I've only been playing this game for about a week, having drifted in here from the less than satisfactory COD2, and so far I am truly amazed at the level of realism this game offers.
I am both an active reenactor (WW2, WW1 and Romanian War of Independence) and a sniper for one of the Bucharest based airsoft clubs.
That being said, I can wouch that this is the closest to a real rifle that I've seen sofar in a game, especially for the MN 1891/30 and M38 we regularly use in our reenactments.
Especially Kudos for the dev team on implementing the "re-load" animation- heaven only knows how many times I've had to push reluctant cartiges into the rifle...
But back to the subject of this thread.
As a sniper in real life, I of course opt for this class when playing, but I noticed a distressing fact- on most of the "infantry" maps, the distances present are totally inapropoiate for a scoped rifle.
Especially in urban environments like Danzig, the best weapon you can use is the basic infantry rifle. That, of course, means you still have to comply to the guidelines listed above in this thread, but the unscoped weapon gives you the advantage of higher mobility and a wider FOV while in an ambush position.
However, when trying to make use of my real-world experience in the game I became paintfully aware of the fact that whoever designed the maps wasn't that used at thinking like a sniper, as there are some great spots (on Danzig for example) that are either impossible to get into or impossible to get out of, resulting in your getting stuck in the geometry of the level.
The best place to use a sniper rifle is actually on the combined arms-tank maps (if available) because of the ample spaces and generous hide opportunities in the form of ruins and vegetation. Some of the custom maps are especially good at that, and I've had great sniper-only games on maps such as "Lakelands-Night".
Even on maps that have no scoped weaponry on them, a trained sniper can use a basic rifle to achieve basically the same effect of disorientation/suppresion on the enemy.
Some of the best examples are "Snowy forest" where a single german sniper can hold off the line (I had one of my best nights there, with rarely having to shoot a second time, so much so that eventually the players on the russian side left in disgust) and "The road to hill B4" where playing as a strelok I sucessfully managed to out-flank the german position, making it easy for my team-mates to storm the top.
However, the best shots I got sofar were on two custom maps I don't remember the names of. (one had a huge yard with barracks, guard towers and a round castle-like structure in the middle with a radio on it, and the other one had as objectives a "mortar position", "Ammo dump" "abandoned bunker" and "church", the terrain being made up of small rolling hills and wheat fields with the occasional forest)
On the first one, I played as a russian and kept a close watch on the castle structure, where from time to time some germans would try to sneak up and call out arty on our position. On one ocasion I was hiding in a bush near the top of the hill that obscures our spawn-point from view (On my previous life I had been camped on the other side of the compound at about 300 meters from the castle but got spotted and artied to death) and shot from about 1000 meters hitting the german in the head. The shot was sligtly angled up, and elevation was about 1 centimeter on the screen (17' monitor, textured "all black" scope) meaning that the middle "post" of the sight blocked my view of the target completely (for some time I also had a similar WW1 vintage German scope on my airsoft rifle but eventually swithed to a "regular" 30-30 4X32).
The second shot is really the one I'm really proud of. I was capping the abandoned bunker point, lying on top of it amid some sand bags (simmilar arangement to the top of the command bunker on Basovka) and spotted a Russian tank in the distance, whose commander was negligently popping up of the turret while examining our positions on the mortar site with binocs. The distance was about 1200m, meaning I could barely see the guy on top of the tank. I took careful aim, and missed, but managed to see where the shot impacted the side armour.
Amazingly, the guy continued to stand there, so I fired a second shot, this time with about 1.5 cm of elevation (also screen distance) To my surprise, it hit home, eventhough the vertical "post" of my scope obscured my view of the whole tank!
Well, that being said, good hunting and I look forward in meeting you on the battlefield.
And don't forget- smile, you're being watched!
