Snipers underpowered

[TheOldBreed]

in the book 'Shooter' by GySgt Jack Coughlin (A Marine sniper in Iraq), he says about how he shot this 'bad muslim fellow' in the chest/rib area with his rifle (M40A whatever). then later in the day a grunt came upto him saying they had a wounded prisoner, that looked like he'd been shot with a sniper round. sure enough, it was the same guy he'd capped earlier. he was still alive n 'well' (well enough when you've been shot haha). kind of off topic, but i guess it proves that not all shots from a sniper rifle, even by an experienced sniper, are fatal.

[ConscriptVirus]

yes snipers are fine for now. maybe if it were a .50 cal, things would be different.

also if i remember correctly, in the youtube video on the first page of the soldier getting shot, i think the soldier was able to return fire and after reinforcements came, they were able to find and wound the shooter so im assuming that they probably found a sniper rifle with the guy which is why they called him a sniper.

EDIT: heres an article about that video http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1443820/posts and yeah its a dragunov

[ReadMenace]

yes snipers are fine for now. maybe if it were a .50 cal, things would be different.

also if i remember correctly, in the youtube video on the first page of the soldier getting shot, i think the soldier was able to return fire and after reinforcements came, they were able to find and wound the shooter so im assuming that they probably found a sniper rifle with the guy which is why they called him a sniper.

(Then PFC, now Sgt.) Stephen Tschiderer, a combat medic, was able to return fire, wound, capture then treat his attacker.

There's a lot of inaccurate information flying around in this thread.

-REad

[Truism]

Real world snipers do much more recon than shooting. So you should help your team by observing enemy locations instead of fighting your own little war

Stop right there criminal scum.

Real world example X. Therefore you should assist your team by doing X.

Wrong.

If Y assists team more, then you should do it over X in game.

Real world example X occurs over a long period. X is about a lot, lot more than saying where something is and what it is.

Finally, real world example X is a function of the fact that snipers are one of the few assets that are easily concealable and don't need to be physically co-located with the unit they are attached to in order to do their job, that their job requires that they remain undetected anyway and that the training required to do Y effectively transfers easily to X. In PR, X values are independant of the class, but Y is tied to classes. Therefore all kits are equally suited to X, but very few are suited to Y.

Therefore, snipers in PR should focus on Y tasks.

That is all.

[Hunt3r]

Standard sniper round: 7.62x51
Standard NATO assault rifle round: 5.56x45
Standard Warsaw Pact sniper round: 7.62x54R
Standard Warsaw Pact assault rifle round: 7.62x39

Wuuut?

[RELEASE_THE_KRAKEN]

The rifle that was used to target Sgt. Stephen Tschiderer was a dragonov. It fires the 7.62x54r round which is a full power round.

If I recall correctly, the sniper rifle used by the US in PR is the m40. If this is correct, the M40 fires a 7.62x51 which is the same round that the g3 rifle (the mec standard rifle, and insurgent squad leader rifle) uses.

So if that round was boosted to kill in one shot to the chest, then the g3 would have to be boosted as well for 'realism'. That of course would hurt gameplay. Also the 7.62x54r is just on par power-wise with the 7.62x51.

[Truism]

Common Fault: Mistaking the standard Warsaw Pact Assault Rifle round for a 7.62x39mm round.

Since 1974, the standard assault rifle and light support weapon of (now former) Eastern Bloc countries has fired a 5.45x39mm cartridge.

In the future, ensure you do not mistake the AK-74 for the AK-47.

Wuuut?

[Just_A_Thought]

I'm just going to pop my head in and explain that the width of a round (eg. 5.56mm or 7.62mm) is not the only factor in determining A: The dimensions of the round or B: The stopping power of the round.

An AK fires a 7.62x39mm intermediate power cartridge, while an M14 for example fires a 7.62x51mm full power cartridge. A PKM fires a 7.62x54mm full power cartridge. All the same bore calibre, all very different dimensions, energy carried by the round and thus stopping power.

Sniper rifles often, but not always use more powerful ammunition, and often come in different models that scale up the calibre. The AI AWP ('Police'), AI AWM ('Magnum'), AI AW50 ('.50 BMG') are all the Artic Warfare sniper rifle by Accuracy International, with minor differences, but chambered for completely different cartridges with insanely different stopping powers.

Agreed. Bullet shape and a whole bunch of other things affect how well a round goes--and how much damage it can do. Sniper bullets should carry more velocity (and stopping power?) than other rounds, but snipers in PR don't have to worry about things like wind, atmospheric conditions, or even very much bullet drag/drop.

A few sources on this (not sure how authoritative/accurate they are, but I've seen similar info on a number of websites. Please let me know if something doesn't look right.)
External Ballistics Bullet Projectile Drag Drop Point Air
"Since different projectile shapes will respond differently to changes in velocity (particularly between subsonic and supersonic velocities), a BC [the ballistic coefficient, which relates to how much drag a round experiences] provided by a bullet manufacturer will be an average BC that represents the common range of velocities for that bullet."

External ballistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Under heading 2.7 The Transonic Problem: "In the transonic region, the centre of pressure (CP) of most bullets shifts forward as the bullet decelerates. That CP shift affects the (dynamic) stability of the bullet. If the bullet is not well stabilized, it can not remain pointing forward through the transonic region (the bullets starts to exhibit an unwanted precession or coning motion that, if not dampened out, can eventually end in uncontrollable tumbling along the length axis)."
So I think sniper bullets are shaped so that they don't lose as much stability.

