Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): Contact with marksman sniper rifle rounds should slow down or stun the target, but not to such a degree that the followup shot is guaranteed to hit. In return, possibly decrease the damage of the round so that it no longer oneshot crits elite runners. This would make sniper more offensively useful for attempting to secure solo two-hit lethals on lone targets, as well as supportively useful for firing off a shot to slow down a fleeing or advancing target that the rest of the squad then mops up. Flak ammo should operate the same way but with less of a slowdown/stun, but applied to all targets who received damage.
Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
The sniper rifle is currently fairly underwhelming as a both a support and an offensive role.
I've played two rounds of sniper specialist yesterday and even in those perfect offensive situations where I let a target run right up to the minimum range of my sniper rifle and then hit them with marksman ammo, they still manage to run away from me in a straight line and escape out of range before I can fire again. Even when you get a oneshot crit on a runner, their health "takes time to update" and they have two seconds after being hit to pounce or yakety out of range before falling into crit.
On the flip side of the supportive role, one round I played as sniper spec I had a stupendously coordinative fireteam and we would play "tag and chase" where the squad would rush after the target right after I fired, yet even in the best situations they failed to pursue the target due to its ease of evasion. It's just not fun to have such good teamwork as a sniper and not be rewarded for it.
Honestly it seems like the most use I currently have as a sniper is using my scope and NVG goggles to constantly call out targets and clear zones; I remember a good moment when, on ice colony, I was just casually checking out the LZ when RIGHT at the edge of my scoped vision, I see a rambo get molested by a hunter inside the bar; I quickly yell out BAR, my fireteam rushes after me, and the medic gets to the rambo right before he would've died of his injuries, while the fireteam chases the hunter off.
Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Have the marksman and flak sniper rifle projectiles apply an INSTANT short stun (1/2 the time to the next shot) or long slowdown (2x the time to the next shot) on hit. In return, remove the potential "compounding" effect with the low-health-based slowdown by making the marksman and sniper rifle bullets weaker so that they don't automatically slow down / crit targets after two seconds of a tick have elapsed to update their health to appropriate levels.
Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
Likely there will need to be some new procs added to projectiles / being hit by a projectile to implement a slowdown or stun on hostiles, and then sniper rifle ammo will have to use those procs.
Make marksman and flak sniper ammo temporarily stun or slow down targets on hit.
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