Why don't sniper rifles have armor penetration?

[Furry Eskimo]

Is it just me, or is it really weird that the sniper rifles don't have medium to high level armor penetration? I understand that they have the potential to deal a lot of damage, and in practice they seem to, but what's the point of having low armor penetration? That just mean that they're ineffective against most armored targets, because the rounds would bounce off?

Maybe I misunderstanding how armor penetration works, or maybe there are new weapons on the way that will provide this, but it seems like we have very few weapons currently with medium armor penetration, which just feels a little weird.

Am I misunderstanding what armor penetration is for?

[ANCsemi]

Originally posted by Mini:

Only two non stratagem weapons have medium armor penetration and neither of them are conventional bullet weapons (those being the Scorcher and Jar-5).

4; Senator and Liberator AP, both conventional bullet firearms.

[Jozsefirst]

Originally posted by <⬇️⬅️⬇️⬆️⬅️>:

Originally posted by Jozsefirst:

I see so many people claim the sniper rifles....

As far as I can tell they are not really good at anything....

What? There's only one "sniper rifle" - the AMR.

Originally posted by Jozsefirst:

You are far better off using the Diligance

The Diligence (DMR) is what's being discussed here. You talking about the Defender?

The line between DMR and sniper rifle is somewhat muddy, I would consider the Diligence Counter Sniper to be a sniper rifle too along with the AMR. OP too says "sniper rifles" not "sniper rifle". I was primarily reflecting on that along with the suggestion made by multiple people that these guns have good dmg output.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Jozsefirst:

Originally posted by <⬇️⬅️⬇️⬆️⬅️>:

What? There's only one "sniper rifle" - the AMR.



The Diligence (DMR) is what's being discussed here. You talking about the Defender?

The line between DMR and sniper rifle is somewhat muddy

It's actually organizational, and so completely impossible to draw in a game where nothing larger than a fireteam exists.

[Spartykins]

Originally posted by Zidj:

Diligence counter sniper should have medium armor pen for its tradeoffs in handling and recoil. Damage and scope zoom alone doesn't help it at all.

whopping 15 or so extra damage doesn't mean a whole lot to me either tbh

[Phantim99]

DMRs aren't exactly known for their ability to punch through heavy armor IRL, either.
I've run the Diligence and the Counter Sniper version, and honestly it feels perfectly acceptable IF you play it like a scout/recon. It can't run and gun, and it suffers close range, but if you get a vantage point, you can slap targets before they can even threaten your group. Pretty sure I've 1 tapped Rocket Devastators before they even knew what was happening, which made my team's life a lot easier.
If you're looking for a proper sniper, just stick with the Anti-Material Rifle. In all likelihood you'll unlock both at the same time, if not get the Anti-Material first.

[ANCsemi]

Originally posted by Spartykins ❤:

Originally posted by Zidj:

Diligence counter sniper should have medium armor pen for its tradeoffs in handling and recoil. Damage and scope zoom alone doesn't help it at all.

whopping 15 or so extra damage doesn't mean a whole lot to me either tbh

The only reason it would ever matter is if it were a break-point on an enemy. (is it? I honestly don't know)

Ie. If the Diligence could one-shot roaches, but two-shot hunters, and the Diligence CS could one-shot hunters too.

[Jozsefirst]

Originally posted by Phantim99:

DMRs aren't exactly known for their ability to punch through heavy armor IRL, either.
I've run the Diligence and the Counter Sniper version, and honestly it feels perfectly acceptable IF you play it like a scout/recon. It can't run and gun, and it suffers close range, but if you get a vantage point, you can slap targets before they can even threaten your group. Pretty sure I've 1 tapped Rocket Devastators before they even knew what was happening, which made my team's life a lot easier.
If you're looking for a proper sniper, just stick with the Anti-Material Rifle. In all likelihood you'll unlock both at the same time, if not get the Anti-Material first.

The Diligence is perfectly suitable for CQC, so long as your aim is decent the dps will serve you well despite the lack of auto fire capability. The high mobility of the gun (aka how fast you can adjust aim with it) is a big factor in this as well. You dont have to play with that gun like a marksman but you can, that's the beauty of it.

[TheAceOfSpodes]

So, bit of gun nerd ♥♥♥♥ to answer your question from a realistic perspective.

What you're referring to as "sniper rifles" are in fact not "sniper rifles". They're DMRs (designated marksman rifles). An actual sniper rifle is not in the game. You could argue (as I would) that the Anti-Materiel Rifle is a "sniper rifle", after all the M82 Barrett has been used semi-regularly by snipers, but generally sniper rifles are defined as having a bolt action. Now, rather than just merely pedantic nitpicking, this is a fairly important distinction.

