Thread: Can a good Sniper/Spotter team help a team?

I've actually loaded up a sniper kit during a round of baby tunis, with the objective of finding some kind of useful advantage for it. There's a couple of things I've noticed:

- If you see an enemy rocketing, in a small cluster of people, then shoot him. If he's standing still, go for the headshot, if he's moving slowly (he's rocketing, keep in mind, not running), go for the bodyshot. Why? If you go for the headshot, you gain a temp advantage of having 2 rocketers down (one dead, the other reviving). This can be the difference between a friendly advance working or not.

- Everybody hates snipers! Pop out once, pick off the slowest moving target, and he'll come back with a vengeance for you, it's even better if his entire squad starts looking for you, snipe from a distant location, get one kill, then move back with your squad, I've noticed doing that caused the enemy squad to launch a volley of rockets on my old position, lightening the suppressive fire on my own side. On baby tunis, this was just enough for what I believe was Unload's squad to make a push across the no man's land and establish a foothold on their side of the river.

You can notice a difference when the teams are uneven numbers (24 vs 22 for instance). If the teams are even, or close to even, then distracting 2-6 enemies for 5-10 seconds gives you a small window to take advantage of uneven numbers and make an advance.


Now, the cons of sniping:

- If you're at all in danger of imminent close quarters combat, don't bother. The sniper rifle is beyond useless in CQC, and the pistol..... ya, just don't go sniper if in danger of CQC.

- Lack of a defib. Now this one's an interesting problem. When one person goes sniper on a team (me, in the round above's case) I noticed that a few more people also switch to the sniper kit. This monkey-see monkey-do effect greatly hurts the team. One sniper per squad that sticks together, is the most we should ever see, and even then, only when the situation calls for it. You shouldn't need to worry about the lack of a defib if there's not many. I personally go with the Support kit over the Assault kit as a SL 90% of the time. Support lacks a defib just as much as a Recon does.

- Tunnel vision. I noticed that I was starting to zero in on targets. I was playing mind games with three assault kits rocketing my teammates for awhile. Because of this, I didn't even realize there was a breakthrough on the north side. Luckily someone else was there to guard Living Quarters. I recommend that you don't snipe as a SL. Also if you're a SM, practice practice practice avoiding tunnel vision. Try to focus only on mission critical objectives, such as stopping a rocket barrage, or slowing an advance. Don't look around for easy kills. I noticed that I was shifting my focus onto a support guy who was grenade spamming from behind cover. Took me awhile to realize that I was just waiting for him to pop out. Don't let that happen to you. If your contact is hiding behind cover, it means he's afraid to pop out. If he stays under cover for longer than it would take to reload a Ganz, then assume he believes he's pinned and move on.


TL;DR version:

Overall, the sniper kit can be useful, but only in rare situations. Unfortunately, in those rare situations, going sniper often causes others to go sniper, which in turn is detrimental to the team's defib count. Losing one or two defibs won't be noticed, but losing 5-6 could severely destroy your team's chances of winning. In the end, know your surroundings, and know your team. If you have alot of non-TG regulars on your team, stick with your rockets. If they aren't recon already, then if they notice you sniping, they might start sniping also. If your team is mostly TG-regulars, like that night we had only 3 non-SM on the server, then check if your team has any non-SL recon already, and then decide from there if the situation calls for a sniper.