For the lazy, go to the bottom.
I've been playing PNRP a bit now and I've noticed that there aren't too many weapons that are scoped (Well, to be more specific, no one has them.) This obviously is good in a sense because it keeps RDM'rs from camping up in a tower and murdering everyone or something along those lines but it makes it a pain in the ass when you have to kill something at range unless you have the materials to machine a Precision rifle which you may loose ten seconds after making.
I was thinking, what could fill the gap between short range pistols/shotguns/Assault rifles and the Precision rifle, but not be ridiculously overpowered/RDM'r friendly?
I thought for a minute and came up with the idea of making the Schmidt Scout, everyone's favorite ridiculously low damage sniper rifle from CS, into a .22LR varmint rifle. (A.K.A. A relatively low damage rifle mainly used for killing pests such as squirrels, rabbits, and what not which would be zombies and Antalions in our case)
Ammo would be relatively cheap, only requiring 2 or so scrap and 2-5 chems. The ammo could be made by anyone, maybe not the same as the rifle, so that people wouldn't have to be constantly harping on Engineers for ammo. The scope's zoom would be semi-low, still a crap load better than iron sights but not nearly as nice as the Precision Rifle's. The magazine would have approximately 5 round max capacity and the firing speed (That means fire-rechamber-fire) would be slow compared to something like the BadLands rifle, but somewhat fast for a bolt action (We're talking about a tiny .22LR here).
You may be thinking, "FAILZ YOU IDIOT! THAT'S A HORRIBLE IDEA! Minges will just grab one of these and spam hip fire/scope with it!". We'll here's where things get interesting. On a body shot (I don't know if Source has/supports hit boxes other than the head and body), depending where it is on the body, will only do around 13 damage. On a head/critical shot it will do approximately 16 damage, the same as the current weakest weapon, the Lucky 57. This means it will be pretty much impossible to kill someone in a single magazine. I'm not saying you shouldn't try it, but it's not a good idea. Damage (Hopefully you can do this with your style of weapon coding) would drop off considerably after 150 feet or more. Accuracy would remain quite high though as to make this weapon even worth while to have.
Why would you even want to have this gun with those horrible weapon stats? Simple. Imagine you're in your base and you see a couple of Antalions headed your way (I swear these guys have eagle eyes), you don't want to waste good ammo from an assault rifle on them, but you don't want to loose health knifing them. If you had the Varmint rifle, you could just pull it out and weaken/kill them before they jumped your walls and started attacking you.
Additional info (AKA only the important stuff):
Name: .22LR Varmint Rifle
Weapon model would just be the source one. No need for going fancy and making custom models if you've already got one.
Ammo model (.22LR rounds): According to GMOD "models/props_lab/box01b.mdl" (HL2)
Damage: 13 on body shot 16 on critical. Feel free to adjust this.
Magazine: 5 rounds of .22LR
Firing speed: Medium-ish (Fire- rechamber - fire) I can't give you exact numbers.
Purpose: For long(ish) range NPC killing. (So you don't have to nigh die everytime a group of NPC baddies show up)
Cost to make (Rifle): 40 scrap (Again, feel free to adjust to make it fair compared to other weapons.), 15-30 small parts, 20 chems.
Cost to make (Ammo): 2 or so scrap and 5 chems. (This ammo does low low damage so you might as well get a good amount for your buck.)
Description: A low damage rifle for killing pesky antalions. And no, you probably won't kill someone with this.
Feel free to make suggestions and such. Having a hoard of antalions/zombies show up outside your house can be a pain in the ass if you aren't swimming in (Not fired at you) bullets so I suggested this.
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edit: I just realized I sorta went from wanting a ultra cheap sniper rifle to a varmint rifle that does low damage in that post. o-o