Green and Smashy! lol.

None taken

I always use sniper builds because I find melee boring. You run in and whack people, no real tactics( For me anyway, others may think differently)

Well a sniper is a fairly easy build.
100 Sneak, 100 Guns.
And preferably a silenced weapon.
Your finished, anything else is just icing.

It is nice that fallout rewards being stealthy, most games make it A a requirement or B offer no real advantage for attacking from stealth.

If the game had the weapon mechanics of STALKER it would be 10x better....

EDIT: I made a non-stealth energy weapons character and it works great...probably because they have high crit mulitpliers.

I'm not happy with how they nerfed the sniper rifle....but I can still kill things with sneak crits out of VATS (how I used it anyway) so I can live with it. I do have to note....if they didn't nerf the damage .308 does the BAR would be utterly devastating to the point it would arguably be "overpowered" and might have given some of the "hardcoe elite" an aneurysm.

Realistic ballistics, such as bullet drop, wind and flight time? That's a "hardcoe" option I could go for....I wouldn't make that part of the basic game though, it would be a game killer for quite a few people if they were forced into it.

Legitimate? Playing sniper is as legitimate as circle-strafing targets at point-blank range while spamming stims.

I know you can still one-shot things with sneak crits. But that applies to all guns with a DAM of 40 or higher, and is not unique to the sniper rifle.

Personally, I think it's ridiculous that the trailcarbine (.44) does more damage/DPS than the sniper rifle and the brush gun does more than twice as much damage as the sniper rifle with a comparable rate of fire. Even the hunting revolver does twice as much damage as the sniper rifle.

And then there are the Gauss rifles...

But I don't think I should complain TOO much, or else the brush gun - and any other gun affected by Cowboy - may get nerfed in patch 1.03, to the dismay of everyone who actually uses those weapons. But I'm going to call a hateful nerf when I see it. That's the only way I can describe what happened in the patch: hateful. They didn't even have the decency to nerf the sniper well.



I said, "more" legit. But let's not getting into the question of play style legitimacy (or lack thereof).

Sorry double post.

You weren't being forced to use it....

Snipers will always reign supreme. Its not just Fallout, its life. You can't fight somebody half a mile out with a high powered scope and a fully loaded .308 or .50 rifle. That and the simple fact that its the only way to kill whoever you want and still remain on good terms with their faction. I am liked and up by everyone but the powder gangers. However, I like to think of my character being more of a lone assassin. My main guns are the 10mm w/ all mods, Verment rifle w/ all mods, lever action shotgun, lots of grenades, and of course the sniper rifle w/ all mods.

That's right. The only realistic of beleavable way to play a gunman in NV is to be a sniper. Somekind of gunslinger or grunt would just get shot in reality. Only way to defeat a bigger group alone is to stay hidden and use long range gun, matrix moves won't help. In addition sniping is also remotely fun compared to shooting enemies with pistols or automatics. That's because using those guns is just spamming bullets at enemy and eating stimpaks while backpedalling. Even though one of the funniest moments in the game is assaulting vault 3 with hunting shotgun and grenades.

What I've wondered is that why is the courier the only real sniper in the whole wasteland? Sure there's the 1st recon and Boone but the player never has to fight against any snipers. If sniping is so effective, wouldn't it make sense that most robbers would use snipers? Instead they use pool cues and close range guns.

Are you being sarcastic?



Not everyone can be a sniper. Short of special forces, snipers are probably the most (combat) trained of all soldiers in the army. Their weapons are also much more maintenance intensive than your run-of-the-mill assault rifle. In fact, I would make the argument that a true sniper (both the soldier and the weapon) would be rare in a Fallout-type world. No doubt you'd have a couple very talented marksmen though, amongst the tribals.

Not really. Going in guns blazing just gets you killed if you're alone. In reality that is. Sniper being very powerful in new vegas just makes sense and is completely okay.



Sure snipers are elite, but I'm talking about engaging the courier from the same distance he does with long range weapon. Fallout world doesn't lack guns or ammo so finding a rifle shouldn't be a problem. When I travel the wastes, I'm the one who starts the fights first. There's never an occasion when I get shot in the head from nowhere the way I shoot at my enemies. If sniping is so powerful, it shouldn't be surprising that there would be robbers in hidden strongpoints, scoping the landscape and preying on occasional travellers. Basically all robbers just charge the player right away.

Well, the AI doesn't sneak. So nothing's going to change until that is addressed. I would also argue that robbers would never actually be snipers (in the modern, military sense), just marksmen. You can't just pick up any gun and be a "sniper."

Anyway, there are much better guns to use now. Hell, even the Cowboy Repeater (with the Cowboy perk) compares favorably to the sniper. What was done to the sniper rifle in the patch was a hate-crime. If they really wanted people to use a sniper rifle as a sniper rifle, they should have lowered rate-of-fire and the crit rate. Those two actions alone would've discouraged using the sniper as an assault rifle, encouraged attacking from sneak, and balanced things with the hunting rifle.

For example, lowering attacks/sec to 1 would've allowed the sniper rifle to still attack faster than the AMR, but makes it far too slow to be used as an assault rifle when the magazine size is 3-5.

Lowering the base damage, of all things, makes no sense. They murdered the weapon - the only reason to use it now is because it can be silenced. Ironic, because silenced weapons only come into play at medium/short range, thus arguably it makes the sniper rifle a credible VATS alternative to the trail carbine at medium/short ranges attacking from sneak. The trail carbine with scope is the superior weapon at long range.

