penalty comes to close/melee sneaker as they need more sneak value and also are more exposed to enemy fire.
I would understand it as a form to cut down heavy armors resistances, but in the end lesser armors will get even less resistance...
Imo it will be better to not allow at all combat and metal armors to be used with stealth boys (or make harsher penalties for those armors)

Things i like:
-Wartime drawback: involves decision making and makes close combat builds to lose some scout capabilities helping differentiate sneak roles
-Sneak bonus for armors (helps against blue suit sneakers)
-More specialized sneak perk(s): will make sneakers have to lose something (other important perks) to be effective


What i would suggest:
Armors
-Sneak mostly limited to jackets and leather armors. (help reducing tankiness of sneakers)
-Better sneak bonus for higher tier armors. May be with addition of new tier 3 armors to help balancing resistances and sneak bonus (increase value of sneak gear)
-No bypass penalty: balance those new armors if want to cut resistances

Harsher penalties for non silenced weapons
-Sneak reduction based on weapon type (something like now, harsher penalties for rifles and two handed weapons) so rifle users will need to compensate the sneak reduction with silent walking and ghost perks (limits mobility and survivability)

What this try to accomplish:
-More value on sneak gear (not to much, but at least tier 3 armors will be used more)
-Long range sneakers usable but with limited mobility and survivability
-Close combat sneakers with reduced detection capabilities (wartimer)
-Scout sneakers with mobility and scouting capabilities but no combat potential at long range (need to activate wartimer to engage with a silent weapon)

[Count Matthew]

Here is my sneak suggestion: I will note that I firmly believe that sneaking was fine when it has its wartime mode activation. It was definitely an issue with the weapons for sneakers and their stats.

I also believe firmly with the idea that sneakers should never have been able to kill people one vs one because why were people going to the core by themselves?

Finally, if there is another season. Sneak should be available around tier 5 tech progression. So people cant complain it killed the server in the first week.

Nerf every single weapon that makes sneak viable for combat.

This ensures that the sneak never can ever win in a 1v1 fight. (Unless it's other sneaks).

Introduce more support items. This already includes  soflam, but maybe include more things like a light smoke nade pistol, dart gun, crossbow, even trip wire traps!

Keep sneak fun. But completely remove it as a combat character.

[S1mancoder]

Thinks i dont like at first sight:
-Leather jacket giving better bonus than higher tier versions.

Well, armors balance is a different part of a concept and overall it is work in progress and at the moment looks like:

Spoiler for Hiden:

I agree that now all armors for sneaks are kind of sidegrades instead of straight tier upgrades, but lets leave economic/tiering questions for now - this part of sneak is going to be changed later.

-Same problem comes from using weight as a penalty: the less thing you bring to combat better you will be.

Well, as I said economic side will be also rewoked on top of that, the least we have to work with is a stealthboy price.

-Armor by pass penalty: this is a form to cut sneak survivability. But the greater penalty comes to close/melee sneaker as they need more sneak value and also are more exposed to enemy fire.

This is a difficult question indeed. At the moment even sneak leathers are more than enough to survive return fire and shoot back, so even if you react to sneaker in time (after he has 1-2 attacks on you) you will still be at disadvantage. We have bypass resistance and armor efficiency perks to decrease that bypass penalty, if it will be too harsh we will change its mechanics to make it less harsh.


Among things you suggested there is a planned mechanic to make non-silenced weapons have longer resneak time after you shoot it compared to all other resneak time. Sneaking in heavy armors now is one of the core parts of concept so unlikely to be removed.

P. S.

Nerf every single weapon that makes sneak viable for combat.

I doubt if I could answer it seriously.

[RazorRamon]

P. S.

Nerf every single weapon that makes sneak viable for combat.

I doubt if I could answer it seriously.

No need to take him serious

Count matthew is the original "I want everything i'm not using anymore nerfed!" turncoat. So whenever he chimes in for balance reasons just skip the post

[Count Matthew]

P. S.

Nerf every single weapon that makes sneak viable for combat.

I doubt if I could answer it seriously.

No need to take him serious

Count matthew is the original "I want everything i'm not using anymore nerfed!" turncoat. So whenever he chimes in for balance reasons just skip the post

I play sneak a lot actually. Maybe 50% of my time on AoP currently.

You See Ramon, I'm more objective about things than you are. I try everything and then give my opinion.

[SnowCrash]

So, it looks like every leather armor will have different purposes.
LJ: looks good for scouts and long range sneakers (while also for close sneakers)
CJ: good for hit and run or chase fleeing enemies
CLC: good for spammers
I like that. Tier and price can be adjusted latter as you said.