DMRs (generally speaking) have shorter barrels (when compared to anti-materiel rifles), and use rifle caliber ammunition (or smaller). Many of these guns are based on the M16 platform and use 5.56, many are using 7.62 NATO, the Soviet/Russian ones are generally in 7.62 long.

The important part of this is that even full-sized rifle calibers like the 7.62 long or 7.62 NATO are not armor penetrating rounds. I mean, yes, they do make armor penetrating variants, but even those are generally stopped by common infantry worn body armor (I'm talking level 4 stuff). I've seen commercial body armor that can stop .50 cal armor piercing rounds as well... Although the sheer force of the impact may make you wish it hadn't.

However, in practical gameplay terms, they aren't very useful because they're niche weapons, and the appropriate use-case for them doesn't come up nearly often enough. We know that Arrowhead is adding new enemy types to the game, so maybe in the future there will be one that encourages a team to bring along a precision weapon like the DMRs. Like a bot sniper or something that tries to engage from in cover and at range. But yeah, as they stand, too niche to be useful on missions.

tl;dr - The DMRs aren't designed to be armor penetrating, they're designed to be precision weapons used against infantry targets. In game, this translates to being more useful against bots than bugs. The actual "sniper rifle" in the game is medium armor penetrating and can 2 shot Hulks from the front.

[Creamy Freak]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

Is it just me, or is it really weird that the sniper rifles don't have medium to high level armor penetration? I understand that they have the potential to deal a lot of damage, and in practice they seem to, but what's the point of having low armor penetration? That just mean that they're ineffective against most armored targets, because the rounds would bounce off?

Maybe I misunderstanding how armor penetration works, or maybe there are new weapons on the way that will provide this, but it seems like we have very few weapons currently with medium armor penetration, which just feels a little weird.

Am I misunderstanding what armor penetration is for?

Its so they can sell us one later that does

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by TheAceOfSpodes:

So, bit of gun nerd ♥♥♥♥

Oh, FFS, now I'm provoked.

A DMR or sniper rifle is defined mainly by where its shooter is in the organization of the unit. The designated marksman is stuck running about with the bulk of the platoon. Because of that, the DMR can be as minimal as a scoped assault rifle (i.e. firing an 5.56 mm, 5.45 mm or something similar) - the opportunity and, quite often, the training are just aren't there. At the same time, there's really no upper bound for a DMR. The SVD is a completely dedicated design that fired 7.62x54 mm at the time the average Soviet rifleman had switched to 7.62x39 mm SKS, and everyone else generally used WWII sniper rifles. Yet its users were clearly squad or platoon marksmen. It's even got a bayonet lug!

Now, there's no rule a sniper rifle has to be bolt-action, and I've seen strong contentions with the adage that any sort of self-loading action decreases accuracy. However, we need to consider the Green Meanie: during the late Cold War, British and then NATO sniper rifles made a huge leap in accuracy using sports-grade techniques, and then went further by using larger cartridges like the .338. These would actually have improved penetration at the same range. Their downside is that no-one else uses them. With an assault rifle-based DMR, you're using the same rounds as everyone else; with an SVD, once you run out of your brass-cased 7.62x54 mm sniper rounds you can at least yank some of the shoddier steel-cased rounds out of the machine gunner's belt. That's not a problem for a sniper, who - whether alone or in twos or in threes - is an independent unit who's not around frendlies for days and weeks.

There have been AP DMRs, though. The ones I know were the result of Russian attempts to avoid having to make an actual sniper rifle (which would have an astronomical pricetag and not meet the milspec requirement of being able to hammer in nails) while addressing improvements in body armor. The first example is SVDK using the ancient 9.3x64 mm Brenneke. The second is Chukavin SVCh being offered in .308 besides the regular 7.62x54R. And of course you have the exotics like 9x39 mm and 12.7x55 mm subsonic rounds, as well as the Dragunov-derived testbeds for the wannabe 7.62x54 replacements, the 6x49 mm and the 10x54R mm sabot flechette... Basically all dead ends because Russia's gotten rid of most designated marksmen in favor of a brigade-level all-sniper unit.

[Spartykins]

Originally posted by SievertChaser:

Originally posted by TheAceOfSpodes:

So, bit of gun nerd ♥♥♥♥

Oh, FFS, now I'm provoked.

A DMR or sniper rifle is defined mainly by where its shooter is in the organization of the unit. The designated marksman is stuck running about with the bulk of the platoon. Because of that, the DMR can be as minimal as a scoped assault rifle (i.e. firing an 5.56 mm, 5.45 mm or something similar) - the opportunity and, quite often, the training are just aren't there. At the same time, there's really no upper bound for a DMR. The SVD is a completely dedicated design that fired 7.62x54 mm at the time the average Soviet rifleman had switched to 7.62x39 mm SKS, and everyone else generally used WWII sniper rifles. Yet its users were clearly squad or platoon marksmen. It's even got a bayonet lug!

