Why even have them in the game? In Ins2, at least they could always guarantee a one-shot kill if you hit the chest or head. I went back and played some Ins2 today and used the bolt action just for kicks and it feels miles ahead of Sandstorm's bolt action guns. You can sight up quickly, it's clear where your crosshair will be without clouding or blocking your vision arbitrarily, your bullets were very accurate, and there were plenty of places where the guns really outperformed the semi-auto snipers. Additionally, the character models moved much, MUCH more naturally as far as turning and sprinting are concerned. It made bolt actions fun, even though they were also maybe a slight handicap.

In Sandstorm, they're SUPER slow to sight up, I find myself off by half of the scope's diameter a lot of the time once I finally do get sighted in, the aiming always feels a little strange, the characters move too fast to accurately track (forcing a reliance on flick shots or guessing where they'll be in 2 seconds and waiting for them to cross into your sights), and then after all of that, you get no hit-reg or the heavy armor lets the person shrug the shot off without flinching.

Every tactical shooter I've played since 1.6 has had a lethal, powerful, and dynamic bolt action rifle of some kind in the game. It has always been my preferred weapon because my aim is naturally very twitchy (could never track well with the lightning gun in Quake, but I was a crack shot with the railgun). So, a powerful single-shot weapon that drops a target instantly (and rewards accuracy) has always appealed to me. I feel like there is no such possibility in Sandstorm, and it's a little disheartening.

@tedeski I agree, the bolt action snipers should be 1 shot to the chest regardless of armor.

@tedeski

Please use the search function. There are several threads with relevant arguments going on about this topic.

No one needs another topic about this.

@marxman-lmc I'm well-aware. I made one about this issue. However, this a new issue, since they've alleged to have fixed the hit reg issues and claimed they should be fine now. They are not fine. There is no reason to necro a dead thread from 2 months ago when a new one does the same job just as well.

While the bolt action is probably more fun in source than in SS, it is still inferior to most rifles. You can mount a 7x scope on the m16/ebr/sks/fal, all of which are superior to the m24/mosin. You're always gonna get a quick kill with these weapons and you get a lot more ammo out of each of them which means follow up shots onto additional targets are quick and easy. Thus the same can pretty much be said of sandstorm.

@solusvod You're right, when discussing about 90% of the engagements in source. There were some places, though, where the semi-auto's would lose accuracy and damage falloff became an issue. Granted, those areas were few, so the bolt actions were not great choices most of the time in source. However, instead of leaving a broken system in place for Sandstorm, they should've fixed it. They made it worse, not better. That's the issue I have.

Now, if their solution is to remove bolt actions, by all means remove them. I simply don't want to see heavily underpowered weapons in the game (and I don't want overpowered weapons, either). I want the weapons to all have their purpose and be effective at that purpose. The bolt actions in Sandstorm are neither effective nor balanced. The only purpose they have is better served at all times by a different gun. Either fix it or remove them.

The Mosin is pretty balanced with the SVD, but here's my rant about the M24 if you wanna follow up on this: https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/30552/the-goddamn-m24-bolt-action-rifle-bolt-action-compensators

TL;DR M24 is an actual garbage rod. Not the Mosin meme rod; it's just a waste of two supply that could go toward an M14 EBR.