How to avoid getting obliterated by whole groups of enemies?

[dgresevfan]

I'm a sniper. I also use grenades although I have essentially no throwing skill yet. Here's the thing. If I snipe someone, everyone else in the room proceeds to either stun, daze, incapacitate, or burn me.

If I use grenades on THEM, unless they die immediately, everyone just takes a healing hypo and then they proceed to stun/burn/incapacitate etc. me.

Flashbangs kind of work and so do napalm grenades, but the cooldown on grenades makes it impractical to use more than one.

What am I doing wrong?

I can take out a few enemies. This is more when there's a room with a group of four or five gang members around a campfire, for example.


The other problem I'm having is Death Stalkers. It seems to be impossible to detect them before they attack, without filling the room with traps.

[Qiox]

My personal opinion: Sniper Rifles are a support weapon and not something to be used all the time. Aimed Shot to start a fight with it to delete one enemy, but then use something that will allow you to kill multiple enemies per turn for the rest of the fight.

[dgresevfan]

Well I have a shotgun for everything after the first shot. But I sometimes can't even get that far because everyone in the room hit me with grenades and psionic powers leaving me standing there stunned and with no health.

[Qiox]

Then I have to ask, what level are you, and exactly which enemies are giving you trouble? If you are attacking people significantly higher level than you, things will not go well.

With Death Stalkers, a high perception character can usually spot them once you are up around level 20+.

I certainly don't bother trying to fight them until I am at least level 16. Higher is even better.

[WalrusJones]

- You can retreat behind cover after your first attack, so that the enemies have to round a corner one by one, or two by two to try and kill you.

- You can remotely create noise to make the enemy start searching for you (IE: A TNT pack,) so that they split up and wander around.

- You can stealth around and place traps so that when you run away after the initial engagement, they will kill themselves for you. (Note: This may not be compatible with strong armor approaches to fighting.)

- You can equip a tazer so that singular close quarter combatant enemies will get stunned for approaching.

- Metathermics psionics can do a great deal of slow/crowd control/bleed and burn, as well as grant you access to one extra stun ability.

- You can have a full auto secondary weapon (A 8.6mm rapid hornet is a great casual assault rifle,) such that you can target the second man in a conga line of enemies with a burst fire and kill the first two. (Later incendiary ammo can make this a form of crowd control, as the 8.6 special ammo is able to cause fear.)

- You can craft ~15 DT ballistic vests, as these will make it so only melee, crossbow and elemental enemies are capable of being a threat.

- Aluminized cloth on the ballistic vest gives you the ability to resist burning.

- A shaded visor on a metal helmet will make it overwhelmingly unlikely you will get incapacitated. (With the above three measures, you will only need to avoid stun.)

[Renamao]

You don't really need throwing to have properly use granades. Though, investing a bit so you can get granadier and three pointer (only takes 30/50 points, and are very STRONG feats) can help you out. As after all, you can just abuse the f5 to make the perfect Alpha start.

WIth that, you should also HEAVILY invest in chemistry. It will allow you to make better bullets for your sniper, and make powerful mk4-5 grenades, napalm molotovs and flashbangs. Those are grenades that can actually win a fight with a single throw or two.

Also, with your sniper, try carrying a pistol. They don't need much to be somewhat effective. Snipers style is using the Snipe to delete one enemy, aimed shot to delete the other, and then, if you don't have defenses like flashbangs and stuff, the enemies will just swarm you. Mostly because snipers have aim penalty for close range, and for moving and shoting.

Another important thing, traps. Its good investing on it, making your battlefield on stealth, and then, fighting along the path of trap protection. Even if you don't invest much, you can use bear traps, and they are GODLIKE. Though, if your trap skill is lo,w the enemy will probably see it and attempt to defuse.

[WalrusJones]

Mind you, there is a sniper that has a good enough action economy to see use in normal combat, with a rapid reloader a 7.62 spearhead can fire twice in a turn.

With temporal manipulation psychic abilities, you can use a throwing item on the turn where you use a RR 7.62 spearhead twice (Or a pistol, SMG, or assault rifle.)

(Psycho-Temporal Contraction can also be used to double the rate of fire of a 8.6mm sniper rifle.)

The only thing I disagree with is the above post with pistols, pistols take a pretty high stat investment to use efficiently (As they need stat investment to reduce their high AP costs,) assault rifles or shotguns are the two most natural low stat investment sidearms for a sniper rifle.

[nightshift]

Sniper rifles are great, since you have two feats that allow you to one-shot enemies.
I used a Reaper Commando Bipod I got from Edgar after solving their burrower problem and it converted me to implement these guns on my Pistol build. Served me well even at close range and against Lunatics and Ironheads that came in groups of 4-5 between the tunnels of SGS and Core City. One shot per round was enough. Opening with a Snipe, then Aimed Shot in the next which I used more frequently thanks to the feat Shooting Spree. All you need to do is kite them. Can slow them down with traps and throwables if you like. It's advisable to increase your Traps stat for many reasons even if you only use Bear Traps, one being that otherwise the Hunter of the enemy group will disarm what you placed upon seeing it before you initiate combat. Never really used covers since you recieve a penalty for moving BEFORE you shoot. So attack first then move. Still try to re-stealth when you can so you can Snipe again.
Since then, I used Dragunov after for a short time until I just recently made my own Rapid Smart Spearhead with Anatomically-Aware Scope.

