SPAWN BEACON THEFT!
So firstly, the issue with spawn beacons. It’s awesome that engineers ACTUALLY get points when friendly squads spawn on your beacon, however this makes valuable beacon positions rather… well… valuable. I also learned that you can easily destroy friendly spawn beacons with a melee bash. Add the two together, and you get this experience I had today. Spawned as engineer, go to a fairly typical position for me near that windmill strategic point, put down a spawn beacon in a pretty typical place for me which was clearly popular since squads kept spawning on it, I also put down two sandbag walls to protect it, and I went about finding a place to also put down an ammo crate since I generally always put down ammo crates when I put down spawn beacons.
While taking a few seconds to find a nice spot for the ammo, I noticed hammering sounds. It also seemed like the buzzing of the beacon had ceased. I go and look to my beacon, which was still there but was falling apart (it had been melee’d) and another engineer was JUST finishing their own beacon in the exact same place, right there within the sandbag walls I had placed. Well I wasted no time; I pulled out my M1 Garand or M2 Carbine and melee bashed HIS recon beacon and put mine back in its original place! I did notice, too, that much later in the match I was still getting point from it so the bugger hadn’t come back to do it again.
Therefore, I think that we need to make it so that no melee bashing or friendly explosions/gunfire can destroy a beacon, and can only be done manually. That said, I would also regard it as a friendly and helpful thing to do if someone bashed-out some beacons that were clearly too far away to be useful, with purely good intent, and ideally also for players who wouldn’t mind if their old beacon was destroyed. Thus, if an owner of a spawn beacon wouldn’t mind a friendly person destroying their beacon, maybe they could telepathically make it vulnerable to friendlies somehow, whether they bash it or hit ‘J.’ This way, while they want their beacon, friendlies can’t mess with it like with the scummy engineer I witnessed who wanted to steal my beacon points. So perhaps hit a key or double-tap a key and a message will pop up “Beacon Invulnerable to Friendlies” or “Beacon Vulnerable to Friendlies.” Seems like a reasonable method in which to avoid evil engineers stealing good beacon positions… ‘scummy’ really was the word that came to mind as it happened if I’m not mistaken. What a thing to do…
**DIFFERENCES BETWEEN M1 GARAND SNIPER **
AND M1903A1 SNIPER!
On the D-Day map I did as I often enjoy doing; sniping and reconnaissance. I was picking off enemies, including lots who were on stationary MG42s, with both a sniper who was kitted out with a fully-upgraded M1903A1 and a sniper with a basic-bitch M1 Garand Sniper that had no upgrades whatsoever. I’ve yet to personally upgrade an M1 Garand Sniper and all the ones I’ve been getting from drops have been non-upgraded. Anyhow, I can actually confirm as of today that on Enlisted, I can and have sniped at 300m and POSSIBLY 400m, but it’s not exactly something that is easily confirmed. At the farthest perceived distance I took the M1 Garand, it took two hits to put them down (luckily they were quite still) and I watched as they crawled away to heal up. They were in shadows, but I had an idea of where they are. I shot, and got a hit, but it didn’t finish the bugger off! I shot again, hit again, and he was done, so four shots with an M1 at roughly 300-400m, wow!
Of course with my upgraded M1903A1, I could do it with half as many hits. I also noticed, at least it seems to be the case, that the M1903A1 has a stronger magnification on its scope, but not only that, I THINK a larger viewing area within the scope as well. The M1 Garand Sniper, on the other hand, seems to have less magnification and also reveals less area. As for accuracy, out at about 300m or so, I could already perceive a very clear difference. Granted, the M1 Sniper isn’t upgraded and would be probably much-improved by upgrades, but as-is, I was finding that it seemed as though I had to hold higher to get hits, and I also was witnessing what I think was clear drifting both left and right. This was on a stationary target, in fact they were on an MG and was being quite politely still while I took pock shots at 'em. I did score the scatter hit, but I was missing a lot. I switched over to the M1903A1 and while I did have a tiny bit of trouble figuring out the hold, I could most certainly score hits more easily, and also of course since it does like 33% more damage than the M1 Sniper, it could kill more easily too.
Speaking of which, I looked at the distance-to-damage ratios and it seems as though the bolt-actions degrade slower in damage while the M1 (whether scoped or not) degrades more rapidly with distance. By the time you’re out to 400m, 12 damage becomes 5.4. With a non-scoped M1903, the damage drop is faster than a scoped M1903 variant. Non-scoped M1903 goes from 14 damage to 6.3 at 400, so I think the damage-drop mathematics used for the scoped and non-scoped M1 Garand is probably the same as non-scoped M1903 rifles, but the scoped M1903 rifles retain more of their damage of longer distances. Specifically, an un-modified and scoped M1903A1 goes from 14 to 10.6 damage, which is in excess of 50% greater than non-scoped M1903 counterparts. The tools are available to do the math and figure out how much velocity/energy is retained at different distances for different firearms, perhaps that mathematics should be utilized to judge damage so as to retain consistency. Besides, iron-sighted rifles CAN reach out to 300-400m, why nerf the damage to the point that by the time it reaches that distance, it’s comparable to 9mm or .45 at the muzzle?
