the black dots, don't work under about 250m and above about 600m, but most of the time under 250m you can see the player anyway.
Also when you are unloading rounds into a player, if they have just respawned, they have respawn armor, something I think nova programed in to stop respawn raping. Respawn Armor, gives the player 6 seconds invunrability, or until they fire, which ever comes first, so if they have just repsawned and not fired, you can't kill them for 6secs.
About the low deaths, snipers usually have low deaths, as they run and hide, and gunners most of the time have higher deaths as they charge in.
Another reason why you may not be able to hear the shot is the distance of the shot, if a sniper has taken you out at about 800m, its hard to hear the shot. But it is prob also because of what StevieB said as well:
""QuadMXRacer was killed" and i presume " QuadMXRacer is dead" is also a common one? this means u died cause of lag in your connection, if ur data gets too far out of the hosts data then u die, simple as that."
I think what StevieB is talking about here is Nova deaths, also called Bug kills.
The cheat problem is greatly reduced in public games, as the host has direct control over punting and banning people, also some cheats, cheat to improve their stats, and most public games don't have stat's. Or stats that everybody will look at.
For an example of the cheating problem in nova games, have a look here
http://www.geocities.com/snipers_and...c_cheating.htm
But he left shortly afterwards, so wasn't a big problem.
Any way I'm whitering on here.
Hope this is helpful
Peace Out