Apophis

I just wanted to put together some brief bits about sniping in Joint Operations. When done properly it is HIGHLY effective. When done poorly it tends to provide a very minimal return on your investment.

• WEAR APPROPRIATE GEAR : Make sure your soldier is wearing a ghillie suit. While it has no real effect at any distance, it does make it much more difficult for people coming in close range to find you. The grasses DO obsure you well at close range.

• BEWARE THE FIRE INDICATOR : You know that obnoxious yellow pie-slice that flashes when an enemy fires in your general vicinity. I would LOVE to turn that thing off, if anyone knows how let me know. Fire and movement is important. Take your shot or two and then relocate to a new position. Have this position thought out BEFORE you engage your targets. You need to know where your next safe location is going to be before it is necessary to use it. Fire, move, rinse, repeat.

• BEWARE YOUR TRACERS : Starting with the first, every third shot you take is a tracer. While your target may not be able to see where they are coming from before they take off his head, other observers around you will be able to. Once they know where you are, they will stalk you. Firing these shots into the ground is a good idea.

• MOUNTAINS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE BEST : With the current demo of Joint Ops, snipers are not obscured by the grasses at any distance, so when you are up on a mountain top you are HIGHLY visible. Unless it's the right time of day that puts the sun right over your shoulder mountains are the first places they're going to start looking. Trees provide better-wearing cover at any distance and will also provide you with something to block the spec fire. Low ground can work great if you have a low sloping incline up to an elevated base. Fire and move.

• LUNCH BREAKS : Plan on taking some lunch breaks while you snipe. You ARE going to attract someone's attention that won't give up until they find you. So have a good escape route planned to get out of Dodge after you've moved a few times. Even if you just run around the mountain, watching for counter-snipers in the mountains from afar and move to another position 180° or so around the base. It at the very least will bore your hunters. Don't keep firing and drawing attention as you move, you might as well be leaving a red ribbon for them to follow.

I know a lot of you have stuff to add too, so just add whatever you've got to this thread!

Anyone want to explain the elevation adjustments on the sniper scopes?

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Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

=Sarc=

Sniping is the most coveted class in just about any game. It's very cool taking out targets with the rifle. However, kills is not the only purpose of a sniper. Remember to update your team on enemy positions. Designate targets for mortars or to point out areas of interest. If you're playing a sniper to rack up points, switch your class now because you rarely rack up a high score. Other players that defend or attack get more points because kill in a base zone give more points than the occasional 11-point kill.

Elevation
The scope's elevation has to be adjusted to compensate for bullet drop over long distances. Find the target's distance by using the binoculars or target designator. To adjust elevation on the scope, hold Ctrl and use the mouse wheel to adjust it in 50m increments. The Joint Ops APC's cannon also has the ability to adjust elevation.

Counter-sniping
Get in an armored vehicle. You'll be safe from sniper fire as long as the windshield isn't facing the sniper. Use those binoculars to find out the exact position of the sniper. If you're a sniper looking for the enemy, remember that you're the fish in the barrel. Act fast because the enemy sniper knows where to look for you.

Don't know how far out to look? Check recent the enemy sniper's recent kills. Press 'U' if you missed them. You'll see the point award, if there was one. Use the points to determine how far to look. A 3-point kill is very close, about 100m. A 9-point kill is close to 500m.

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JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.

en4rcment

I believe that turning off tracers in the host set up menu gets rid of the fire indicator. It also gets rid of the cool tracers that some of the weapons fire. I would be willing to try it out though...


Ok...short version.

The sniper scopes in JO can have their elevation adjusted anytime in game by looking through the scope and holding down the control button and using the mouse wheel to raise or lower the elevation setting. You will see your elevation in the upper right hand corner of the scope window.

In essence, JO tried to stay "realistic" with sniper fire. So your bullet begins to drop every 100 meters that it flies. So if you have your scope set to 200 meters and try to shoot at a target at 600 meters, your bullet will hit the dirt before reaching the target (or just miss really low). Changing the elevation settings allows you to hit targets at different distances without needing to adjust your aim (you don't have to aim higher or lower than your target, you put the crosshairs right on). Therefore snipers need to first use their binocs (B Key) to get the approx distance to their target, and then change the elevation on their scopes. After doing this for awhile, you will soon learn to judge distances rather well, and be able to guess elevation settings without using the binocs. For example, the other day I was defending a base and this idiot (enemy pubber) decides he's going to park a ship off of our eastern shore and start spamming us all day with his grenade launcher. As grenades began to explode everywhere, I did not have enough time to pull out my binocs and get a distance. So instead, I pulled out my rifle and looked at the enemy through my scope. From looking at the size of him and his ship, I estimated his distance to probably be around 600 meters from me. I changed my elevation to 600 meters and aimed a hair above his head (I always do this, because if the bullet falls it can hit the rest of his body). I pulled the trigger and watched my tracer arc nicely and bury itself in his chest. Problem done.

