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[Glave]

What is sneak?



Quiet movement, and the ability to remain unnoticed. If successful, you will be much harder to locate.
-Quote from Fallout wiki

What sneak is supposed to be?

A skill allowing players to scout an area, plan their attacks carefully and make decisions adequate to the enemy's behaviour. It's also supposed to put a player out of harm's way, should he succeed to vanish from the pursuiting opposition's eyesight.

What is sneak right now?

Sneak right now is too multi-purpose. The scenario below is a bit complicated, but it should provide a brief explantation to the problem:

Two gangs are fighting each other, with, let's say five men each. Gang A has a team consisted only of snipers (10 perception plus sharpshooter, view range of 56), whileas Gang B has a team of psycho addicts(1 perception, view range of 23). Both gangs lose a member. Snipers are formed in a line, psychos are engaging them in close combat(5 hexes away from them). Gang A's member corpse is lying right next to the formed line, gang B's member corpse is lying 3 hexes away from the rest of the team, behind them. Here's what a single sneaker is able to do:

a)He/she will loot the Gang B's psycho that has fallen first in battle, knowing that snipers might see him as they will be facing his side, but they will be unable to react due to the offense leaded by close-quarter Gang B;
b)With a bit of luck, there will be only one, two players left on the battlefield and because there is no good protection against plasma damage except for Tesla Armor, he will finish off the remaining players and loot safely.
c)Because of psycho's damage resistance, Gang B will surely beat Gang A, which is very beneficial for the sneaker, as players with 1 PE(damaged by psycho's negative effect) are unable to detect a sneaking character from more than 3 hexes, allowing him/her to loot safely and fall back into the world map.

Gang B sobs, as there are no spoils of battle, even though they won(maybe except for armors, depending on the carry weight of the sneaking character)

Nerfing sneak.

First of all, it's very tedious that players aren't having their sneak broken by simple actions, such as looting a corpse, opening a door, providing first aid etc. Sneak is an ability that should allow players to MOVE unnoticed, not act completely in stealth. Thus, any actions taken while in sneak disable this mode

Secondly, running in sneak towards a player just to burst him with a big gun from 1 hex away is not the way to go. Players breaking their sneak mode should suffer from a 15 second cooldown for this skill, as well as negative action points(same as when a knockout or knockdown occurs), rendering them unable to take action for a certain duration.
An example of action point penalty shown below.


This would enforce players to leave sneak behind some cover, inside buildings and then take action, instead of instantly jumping into fights and looting.

Thirdly, the minimum detection range should have a formula of it's own. There are situations in which you cannot see a sneaker in a 5x5 room, while having a character with 10 PE. The new formula should be as follows:

( 20 + 3*PE ) \ 7, rounded down

thus giving a player with 1 PE the current range of 3 hexes, whileas snipers with a view range of 56 would detect sneak at the range of 8 hexes.

Please, keep in mind that the numbers are just an example. They are not reflecting exactly how it would look in the game, as it would be a matter of balance, but as of now, the values above seem to be a good way to prevent sneak from giving players invisibility.

Every comment is taken into consideration for reworking my idea, so don't be afraid to post your thoughts!

[LagMaster]

i am in from detection of sneaky caracters, like in FT, but not for any penalty in sneak

[eBay]

as Solar said he has a sneak char and he likes to use it, and dont call it sneak, this is magic ...

[Glave]

Yeah. As of now, sneak is the invisibility spell.

[Rejfyl]

I agree that sneak should be reworked so we can avoid situation, when some characters are invisible while standing in an open field. UP

[Floodnik]

Sneak should work like that:
Sneaker should be mostly seen when he is in front or front-sides of a person, he could only hide when being behind an obstacle or at huge distance.
But when the sneaker is on back(-sides), he shouldn't be seen at all! So you could actually sneak close to your enemy and inflict a deadly blow. More realism, more tactics and thinking, more fun

[Glave]

Upping the discussion since a fix to sneak should be prioritized.

