XM43E1

[joaopslima]

can someone explain that gun for me please
i’ve read the PR like 5 times and i don’t comprehend it

[Oh_God_Help_Me]

gun

[s5nt]

sniper but better

[I_love_loopers]

They made sniper cool

[Ingwe]

The old pmc amr gun

[Blue-Lou]

Anti material rifle(Barrett fifty cal)

[Steelpoint]

I am so fucking confused regarding this new weapon.

@Johannes2262
I think you are thinking of the Vulture sniper, a admin only weapon that works as you describe.

The XM43E1 is a different sniper that uses the sprite of the old old PMC sniper (I think). There are two PR’s up for the weapon but only one is being test merged.

I’m not going to pretend to understand how the XM works now as I think its gone through three different design iterations at this point. But, if I had to I think it currently works like this.

• The weapon uses an aimed shot mode like the regular sniper.
• The first aimed shot that hits 1 targets deals 50% less damage of the full damage potential of this weapon. The only exception are runners which get the full damage upfront.
• First aimed shot deals 50% of base damage, second shot deals 75% of base damage, third and all subsequent shots deal 100% damage. Damage ramp up is reset if you strike another target (I don’t know if it resets if you miss or if a certain amount of time elapses)
• Damage dealt is based on the type of xeno. Runners take the least damage, T3’s and the Queen take the most damage, every other xenos takes a middle grounds worth of damage. HOWEVER Defenders are unique in that they take 200 damage + 10% of their current health’s amount of damage. (maybe)
• Last I checked about two design iterations ago this was about 225 damage to Runners, 275 to most other xenos and 375 to T3s and the Queen. The gun has 50 AP as well so it ignores armour. This may be out of date
• It has (or had) a 4 second cooldown between aimed shots, this may be out of date

[N.H.C]

Its a sidegrade for the sniper. You lose the versatility you have with the M42A, and exhange it for potentially higher damage.

Like steelpoint said, it has a fancy mechanic where you “ramp up” if you keep hitting the same target with aimed shot. But if you take that away, the damage of it is very bad. The Pr even says it, without the ramp up its has lower DPS then the M42A. Really, its only a sligth diffrence but so bad normal shots arent really worth it.

One big balanching factor is also that you can’t buy more ammo for it via req. And i belive it should stay that way too. It makes each shot much more important. Helps giving you that classic sniper feeling where you wait for the perfect shot, instead of blasting away every chance you get.

I myself like it. It rewards players that can pick there target and punishes players that are too trigger happy. Of course it feels OP rigth now. But thats mostly because its a major new threat wich people need to get used to. Im pretty sure sooner then later xeno players will find a way to cheese it.
I personally would just go defender and make the sniper waste there bullets on me, being that they cant get more and all.

[Ingwe]

That’s the vulture you dumbass

[Backsea]

You can buy more ammo for it from req

[N.H.C]

oh shit they changed that? I honestly liked when you couldnt

[Wintermote]

From my experience playing sniper, the normal rifle is basically sitting around waiting for a xeno to overextend, and then trying to pop an aimed shot off to finish it during the overextension. With some utility with flak/incendiary. Practical experiences tells me, aimed shot is the only viable way to use it as the regular shots do completely ignorable amounts of damage for everything but edge-cases.

This new rifle plays into that further; instead of a fresh reset for every engagement, you’re picking one specific xeno and each hit ramps up - max damgae by the third shot.

For vacuum comparison, it will take 4 aimed shots with the regular sniper rifle to kill a praetorian, with this new rifle it will take 2 at max damage, but minimum 3 hits overall because it has to ramp up (with no healing between any shots). I’d expect the average target to take 4-8 hits overall.

From practical experience, you will get at most (95% of the time) 2 hits on a xeno before they duck into cover. Most of the time (>60%) you’ll only get 1 hit.

