Give Sniper Specs more Sniper ammo

[Garrison]

you know, you could also not go BANG BANG BANG with it so often...

Do snipers have to shoot so often? They really should be conserving that ammo for boilers to keep them a bay instead of shooting every alien they see.

Then again, I don't go sniper often enough to know the beef of it, but still... Shouldn't be spraying that so much.

As a guy who managed to survive as a sniper an entire round, and win. You'll still run out of ammo relatively quickly trying to suppress only boilers. I burned out half my ammo just trying to keep one boiler and it's two guards from trying to gas our fortifications. (Damn weed healing) I had to return to the Almayer 3 seperate times, for resupply/healing. And it was way more time consuming then it should of been.

Granted, my delays were from triage and being crippled, and this was back before the latest Spec rework and snipers were given NVG's. But I still feel its rather valid.

My proposal would be to restrict special ammo, and make plain/armor piercing ammunition more plentiful. That way when a sniper engages a target, they need to decide what sort of ammunition would be most suited for the job. Rather then just using your ammo types simply because you've run out of the other stuff.

[Cupcakes_n_Hacksaws]

I think snipers need a buff, but that this isn't the way to go about it. Currently they're just barely better than a rifle with a scope on it.

[Tidomann]

Confirmed it's powergaming behavior, especially when they dupe ammo before first deployment. I have caught a few people doing that on multiple occasions already.

Whoa, marines can bring 13-16 some odd mags, but I can't fill my backpack with extra sniper shots? Especially if I restrict myself to the 3 clips of mod88 ammo? I guess bringing down a super modded m41a with a sniper and a pistol will just reign supreme.

[Bronimin]

Yeah it is really dumb. I could kinda see the modded rifle being better with the duping but if that will get you banned then there is no contest at all between the two, the sniper is awful. Modded rifle sounds like way more fun too, blitzing around and burstfiring at anything that moves.

[WinterClould]

When I Sniper Spec I always unload my rifle, put in a incendiary mag, chamber a round of fire ammo, unload that mag from my rifle, have cargo refill both the fire and marksman mags, then but the fire mag back in my gun. This leaves me with a loaded rifle with 15+1 rounds of incendiary ammo inside of it, two full marksman mags, and a full untouched flak mag to spair. No loose ammo so that shouldn't be "power gaming" right? I also always order more ammo from cargo and try to get them to give it to me before first drop but that's a 50/50 if they even bother ordering it. Even doing all of that I still feel like I just don't have the ammo to be able to adapt on the fly and do good damage against the xeno like I should.

Say I have marksman loaded to pick off boilers, I fire once and before I can get a second shot in a crusher is body blocking for the boiler. Now the smart thing to do is load flak and hit them both right? But I have a marksman bullet chambered already and if I want to get a shot of flak in I have to waste one of the very few bullets I have left just to get maybe one or two hits in with the flak before I have to waste yet another bullet switching back to marksman when the crusher gets sick of sitting there or the boiler gasses me and I have to pick new targets. If you try to switch your ammo to always fit the situation your going to end up wasting a lot of ammo or having to do something silly like loading one shot at a time from your mags and ejecting the mag before each shot which is just very silly, very time consuming and quite dangerous. As it is now I just burn through each mag no matter what my target is, even if that means I end up hitting a rav with Incendiary or a lone runner with flak. Swapping mags is a bigger waste then that.

I love sniping in this game, I really do. I'm never going to trade my sniper in for a modded out M41.. but, if I did... I'd probably be a bigger help to my squad and team in the long run. I'd save cargo points by not asking them to order ammo, Id be able to constantly keep fire on the xeno every chance I got. In the event that our SL goes down I'd be better able to lead better because I'd be able to focus on chat and those around me instead of just whats on other end of my scope. So many upsides to going Modded M41 instead of sniper. Having more ammo won't fix everything, like a sniper spec is still going to be a worse second in command then the lone wolf they normally are, no matter how much ammo they have. But still, more ammo would go a long way to making people actually take their sniper over a modded M41 and it actually being effective.

[misto]

if we're giving anecdotes regarding the state of snipers, i dont have much experience playing as one, but i can say that during my times playing as an alien, a sniper can bring a lot of harassment, fear and uncertainty to an alien team, although only seems to occasionally land a finishing blow

[Garrison]

if we're giving anecdotes regarding the state of snipers, i dont have much experience playing as one, but i can say that during my times playing as an alien, a sniper can bring a lot of harassment, fear and uncertainty to an alien team, although only seems to occasionally land a finishing blow

Ya know, there does seem to be a lack of Alien perspectives in these kind of debates.

[Crab_Spider]

Ya know, there does seem to be a lack of Alien perspectives in these kind of debates.

They bring you to half your health. I wouldn't want to say anymore since they're just that powerful in that regard. Xenos know the deal with snipers and they're easy to take care of with a simple flank.

