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Elite Rifleman - Bolt-action

NikolaiLev

Grizzled Veteran
Oct 18, 2011
158
41
The Elite Rifleman class has the ability to pick a bolt-action rifle instead of their semi-auto rifle. Gameplay-wise, what purpose does this have? It decreases your team's overall firepower, and if I recall correctly, Elites spawn with only one hand grenade as opposed to the rifleman's two. If you wish to play with a bolt, why not just go Rifleman?

Is there some sort of hidden bonus I'm not aware of?
 
Maybe you're playing and there is this one bastard in a spot with only the tip of his head showing and killing you everytime, and since it's from a distance, you can't hit him with the semi rifle. Instead of switching to rifleman to kill him and possibly lose your semi for the rest of the game, choose the rifle and kill him then go on happily using your semi the rest of the game. This is all for arguments sake, this has never happened to me personally with the semi, but it has with the assault where I wish'd I had a rifle.
 
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There's a bit of a point to it. If you commonly play as Elite Rifleman, you level up not only the gun you use the most but the class itself. So if you are an Elite Rifleman hero, for example, but still level 1 on Rifleman, you can use the bolt-action rifle without having to switch to Rifleman, thereby keeping the slight handling benefits of your leveled-up class.

That's the only thing I can think of.
 
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The semiautos have a small amount of unavoidable inaccuracy baked into them, it's noticeable at longer ranges. The bolts don't have that. It's not usually a big deal, certainly not as huge of an accuracy loss as RO1's semis had, but it's there.

As for why bolts are on the Elite Rifleman slot, it's probably just another holdover from RO1.
 
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The Elite Rifleman class has the ability to pick a bolt-action rifle instead of their semi-auto rifle. Gameplay-wise, what purpose does this have? It decreases your team's overall firepower, and if I recall correctly, Elites spawn with only one hand grenade as opposed to the rifleman's two. If you wish to play with a bolt, why not just go Rifleman?

Is there some sort of hidden bonus I'm not aware of?

In RO:O bolt-action rifles had many pros and were generally better (less sway effect, recoil and could kill almost always with one bullet) at long range shooting than semi-auto rifles.
In RO2 unfortunately SMGs are as effective as rifles at long range, so bolts lost much. Sometimes even if you hit somebody in a chest with rifle, he can use 1 sec med-kit (bandages) and he's good as new. There is also not as many rifle players as in RO:O because most of players pick SMG/Semi-auto slot.
 
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In RO2 unfortunately SMGs are as effective as rifles at long range, so bolts lost much.

100 meters is not "long range". Few maps in RO2 have any engagement distances above 150 meters.

Fallen fighters is about the only map with engagements over 200 meters. Even from the church to the HQ in Spartanovka is only about 170 meters. Pavlovs house and commisars has the potential for long range engagements but most fighting happens building to building.

SMGs are nowhere near as effective as rifles above 100 meters. For starters, the recoil means you have to use single shot bursts, since any shot after the first will go a good 3 foot above where you shot at.

At about 150 meters, SMGs usually only hit on target about 40% of the time, meaning you need to shoot multiple times on target just to get a hit. With rifles they hit at 100% of the time.

Also the penetration is very lousy. If you have an SMG shooting from a window 100m from a rifleman, the rifleman can penetrate the wall and get a hit, the reverse is not possible.

Also because you need to do 1-2 shot bursts, they're much less lethal, since it generally takes a heart or head shot to kill with 1 smg bullet. However with a rifle, stomach and chest shots have a good chance of killing instantly or slow death.
 
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Why wouldn't you be able to hit a guy in the distance with the semi-auto? I do it all the time.

As i stated below, this has never happened to me. And the latter quote explains why it may happen to some.

This is all for arguments sake, this has never happened to me personally with the semi, but it has with the assault where I wish'd I had a rifle.

The semiautos have a small amount of unavoidable inaccuracy baked into them, it's noticeable at longer ranges. The bolts don't have that. It's not usually a big deal, certainly not as huge of an accuracy loss as RO1's semis had, but it's there.
 
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The semiautos have a small amount of unavoidable inaccuracy baked into them, it's noticeable at longer ranges. The bolts don't have that. It's not usually a big deal, certainly not as huge of an accuracy loss as RO1's semis had, but it's there.

As for why bolts are on the Elite Rifleman slot, it's probably just another holdover from RO1.

I see. Not an inaccuracy weighty enough for me to have noticed it. I regular kill bolt riflers on long distances, and have never felt outgunned against them in those situations.
 
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Maybe you're playing and there is this one bastard in a spot with only the tip of his head showing and killing you everytime, and since it's from a distance, you can't hit him with the semi rifle. Instead of switching to rifleman to kill him and possibly lose your semi for the rest of the game, choose the rifle and kill him then go on happily using your semi the rest of the game. This is all for arguments sake, this has never happened to me personally with the semi, but it has with the assault where I wish'd I had a rifle.

Lol in this game you can snipe people with the MP40...how exactly can you not snipe them with the semi auto rifle? What a silly argument. There's absolutely no need for a bolt action rifle for long ranged shots. The semi auto works EXACTLY the same. Even the Mkb can snipe people 300-400 meters away.
 