1 hit without stacks comparison:
Normal Rifle - 210 damage; Praetorian needs to be less than 33% hp to kill it
New Rifle - 187.5 damage; Praetorian needs to be less than 28% hp to kill it

1 hit with 1 prior hit comparison
Normal rifle - “”
New Rifle - 281.25 damage; Praetorian needs to be less than 43% hp to kill it

1 hit with 2 prior hits comparison
Normal rifle - “”
New rifle - 375 damage; Praetorian needs to be less than 57% hp to kill it

In other words, it’s more for targeting a specific xeno and either suppressing them, or killing them on their overextensions (or you could think of it as decreasing their viable exposure time/space). If you switch targets your stacks reset, so for any xeno that isn’t the current target, the sniper isn’t as dangerous anymore.

Presumably the stacks only accrue with aimed shots and only reset with aimed shots, so its viable to aimed shot Target A, then regular shot Target B - but without gaining or resetting stacks on A or B. When Target A pokes their head out, you can aimed shot them again with your stacks intact.

The counterplay strategy on the receiving end is to try and keep the sniper switching targets. If an aimed shot hits you, then instead of continuing to fight at that specific front, move off it to somewhere else, or else minimize exposure time and play more defensively so the sniper never gets a chance to aimed shot you again while you’re under 50% hp.

To me, it sounds like an overall upgrade on the sniper and better achieves what a sniper rifle should be doing. It’s main drawback however - which is less utility against non-primary target - seems too similar to the normal rifle in performance.

I haven’t played with it yet nor seen it in practice, but my gut instinct is that the damage on first hit is a little too high. I would try a value between 170 and 180 damage instead, so 46%, 47%, or 48% of full damage; maybe the best way to stat that is to reduce max damage to 360 rather than 375 so the 50% and 75% multipliers are nice whole numbers.

I expect that part of the balance problem here isn’t so much the damage the rifle is doing, but actually xeno players being caught by surprise on 2nd/3rd hits and not taking the stacking damage seriously yet.

Part of that issue is probably a lack of UX conveying effectively what’s happening. Who has stacks on them, how many, for how long? At a bare minimum there should be differentiation of some sort between the normal rifle aimed shot and the new rifle aimed shot. They have to be very distinct from each other in sound, impact, appearance, or w/e, so that the xeno player knows which one they’re dealing with, as it dramatically changes their strategy and behaviour going forward.

[Wintermote]

Gun got updated, my tl;dr is:

Could have been a cool gun; oh well.

Feedback:

• Wall penetration and wall damage should’ve been increased, not reduced

• 8 shots to destroy a single reinforced wall is absurd

• 3 shots to destroy a single regular wall is borderline

• It should be 4 hits and 2 respectively, this type of damage is almost genuinely cosmetic in actual effect, I don’t know why it even got nerfed

• 9 shots to destroy hive cluster is also absurd - and that’s without intervening walls so in practice it’s even more than that. Did people forget clusters can be rebuilt in not even 20 seconds?

• Ammo supply should increase with lower damage, not decrease. Resupplying sniper through the round is going from ~2 purchases, to ~4. Maybe even 5 as damage has gone down. That means something like $12,000 just to keep the XM43 supplied. Maybe approaching $20,000 if the sniper is just spitting shots everywhere. This is 2-4x more expensive than any other spec to keep supplied.

• Wall penetration has become essentially a cosmetic effect; damage and penetration is too low to be mechanically useful

• The only use-case where I think the XM43 has an advantage now is targeting a single specific T3 (no other type) with 2+ hits stacked up. Only in this case does it retain (barely) an advantage over the M42. In every other situation I believe you are better off with the M42.

Frankly, I’m not sure it would’ve ever been possible for this gun to be good, simply because an IFF high burst weapon secures kills, and because it secures kills, it’s what everyone who dies is going to gnash their teeth at. You see this issue throughout the entire marine arsenal: A LOT of sustained low damage weapons, almost nothing with high burst damage. Even the things you’d expect to have high burst damage - like grenades, are actually almost useless for damage.

c’est la vie, XM43. You had a good couple weeks but xeno’s have seen that it’s time for you to go.