This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Sniper Rifle: From YKTTW
The Sniper Rifle in Deus Ex is Fake Difficulty because it wobbles? Seriously? Would you like me to add a "win instantly" button to your game so you don't actually need to play it? You're not experienced with the sniper rifle, so it's hard to keep it steady. How is that Fake Difficulty?
Camacan: Fake Difficult is merely subjective, as it says in the article. The sniper rifle constitutes fake difficulty because there is no way to engage with it: no way to control or compensate for the wobble: not the slightest interaction possible or pattern decernible in it: it is just arbitrarily imposed on your controls. I agree it is in accord with the character's skill level but it still feels tacked on to me.
Eric DVH: Fake Difficulty is not subjective. Fake difficulty would be if, say… The gun actually fired a moment after you pressed the button, enemies dodged perfect shots, headshots weren't instant kills, etc. Scope wobble is no more fake than the lack of auto-aim in PC FPSs, and I personally think it's honestly more realistic (and fun) than the robo-marksman feeling in most games, since I don't just have to line up the shot, but also have to fire exactly when the crosshairs are over my target. It's really just an extension of the random error imposed on shots from the hip with other weapons in Deus Ex.
Alucard:In all honesty, this isn't totally satisfactory. Can a gun nut or some kind of military expert add some Useful Notes on sniping in TV and Real Life?
Hi. Gun nut here, kinda, sorta, I guess.
One of the first things we need to do, I think, is define what sniping is and who does it. This varies considerably from military to military around the world.
In the Eastern Bloc we tend to see Soviet doctrine and equipment. Soviet doctrine said that they identified the best marksman in each infantry platoon and gave him a rifle with telescopic sight, both of which were designed for the specific task. In defensive operations, Soviet infantry tactics envisioned a strongpoint held by an infantry platoon of 30 to 40 men dug in close together, with such a strongpoint every thousand meters or so at the front line. Each infantry platoon's sniper is responsible for fire support for the strongpoints on either side as well as for his own. His job is to identify and kill high-value targets: anyone carrying or using a radio, anyone who appears to be giving orders, heavy weapons teams with belt-fed machineguns or antiarmor weaponry, etc. Since 1965 or thereabouts his weapon is most likely going to be the Snaiperskaya Vintovka Dragunova, or SVD, the Dragunov sniper's rifle, though there are still many pre-WWI-era Russian bolt-action rifles that have basically had a (very old) scope bolted onto them, in reserve stocks, and not only in Russia, which can be used in the same manner but which were judged less efficient. And with this weapon, the sniper, along with the team that has the platoon's one and only belt-fed light machine gun, is responsible for providing fire support for his platoon of infantrymen, engaging targets at ranges beyond the useful range of Kalashnikov rifles with iron sights.
In Western armies we see very different approaches. We see snipers as a battalion-level asset, assigned to an infantry battalion's scout platoon. They may use what started out as an ordinary infantry rifle, but with a scope bolted onto it, using higher-quality ammunition to improve its accuracy further. Or perhaps something designed from the ground up. US military snipers after the Second World War often used what started out as expensive high-end civilian hunting or target rifles, especially in Vietnam. Western snipers are selected rigorously and trained extensively in camouflage, in stealth, in fieldcraft, and in observation. They tend to be deployed in teams of two, one of whom will usually act as a spotter, using binoculars to acquire targets and in some instances perhaps even a laser rangefinder to assist in determining range to target (it is not widely known, but judging range is a very important part of hitting man-sized targets if they are more than a few hundred meters away). The spotter may be armed with an assault rifle with a silencer, or a pistol-caliber submachinegun with a silencer, and will generally only fire his weapon in defense of the team. These two-man teams may act as scouts as much as snipers, and frequently their orders will be to gather information from the front line or even behind enemy lines. They are generally not attached to a specific infantry platoon, as Western infantry platoons tend to have belt-fed light machine guns in abundance, and artillery and air support for targets beyond their effective range. At least that is the usual plan.
In the US military since 2003 we have seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan the creation, first unofficial, then made official, of designated rifleman (DRM) teams at squad level, whose job is similar to that of the Soviet platoon sniper: to provide fire support for the squad of eight to ten men by means of long-range precision fire. They tend to use highly modified versions of the M16 rifle with some kind of optical sight. This is the Mk 18 Mod 0 Special Purpose Rifle, and yes, you may notice there's an M16 under all that stuff bolted on. That particular rifle is built by the Navy for US Marine designated rifle marksmen, but there are many variations as these rifles are often cobbled together by unit armorers using whatever suitable parts they can get (the match-grade premium target-rifle barrels, for example, are in somewhat short supply these days, and the precision with which they must be manufactured does not really lend itself to mass production, so they tend to be made in small batches by small shops owned by small companies whose names are famous among long-range target shooters and no one else), and issued with special ammunition to improve their accuracy and lethality at long range. The designated marksmen themselves have generally had additional training but not to the same level, or covering the same subjects, as Army or Marine snipers.
If we step back for a moment from the hardware, we note also that the term "sniper" has been applied to some people with very, very different jobs by different militaries. A degree of generalization is difficult to avoid. I would say that the term "sniper," to the extent that it can be applied meaningfully at all, describes a rifleman who has the job of engaging individual enemy soldiers at long range, using a weapon with an optical sight and possibly even special ammunition to improve his chances of killing them at ranges greater than those at which most modern late 20th Century, early 21st Century infantry rifles are capable of. It generally also denotes someone of acknowledged skill, who may also have had special training to match his special equipment.
