What's so good about sniper rifles?

[AllenWL]

Because really, you simply cannot ask for a combat tip without bumping into them at least once.
Killboxes, I get. It's easy, it's simple, it's low-risk.

But what's so good about sniper rifles? I mean, one or two is nice, sure, but what's so good about them that whenever you ask about combat you almost always  get 'get a sniper rifle and snipe them' as an answer?

[Lys]

Well, they have a huge range (duh) so your colonists are pretty safe and they have the potential to incapacitate/kill with just a single shot (as long as the target is not mechanical), which is pretty neat. What else would you want from a weapon?

[Mikhail Reign]

The AI reacts pretty badly to threats with sniper rifles when they aren't actively charging. When they are in the wait period before a raid, or a seige, you can just move your sniper up to the edge of his range and shoot anyone with a sniper rifle. You are then pretty much free to pick people off with 0 threat until you force them to attack.

[Alistaire]

The maximal range on a gun is higher than the maximal range that pawns automatically fire at other pawns. This means guns can outrange pawns very effectively and since sniper rifles have the highest range which is higher than the pawn autofire range for raider groups they can't do anything against you. Even if they have a sniper rifle they will not autofire since the max autofire range does not account for max gun ranges.

[Shurp]

Killboxes are great when the enemy charges your turret nest.  But what do you do when you are confronted with mechanoids guarding a ship part or raiders firing shells at you?

You have to go out and meet the enemy on his turf.  And here you can take advantage of the AI.  Park your snipers at the edge of the enemy camp and start shooting at the fringe units.  Those on the fringe will return fire, but the rest will just mill about aimlessly.  And if they do all come at you just retreat a bit, and they'll give up and return to camp.

It seems an unfair tactic -- but there's no other way to take them on when you're outnumbered and the game doesn't provide any other obvious way to split them up and take them on piecemeal.

[praguepride]

So first, one of the other neat things about sniper rifles is that if the enemy pawns are "guarding" something (i.e. mechanoids around a downed ship or raiders around a siege camp) once you disengage from the fight, they run back to camp so you can "kite" them over and over again.

I don't really view this as an exploit because using snipers to harass an entrenched position is combat 101. As soon as they enemy mobilizes to respond to the snipers, your sniping team either falls back or sets up a new position. I think that it feels "exploit-y" but I think it's a lot more based on reality then one would expect. Maybe enemy pawns should trigger behaviors to react better like "get to cover" or "send out a fire team to take out snipers"

But then you can use your snipers to lure the enemy into ambushes to divide and conquer... all in all not something I view as an exploit, especially because larger raider camps can easily 'counter snipe' quite well because they have a dozen guys with sniper rifles...

[AllenWL]

So basically, huge range and high damage which lets you engage without actually putting your colonists in danger huh.
I guess that does make it a more effective choice for enemies who aren't charging at you.

I think I'll still prefer other guns though. I mean, I get what makes sniper rifles so good, and I'll probably keep a few to deal with sieges and such, but it seems like sniper rifles are mainly for stationary enemies. I don't use killboxes, so I think I'll benefit better from other weapons that work better close-range.

[skullywag]

I make staggered positions from the enemy encampment back to a main fallback. I hit em with the sniper until they engage, i then pull the sniper back to the position after the new last (leapfrog) the enemies then get attacked by the last position so on and so forth until im back at the main position where they all open up on whats left. It usually ends in a few making it and then running for their lives. Depends on numbers of course and if the enemy is staging, but it works anywhere else.

[Bruxy]

The main reason I like sniper rifles is Scyther raids. Scythers can attack my turrets without getting in range, but my sniper can then attack the mech without getting in its range. And since it's focused on the turret it will never bother going after the pawn and stand nice and still in the open. Given the power of the sniper rifle and the general poor (at max distance) accuracy of the Scyther, a decent sniper will take down the mech well before the turret blows up.

[Shurp]

You probably can get by with just a few sniper rifles; that's enough to whittle down stationary enemies until they flee or get fed up and attack.

One other advantage: you don't have to worry nearly as much about your pawns shooting each other.  Whereas if one of your guys has a minigun bullets are flying all over and you have to be really careful where the rest are standing.

[RawCode]

under normal conditions taking any damage is painful, losing pawns can turn into complete disaster.

for this reason, everyone eventually fall into some kind of "zero risk bias" and will give everyone sniper rifle to avoid risk of taking damage.

[Shurp]

Yeah, that's a basic defect in the way this (and similar) games are set up; it's hard for you to replace any casualties (limbs, pawns, etc.) but the people attacking you have an endless supply of suicidal maniacs.  If you're taking any significant casualties in a battle you're going to be ground down to nothing pretty quickly.

This is one of the things that makes turrets so great.  Go ahead, blow them up, it's easy to make more!

We need some other resource that can be consumed by battle which takes time and effort to replace but not too much. Ammo, for example... "oh crap, yeah, all my pawns survived the battle, but I'm out of 0.50 sniper ammo, gotta start making more at the reloading bench!"

Maybe if we had alien attack chickens that only took 5 days to hatch and 10 to reach adulthood? 

[AllenWL]

under normal conditions taking any damage is painful, losing pawns can turn into complete disaster.

for this reason, everyone eventually fall into some kind of "zero risk bias" and will give everyone sniper rifle to avoid risk of taking damage.

Yeah, that's a basic defect in the way this (and similar) games are set up; it's hard for you to replace any casualties (limbs, pawns, etc.) but the people attacking you have an endless supply of suicidal maniacs.  If you're taking any significant casualties in a battle you're going to be ground down to nothing pretty quickly.

This is one of the things that makes turrets so great.  Go ahead, blow them up, it's easy to make more!

We need some other resource that can be consumed by battle which takes time and effort to replace but not too much. Ammo, for example... "oh crap, yeah, all my pawns survived the battle, but I'm out of 0.50 sniper ammo, gotta start making more at the reloading bench!"

Maybe if we had alien attack chickens that only took 5 days to hatch and 10 to reach adulthood? 

I get by with armor and and a 'You kill us, we slaughter you' mentality.
I don't particularly care if raiders trash our base and kill our people as long as they leave wounded, bleeding, and running for their lives with their allies bleeding on the ground next to our dead.

The fact that I always use combat realism and extended prostetics and organ enginnering might be a factor in that too. Makes it harder to lose limbs and easier to replace them.

[Shurp]

Ahhh, yes, if you're playing with a mod that allows you to regenerate organs that's a huge improvement.  I think I'll have to dig that up, thanks for the tip!

[AllenWL]

It doesn't let you regenerate organs, it lets you make prostheses and some replacement organs. You need a bit of research them some materials to make all but the most basic things, and most take quite a bit of high-end materials.
What makes it a winner for me are the cheap early-on prostheses you can make like steel arms, hook hands, wooden feet, etc.
Organs can easily be gotten from prisoners anyways. Every raid gets me at least one prisoner which I can harvest for organs, and I don't lose an organ every battle, so there.

Oh, can't forget that with combat realism, you can make armored vests in smithing benches which when worn, protects your pawns organs.