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Lol in this game you can snipe people with the MP40...how exactly can you not snipe them with the semi auto rifle? What a silly argument. There's absolutely no need for a bolt action rifle for long ranged shots. The semi auto works EXACTLY the same. Even the Mkb can snipe people 300-400 meters away.


Realistically speaking the bolt is more accurate than the semi autos for 2 reasons

1.The gas operating system took some of the velocity off of the bullet to manipulate the bolt.

2.And the main reason.The barrel was designed for rapid fire and not to overheat.While the bolt was designed for high precision at a slower rate of fire.Not to mention its parts would wear out fast and would equal less accuracy while the bolt was practically indestructible during field use.


To this day the bolt is considered the best sniper platform there is for long range precision.Like some have said the ranges on current maps doesn't give the bolt much advantage but, with longer more open maps I think the bolt will be more accurate in game.Even on fallen fighters at the longest ranges the bolt seems to hit a tad better.In one shot when the semi often requires 2-3 shots at a small long range target.


With all the modern technology available the army ask for companies to design the ultimate sniper rifle .... this is what was made.
Spoiler!
 
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Lol in this game you can snipe people with the MP40...how exactly can you not snipe them with the semi auto rifle? What a silly argument. There's absolutely no need for a bolt action rifle for long ranged shots. The semi auto works EXACTLY the same. Even the Mkb can snipe people 300-400 meters away.

I'm sorry but it's quite tiring to hear this "you can snipe people with MP40" nonsense in this community over and over. It really makes me feel like these people never even use MP40, they just think you can "snipe" people with it because they occasionally get killed by it at a significant distance.

Have you tried "sniping" someone with the MP40? Not sure how you can do that when it takes multiple hits to kill someone without exception unless it's a headshot or bleed-out; experiences dramatically inferior trajectories compared to any rifle; and, inarguably, has the worst accuracy of any gun except the PPSh (which, ironically, you have a much better chance of getting a long-distance kill with anyway due to having higher power and higher RPM).

The MP40 is almost useless at times. I mean, frankly, it often fails to even do its job as a close-range weapon (in-game, not in reality), due to the fact that 90% of the time the enemy you run into has a PPSh which will one-shot you while being hipfired -- let alone have any kind of long-range effectiveness.

We've all gotten awesome kills with the MP40 at long ranges.. but don't delude yourself. It's nothing but luck, and usually it's after firing off half a magazine. Hardly a damn sniper rifle. To "snipe" is to dispatch targets at extreme ranges effectively and reliably. If you think the MP40 can do that you've probably never used it.

In this community, the MP40 is a sniper-rifle that headshots riflemen at 2,000 yards on the first shot while being fired from the hip. In reality, you frequently empty a full magazine of ammunition shooting at a crouched soviet at fifty yards, hit him twice, get one-shotted in the leg as he turns around and fires a small burst of the PPSh, then bandages and goes back to what he was doing.
 
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switching to rifleman

I would like to switch to rifleman. But first i want to have al bolt shooting sound like a 54R has. Not that ridicolous sound from the actually MN91/30.
Give the bolts a sound, which they deserve. More powerfull, that you fear your own shot, and more will play this class.

BTW: I have to hit sometimes 3 time with my Tokarev before i kill the**stard.
 
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There is a reason why the longest kill ever (so far) was done by a bolt-action rifle.
Distance was 1,853 meters and was by a British Army Sniper with a AWSM.
Semi-automatic and automatic firing weapons use part of the gas caused by the explosion inside the barrel to pull the bolt back and quickly operate the loading mechanism so a new round is allmost imidietly loaded onto the chamber and is ready to be fired.

If you want supreme overkill, you can use a PTRD-41 wich has a maximum effective range of 10,000 meters (yep, that's 10km).
The PTRS-41, wich is the PTRD's close cousin, has a fixed magazine and can fire 5 rounds without reloading while with the PTRD you have to manualy load each round into the barrel after every shot.
AT rifles are not the same as bolt-action rifles but the principle is EXACTLY the same.

And if you are still wondering how the hell do the PTRD and PTRS have such a high effective range it's because of the 14,5mm round wich is basicly more than 2x more powerfull than a .50BMG.
 
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The MP40 is almost useless at times. I mean, frankly, it often fails to even do its job as a close-range weapon (in-game, not in reality), due to the fact that 90% of the time the enemy you run into has a PPSh which will one-shot you while being hipfired -- let alone have any kind of long-range effectiveness.
Whilst it is true that you can indeed snipe - one aimed shot to the noggin - up to ~150m with a Papasha (roughly 1-in-3 hit chance against a stationary target in my case) I do have to take issue with the highlighted part of your post. Headshots aside, I very rarely take anyone down with one shot from a Papasha; the vast majority of the time I have to hit them three or even four times. (Confirmed hits with the hit report sound effect plus splat anim.) Maybe arms are acting like shields preventing hits to the chest (I read somewhere that arms and legs have a damage cap).

Can't comment on the sniping capacity of the MP40 because I've never used it (and never intend to grind it all of the way up to level 50 either). I have read that it's more accurate in RO2 so unless some other mechanism is in place that renders it more accurate than the Papasha at mid range but then suddenly worse at longer, I expect sniping to be at least as doable as it is with the Papasha (head hits).
 
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