Truism wrote:You're missing the point entirely. At 400-500 meters, not only is your rifle not ideal for the task (because of the way they are modelled in PR), but your field of view will be too obscured by terrain features to provide any meaningful picture of the enemy's deployments.
At 400-500 meters your the only one who can kill enemies with 1 shot. If your lying behind a log, in a bush, or next to a tree your pretty much invisible. I've tested this with a friend of mine on an empty server. If a sniper is lying in one of those big bushes you have no chanse to spot him by just looking in the general area. You have to study the piss out of that bush to actually see him.
By staying too far back to possibly be spotted, you are not fulfilling your role in PR. In real life, snipers do fire from these distances and more, but in real life, the AO is bigger, the terrain isn't designed to block and obscure vision from these ranges, and if it is, snipers can afford to wait for hours with a narrow avenue of attack for assets to stray into it, because the operation is longer, and the density of troops is higher.
If im lying behind something or in a bush 400+ meters away, im almost invisible, but enemies
that are moving are piss easy to spot.
Think about it like this. If you can lots of enemies from 400 meters away, then you are visible to square kilometers of ground - you are not concealed at all.
If a sniper is a tiny bit smarter than a potato, he will find some decent cover.
If a sniper is actually shooting from this distance, he needs to set himself up in a narrow attack avenue to minimise the threat of being spotted by enemies outside his firing zone. By doing this, he limits the amount of the map he can see and provide intel on, hurting his team. Quite aside from this, sniping at 500 meters also entails that an enemy stand basically stationary for 4-5 seconds for you to rest your sights on him, let deviation settle, and take the shot - by sniping from 500 meters in a narrow avenue, you are basically just setting a really small area which the enemies will no longer stay still for long periods of time in.
Fools Road. There are plenty of spots where i can see the entire flag and its surroundings from great cover whle having multiple escape routes.
When im talking about sniping, the only maps im even considering is Fools Road or Quinling. All other maps are not what i would call "sniper friendly"
A sniper DOES excell at killing weapons crews on stationary objectives (AA, machine guns, and even ammo resupply points) for these reasons, but unless you are fighting retards, or bots, PR's geography will generally not allow you to consistantly kill infantry at 500 meters.
Find a spot overlooking an enemy flag, tell your CO what you see, when one of your squads attack headshot the piss out of enemies on that flag and try to find out where they come from so you can tell your CO where the enemy RP is.
You can easily make 20ish-0 on Fools Road if you know where to shoot from. Stationary infantry (and they will be in a firefight) is just an easy target as inf on .50 cals or other stationary objects.
There are a select few target areas that will, but they are few and far between - your time is wasted camping them as they are not usually of any strategic importance, and very, very seldom of any tactical importance (even assuming there are people there). Again, I call lies and misinformation.
There are PLENTY of areas on Fools Road that make great hiding spots from where you can see the enemy flag and its surroundings.
Also, I was pretty clear in saying that hitting someone is preferable to suppressing them in the PR sense, but that suppressing them regularly is much preferable to waiting at 400 meters for a perfect shot so you can pad your kills and culture your E-Peen. Repositioning is a must as a sniper, and something that neither of you are able to do with your narrow avenues at 500 meters.
Believe me, its far more "supressing" to see your LMG gunner/AT/marksman (those kits can easily be identified from 400+ meters) flying though the air after a headshot.
Supressing someone with the sniper rifle is a waste of ammo, and will get you discovered very quickly.
Finally, what I meant was that in vBF2 sniping, your are a killer, and you do have the luxury of picking who to kill because you don't have to wait for a scope to settle.
When an infantry squad is moving, some of them often stop for 3-4 seconds and that is just enough to make a kill. Then they will go for cover, but since they will most likely have no idea about where the shot came from they will hide behind something that doesnt offer them cover from your side so you can kill 1-2 more of them. After killing those you can just stop firing and observe.
Eventually those guys you just shot will regroup with the rest of the squad, and if you see where they came from you know where an enemy PR/FB is.
To say "Prioritise targets; kill commanders, medics and officers first," is to imply that you have a choice of at multiple stationary targets.
If those targets are in a firefight you do have that luxtuary. And they will most likely never know that
you killed them.
This simply isn't the reality on the PR battlefield - there is relatively little incentive for a whole squad to sit still in your vision, because of this IT DOESN'T HAPPEN.
Eventually they will stop moving.
You are outright fibbing if you're going to say you regularly encounter situations where prioritisation of targets is an issue the way it is in vBF2. When sniping, you are lucky to get what you can, and beggars can't be choosers.
I often have to choose targets when the enemy squad is engaged by someone elce.
Do you have xfire my friend? Maybe we should team up when sniping one day so we can learn from eachother?
.