If anyone has any elevation questions, feel free to post here or PM me.

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Opus

The scope elvation has been pretty solidly covered here. I'd just like to add that some of it is simply trial and error in terms of fine-tuning your gun-sights according to distances needed. So far my longest shot has been 900 m or so (gunner on a stationary boat offshore), but it took about 2 shots to zero in on him at that distance. Oh, and btw, it IS possible to change the score values for sniper kills in JO--I've played on a few servers where all sniper kills were only worth 1 pt., no matter the distance. Might be something we might want to think about as well - it would certainly give a sniper a bit of an edge.

I was wondering if anyone wanted to play around with a sniper/spotter combo, with one person doing the actual sniping, and the other doing the range-finding and peeling any close contacts away from the sniper team. I'd like to see how this team does under real conditions in this game.

As far as anti-sniping, the other obvious method is to NEVER stand still if you know there is a sniper working in the vicinity. I don't know about the rest of the ppl here, but I have a hell of a time hitting a moving target with the sniper gun, even from reasonably close range.



Badger's SOP's for sniper tactics work just as well in this game as they do for GR--S, S, S, M .

Riyker

Noone has mentioned yet that the sniper is ALSO a very good class for near battles. I've taken down many w/o the scope easily from 1 to 100+ yards.

...at least in the demo.

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=Sarc=

Practice makes perfect!

I can't prove it was on the first shot but I can prove it was a long way off. ~800m!!

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JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.

H-Hour

Yeah, that was a very nice shot Sarc. Even 13thMEU was impressed.

leejo

One thing I've noticed is that the 1000m elevation is incorrect. It behaves more like 100m.

LOWDRAG

Please keep in mind, saw this happen the other day...

If your sniping and one of the bases is going down , your done crawling around on your belly.. You just turned into a defender like the rest of the team.

LOWDRAG

Funny how they thought that was a good shot and I was hacking...

leejo

Doesn't it depend? If I'm sniping outside Bravo and Charlie comes under attack, what do you recommend? Seems like the sniper sorta has to hope his teammates can hold the fort and maybe report movement or create some problems in Bravo. Spending 2 minutes running down a hill, finding transport to steal, getting back to charlie.....

LOWDRAG

Good point...

to clarify...

Sniper was at Alpha as Charley was going down ... Without Bravo and Charley sniper set up here is useless.
Soemthing else I just thought of....

The teams were only like 6 on 6 , if we had 20 on 20 .. then i could see the snipers taking their sweet time and doing another mission that doesnt call for a quick change to defense.

=Sarc=

That is a good point, Lowdrag. I think we have to look at the team's class loadout and determine whether a sniper is needed. If you look at the player list (Tab until you see it), it shows what class your team members are playing as. In smaller games, I find snipers to be less effective. They often camp out of the enemy base waiting a long time for an attack. When an attack is eventually carried out, it's usually a rocket helo or BMP/APC doing all the work. The sniper is often too far to even get into the zone to boost the attacking number.

I think the best coordination would be dropping off a sniper prior to attack so he can take unarmored AA threats and target points for mortars. I find offensive sniping to be less effective than defensive sniping. Taking out targets in an enemy base doesn't help much unless you have friends moving in to take it. Otherwise, you're just revealing your position and getting kills for nothing. Defensive sniping seems to be really helpful. Pubbies often snipe offensively and sometimes you need a sniper to take him out. Other times, you get the crazy mofo on a gunboat dropping grenades all over your base. A sniper at that point will easily take care of the problem.

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JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.

leejo

unless the crazy mofo has friendly sniper up on a hillside!

Hmmm, the sniper can adjust fire and counter-snipe and the gunboat can pound their equipment and the medic can carry the beer.

en4rcment

This to me sounds dangerously like we are going to tell members what class they can and cannot be while playing JO. I would not recommend that route.

I always play as a sniper and I do not think I hinder my team at all. When we need to defend a base, I hang within 200M of our base, counter-sniping and switching between mounted weapons and armored vehicles when the action gets intense. When we have enemy foot soldiers running around our base, I pull out my sidearm and dispatch them quickly. [One exception is that I will sometimes switch to an engineer to have the STINGER available for helo defenses]

Also, for offense, I rush a base with my sidearm as soon as we are mounting an attack. I don't stay 300 meters away watching everyone fighting for a base. If you play with me, you will see that I capture alot of the flags...I also end up hiding within their bases on our failed attempts, feeding intel and waiting for the next attack wave...

I think we need to set up some better guidelines for the snipers instead of telling people that they can't be a sniper. Sometimes people get too into hunting down enemy snipers in the distant hills. This often puts that player too far out to be of use when his base comes under attack.

Rather than limit classes (the whole point of the game is playing the type of role that you enjoy) I would rather set up solid defenses with small attacking teams who feed intel as they start to pick off the enemy. When the time is right...we all move at once to take the next base. Using this tactic has been very successful for the TG team.

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