Mouse settings and strategies for sniping

I'm new to pc shooters but I'm definitely adjusting to mouse and keyboard. When it comes down to it, mastery of your mouse can make you an offensive powerhouse when playing sniper. What mouse do you have? What settings do you use? Do you have any tips for someone who is new to mouse aiming?

Here's what I have to contribute
Mouse: Razer Naga
Precision: 5600dpi
Polling Rate: 1000hz
Mouse Acceleration: Disabled
MNC In-game Sensitivity: A couple ticks above the lowest
Tips:
*If you have a mouse with additional programmable buttons, make a profile for MNC and give yourself a second button option for keys that you aren't comfortable clicking.
*Also, I tried mouse acceleration and I dislike it. It's your preference but it made aiming difficult to commit to muscle memory.
*I seem to pull off a lot more drag shots with the mouse compared to 360 controller. If I take my time and aim a shot, the target often moves at the last second but if I quickly swipe the crosshair for the drag shot, it works nicely.

Anyway, hope this is helpful to players that are new to pc shooters.

Disabling accel in the driver is not enough since the game has viewport acceleration enabled by default, you may as well talk about that, the game also has smoothing enabled by default

You did not point out which sensitivity factor you use in game so I don't have any indication how sensitive your mouse really is so the opening post is moot to begin with.

For myself:

Steelseries Xai at 400 CPI, EPP disabled, MarkC mousefix enabled, no prediction, no accel

Sensitivity 35 in game, disabled smoothing, disabled accel.

Sorry, meant to add my in-game sensitivity. I think it's 25 or 35? It's a few ticks above the lowest. I have not messed around with anything else in the mouse tab options in MNC.

you need to be using the highest dpi setting on your mouse, and your control panel mouse setting needs to be exactly in the middle of the slider (whatever your default is, it's usually this), or you are losing resolution.

you need to disable any form of acceleration and/or smoothing, whether it be ingame or otherwise. i suppose this is ultimately personal preference, but i have never heard of someone who plays games somewhat seriously to do it without turning off acceleration. the lack of precision is crippling.

from there, you can adjust your sensitivity in game. personally, i always prefer my sensitivity very low compared to others. between .85 and 1 for counterstrike, for instance. the default is 3.5, i've heard of people playing with up to 20.

since different dpi values will give you different results, i'll give you a tangible example. i have to move my mouse the entire length of my mousepad (18 inches or so) to turn 270 degrees (less than a full 360).

in MNC, practically speaking, my sensitivity is about double that. I can turn 1.5 times with a full traverse of my mousepad. i don't know exactly where the slider is, but it's very close to being bottomed out.

I'm going to follow all you've said and test it out shortly. Thanks for the informative post and I'll let you know how it goes.

I know plenty of professional players who do use accel but nevermind.

Also instead of giving vague "somewhere near that part of the slider" figures you could just give factual numbers derived from your hostileinput.ini otherwise this thread will remain to be about as vague as you happen to are right now.

To give some hints for readers:

bEnableMouseSmoothing=false
bViewAccelerationEnabled=false

these convars are your friends, caress them.

yeah, and even the sensitivity numeric is pointless, since most people have different dpi mouses and some of them even screw up their sensitivity in other ways.

that's why the only real measurement is inches per rotation.

Since I lack the appropriate formula for the unreal engine 3 it's still more precise than "I think I did so many this and that"

In case you missed it I supplied all relevant data and that should prove to be more useful than "I do this to do that"

I don't have any info whether UE3 uses wm_mousemove, wm_input or directinput but still:

- metrics will beat your vague stuff any day

It would be easier if the engine treated sensitivity like about any other competitive FPS, that is: sensitivity being a normal factor so I could just use 1.

point: while it may pointless right now because no-one from the comp scene ever bothered to get down with the input stuff in unreal engine 3 it may not stay that way provided there will be a good comp game based on the engine.

Stick to fact, people will thank you later

i don't even really understand your point.

telling me what your sensitivity coefficient is is completely pointless.

we're using different dpi mice, and possibly your mouse input is being modified by your OS.

therefore the only useful comparison is practical turn rate, e.g. deg/inch.

could use a converter to help with this, like this one:

http://ragial.com/mouse/

but it doesn't even matter because I don't know how the ingame coefficient modifies the input.

that is why, for the sake of parsimony, i already knew my practical turn rate and relayed it to you for your information

EDIT: oh, and it's even possible that our resolutions are modifying our DPI ingame! as if the rest of that wasn't confounding enough. though I doubt the UE3 engine would do something as stupid as that.

Yeah I got that impression already in the customisation thread. Different DPI values are nothing but yet another factor in the equation, knowing more factors directly relates to knowing more about the sensitivity of a person.

What you gave me was a lot of "I turn like this in that game and this is about (a keyword in this) the amount of that and this translates to about (here it is again) that"

spin the thread further, should somebody get the details out of the engine who will remain more precise? me who gave all relevant data with 2 variables undeclared (sensitivity factor and input method) or mister "this is about that"

Anyway to contribute a bit to the OP since he was also asking about sniper strategies:

- Don't scope unless you have to
- Never stand still, you can jump and shoot while you're scoped in should the need arise
- if you duck in and out of cover in a sniper 1on1 you will die unless the enemy sniper doesn't know what to do
- Hitting the head doesn't always register properly, hit the center of the model at about neck-height gives more consistent headshots
- Headshots register from all angles, yes you can score headshots while shooting a gunner in the back or the shoulder
- Drag if you have to, snap if you can
- Take a risk, sitting somewhere waiting for the golden shot is detrimental to team performance.
- Taking a risk does not mean "charge the front" because you will die
- If you stand too near to your icetraps assassins will lungegrapple you out of confidence, don't be that guy
- If you only use icetraps to protect yourself you behave like a selfish lonewolf; this is a team game
- Priorities are as follows: there are none, use your head and go for the biggest threat
- When no-one else is pushing bot lane shoot the bots with your sniper rifle, juicegain is quite fast
- When you juice: SMG out, kill all pros you can reach and get out alive (toss a flak near a turret for good damage)

Not exactly sniping alone but this should serve well enough

of course, i shall remain the most precise, thank you

the end result of this equation is, how fast you can turn, given the amount of mouse movement you provide.

i gave that.

you are welcome

I think I'm pretty happy with my settings now. I took care of turning off the in-game acceleration and smoothing, lowered my in-game sensitivity to 15, and made certain my control panel windows mouse sensitivity is smack dab in the middle at 50. I feel very comfortable at both resolutions I typically play at (1280x720 when recording footage, 1680x1050 when not recording; both windowed). Thanks for the suggestions guys.

may also wanna disable the inherent oneframelag to reduce input lag

I'm going to be honest here, I have no idea where all these convars and options are that you guys are talking about, any chance you guys could go into detail as to where I could change them?

This thread should help anyone confused on turning off mouse smoothing and acceleration.

Oh, and Grimbar: I can't find anything about disabling one frame lag? I did some googling and shifting through .ini's but didn't figure it out.

Also, a new issue arose after I changed my settings. I am no longer able to keep a solid 60 fps while recording crossfire matches (The frame rate starts at 60 but ranges from 35-50 after a few seconds and becomes annoying to play). I'm not sure which setting change is messing things up but I'll test it today.

HostileEngine.ini

[SystemSettings]
OneFrameThreadLag=False