Guide to Sniper

[DavidP]

I have a few tips for concealment.

The Ghillie Suit.

1. Use it for breaking up your silhouette and diverting your enemies eyes from your location. Hide in terrain that is dark and green. Since shrubbery does'nt render at long ranges it's better to have a sniping spot in some hills for long range shots which are easy to hide behind.

2. When sniping without a Ghillie suit(Aka militia/insurgent) On Mestia Trees are your best friend. Basrah it's the sanddunes and sandbags.

[boltcatch]

The absolute, #1 biggest lesson for aspiring snipers, is to constantly spot the enemy and call in locations, directions, actions, equipment, and so on. You can kill a lot more guys and defend/attack better when the people you're trying to shoot are occupied with 12 of your teammates trying to stomp them. When ANYTHING happens, tell your team - when their officer buys it, the Land Rover driver just took a round in the head, they have a medic, etc. You're probably also the first person who will notice if they have a rally close, when you cap the same guy twice in 20 seconds.

Most of this is about Basrah -

Basrah can be pretty rough for sniping locations outside the city, so you'll often want to have as much range as you can get. I spawned on there north of the village once, right behind an entire Brit squad. I saw the tail guy had the sniper kit, so I ran up, emptied my SKS into him, and grabbed his rifle and ran like the wind. I ran north.

I took cover north and east of the two small bridges, a few feet down from the top on the south side of the slope of a largish dune. This meant that Brits coming from the airfield would not see me; about half a dozen vehicles drove south on the road 40 feet to the west - I was in plain sight, but no one looked. Brits south of me would not see a silhouette even if they looked, which they did not as they were engaged from the south and east. I simply shot them all in the back. Breathe, relax, aim... click.

5 minutes or so, 16 kills, no deaths, round ends.


Sniping in the city is another story. I find that unless you're way off on an oblique, 6 Brits on the roofs will find YOU quickly scanning the other rooftops, and from the ground you'll shilouette badly. Shooting from lower levels you drop down to is much safer, but rarely gives you any useful field of fire. Best bets are taking on Brits from the rooftops when they're in the open areas outside the city.

Island is rough, limited amount of obvious places to shoot from where you can see anything useful - unless you're shooting across the river at the south end of the refinery, in which case you can kick their ass. Another good spot for that is the top of the hotel. Doesn't matter how obvious it is, if you can shoot well and they have other insurgents on the ground pouring out of the mosque, you can dominate them.

Which leads us to last night - a game that lasted about 2 hours, with a final score for me with the scoped Mosin of 38-3. They attacked the cache my squad was guarding in the refinery for basically the entire two hours, including one amazingly kickass 20 minute-straight gunfight, at the end of which I took my first death by direct heavy weapons fire (APC and Tank). 23 kills before dying.

How did I do it? As the guides here say, position is critically important. I was somewhere they'd not likely look, yet at the same time was too open and obvious a sniper spot but had both cover and concealment. It let me choose my field of fire, yet make that field as narrow as needed. I was in the top of one of the oil derricks.

They knew where our cache was exactly, but I must have shot at least 15 guys standing right on top of it. The other shots were long range at Brits shooting at my guys; I kept thinking, damn I missed, because I'd shoot and it'd look like they ducked, then got right back up. They weren't ducking, they were dropping. In reality, there was twice as many of them as I thought, and they just kept respawning; I didn't know how many I waxed until I died myself and checked the score. The entire time, I was calling out targets and other info.

As for maps in general, if you're going to snipe don't forget the impact it has on morale. Every once and a while make the large investment in time to get a great firing position that overlooks some place they thought was safe - and shoot them in the back when they're not looking... but not every time. Terrorize them. Demoralize them. Make them mad, so they do stupid things, and argue amongst each other. If you're really lucky, someone will think it's TKing, and they'll all start hosing each other.

[[R-MOD]KP]

Boltcatch, I wanna play a round as sniper/spotter with you.

[[R-DEV]Jaymz]

Originally Posted by boltcatch

The absolute, #1 biggest lesson for aspiring snipers, is to constantly spot the enemy and call in locations, directions, actions, equipment, and so on. You can kill a lot more guys and defend/attack better when the people you're trying to shoot are occupied with 12 of your teammates trying to stomp them.

This is exactly why we gave snipers the ability to spot through their scopes. It gives them the secondary role of being an observer for the rest of the team, thus more teamwork involved in a kit often associated with gheyness, thus everybody wins

[DeePsix]

I agree wholeheartedly! I play as the Designated Marksman a lot and on urban maps like EJOD, having a guy on top of a building with a scoped weapon calling out troop movements is almost essential! When defending the East side of the city I could effectively communicate with my squad leader to the locations of enemy squads and watch them ambush them. Makes the game so suspenseful and real feeling!

[[R-DEV]Jaymz]

hopefully it will be even better once the patch gets out and your rifles are calibrated properly

[DeePsix]

I hope so too! I don't mind deviation at all, it adds realism IMHO, but it's so crazy on the M21 right now that I really cant hit anything. I can certainly harass though and still observe. I've been working as an Automatic Rifleman and a L-AT soldier until the patch. I look forward to see what you guys do to the long range rifles!

What exactly has been re-calibrated with the the DMR and the Snipers?

-DeePsix

PS- Not to take us off topic, but do you plan on slightly increasing the damage of L-AT? (PM me to keep us on topic if you want)

[crAck_sh0t]

another good thing for a insurgent sniper or a brit sniper on basrah is to always try and shoot the officer

often squads sit around once the squad leader is dead for him to come back.

[boltcatch]

Those berets make for good targets.

What I cannot understand, is that people don't seem to recognize when there is a SNIPER, shooting at them with an actual sniper rifle. You shoot at them, and 75% just look around. 20% will drop prone; 4% will crawl away sloowwwlly after they do that. 1% will run the hell away, so I can't shoot them again.

Even worse is when you shoot their infantry for 10 minutes while their armor is sitting right there - those gunners have some of the best weapons to find and kill you, but they never seem to look for you.

[[R-MOD]KP]

Very much agree with all of these. With the L115A1 I just played around with in Basrah, it's hopeless hitting a guy who's prone. However, if you put a round near them, they'll usually stand up and give you a good target. Aim for the lower abdomen and you've got a sure kill.