(Mostly replying as I enjoy the discussion of mechanics - feel free to disregard as you know much more about the game than I).
Instant death! 15 damage is enough for one bullet to kill you with a headshot. Assault rifle users and commandos would be a nightmare. At most I'll increase the damage by 1.
So you mean a headshot would be a... lethal takedown?
It obviously has good realism credentials (getting shot in the head with a rifle is, I gather, usually pretty lethal, rifles are obviously stronger than pistols as per real life, etc.). I'm not sure it is that bad for gameplay: it means (unless you are on lots of ballistic protection/flak jackets) that angry soldiers shooting at you should be a nightmare, rather than rather than the current damage risk being sniper >> heavy weaps > minicrossbow > shotties(if close) > pistol >AR, and I think MJ12 commandos should be frightening in a straight fight. I suggest players should be very reluctant into getting into stand-up fights with military - they should either want to stealth them, find ways of spitting them up, work out an alpha strike that takes them out, or have such 1337 skilllz and a tanky build they can kill them quickly and weather any damage they take.
As for the damage value, I'd want an AR headshot to kill unhelmeted mobs on untrained, advanced ish to kill helmeted, and maybe master+other buffs to kill commandos. Obviously with sneak attacks etc. the players AR can deal uber fast ambush kill - but this seems no biggie as ambush kills on anything except MiBs is easy (on my run my tricked out stealth pistol would kill typical mobs wth 1-2 taps and commandos in 3, and planting those shots can happen way before they can respond). If it's a huge worry one can make the recoil even worse or contemplate making the silencer give a damage nerf.
As it stands, pistols seem much stronger than rifles. They're way stronger for alpha than the AR: hemi-competant plays will guarantee a first HS, which basically kills mobs modulo an easy followup shot, and silenced hitscan weapon after Liberty letting you pop heads relatively safely whilst an AR player has to wait to HK to do the same. They seem generally much more efficient for bullets:kill due to the higher per-shot damage, especially in stand up fights where the AR should come into its own. Apart from bullet cost they seem better than an AR anyway in a firefight - you need HS to kill, and pistols with lower recoil are generally much easier to do this. They probably win in terms of utility for other weapons in the class: cross bow gets more ammo and fires underwater, whist the added range for the SR is seldom used (tricked out pistols can snipe the commandos in the plaza from Paris start, and shoot troops across the wallcloud - the only time I really wanted more range was Vandenburg. Added to this, Rifles take 4x the inventory.
In summary, the 'workhorse' of the rifle class (AR) is one of the worst weapons in the game. PLz buff more.
Vanilla drops are randomized between 1-4 no matter the weapon. in v9.0 the assault rifle is now the exception, and drops 1-5, with additional odds that there will be more than 1 bullet.
People like
SymbolicFrank set in their Shifter mole-popping ways do not recognize the 1-4 drops are vanilla design and claim the mod is too "restrictive" as a result, which is fucking laughable as the mod increases gameplay depth and freedom substantially. It only restricts the few things that needed to be restricted, and then adds five times as much (balanced) freedom on top.
Yeah, I know it was in vanilla, but it still annoys me, despite the balance rationale. It also means gamely strats like farming crossbow opponents to shoot off their darts is good economics. (Maybe have a 'true realism' toggle than goes for more simmy stuff at the expense of game balance?)
Often a point made by players, yet weapon skills increase reload speed, damage and accuracy, and also come with perks which do things like reduce recoil and scope sway that cannot be overridden by laser.
Laser sights are rare, you get one in the beginning and no more 'till the superfrieghter (if I recall), and you have to remember to actually use it/turn it on. It doesn't override weapon skills, but it can come close if you are an effective player that always remembers to turn it on every time.
Hands off my laser sights.
You can get a second laser in the collapsed tunnels at HK, although you need to have invested in L3/4 aqua to do it and have a good way of messing up Karkians underwater. Yet most weapon classes would only ever need two, and the 1 LS at liberty is more than sufficient as you'll apply it to your main gun (e.g. AR, stealth pistol) which you'll be doing almost all the shooting with.
It is so OP because it gives you perfect accuracy, which is by far the most important thing given combat relies on getting headshots. Reload speed is pretty irrelevant as you need to reload less as you reliably headshot all the time, LS means I have never used the scope even at extreme range: even if you can't see the dot, you can just line up your reticule so it centered on the head and tap which is usullly better than negotiating the scope sway. Recoil and damage do matter more, but you do get plenty of mods to help with this, and at least for pistols the recoil is pretty mild anyway. I think most players who realize how good it is will reliably toggle it - I bound it to one of my mouse buttons so it became a reflex on draw.
The upshot is that LS is 'worth' at least advanced skill + several mods: I'd take untrained with a stealth pistol with laser over advanced with pistol with basically all the other +x mods applied and probably some levels of targetting too (as an aside, it also means you can run'n'gun quake style as you don't need to worry about reticule width). A single weapon mod, even a rare one, shouldn't be this good. A band-aid would be to replace the laser at liberty; a better treatment is some kind of nerf like jitter, sway, or something else.
I agree that if you have master lockpick/electronics with the '1 use per' perk you start having them in the vanilla quantities but isn't that the point? Why else would you invest so heavily in those skills.
Not to mention, you sacrifice a lot of potential power if you upgrade even one of those skills fully, perks and all.
I didn't get the 1 use per perk for either, 50% is good enough for those uber hard locks/keypads, as you can generally blow up/DTS/shoot the destructable ones. I agree it is a significant investment in xp (I still got both to master at around HK without even beelining - I still picked up advanced stealth, hacking ,etc.), but notwithstanding that the rewards are too great: the hard difficulty chests often almost pay for themselves as you often get a tool/lockpick with the loot, you end up with loads of medkits and biocells which buff everything else, not to mention the weapon mods and aug canisters. At lower skill levels going for one of these chests is a major investment - at master, you can just pick them all up.
It means lockpick and electronics are the strongest skills in the game, principally because you can use the excess loot to more than compensate for the skills you lost out on: LS means you can be highly effective even at trained or untrained with guns, combat strength can substitute for lowtech weapons (although you tend to use them for sneak anyway, as I doubt you can survive on high difficulty with a style of running up to someone with the DTS), trained athletics +l4 aqua is sufficient to do the collapsed tunnel and ergo all the aquatic challenges in the game (even with master athletics you'd need Aqua or a lot of rebreathers), all the consumeables (tech googles, rebreather, etc.) can be substitued with appropiate augs. Sure, this does constrain your build, but on my runthrough I could do basically everything in the game with the possible exception of some of the environmental hazards (but even then, regen + chomping medkits can get you quite far).
Not a bug. Vanilla design. The cameras outside the base proper? We'll you've not trespassed at that point. At least I assume that's the Ion Storm logic behind it.
Yeah, I can understand outside the base. A couple on the exterior (but beyond the fence) seemed to sweep over me without alerting - maybe just surprisingly narrow FOV - I'll see if I can dredge up a save to confirm.
