As per title - running around, cloaking in and out, Comm + Knife, causing chaos? Take your SMG and stuff it! We got 6 rounds of BAM and a deadly slashy/stabby friend! Who else loves this beastly combo?
I'm going to start with some legitimate negativity before this gets out of hand: I'd like it a whole lot more if it weren't crippled by Nanoweave.
Thats what Nanoweave is designed to do though. I hate the fact that nanoweave blocks Bolt Action rifle headshots as much as the next guy, but having to shoot someone an extra time in CQC is the whole point of the suit slot. I run with pretty much exclusively the commissioner, so I know that nanoweave can often get you killed when you expect to only need 1 shot and a knife and it turns out you need two. You have to realize though, CQC is where nanoweave shines. The suit slot is designed to give you that extra bullet or two in a gunfight. The commissioner fires fast enough that you can shoot twice and knife before someone turns around.
Nanoweave simply means you have to work a little more. Shoot, shoot, knife, shoot, shoot knife - if you run through the character model, 180, run through, cloak.. ..I find exploiting the lack of collision detection in this game makes it work. Of course, you could just as well SMG them but ya know, using the Comm as a secondary melee weapon/ranged up to 5-10 meters has been working well for me. You can take out two folks relatively cleanly and reliably, since they end up shooting each other, if they don't flinch, hesitate and make life easier. You have to zigzag through them like a nutter. It feels very Gun-Katar. Of course, it's not for everybody but ya know, I find it fun and very effective. I'm sure there are others out there, with a similar style and similar love for the setup.
There's a reason I run commissioner on all my loadouts for all my classes. Great for executing clueless enemies and for quickly finishing fights if the enemy gets too close. Nanoweave can screw with it a bit but a headshot or two opening shots still makes it a damn fast kill.
When I do things right, the commie+knife combo is really efficient and I love it. There was one time I was sniping and the base I was at was completely overrun so I took out my commissioner and enlisted people--cutthroat style.
A little survivability in CQC oriented situations is fine...no one cares about that. A hard counter to an entirely unique playing style, long ranged sniping, is not. To everyone else... I was going to get the Underboss, why does everyone choose the Commissioner?
I'm not a huge fan of it myself. I just don't mesh all that well with the Comissioner. Sure, it's a nice little gimmick, but as a side arm in general situations it just lets me down too much. The Emperor and Inquisitor might need more bullets, but their RoF and excellent all-round reliability more than make up for it. Plus with a suppressor it's easy to get knife streaks on a bunch of oblivious players.
Nobody cares about snipers. You don't cap points, you don't kill tanks. You're not needed. The CQC infiltrators are doing your job for you while you're sitting on a rock, stacking kills.
For Infil play, I use the basic Mag-shot with silencer, 3 shots, 1 knife, no one gets out alive (if I can line up, it's headshot + knife), and no one around hears anything, a beauty. For other classes (though I also have a sneaky LA favorite with all silencers weapons), Commisionner is good enough indeed. Well, even the silencer is not really needed, tbh, since commissioner is NS, nobody reacts to it being fired close anyway. I've been able to stack like 6+ Com/Knife kill as a medic by casually running in the middle of a VS group spawning from an AMS, acting like one of them, before 1 VS started shooting me.