With the Gobi, it's even worse - there is no reason to use it at all.

No one sneak attacks you in the game because it would one shot kill the player! Walking around looking at the Geckos - BAM head shot - dead player. Think of the complaints - I am wearing power armor and I was one shot killed by a Cowboy Repeater! Sneak attacks are too powerful to use against the player....

Not necessarily die, just take lots of damage so that you get penaltized from too careless travelling. The same way as running through interiors carelessly you occasionally step on a landmine. Instead of roaming the wastes thinking you're the kind of the world you'd be forced to watch out and browse dangers with binoculars or scope.

^^Well a sneak attack head shot to the head from a cowboy repeater would do in the low two hundreds. The NCR Rangers would defintely one hit kill the player with a Brush Gun, Sniper Rifle or even worse an AMR!

But that would be a whole lot of fun - searching for those hidden sniping Rangers. Of course if they had a high sneak - it might be difficult! Make life a pure terror for a melee brute!

Actually, it would be a whole lot of complaining, as it favors the sneak/long-range assassin character. Then everyone would whine even more about how they are "forced" to use sniper rifles (except this time, they will actually be kinda forced to).

The one way I can see it working (without non-sneak character builds getting pwnd) is removing the 2X multiplier when attacking out of sneak, by rationalizing that a critical hit should be a critical hit, sneaking or not. As in, some critical hits shouldn't be more "critical" than others, if you get what I'm saying.

^^Completely agree. I actually modded my game to do that! Sneak sniping is still strong - just not over the top strong.

Yeah, if I could mod, I would. There's still an incentive to attack while sneaking - it guarantees a critical hit - it's just that there's no massive 2X sneaking damage bonus to go along with it. I'm willing to give up the sneak damage bonus if it means that the AI can sneak.

The Perception vs. Sneak mechanic would have to be tweaked though.



Sneak anything is strong, not just "sniping." Which is why I don't understand how people can make the argument that "post-patch, you can still one-shot things from sneak using the sniper rifle." Well, of course, but so can the Cowboy Repeater with the Cowboy perk.

Actually, the Cowboy Repeater does slightly more damage than the sniper rifle, post-patch, if I remember correctly. So the fact that the sniper rifle can still one-shot things out of sneak is an awful argument in general, when the Cowboy Repeater can do it just as well. We can use this reasoning to rationalize nerfing all guns to ~40 DAM, and there would never be a reason to have a gun-type weapon with >40 DAM.

Nah, the Sniper Rifle still out damages the Cowboy Repeater. I would like to see four things implemeted to make Sniping more realistic:

1. Make the Characters Perception set the maximum range you can see and shoot. Right now you can be a dead eye shot with a perception of 1. A character with a perceiption of 1 should not see a critter until he is right on top of it.

2. Give different Guns a real range. Only the Sniper type weapons should have any chance for long range shots.

3. Drop a Sneak attack to just a regular crit. Not a double crit.

4. Damage from guns should drop considerably when used at extremely long ranges. This would force players to actually have to sneak a little closer to get that kill shot. Real snipers are experts at sneaking. But in Fallout you can be a mega sniper with a sneak of 10.

And if you are on the PC it is super easy to change the crit mult on a sneak. Be more then happy to show you how.

No, it doesn't. With the Cowboy perk, the Cowboy Repeater does approx. 44 base damage. Obviously, with special ammo, the sniper rifle does out-damage the cowboy repeater, but the mere fact that such a low-level weapon compares so favorably to the sniper rifle (it has a higher ROF, higher Crit chance, half the AP cost, larger magazine size) despite costing 5 times less (800 vs. 4100) is a joke.

Then there's the trail carbine, which absolutely destroys the sniper rifle stats wise. Without the Cowboy perk, the two weapons are comparable. With the Cowboy perk, each basic shot does almost 50% more DAM than the sniper rifle, which is superior to even the sniper rifle with JSP ammo (DAM*1.5 - DT is mathematically greater than [DAM-DT]*1.5). The trail carbine also costs less, is much more durable, has half the AP cost and fires faster, while weighing less.

I cannot stress how ridiculous the nerf to the sniper rifle is. A nerf was needed, not a murder.



Thanks, I appreciate it. Unfortunately, I'm not on PC.

I have to agree with you, Mudhen, they were brutal with the sniper rifle. I understand and agree that it was too powerful, and needed a nerf, but getting rid of the x5 multiplier would have been enough to stop people from abusing it. Even lowering the ROF I can accept, but then lowering the damage by a third as well? Why does This Machine do 55 damage, the SR 42, and the Gobi 40, when they all fire a .308 round? Considering that the SR and the Gobi are supposedly, by definition as sniper rifles, precision weapons? Instead of nerfing with a scalpel, they went in with a machete.

I personally prefear brute melee character to stealthy sniper. Much more satisfying swinging a sledge hammer, than shooting a enemy from far away. Unfortunatly stealthy sniping is far too effective. It would be better with bullet drop and proper range and make it so that you have to place youre shots, like shooting a enemy in the head is insta kil but not in the leg or lower body

Yep...common sense really. Don't give your enemy a chance to retaliate = win.

You got half of it right im a sniper but if they get to close i think a CZ57 Avenger will enter the equation.

I will charge in if i know what it is is not worth wasteing a 308 or 50 thou.
.....boatflys.......

I do say thou the sneak attack crits are very high dmg pretty much able to ko deathclaws in the head with anti-mat rifle with match hand loads.