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 modeSecondly,
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!