Also, based on my experience, Pistols are ideal sidearms for Snipers.
They are the kind of guns that supports Snipers the most, AR's, SMG's or Shotguns are not in relation to them at all. Their feats only support themselves, not Snipers and the playstyle required to play one. However, just as sniper rifles, pistols can have high crit chance and damage thanks to their feats - while the other guns have more use from Expertise since their power comes from bursting which doesn't benefit weapons that aims to do damage with a single projectile only. Kneecap Shot is also very useful against melee enemies and upon critting the bleed damage will be all the higher too.
I prioritize to open battles with a Snipe, but having your pistol in hand also boosts your initiative (thanks to the Gunslinger feat), which I found to be an excellent bonus as you can switch to your rifle and drop the enemy before it makes it's move. Sharpshooter feat increases the crit damage for rifles AND pistols too. Also you can use 44 explosive ammo which simply rules and is a lot of fun. Also, despite the common belief, you don't need that much Dexterity, 8 is enough in my opinion. High Dex is for SMG users, there's no significant benefit for it when you use a high caliber pistol, but 8 is ideal for rapid-reloadered weapons with 9mm (15 AP) or .44 (20 AP) rounds while giving the necessary boost to you subterfuge skills.

Temporal spells also complements Snipers as they can be effective with low Will, can slow enemies down (like another Kneecap Shot), raise your MP by 30 and your AP by 20 for 3 rounds, while Recurrence is very powerful after a shot from your rifle and you can use Aimed Shot every round with the cooldown reduction spell and Shooting Spree.



Against Crawlers, it's important to raise your Sneak skill so they can detect you slower - giving you time to spot them first. Get a good pair of Motion Tracking Goggles, maybe grab a Stuffed Bat too and always move until you detect them and hit enter (or win the initiate because of your Pistol upon bumping into them), then kill them. Molotovs and Traps can come handy too. You can also camp near the exit, take a Crawler down, retreat to previous area (quicksave, can wait out the stun if you got hit), re-activate sneak if you want, enter and repeat. If not, then throw something to reveal them - again, win the initiate, then just Aim Shot. The feat Paranoia is very useful to further increase your initiative in addition to Gunslinger and provides 30% damage bonus against them if you spot them first.
First walkthrough, playing on Normal and defeated the Black Crawler with the above mentioned Reaper on level 15 (involved a Molotov inducted fear though), but I suppose Quick Tinkering can also auto-win this fight if you have it (I don't just yet). For defense, a Biohazard Vest with Black Cloth is truly a godsend against Crawlers and Burrowers alike.
Happy hunting!

[WalrusJones]

Personally, I find initiative bonuses to actually be pretty moot, as manual combat activation automatically grants you peak initiative, and there are relatively few cases where you are forced to roll initiative where you aren't facing enemies whom are given godlike initiative scores.

The majority of pistol feats are among the most specialized to a single weapon class in the game, given they have five feats which only affect them in highly specialized cases, far higher AP costs then normal per point of damage, and highly limited range. To me, they are more like the "sniper rifles" of an SMG build.

The cause for shotguns holding natural synergy is simply that there are zero required feats needed to effectively utilize a shotgun, with one feat simply making it so you can effectively utilize the shotgun with almost no investment in guns (Leading Shot,) and a few that aim to augment the crowd control and damage output of a shotgun.
If you do dip in shotgun feats a single feat grants one of the single largest bonuses in critical damage in the whole game (And since you are going to be taking critical feats that synergize with both this and the inherent stat bonuses of sniper rifles, it is a very easy dip to justify.)
Lastly, it is easy to hit the 20 AP Cost of a .44 pistol with a shotgun with no stat cost, saving three stat points on the whole character by just reminding yourself "Oh right, I can just craft a great one of these."

As for assault rifles, many of their feats are generic firearms feats, with only a few having an effect on burst fire, which makes them likely to be not especially relevant. Their key advantages are low movement and close quarter penalties, good range, and very low AP cost with no investments, with it being simple to build an assault rifle into a 11-16 AP cost pocket sniper rifle. (My last playthrough even used a 9mm assault rifle as a improvised sniper rifle on the final stretch of the game, to conserve the good quality 12.7mm ammo that I had carried with me into the end game area.)

[fakename]

You need to diversify your tactics. As a sniper you're going to be retreating after your initial ambush, so consider using abilities to hamper the enemies' movement such as Caltrops, Traps, or the Force Field spell. Don't stand and fight a group, retreat and bide time for your cooldowns to refresh or re-enter stealth.

[WalrusJones]

One thing I also should mention is that if all enemies are "Incapacitated" by a flashbang, you should be able to re-establish stealth.

[GLORY_TO_GOD]

Vanishing Powder grenades are great for restealthing in combat, they tend to be most useful when fighting other snipers. Also nail bombs work well for taking out small groups of enemies. If you want to reduce the chance of enemies to hit you you could try using chemhaze Grenades. Also if you are on cool down for something that you need you could try using temporal stasis on yourself.

[San-Kyu]

At times I've found that I can eliminate some of the enemies safely by luring them away with traps. The "ranger" or gun-toting enemies appear to disarm traps they see. I then set a trail of cheap and no-skill-required bear traps to somewhere isolated and then I alpha strike the hapless enemy. It seems like usually only one or two enemies are triggered by traps this way but its one way of evening the odds.