The wiki article and the following website (which is cited on the wiki article) both show a number of other factors that affect ballistics.
Exterior Ballistics

We should maybe be happy that all these affects aren't modeled in PR--or we might not be able to hit anything.

[DkMick]

Nothing I can't stand more than "in real life" this and that. Such ****. As if anyone that's ever said "in real life" has ever done it "in real life".

[Phantom2]

This is why we need the M-107 in PR

[Truism]

Nothing I can't stand more than "in real life" this and that. Such ****. As if anyone that's ever said "in real life" has ever done it "in real life".

I agree in principle with what you are saying but there is/was someone on the dev team who is/was a sniper in real life. This fact amazes me because I can't imagine snipers being the inept individuals PR portrays them to be.

[alberto_di_gio]

Game-wise I don't think snipers are underpowered. If you are a decent shooter and have you time to get ready for the best possible shot almost all shots kill the target.

[killonsight95]

I agree in principle with what you are saying but there is/was someone on the dev team who is/was a sniper in real life. This fact amazes me because I can't imagine snipers being the inept individuals PR portrays them to be.

errr.... if a DEV says he is then likly enough he is one and PR has many advisors on subjects such as bullet damage etc. so i think they are more qualified than you are. Also the idea of a sniper is to remain undedected and recon for the team and take down high prioty tragets such as TOW's, AA's, vechical gunners and medics not just shoot at random people that happen to come into your sights at 800 meters or so

[Hunt3r]

Common Fault: Mistaking the standard Warsaw Pact Assault Rifle round for a 7.62x39mm round.

Since 1974, the standard assault rifle and light support weapon of (now former) Eastern Bloc countries has fired a 5.45x39mm cartridge.

In the future, ensure you do not mistake the AK-74 for the AK-47.

Wuuut?

I know that the AK-74 is more common then the AKM when it comes to actual Warsaw Pact rounds, but the general stereotype is that most insurgents and others use the 7.62x39.

[Truism]

errr.... if a DEV says he is then likly enough he is one and PR has many advisors on subjects such as bullet damage etc. so i think they are more qualified than you are. Also the idea of a sniper is to remain undedected and recon for the team and take down high prioty tragets such as TOW's, AA's, vechical gunners and medics not just shoot at random people that happen to come into your sights at 800 meters or so

I know exactly what the idea is, however sniping in PR relies in large part on the other team doing really stupid things. Those high priority targets need to sit pretty much perfectly still to be reliably killed even at ranges that normal infantrymen could engage moving targets at. What this actually does is make snipers in PR killers of opportunity - they kill not so much what they choose to, but what they can.

In practice, this means even the best snipers in PR will generally take what opportunities they get in the form of people sitting still in the open. In real life a snipers don't act in this way - the fundamental idea is that a well concealed sniper in a good fire position should be able to kill many targets if he chooses to, but will generally choose not to in favour of waiting for the high value target. That's the idea at least, in reading about how snipers have been employed in our recent campaigns, one gets a somewhat different impression, but that's not "best practice", and that's what we're really arguing about here.

In summary, snipers in PR should have the freedom to choose who they kill and not rely on horrific mistakes from the enemy to do so. This would create a greater divide between good snipers who are able to make sound decisions about the value of targets VS the value of their firing position and security and those who simply aim to kill as many grunts as possible and die quickly. I wholeheartedly believe that PR squads are now more than capable of using their weapons systems to completely neutralise a position with fire, it stands that good squads should be able to apply this to a bad sniper as well, and then maneuvre to destroy him.

Also, I'm well aware that PR has many advisers etc, etc, etc. If you re-read it, that's why I was surprised by the fact that snipers are ludicrously inept in PR. There are plenty of trained infantrymen on the forums and in game who are not advisors but rail against how the accuracy modelling in game works to turn our supposedly trained avatars into something with accuracy comparable to an untrained pleb off the street who hasn't slept in a week. I've noted for example that I shot substantially better, after not sleeping three days and completing a fairly arduous and long route march, than a PR soldier does. We even know why it is that the Devs do this, because they told us that they're more than willing to make the game less realistic to try and promote long and "intense" firefights that are "epic" and "cinematic". I'm pretty sure those words may be directly found in posts by Devs.

[DaKillerFox]

I have no problem taking targets down at 700+ in AAS. maybe you need to compensate more for bullet drop and lead as well

This game doesn't have bullet drop does it? No way...

[Phantom2]

This game doesn't have bullet drop does it? No way...

The game does have bullet drop, It's only till 600+ Meters. It shouldn't be more than half an inch bullet drop though.



This should explain it. Well, nice vid by ralfidude.

[BadGuy]

Whoa whoa whoa, saying it is under powered is kinda weird cause before 9.0 all snipers killed on one shot, but not the Enfield SMLE because it was the one with the smallest with .303 so that was a reason it had two kills. I don't know about the two hits to kill thing but now one hit I guess cause I think I got hit by one is a hit that make you "Trip Out" Black and white. I would worry about the MEC sniper cause it can not hit targets standing still at 250 or more meters prone. But complaining about not hitting a moving target at 600 meters is quite foolish cause all bullets have time to travel.

[Truism]

@badguy You're talking out your arse. There was so much wrong with what you just said.