[Sius]

In ideal world sneak would work as it works now (or even better) for unarmed/mele chars, so they would be able to use Silent Death perk (mainly at night) and do some serious damage to SG snipers or BG rocket/miniguners. The way I see it sneaked mele ninja should be able to hit'n'run and he should be snipers nightmare. Also rocket/grenade builds should be afraid of sneaked mele guy since their attacks are AoE ergo they hurt themselves too if they attack such guy when he is too close to them. Anyway burst build should be sneaked mele guys nemesis because close range=a lot of bullets in his chest.
BUT sneak should not work this way for other builds like miniguners. For other builds it should be as you described it. A tool to scout the area, do some recon and then strike with full power or if necessary hide a bit.


But I'm kinda out of ideas how to achieve this.

[RavenousRat]

The way I see it sneaked mele ninja should be able to hit'n'run and he should be snipers nightmare.

Point blank burst will be always better than any melee/unarmed attack, only if they implement jedi lightsaber, so ninjas with combat knives sneaking to thier victims to stab them will work worst than ninjas with P90C's sneaking to thier victims to burst them.
Only if there will be silent weapons such needler and all unarmed and melee except for ripper won't make you visible after attack, then you can call them ninjas, but it will be way to unbalanced to shoot someone's eyes from needler and then shout "Ha ha ha" over all town and they won't see you, then needler removed from silent weapons, so all unarmed and melee weapon will be silent, but still it'll be permanent invisibility spell and you'll act like dark templar from star craft... hmm new PvP-melee class?
So melee and unarmed won't work good unless it won't break sneak, as you can see this suggestion about removing all APs to make sneak works only to move and nothing more to prevent from stealing objects from field. So I may only suggest to get small limit of weight which won't give penalty to your carry weight at all, it'll be X (insert here number equal to Weight of Combat Knife+Weight of Leather Jacket+Little bonus for carrying something light) so X=0,9+3=~4+little bonus of 1=5 or 4.9, if your carry weight =<5 you have no penality to sneak, if >5 every 1 of weight will give you like -15% to your sneak skill, and if you carry more than 15 weight, you can't use skill at all.
Weight of plasma/frag grenade = 0.45 = ~0.5 if you're naked you can carry 5/0.5=10 or 11 grenades, 12th and next grenades will reduce your skill on 15%, leather jacket weight is 3, it's 11-6=5 grenades to be without penalty.
P90C's weight is 3.6 x24 10mm AP weight 0.432 = ~4 +0.4 for every other clip for gun. Naked with p90c and some rounds can still run without penalty.
LSW's weight is 9, it (9-5)x15=60% penalty already + 0.54 weight of every 30 .223 ammo so it's half for 15% penalty, so it'll be like 75% for LSW + 60 .223
Minigun is 12.7 = ~13 weight + 0.96 for every 120 5mm AP, so minigun + x1 clip = ~14 weight, it's 135% penalty... it's alot.
Picking up miniguns and LSWs from dead bodies of your friends will make you partly visible 'cause of big penalty to sneak skill, picking up alot stuff to have total >15 carry weight will remove you sneak skill at all, so you'll be totally visible.
That's all I can suggest.

[z0m2h14]

give sneakers penalty for holding weapon in hands, like 40-50% for BG/EW, 20-30% for smg/rifles, 10-20% for pistols, 10% for grenades (for each grenade in hands, lol , and half penalty for inactive slot (second hand)

[RavenousRat]

give sneakers penalty for holding weapon in hands, like 40-50% for BG/EW, 20-30% for smg/rifles, 10-20% for pistols, 10% for grenades (for each grenade in hands, lol , and half penalty for inactive slot (second hand)

Simple make weight impact much more than it's now, don't need to do something with BG or weapon or anything else at all in hands or other places of body.
Right now you can run with 2 miniguns and BA in inventory and have only -39% to your sneak. It looks like a joke.

[Sius]

Simple make weight impact much more than it's now, don't need to do something with BG or weapon or anything else at all in hands or other places of body.
Right now you can run with 2 miniguns and BA in inventory and have only -39% to your sneak. It looks like a joke.

