Arf

Yea, as Guardian said there are no average snipers. Most of the time the kit is a nexus of stupid. These are some of the sniper related stupidity squad leaders have to deal with:

1) A sniper is killing your squad so squad members start switching to sniper. The stupidity of this always amazes me. Fighting the good sniper who just shot up your squad on his own turf is a bad idea. It usually ends with a good number of mostly harmless snipers on one team causing them to loose.

2) "While you guys take the flag I'll cover you." That's pretty much saying, "Hey guys I can cover the 360 degrees around the flag that the enemy can spawn from a single angle and I'll do it with bolt action rate of fire and 5 (maybe 3 shots) in my magazine." Unless the patron diety of snipers is in the squad someone is a big fat liar.

3) A positive K/D ratio does not make a sniper usefull. Sure, he got 5 enemy squad members before they reached the flag but 6 of them made it to the flag. So all he did was feed some enemy Medics a couple revive points.

Don't do those things and you'll be long on your way to being a good sniper. In close range aim for the chest, putting them down to 20 hp is effective enough when teamates are with you. Once your guys have covered the distance a sniper has out lived his usefulness and needs to temporarily acquire a better kit or should be the first on the flag. Hiding on the flag with a cloaking device is an excelent way to steal it from the enemy. Most importantly always find a way to kill the sniper with the kit you have; another sniper wont be helpful. If you can't kill the sniper find a way to keep him from killing you because if he never gets you to respawn you can make even a great sniper a drain on his team.

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MDFubar

Depending on the map, task of the squad, and the ability of the sniper; they can be useful in a squad. I have found that as an SL it can be helpful. Many times the Sl hangs back to provide a spawn point and overwatch for the squad. When rushing the flag, the APM's come in handy to help defend the corners and limit access to your people. The grenades and pistol are also very handy in defending yourself.
It pretty much boils down to, there is a right place and right time depending on the objectives of the squad.

Concr3te

Why use a pistol when you got the Lambert?

MDFubar

At close range. Someone running around a corner firing thier weapon may take that one shot to the chest and keep shooting, but when you hit them with the pistol..the rate of fire may save your life. I keep the pistol out if I am taking a flag.

Damonte

It's a good possibility not everyone has the Lambert unlocked yet. I know I don't. The recon kit upgrades are the last on my list.

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Hellswaters

Or you might be using the true sniper rifle for long range shots

jepzilla

Okay, time for my usual spiel...

I'm always skeptical about snipers. Everybody thinks they're handy with a sniper rifle, but the actual pool of good snipers is small, very small.

If you want to play sniper, you're not some elite commando slinking through the woods to kill a single high value target, creeping silently towards your kill. Notice how snipers in 2142 don't have gillie suits, all you've got is a big rifle with a decent scope. The kit isn't even called 'sniper' anymore. You are not a sniper, you are a marksman, and the best way to work with your squad is to fully adopt this role; you will move and advance with your squad like any other member, and your job is to engage priority targets which would be otherwise difficult to fight. Emplaced machine gunners, engineers, rocketeers calibrating their range... a marksman can make a significant, beneficial impact to his squad by killing these targets quickly, before they have a chance to kill his squaddies. Anything else is a target of opportunity.

Given this, speed at engaging midrange targets is more important than long-range accuracy- your principal targets will be at fairly close range (for a sniper) and stationary. If you're able to pick them off in one or two seconds, then you are a very valuable asset to the squad. If not, your kit is a waste.

Guardianx11x

Well, I rarely ever use the lambert. The high damage of the sniper rifle is your only advantage. I have exactly three "close" combat stratigies.

1) Mid-Range....shoot him in the face. Most good players always crouch or go prone when the engage targets at this range with assault type weapons. They wait for their targeting recticle to get small and accurate, aim..then shoot. Take advantage of this, dont crouch. Zoom in and shoot them in the face.

2) Short Range....Curse yourself for being in this situation. Try to pump one shot in the chest, if you get a hit..and he hasnt already riddled you with bullets you have a chance. With the pistol he is (at most) two shots which are quick to get off.

3) Short Range, multiple targets....Run, Hide, or Die. (maybe drop a sacrifice APM to try and take a few with you)

Donts....
-stop moving
-zoom in for more than two seconds
-move AWAY from cover
-fire anything but your sniper rifle first
-pull out a knife <- key

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Fehmart

Bomm, we all know you hate recons with a vengeance, but they do have a place in squads, depending on the situation. Arf, jep and guardian already hit on their main purpose in a TG-ish squad, and seriously, it's better to have a quick takedown on a rocket-shooting assault than just trading rockets. Opportunity kills on unrevivable targets such as people in railguns, open vehicles, or just lone wolves are also another benefit.