Sneaking in heavy armors now is one of the core parts of concept so unlikely to be removed.

I get the intention of make sneak usable by every char (compatible with most armors) as is a support skill and should be an option for most builds (like FA, throwing, and the other support skills).
But what i feel is that the way it works now will end or either having a little impact on no dedicated sneakers (and only used by rich factions to get small advantage), or either making everyone want to use stealth boys due to the bonus. While the second not being necessarily bad, It will be hard to balance and may end making things mandatory to not be in disadvantage (like having high sight to detect enemy first, and have to always use stealth boys to remain competitive)

But i cant talk too much until test those changes.

Another option that i have in mind:
-Only allow jacket sneakers to be full time cloaked (kind of like now)
-Every other armor can use sneak, but for a limited amount of time and with a cooldown on where they can sneak again.
So lets say leather armor can cloak for 60 seconds with a 30 seconds cooldown
And metal/combat can cloak for 15/20 seconds with a 120 seconds cooldown

So every char can use sneak and get a bonus. For heavy armors it will be used as a temporary bonus useful to change positions/escape/safe deploy/get the first shot from long range/rush for melee chars.
Leather can be hybrid scout having temporary scouting capabilities, long range combatant (more cloaked time for positioning and snipe) or even melee assassin that has to act quickly to not get revealed in a bad spot
While leather will remain dedicated scout/ninja/stealth sniper

So even if you dont have high sight (or others ways to counter sneak) there is still a vulnerability period against non dedicated sneakers.
And will be easy to remove/rework penalties like armor bypass as the sneak bonus becomes situational

[Weasel]

'' Sneaking in heavy armors now is one of the core parts of concept so unlikely to be removed.''
Seriously? Like.....SERIOUSLY?
Heavy Sneaker in CA id see him at 56 hexes if i somehow had 130 sight range?!? How can you even think that's legit? Why is there other templates? Why is this not called Sneakers Online? Why the fuck am i bothering making dif templates, if it's one sneaker to rule them all?

I totally agree with Mathew here: what SHOULD have been done was nerf the sneakers something fierce, by entirely removing their sneak-perks on weapons and other insane stuff that just makes them able to murder anyone 1vs1.

There was a Poll about sneakers: They should be Recon, not Ninja Assasins. Only question that remains is traps or no traps, but 80%+ do not want to see them as pvp chars.

So as i said before: If a heavy sneaker in CA can just walk up to my sniper's range and start shooting me first....what's the point?

[S1mancoder]

So as i said before: If a heavy sneaker in CA can just walk up to my sniper's range and start shooting me first....what's the point?

Shoot him back while he is under desneak penalty of 5 seconds, that will increase damage on him by 20-150% dependant on weapon and his bypass resistance.

[Weasel]

How about not giving free sneaker perks to everyone then? How about sneaker having to actually take those perks as part of their templates? It would make sense and rebalance things at least a little bit: If the sneakers need to take silent running and i.e. ghost perks as part of their 8 perks it already cuts-back on the murder-perks.

Sneakers should be a a template by themselves, not just ''anyone who tagged the skill'' otherwise everyone goes Weapon skill, FA, Sneak +bunch of Combat-Perks.

You could make sneaking more dependant on char perks, instead of giving a bunch of free item perks.
For example: Silent Attack, you could need to get the char perk in order to unlock silent attacks on all weapons that have it. Pretty much like you need the Rambo(?) Perk to move around with a deployed weapon right now/A perk is needed to fully use the BG skill.

**Also extra question: That 56 hex i would spot heavy sneaker in, does that factor the -6 to min detection range from just wearing a stealthboy?**

[RazorRamon]

Ok Weasel lets add those perks

And add heavy armor training perk to be able to use combat and metal armor, untrained person shouldnt be able to run in them ;^)

[IIKM-enotsneknarF]

Here is my sneak suggestion: I will note that I firmly believe that sneaking was fine when it has its wartime mode activation. It was definitely an issue with the weapons for sneakers and their stats.

I also believe firmly with the idea that sneakers should never have been able to kill people one vs one because why were people going to the core by themselves?

Finally, if there is another season. Sneak should be available around tier 5 tech progression. So people cant complain it killed the server in the first week.

Nerf every single weapon that makes sneak viable for combat.

This ensures that the sneak never can ever win in a 1v1 fight. (Unless it's other sneaks).

Introduce more support items. This already includes  soflam, but maybe include more things like a light smoke nade pistol, dart gun, crossbow, even trip wire traps!

Keep sneak fun. But completely remove it as a combat character.

Well said. At least another player that same ideal as me.