Weight penalty sux and solves nothing. On the other side penalties for active slot seems much more viable solution. Also it could still make sneaking possible even for regular fight snipers or big gunners since they could keep weapons in inventory and equip them later.

Definitely way better combat solution than increasing weight penalties.

[eBay]

lets think about it, how can someone sneak in the middle of a street? how can someoen sneak with 2 avengers and armors in his inventory? how can someone sneak 3 hexes from another guy and open fire ? how can someone loot stuff in the middle of a street ?
atm sneak is magic, must be nerfed and it must be done now, no loot, no weapon, huge penalties for weight,

[RavenousRat]

Weight penalty sux and solves nothing.

So I may only suggest to get small limit of weight which won't give penalty to your carry weight at all, it'll be X (insert here number equal to Weight of Combat Knife+Weight of Leather Jacket+Little bonus for carrying something light) so X=0,9+3=~4+little bonus of 1=5 or 4.9, if your carry weight =<5 you have no penality to sneak, if >5 every 1 of weight will give you like -15% to your sneak skill, and if you carry more than 15 weight, you can't use skill at all.
Weight of plasma/frag grenade = 0.45 = ~0.5 if you're naked you can carry 5/0.5=10 or 11 grenades, 12th and next grenades will reduce your skill on 15%, leather jacket weight is 3, it's 11-6=5 grenades to be without penalty.
P90C's weight is 3.6 x24 10mm AP weight 0.432 = ~4 +0.4 for every other clip for gun. Naked with p90c and some rounds can still run without penalty.
LSW's weight is 9, it (9-5)x15=60% penalty already + 0.54 weight of every 30 .223 ammo so it's half for 15% penalty, so it'll be like 75% for LSW + 60 .223
Minigun is 12.7 = ~13 weight + 0.96 for every 120 5mm AP, so minigun + x1 clip = ~14 weight, it's 135% penalty... it's alot.
Picking up miniguns and LSWs from dead bodies of your friends will make you partly visible 'cause of big penalty to sneak skill, picking up alot stuff to have total >15 carry weight will remove you sneak skill at all, so you'll be totally visible.

If say in short:
=<5 carry weight: your sneak skill = your sneak skill, you have no penalties, you can carry melee weapon and even jacket, you can carry grenades, pistol, smg, even rifle and have room for ammo to run with 0% penalty.
>5 && =<15 carry weight: every 1 weight after 5 will decrease sneak on 15%, you'll have little (for 330% sneak) penalty with LSW and some ammo, slight penalty for minigun. If you use jacket+hunting rifle+~40 .223 ammo you'll have penalty of ~30% to your sneak, it's not that much, if you're in bluesuit, then you'll not suffer penalty at all, because your carry weight will be less than 5.
>15 carry weight: your sneak disabled, picking up few miniguns, sniper/laser rifles and metal armor from dead bodies and then run without being noticed?
With this system you still can use grenades, rifles and even LSW, you'll not bother exploiting your main hand slots by equiping and unequiping items when need, you simply will not carry items which can supply an army of people in inventory and being unnoticed at the same time. And you still can be invisible with most x1 weapon (not few more weapons in inventory) and ammo for it.
P.S. Also leather jacket should give bonus to sneak to partly or totally negate it's weight, and if you use jacket and have less than 5 carry weight (jacket has 3 itself) it should improve your sneak with this little bonus beyond 300%, because it's not serious to see bluesuiters-only in sneak with this system.

[Sius]

lets think about it, how can someone sneak in the middle of a street? how can someoen sneak with 2 avengers and armors in his inventory? how can someone sneak 3 hexes from another guy and open fire ? how can someone loot stuff in the middle of a street ?
atm sneak is magic, must be nerfed and it must be done now, no loot, no weapon, huge penalties for weight,

How can someone survive 10 hits in the head with sledge hammer?

Its game not reality and mele chars should have their place in combat too and sneak seems like the best way how to achieve that.

2 RavenousRat: Ah I see that now .