THAT SAID, it is usually hard to justify a sniper-equipped recon (as opposed to spec ops) because it's practically impossible to keep targets in a well-run squad dead, and they have no direct benefits to the squad/team, like the other three kits do.

Lyramion

A Sniper actually moving with a Squad and not going idle on Mono can do quite some harm. I like the Lambert but vs Assaults you usually lose 1v1.

Id like to try some "Squadsniper" more but once I have to change kits to revive my SL and Squadmates it means one of the Squadmembers is stuck with a weapon he really didnt intend on using at all.

[TG] IronClaw

Hi

I think that snipers only belong in their own squad and a small one at that.
the best use of a sniper is to let them (good ones)give general orders as well as if possible a secondary task such as defending a flag with apm/rdx or slowing an advance using all of your weapons.
A good three man sniper team can be a real force multiplier but the CO has to let them roam.

Sparkle

Guardianx11x

Ok, this topic is begging for an example of helpful squad play. I realize this example pertains to a fairly unique situation, but I felt I was quite helpful in achieving squad goals.

This was a game at Bridge at Remagen, Lyramion occupied himself why expertly flying around himself and the rest of my squad in an air transport. (he posted about this experience...look for "fly forest fly"). Anyway, being the helpful buddy I am, I didn’t fly with him…I found a nice spot where I could watch 2-3 AA guns, and wouldn’t be bothered by infantry. And set to work for about the entire game. If I remember correctly I ended up with a standard 20ish kills, but what sticks out is that more than half of those where people manning an AA gun. I’m not saying one of these people would have shot Lyra down, but at least it kept some annoying ringing out of his ears so he could fly a little nicer.

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-Spartan`II7^

Hm, good point lol... I always knew that you aren't of great use if you stay in the woods killing ppl at random but I never looked at it that way. However, even in those situations, rifle rockets usually make short work of those annoying targets as well and what's even better, they aren't stopped by cover unlike bullets from a sniper rifle...

Snipers would be 100 times as useful as they are now if headshots from thir rifles actually were instant unrevivable deaths :/

I'm not exactly obsessed with the sniper kit/rifle but I'm trying to find a way to use them to a squads advantage that is worthy of being a medic/support short...

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KnifeHeavy

Spartan look at the threads referrenced - because both of the threads are similar - they both started as something different but ended up at the same destination - how can the recon/sniper kit be useful to a squad - I feel all of the kits are pretty balanced and like cogs they all have a time and place.

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Karnstein

Hi fellow (trial^^)clanmate... I don't think that I had commented on the linked two topics, but I'm sure that I read them.

As it was mentioned before a recon truely can be an asset to a squad but it looses compared to what the other classes can accomplish.

Basically a recon can:

1. Snipe enemy players, but that comes at the price of largely decreased cqc ability and it is nothing a good assault player can accomplish with a SS baur or PK rockets.

2. bring his netbat along, but with a otus drone drone you won't really need that because it scans every 5 sec and we also have the dystek meter and the new IPS to detect and track enemy players

3. with camo+rdx he has the chance to destroy vehicles, but that is a job a good SL can accomplish by either requesting an emp+o-strike combo or either requesting a kit switch or even demand at the beginning of the round that s.o plays and engi. And with the new IPS and the old support netbat I would rate an engi as fare more effective against every kind of armor than an rdx-recon.

So the only thing a recon does is to be a "jack of all trades, master of none" class which is fine for a bad managed squad or lonewolfing but I always would prefer a 3-4 assault, 1 engi + 1-2 support squad over one which changes the engi in fav of a recon.

Recon surely isn't a bad class but it is the one which tends to allure lone wolf players or those who are overconfident in their sniping skills or the effect their sniping has on the battlefield. So recon is a class most squadleading people don't associate with good teamwork, which sadly holds true with most recon players.

Beside that most squads (just watchs arghs 4 blitzkrieg video) tend to move forward in a rather fast pace, because they wont be slowed down by apms and that mean a sniper in a squad will find itself either engaged in cqc or close to midrange battles more than often unless he breaks away from the squad coherency, which is frowned upon by SLs and tends to result in either ticket lost or unnecessary squad fragmentation. The other option would be to go lambert. But unless everybody else has none of the engi unlocks, so that the squad really needs s.o with rdx, a lambert recon is a mediocre assault player without a proper gun, a med hub and the ability to rezz other players.

EDIT:

So unless dice makes sniper HS instant death and not crit wounded there is no reason for playing sniper in a squad in 9/10 times, because any good enemy squad will reanimate fallen players faster than you can snipe them and apm clearing with the zeller isn't that needed when 4 out of 6 players are med-whores like our SP-SR/SM/SL fellows

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There is thought and there is action. Do not confuse the two. When the time comes to act, your thought must already be complete. There will be no room for it when the action begins.
Quellcrist Falconer.