| Snipers |
| Fighting other snipers Besides having accurate aim, the key to prevailing over enemy snipers when neither of you knows where the other is, is to wait for the other sniper to make a move while you stay immobile. In other words, wait for the other sniper to make a move. Easier said than done, eh? Well, there's not much more advice I can offer... that's all there is to it, as far as I can see right now. The most straightforward way to kill a really pesky enemy sniper is to crawl into position with extra sensitivity and patience put into remaining undetected (see above section on patience). Then position yourself motionless with the biggest view on your screen as you can see, and wait for the sniper to fire again (getting a team member to run around and draw fire is not a bad idea if the enemy sniper is really screwing your team over). Then track the tracer fire and its all over. The key is to wait for the enemy to make the first move. The second method is actually pretty effective, and that's to draw the fire yourself, at the expense of getting killed. Until voice communication over the internet is fully realized, its often easier to get the job done yourself. Just run around like a chicken and make sure you can run erratically enough to avoid at least a couple of the sniper's shots while concentrating your efforts into seeing where the shots are coming from. Once you die, just run straight into firing position and take the guy out. Leading If you don't know this term or at least the concept behind it, you have a long way to go. Leading is the practice of firing at a location ahead of where your target is at the current moment in order to compensate for the fact that he is moving. If all goes well, the bullet and the person arrive at the same spot at the same time a couple milliseconds later and the target is terminated. Projecting an enemy's path is not easy, but it doesn't take any training more complex than repeated practice. Learn by trial and error. A few basic (really basic) guidelines you'll want to follow though: 1) the more perpendicular the enemy's path is with respect to you, the further ahead you need to shoot in order for the bullet to actually make contact i.e. the more you have to lead the person). In other words, if the enemy is running sideways (across you from left to right or right to left) you need to lead him a lot. If the enemy is running directly towards you or away from you, you don't need to lead him at all. 2) the further away the person is the more you have to lead him. The distance reading in your scope is in fact very key to successful and accurate sniping, and can be used directly to indicate how much you need to lead the person. If the enemy is beyond the sniper rifle's ESR (for an explanation of ESR, go to the weapons section), you need to begin leading him. If he is within the ESR, there zero lead is necessary (i.e. you can just aim directly at him and shoot). 3) lag and slow processing power of your computer contributes to leading time as well. Even on my 350 Pentium II and T1 connection, some lag occasionally occurs, even within the ESR. As you become attuned to how laggy your computer and modem connection are, you can compensate proportionally by leading. To be even more specific, what I mean is that because of lag and slow processing power, your computer may be a little slow in showing where an enemy soldier really is positioned. So by firing ahead of where he appears on your screen at the current instant, you account for your computer falsely showing him as currently being in the position he really was a millisecond ago (that was a convoluted sentence, so read it over again). 4) there's a certain feel to successfully leading an enemy. The best metaphor I can think of is that you should think of trying to fire your bullets so that the enemy will trip over it; try to time it so that when your bullet arrives, the enemy will be running into your bullet as opposed to your bullet ramming into the enemy. You'll understand the feeling when you master it. Lobbing (a.k.a. vertical leading) Okay, okay, lobbing is one of many terms I just made up. The point is that DF takes account of gravity as well, so your bullets begin to arc and fall when you're shooting from considerable distances. What you need to do is to aim higher than you normally would. 1) when the enemy is far away, you must aim higher. Notice that the distance reading on your scope is the distance from your to the point on the terrain that is exactly at the center of your scope. So if you're firing at someone that's on the top of a mountain and you get a reading of "1+ Kilometers" that's simply because the center of the scope is pointed out into the deep blue sky. 2) when the enemy is sliding down a slope or climbing up one, you need to compensate as well. 3) whether an enemy is running towards you or from you does not factor in significantly; soldiers just don't run that fast, so their direction doesn't affect lobbing. Close Combat Snipers' only real defense in close combat is the frag grenade. Don't let any idiot tell you otherwise. Once you get good at it, one or two grenades is sufficent to dispatch anyone that rushes your sniping nest. Even when rushing enemy territory or simply engaging a SAW player intentionally, snipers need to use their frag grenades offensively. As you only get 5 grenades per life, use them wisely. Go to the section about grenades for further information. |