Now, there's no rule a sniper rifle has to be bolt-action, and I've seen strong contentions with the adage that any sort of self-loading action decreases accuracy. However, we need to consider the Green Meanie: during the late Cold War, British and then NATO sniper rifles made a huge leap in accuracy using sports-grade techniques, and then went further by using larger cartridges like the .338. These would actually have improved penetration at the same range. Their downside is that no-one else uses them. With an assault rifle-based DMR, you're using the same rounds as everyone else; with an SVD, once you run out of your brass-cased 7.62x54 mm sniper rounds you can at least yank some of the shoddier steel-cased rounds out of the machine gunner's belt. That's not a problem for a sniper, who - whether alone or in twos or in threes - is an independent unit who's not around frendlies for days and weeks.

There have been AP DMRs, though. The ones I know were the result of Russian attempts to avoid having to make an actual sniper rifle (which would have an astronomical pricetag and not meet the milspec requirement of being able to hammer in nails) while addressing improvements in body armor. The first example is SVDK using the ancient 9.3x64 mm Brenneke. The second is Chukavin SVCh being offered in .308 besides the regular 7.62x54R. And of course you have the exotics like 9x39 mm and 12.7x55 mm subsonic rounds, as well as the Dragunov-derived testbeds for the wannabe 7.62x54 replacements, the 6x49 mm and the 10x54R mm sabot flechette... Basically all dead ends because Russia's gotten rid of most designated marksmen in favor of a brigade-level all-sniper unit.

if there's one thing gun nerds can agree on

is that one of them is wrong

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Spartykins ❤:

Originally posted by SievertChaser:

Oh, FFS, now I'm provoked.

A DMR or sniper rifle is defined mainly by where its shooter is in the organization of the unit. The designated marksman is stuck running about with the bulk of the platoon. Because of that, the DMR can be as minimal as a scoped assault rifle (i.e. firing an 5.56 mm, 5.45 mm or something similar) - the opportunity and, quite often, the training are just aren't there. At the same time, there's really no upper bound for a DMR. The SVD is a completely dedicated design that fired 7.62x54 mm at the time the average Soviet rifleman had switched to 7.62x39 mm SKS, and everyone else generally used WWII sniper rifles. Yet its users were clearly squad or platoon marksmen. It's even got a bayonet lug!

Now, there's no rule a sniper rifle has to be bolt-action, and I've seen strong contentions with the adage that any sort of self-loading action decreases accuracy. However, we need to consider the Green Meanie: during the late Cold War, British and then NATO sniper rifles made a huge leap in accuracy using sports-grade techniques, and then went further by using larger cartridges like the .338. These would actually have improved penetration at the same range. Their downside is that no-one else uses them. With an assault rifle-based DMR, you're using the same rounds as everyone else; with an SVD, once you run out of your brass-cased 7.62x54 mm sniper rounds you can at least yank some of the shoddier steel-cased rounds out of the machine gunner's belt. That's not a problem for a sniper, who - whether alone or in twos or in threes - is an independent unit who's not around frendlies for days and weeks.

There have been AP DMRs, though. The ones I know were the result of Russian attempts to avoid having to make an actual sniper rifle (which would have an astronomical pricetag and not meet the milspec requirement of being able to hammer in nails) while addressing improvements in body armor. The first example is SVDK using the ancient 9.3x64 mm Brenneke. The second is Chukavin SVCh being offered in .308 besides the regular 7.62x54R. And of course you have the exotics like 9x39 mm and 12.7x55 mm subsonic rounds, as well as the Dragunov-derived testbeds for the wannabe 7.62x54 replacements, the 6x49 mm and the 10x54R mm sabot flechette... Basically all dead ends because Russia's gotten rid of most designated marksmen in favor of a brigade-level all-sniper unit.

if there's one thing gun nerds can agree on

is that one of them is wrong

Two gun nerds walk into a bar.

Three opinions emerge.

[TheAceOfSpodes]

Originally posted by SievertChaser:

Originally posted by TheAceOfSpodes:

So, bit of gun nerd ♥♥♥♥

Oh, FFS, now I'm provoked.

I agree with almost everything you've said, but I think we're talking about two different things so I'm not entirely sure why you're provoked. I'm talking more about the guns themselves, and their mechanical differences from a sniper rifle, rather than their employment inside a unit. And I fully concede there's a mountain of overlap between the two categories, which is why I tried to heavily use phrases like "generally".

I don't think small unit tactics are particularly applicable to a game like Helldivers, though, so I didn't bother considering it in my post. I mean... We're a fireteam or less in strength, and our enemies are genocidal robots and gigantic bugs. Trying to shoehorn that into current tactics and organization doesn't really work.