Originally Posted by amoe

btw. someone said that he loves to sit on top ofthe sharqi crane. well.. i wouldn t do that. everyone knows that snipers love that crane and as soon as you kill someone he ll know where the shot came from. i allready killed about 500 snipers who thought that sitting on the crane is a good idea hihihi.
also it takes ages to get up there. the ladder is usually a deadly trap

You'd think so. Let me tell you a short story, which will awkardly segue into a long, drawn out, and interesting post about sniper tactics. In the old days, I used to play a game called Starsiege: Tribes for hours on end. This game will teach you more than any other about being a sniper, for two reasons:

One, the sniper rifle hits instantly, exactly where you aim, so it just comes down to you and your skill, not some crazy bullet drop gun deviation prone or standing equation that basically means you have be lucky AND skilled to kill somebody. Does wonders for your ability to nail a target in a split second.

Two, your rifle shoots by way of laser. Big, shiny, red laser. A giant straight line from you to your target for everyone and their mom to see. Don't talk to me about staying hidden: until you've surpressed a base of enemies with a rifle that draws a big "HERE I AM" sign to you, you haven't really confronted the idea of seeing and being seen.

There are four chief ways that snipers specifically will stay hidden, and stay alive.

The first is the angle and position of your shot. Like you said, people check that crane. They check all sorts of places for snipers; maps have natural locations that both snipers and victims learn to love, and to check. These places will let you shoot people, but they will also be where someone checks. You have to balance the need to hit with the need to not be seen, or at the very least not be hit. Often I'll just accept that someone will see me, and resolve to shoot them before they shoot me. The "hidden" quality you're trying to achieve isn't honest-to-goodness invisibility; it's not getting spotted by someone with an assault rifle. Shooting from places that aren't instantly ascertainable as sniper nests is one way; another is shooting people in places that aren't instantly ascertainable as shootable from only a certain spot. If they're in a corner and the bullets start landing, they know what direction to face. You can't say the same thing when they're out in the open.

The next option, and the next way to stay hidden and alive, is hiding. Literally. Behind something, under something, in the shadow of something, it's a simple fact that snipers are really the only class that's far enough away that you can get a long, lasting benefit out of sitting behind a dumpster (spec ops can get a temporary advantage, as they can fashion C4 out of old children's toys). Take advantage of the fact that people expect to you be in certain places, or to not be in certain places. If you kill 4 people from a nice little spot, suddenly the whole squad knows you're there. Most snipers will pack up and leave, and hey, it works. Your other option, though, is to hunker down and wait it out. This worked in Tribes very well; nobody assumes that if you're still in that area, you'd be shooting instead of hiding. After all, you just nailed 4 people. Why stick around? If the bullets stop flying, you've moved on, right? Wait a little bit, maybe fire at the opposite end of the map, and you can go right back to your original spot, right where you left it.

Or not. Your third hiding/life-saving technique is sprinting like a little girl (who has gone through military training and can now run miles at a time). This too is something I learned from my Tribes days, where a jetpack allows a crafty enemy to go from a days' march away to standing on your face in the space of a few seconds. People often frame a sniper's relocation as a way to avoid detection. I, however, say screw detection: I want to avoid lead. I couldn't care less who sees me. It's people shooting me that get my ghillie suit in a bunch. It's not time to move when you see the whites of their eyes, rather, it's time to pack up when you see the whites of their tracers. Moving before the enemy knows where you are doesn't accomplish anything, except they have to check one more spot which only takes a second. They KNOW there's a sniper there, they've already lost a few men to him. What does it matter if they know where he used to be or not? Never vacate a spot just for the sake of being unseen. It don't matter if you're unseen; only matters if you're unshot! This is still a technique for hiding, because you won't be seen in your new position until you're ready.

The fourth way to stay unseen and undead (not the zombie kind) is smart shooting. Shoot when their back is turned. Shoot when your squad is shooting. Shoot when they've just been revived. Shoot when they're climbing a ladder. Shoot when they're in a Vodnik, playing the Imperial March with bullets on a nearby wall. Whatever you do, don't shoot just to see the bullet hole. You're wearing a ghillie suit and you're far away; nobody is going to see you of their own volition. It's only once the gunplay starts that your hidden identity is at a risk, so you want to minimize that risk.

There's a fifth lifesaving technique, which doesn't have anything to do with hiding: shooting people. You can kill them in one hit, you know. Anything above the shoulders, really. They go down like a sack of potatoes. Their whole team knows you're on the crane? They're getting ready to shoot you? Cry my a river. Better yet, shoot me a river of blood, liberated from the enemies' veins. Ain't noone gonna do you any harm if they're face down on a hill while a medic tries to shock them back to life. In Tribes, you'd get these split second decisions when you've got a couple guys flying towards you. Do you duke it out, or run away? Battlefield 2 is different. A sniper can't fight it out once they get close, but he CAN shoot them the whole time they're getting close. Sans jetpacks, it takes a soldier a while to hoof it to whatever steeple you've parked yourself in. So take that rifle and use it for what it was made for: shoot something.

I hope people read these posts. They're cathartic.