Sneak was fine with Wartime Engage and having to put SB in inventory. All devs needed to do is change what weapons sneaks can use. why I suggested to add this trait called "concealment" which are weapons sneakers CAN sneak with. I'm not sure how a crossbow or dart gun can be a support item....but having sneak utilitys would probably be nice....like I've said before, they should use traps since John even told me they have no idea what to do with traps.

Instead Snowcrash and now simman wants to make sneaking into some complicated shit which is like  fuck you guys on nigga. As ramon said, these changes they've suggested is just keeping sneakers into they're annoying, backstabbing nuisance status which is what ruins PvP.

Here's how I wish sneakers were...but of course devs will only listen to s1man 

• Bring back wartime engage and old sneaking mechanics (SB perks unneeded)
• Add new trait called Concealment, weapons you can sneak with. Anything else you immediately desneak. Having in 2nd hand = desneak
• Makes traps craftable, buyable, armable from inventory. If player attempts to place 2 on 1 hex, he'll blow up or cripple himself.
• VS-50 Mine : A small, anti-personnel mine that is  lightweight, and use to cripple enemies. This way if a sneak can predict enemy movement, he can place mines to prevent their escape while your team catches up to him. These are just mean't to severely cripple, not do 200 dmg. Inventory Picture
• How can players avoid traps? High perception and traps skill. just this alone makes traps visible from 3-6 hexes. Rework Evil Scientist so that Perception no longer can help players spot traps and now need high traps skill. Also 50% chance to activate the trap if someone attempts to disarm
• Door Charge & Door Glue, reduce weight of these items so sneakers can use them. I belive they're currently too heavy and no one ever uses these
• Gravitron Mine - Knocksbacks and KO's whoever steps on it from the direction they're coming from. Does no damage.
• To prevent total mine spam, traps need a 1 hex space to be able to place another one.
• Door Reincorcement - Locks the door and increases HP by 2000. Can be shot down or blown up with door charge.
• What weapons can sneaks use? - Soflam to spot enemies, Throwing knives for sneak vs. sneak battles. Of course this won't immediately kill sneaks so no more whoever gets the first shot off wins.

Now sneaking will serve as a reconnaissance role for PvP teams will attempts to disrupt enemy's in battle. Imagine this scenario. V-Tec is camping the infamous south building in Enterprise and I spot them while scouting. Family enters and engages them. I go around and reinforce and lock both south doors while I go trap the exit to global electrics. Family is winning the engagement so V-Tec attempts to fall back. They get greeted with both locked doors so they move to the right, causing more of them to die. They hit my VS-50 Mines which they are now crippled while family rushes them. V-tec attempts to due a last stand, killing a few family members but lost that battle. Now this doesn't overhaul the entire sneaking shit.

[Weasel]

Ok Weasel lets add those perks

And add heavy armor training perk to be able to use combat and metal armor, untrained person shouldnt be able to run in them ;^)

Make that a perk to be able to use Power Armors and i would agree hehe.

[RazorRamon]

stalkur wall of text

let's see how the snek court has decided about your suggestions:

Spoiler for Hiden:

no lol!


(leave traps out of this, they should be for everyone)

[IIKM-enotsneknarF]

stalkur wall of text

let's see how the snek court has decided about your suggestions:

Spoiler for Hiden:

no lol!


(leave traps out of this, they should be for everyone)

Of course they can be used by everyone. But they're going to be seen by sneakers/other players, reavealing their locations of their traps.

But nigga plz, all you want is to be able to backstab players at 60HP and sneaking is OK for you.

[Count Matthew]

S1man, regarding nerfing sneak weapons - why can't you be serious?

Are you privy to the direction this server is making in terms of sneaking, does sneaking have to be always combat based? IDK

[Caboose]

Make sneak as OP as you like, but add a device that desneaks everyone that is sneaked for a period oif time. Either something to place on the map or something to carry with you. Obviously something very expensive or with a large cooldown.

Obviously sneak power is relative to server population size and therefore battle size. Changes you make to sneak while server is quiet, maybe won't work so well when we have 20v20 again.

Recon sneaks I have no problem with, but 3 sneaks rekting 3 tank builds 3v3 is absurd.

Instead of nerfing sneak, just give us more ways to combat them.

[S1mancoder]

S1man, regarding nerfing sneak weapons - why can't you be serious?

You said EVERY SINGLE weapon, not sneak weapons, thats why.

Well, generally Caboose is right about there are going to be like a few more ways to fight sneks in the future (flares, thermal vision?), but probably not very soon.

I generally dont like STALKER's idea about prohibiting sneak with nonsneak weapons, but adding more support role to sneak is one of the desired directions of development, and there are some plans on it already.

[Count Matthew]

Use a shotgun