Fria Ligans forum

Military sniper rifles usually have base dmg of 3 and crit threshold of 3. Machineguns that use the exact same ammo are 3/4. What is the design intent here? It is a rather big difference.

Snipers already have more range and a scope (for +1/+2), but no additional penalty shooting at short ranges.

It's just that if sniper rifles are that powerful and easy to use by anyone at any distance, standing or prone, everybody wants one.

If you are into sniper lore, "Enemy At the Gates" is well worth a watch.

It's just that if sniper rifles are that powerful and easy to use by anyone at any distance, standing or prone, everybody wants one.

Sure... everyone wants one.

Until they get into a proper firefight where that machineguns or assault rifles massive ROF compared to the Sniper Rifle makes a world of difference.

Your sniper rifle relies almost entirely on your skill rating.

But you get yourself an M60 and start spraying and you get a massive boost to that skill rating because of the higher ROF giving a much higher chance of getting more successes (assuming you hit), and even if you don't hit, you get a lot more suppression.

I suggest you just run a test scenario where you set up 4 players with C skills using M40A3's against 4 Enemies with C skills using M60's and make them all fire at maximum ROF and see who wins that scenario the most times.

EDIT: Oh and since it might come up... the longer range only helps if you're successful at discovering the enemy before they discover you. So that's highly situational.

Sorry, I'm not entirely convinced. If going for max damage (to crit), rolling 6 ammo dice has an EV of 1 (extra damage). Sniper rifles get the +1 automatically while spending 1 ammo. And then there's rifles with ammo dice, like svd. Choosing an additional target with a sniper rifle using ammo dice is quite effective as the base damage is that high.

And range has mattered in our games, so it doesn't feel that situational.

Although I admit the suppressive power of ammo dice is not nothing. It's a nice bonus.

Should also be noted that machine guns default to STR+Heavy Weapons unless mounted on a vehicle or tripod. So works better for someone who's the big brawny type who's also good at close combat and recovering from the flu.

Sniper shots require a slow aim, so 2 turns to fire during which you are vulnerable to suppression, also you don't get to use ammo dice in that case. If you want to use ammo dice, you'd do a quick shot and rely very much on your ranged combat skill, and even then the highest ROF is 2 in RAW. Also if you're so worried about "sniper abuse" why not do the sensible thing and limit the ammo. Or have the enemies order in artillery. A squad of deadly snipers would make life hell for the soviets and certainly be a high value target.
I don't get why it seems so OP to you when it has clear drawbacks compared to other weapons. It's like saying the axe is totally OP, but when you stop to think about it, how often would you be running around with an axe, chopping people up, even though it auto-crits unarmored targets?