Purpose of Sniper Rifles?

[See you Space Cowboy...]

I'm a bit new to this game, so I hope I'm not missing something obvious. I was just wondering what the purpose of sniper rifles are, when it appears that assault rifles have the same range, but have much larger magazines and also have the option of burst and full-auto fire.

The sniper rifles seem to have more base damage, but isn't this more than made up for by the multiple fire modes and vastly extended magazines of the ARs?

[frdnwsm]

It's the range:accuracy relationship. There are three different ranges for ballistic weapons: short, medium and long. The well prepared Street Samurai will have one weapon of each type. A pistol sucks at long range, and may well not even be able to reach a distant opponent. Assault rifles are mid range stuff. Sniper rifles have excellent accuracy at long ranges, but are cumbersome to use at short ranges, and hence have poorer accuracy against close up targets.

ARs do indeed have higher rates of fire, but this doesn't help much if your accuracy is too low to hit reliably.

[OptoNick]

In Dragonfall one of your teammates, Eiger, is wielding Sniper Rifle + Shotgun - it's a pretty decent combo that allows to eliminate enemies in one turn at any range. I'd say that you don't need more than one SR in your team's equipment, but one in a hands of good Street Sam wouldn't harm.

[Clockwork]

Originally posted by OptoNick:

I'd say that you don't need more than one SR in your team's equipment

Actually, having both Eiger and my PC holding a sniper rifle was extremely effective on Very Hard, especially when I didn't want to finish Apex off, but rather kill all hostiles until they stop spawning.

[frdnwsm]

I will point out that Eiger's personal mission nets her a very nice unique AR, the Steyr, IF you make the right choices. (If not, she ends up with a grenade upgrade, which is seriously inferior). But with the Steyr, she then has weapons covering all three ranges.

The above information is, of course, not germane to the HK game. In HK, I give Duncan a sniper rifle so he can snipe away at riggers and conjurers at long range.

[Zadok]

Snipers are perfectly fine in themselves. Only that long range is harder to use due to the often times cramped levels. Snipers can excell but they can also fall flat, so opting for the mid range AR is more reliable. Also with only Rifles 3 as a requirement Full Auto attacks are way better than any other rifle special attack. However: FAs don't scale with a higher Rifle skill as they never crit. That also means that armor works very well against Full Autos. At very high Rifle levels and late in the game sniper rifles may deal more damage.

[frdnwsm]

I wold like to point out tangentially that Gaichu is often underrated. He really starts to shine when given the right equipment.

If you look at his stats, he has not only melee skill but also thrown weapon skill, which enables him to use a shuriken. This is a 15 range thrown weapon, and a hit with this also knocks an enemy out of cover, without having to have him run right up to the foe for a physical attack. He is also trained in "unarmed" combat, which means he can use the Shock Glove to strip enemy AP. Lastly, if you give him Spore Cloud ... and why the hell wouldn't you? ... he turns into a human (inhuman?) hand grenade. He's a quadruple threat.

Oh, and he has 2 ways to regenerate damage, which is damned useful.