I'd explain to you what long ranged bolt-action snipers do for their faction, but you wouldn't read it due to the length. Perhaps I can shorten it up enough...we'll see. Long ranged snipers have a larger field of vision, this means that they can take out more high priority targets. Those engineers repairing the defensive turrets didn't succeed in their goals because they were picked off. Those engineers repairing those AA or AV MAX units were picked off, forcing the MAX units to retreat or risk cooldown. Those engineers manning their AI or AA turret were taken out by a sniper. Those clusters of enemy infantry muscling their way into your bio-lap didn't dissipate because of your perseverance...they were thinned out because snipers back on the mountain overlooking that pad kept taking out their medics. Those enemy tanks that you got smoking but had escape didn't come back after they ducked behind that rock cluster because a sniper on the mountain picked off the driving engineer when he jumped out to repair. That heavy assault on the wall shooting rockets down at your tanks got picked off the moment his shield dropped and he stopped moving to fire... There's a lot that long ranged snipers do that you don't see on the battlefield because we're not in the thick of things right alongside you. Instead, these things happen and go completely unnoticed because you're too busy spraying bullets at anything that moves. When you see a sniper, you simply assume that all they're doing is random killing...but we have the luxury of picking out our targets, that's the point. We seek out high priority targets that are causing all of you problems on the battlefield, and better yet...even if we aren't interested in helping out the faction all those situations I just presented are situations where people make themselves a perfect target for snipers. So, even by seeking out the most kills...snipers are often taking out exactly what you need taken out...thus helping themselves and their faction simultaneously. Am I downplaying SMG play? Not at all, it has its place as an option that works exceptionally well. In accordance to many snipers, myself included, better than sniping simply because of nanoweave makes everything I listed above even more difficult at long range due to potentially negating a headshot. Some say nanoweave isn't that big of a factor in long ranged sniping, but that's another story entirely. That aside, It doesn't change the fact that those roles are what long ranged sniping is for. That is our purpose and those who take up a SMG have a smaller field of vision so they can't cover as much ground as we can from a mountain overlooking the enemy base. They can, however, capture points, overload generators, and take out other random infantry while they zip around...which is the trade off between the two. - So no, we don't cap points...we simply make sure that you can. - So no, we don't destroy tanks...we simply kill the drivers/engineers repairing them when they duck behind a rock to repair after you failed to do your job. Saying that we don't do any of those things would be rather foolish and downright absurd, seeing as how those situations make people prime targets for snipers. I have done every last one of those things, I've watched a bio-lab air-pad clear out because two snipers and I made sure that not a single medic lasted long enough to heal enough of their allies to continue the push...and as our team rushed on forth and took out that Sunderer supplying the troops...we moved on as we always do. Undervalued and unappreciated...we're quite accustom to that, it's why many of us are lone wolves.
^This. Whole purpose of snipers in this game is just to annoy other players. No actual impact on battle. How is the Underboss doing vs Commisioneer? I got one simply because I liked BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM more than BAM------BAM------BAM. TBH I love it in CQC, it makes me feel like true Cowboy Joe. But I see majority of people running around with its bigger brother Commisioneer.
Porpoisenly, I started with the Comm because I needed a secondary that functioned well at close/face range. As a platoon, we'll help TEH ZEG if needs, but more often than not, we'll entrust them to do their thing while we go cause mischief. I was totting my RAMS and wanted a secondary that could cover close-medium range. In this way, I'd have tools to contribute in a wider variety of scenarios - RAMS for counter snipe/snipe/close snipe, Comm or Underboss for running round bases/covering doorways/flushing out enemies etc I read around, heard 'kick on Comm is harder, Underboss easier to control in CQC is you're squeezing off a shot or so when main weapon needs to reload'. Thing is, since I wanted a Secondary to act as a primaryLITE, the Comm made more sense, at least to me. Turns out that I use it for CQC, hipfiring way more often than sighting. The 'it has more kick', for me, was a similar condition to 'suppressors reduce bullet velocity' - something that, with practice, can be built on. Since I've learnt how to CQC with the Comm, the 'increased kick' isn't a factor. It's the only pistol's kick I've even known. So aye, to each their own. Obviously, everyone has different mentalities. At the end of the day, if something is working for us, we just gotta learn *how* we're making it work/what about it works for us - so we can build on it. :: If I was running SMGs, I'd probably pick up the Underboss - simply to fire if the SMG was out of ammo. I've never used that setup and personally it doesn't appeal to me. Limiting myself to an SMG, in a squad/platoon of well organised players, doesn't really pay off. We need the accuracy and range of a RAMS/rifle more than another source of bullets. We have a variety of colorful characters killing things reliably already.* *However, on a support class, I'll happily bring a Hailstorm.
RETORT #846B: IT'S YOU 'I IZ SNIPER NO I IZ CQC NO I IZ HAXOR INFIS THAT ARE NOT NEEDED Do both - snipe and CQC. If you can only snipe or CQC, your limiting yourself and your team. Personally, I aim to contribute in as many ways as possible*. *I do agree that, if a player INSISTS on restricting themselves to CQC, then the current system is better suited to them, if they choose to support the team by capping points and roaming. Those infiltrators that restrict themselves to the role of sniper, I agree, tend to bring less - simply because spotting is so limited and we can't mark the map for others. To be clear, this is not to say dedicated snipers couldn't contribute better but rather the current system supports CQC Infiltrators better, simply because CAPPING POINTS MEANS PRIZES!1!! I would love to be able to mark things on the map for others to see. Apparently this was possible in PS1?
I've actually been thinking on this myself a lot lately... There were people proposing a Binocular tool that you could opt into over everything else for spotting purposes and a myriad of other things, I'm wondering if that concept couldn't be delved into further...
That'd be great - if folks want focus on one aspect of the class, things like that would be a great way to reward it while also supporting the choice, with regards to contributing to play.