[Challenger]

I've played against snipers as a xeno

as runner castes snipers are the overconfident idiots who are usually out of position and easy to kill with a pounce, that being said when they DO pay attention you will NEVER be able to pounce/attack them because they will always see you unless you're using corners to your advantage. The flip side is that unless you travel in a straight line like a dolt the sniper won't ever hit you in return.

As a boiler, I've never died to a sniper. You can tank like three straight marksman shots before critting and even if you do crit, some other alien will drag you behind a corner. Usually the sniper is occupied with their line of fire too, so if we both zoom in at the same time I'll get a glob off before they crit me. In addition if that won't work all I have to do is just step behind a corner, glob in front of my location, then hide behind that cloud while charging for my next glob. Incendiary rounds are a slightly larger pain in the ass because I can't really tank those like marksman, but at the same time they usually do less damage overall so less time is spent hiding.

In addition, when I see a boiler being harassed, regardless of my caste, I do this one simple thing: stand in front of them. You don't need to be a crusher. You can be a young runner even, you won't get one shot. Taking a single bullet for the boiler will always mean they get the time to get their glob off onto the sniper's position.

Generally, yes, snipers take you down to half your health. It's taking you down to the other half your health that's a problem for them when you step behind a corner.

[Roland410]

I've played against a boiler yesterday. They just laughed. I hit them once, and they just shuffled away. Literally. Snipers will usually waste a LOT of bullets to not allow them to come near, even if not to kill them. If shit hits the fan, you need more than those three mags.

[Fritigern]

Snipers are ineffective for lots of reasons, their limited ammo supply just being one facet of their uselessness.

Create a new 'Designated Marksman' job, one per squad like we did with Smartgunners, and give them battle rifles and recon armour. Let them be the ones to plink away at boilers uselessly with 10mm ammo, but at least their power will be consistent.

You can then give specialists some other weapon system that doesn't suck in exchange for its two useless sniper roles.

[Crab_Spider]

Snipers are ineffective for lots of reasons, their limited ammo supply just being one facet of their uselessness.

Create a new 'Designated Marksman' job, one per squad like we did with Smartgunners, and give them battle rifles and recon armour. Let them be the ones to plink away at boilers uselessly with 10mm ammo, but at least their power will be consistent.

You can then give specialists some other weapon system that doesn't suck in exchange for its two useless sniper roles.

So basically, more snipers? Am I hearing this correctly? MORE snipers... now then... if I were to, say, use such an argument, I'd also group the SADAR, which suffers from the same problems, and is just as ineffective as a sniper. I'll stop myself here for a foreshadow.

[Challenger]

How is the SADAR in any way just as ineffective as a sniper?

[misto]

hm hm

i am theorizing a strategy for making snipers more effective that works with tools already ingame

in this very thread there were ppl extolling the virtues of modded m41s, so perhaps SLs and specialists could experiment with convincing some PFCs to take railscoped rifles and follow the sniper around, helping lay down additional long ranged fire? of course, that brings up the problem of NVG availability. does incendiary ammo light up the target and make it visible in the dark? then the sniper could lead in with incendiary and the pfcs could try to finish the target off once its visible. this unfortunately relegates regular sniper ammo to the backburner, and depends on the pfcs being willing and able to cooperate

[Bronimin]

That sounds interesting. I could try doing something later today with Requitisions to try that out. I've heard it said before that two snipers working together are far more deadly than each doing their own thing -- if one shot reduces a xeno to half health then two reduces it to zero, right? Modded pulse rifles won't do as great but it might help.

[Roland410]

Two snipers in one spot does make it a LOT more effective, but since there are only two snipers each round, and in different squads, it hardly is a viable strategy mostly.

[Bronimin]

Then perhaps a solution is to transfer both snipers to the same squad and transfer a regular marine with a scoped pulse rifle to the specialist-less squad so that they don't lose the scouting power of the sniper. Not something I can do as an RO but command could try it out one of these days.

[WinterClould]

Then perhaps a solution is to transfer both snipers to the same squad and transfer a regular marine with a scoped pulse rifle to the specialist-less squad so that they don't lose the scouting power of the sniper. Not something I can do as an RO but command could try it out one of these days.

Problem with moving Specs around is that they are the second in command of the squad. If you move two Specs into the same squad if the SL of the specless squad dies then some CPL has to take over and they tend to hate having to do that.
You might be able to move the Spec from the FOB squad and just tell the SL to NOT DIE and get away with that strat but even then that's a bit iffy.

[Steelpoint]

Or maybe consider that the current Sniper set up is not well suited to the game and replace the Scoped Rifle with an M4RA Battle Rifle, which is a lot more flexiable of a weapon.

Or maybe remake the 'Recon' Specalist and give them a M4RA.

[misto]

if the m4ra was simply buyable rather than a random drop from overpriced gambling crates that might not contain anything useful, you could already be experimenting with m4ra based strategies. please support the various threads that propose reworks to how the cargo buy list functions

[Recounted]

All I really want from the ammo pile from snipers is to have two ammo of each type instead of the stuff we got now.