115gr 9x19 with a muzzle velocity of 1300 ft/s comes out at 432 ft/lb of energy.
150gr M2 Ball .30-06 with a muzzle velocity of 2800 ft/s comes out at 2611 ft/lb.
At 300m, that M2 Ball drops to about 1550 ft/lb.
At 400m, it drops to about 1250 ft/lb.
It does not reach 432 ft/lb until about 950m.
In Enlisted, the .45 M3 does 8.2 damage at 10m and the 9mm STEN does 5.5 which is 0.1 damage more at 10m than the M1 Garand at 400m. So, if we’re to be realistic, then M2 Ball in the game should do about 6x as much damage as that since it deals out 6x as much energy at the muzzle. That, or weaken the SMGs down… that doesn’t seem like a reasonable solution though as you’d have to apparently dump a large chunk of a single magazine into someone to take them down. I guess this focus on ‘energy’ perhaps shouldn’t dictate damage, after all, shot placement matters more than energy. I’m just saying that a rifle round at 300/400m is still very much a rifle round, and ought not be comparable to pistol cartridges at or near the muzzle of an SMG.
In terms of gameplay though, having a semi-auto rifle that can fell an enemy with two shots out to 400m (which, really, how many people are ACTUALLY going to manage to reach farther than that unless it is a VERY still target), the might be a bit OP for someone who knows how to use it. As such, perhaps there SHOULD be noticably less accuracy with the semi-auto sniper rifles as opposed to the bolt-action. I’m also okay with there being slightly less damage even though that’s technically unrealistic and the semi-autos that use the same cartridge as bolt-actions, with the same or similar barrel length, should do the exact same damage. It makes it less punishing for people who use iron sighted bolt-actions. But dang… in terms of accuracy/distance, the scoped M1 Garand seems like total rubbish compared to the scoped M1903 rifles. Why? Requiring four hits on a target at about 400m, obviously they’d need to be still to get that many. I must have been doing so little damage that I managed the minimum to put them on all fours, and also was doing so little damage that I couldn’t finish him with just one more shot, needed a fourth. That, or in the darkness there, I actually hit one of his AI bots which means not all four shots were the same target. The first two were DEFINITELY the same target as he didn’t move. The third, in the shadows, I suppose might be left up for debate. the fourth shot, though, since it finished him, I imagine that must have surely been the same target as the first two but really I suspect that all four shots were needed to take him out.
So, firstly, if the M1 Garand sniper has more bullet drop than the M1903A1, or unscoped M1903 rifles, that needs to be rectified. The M1 Garand and all varieties should have essentially the same bullet drop as the M1903 and all varieties, save for the Pederson Device I suppose. Secondly, are we truly going to leave the damage-to-distance ratio so much better for the bolt-action than the semi-auto? The value of a semi-auto’s speed in and of itself is almost gone by the time you get out to 200m+ because you are required to re-align sights for each shot. Yeah the semi-auto will manage to shoot a little bit more quickly than the bolt-action but at a distance, it won’t be all that great an advantage, especially with an M1 Garand which fires a rifle cartridge and doesn’t have an in-line stock to help reduce muzzle climb.
Perhaps the recoil of scoped rifles, even when prone, is increased to make follow-up shots at a great distance take longer, but the damage of the scoped semi-auto rifles at a distance is likewise retained better just as the scoped bolt-action rifles at a distance is retained better than their non-scoped counterparts. If we’re going to regard the scoped semi-auto rifles as DMRs as opposed to scoped bolt-actions as proper sniper rifles made to be able to reach, even designated marksmen can manage 500m, actually I looked it up and it looks like the distance is more like 600m (660yd). In Enlisted, that’s very much the realm of scoped bolt-actions since at 1000yd (about 910m) they still do 7 damage, meaning 600m should be providing more than 7 damage, while the M1 Garand at 1000yd (910m) does only 1.4 damage so at 600m it’d be somewhere between 5.4 and 1.4, probably somewhere around 4 damage at 600m, which would probably require about 3 shots to put them on all fours and then another 2-3 shots to take them out, which is quite ridiculous. At 600m M2 Ball still got around 873 ft/lb of energy, which is almost exactly double the energy of 115gr 9mm at the muzzle.
Any proposed solutions to these issues? Spawn beacon theft by particularly-unpleasant ‘friendly’ engineers is DEFINITELY something that needs to be rectified, now that spawn beacon locations hold value and therefore will encourage thieves to steal them for themselves. As for semi-auto sniper rifles being nurfed so that skilled marksmen with a semi-auto sniper doesn’t pick off entire squads within seconds, that’s more up for debate. Do you perhaps think that the semi-auto snipers at about 300m+ or 400m+ should basically be relegated to only mildly wounding the enemy unless 3+ hits or headshots are managed? Can you see an alternative solution that I hadn’t thought about or considered in this lengthy post? Similar or differing experiences in sniping?
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