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Sniper Advice
- Thread starter Gungeorge
- Start date
Ian_Gere
Retired Moderator
- Apr 1, 2012
- 6,417
- 2,050
Yeah, i don't know what is different about the AW .338 replicas, because even the cheapest Well Warrior L96's have a... well... established upgrade path and, as we have discussed, although some of it is expensive bollocks which doesn't actually translate into much bang for your buck, things like steel trigger mechs which allow you to use powerful springs without short term failure and CNC hop units/hop arm, which produce better consistency between shots, so that if you miss (and 'kin trust me, you will) your attempts to correct for a/some subsequent shot/s have some chance of working, are worth it.
We have touched on some of the other things surrounding sniping other than the gun and IMO the role of a sniper is about a different mindset to typical airsofting: it is true to say that success as a sniper is gained more through mastering fieldcraft than the particular gun you use; not just the obvious skills like estimating range, windage, predicting target movement, camouflage and concealment, hidden movement, etc. but things like when to shoot so that you don't give your position away whether you hit or miss and selecting a kill zone which you can hit effectively from as unassailable a position as poss and thereby deny access through it to the enemy, giving your team an advantage out of all proportion to how many people it takes to gain it (force multiplication, ie you and perhaps 1 or 2 assault rifles, to prevent a rush attack knocking you out, can dominate an entire flank/zone, meaning your team can use sheer force of numbers to dominate elsewhere on the field - and they do not really even need to be in on it*, to be tactically aware, they can just find themselves owning because even totally uncoordinated fire has a suppressing effect in sufficient volume and sooner or later someone will grab the opportunity created to get forward and shoot around cover, then the momentum takes over).
However it's also like learning the guitar: if it sounds shit it takes a particular type of stubbornness to persevere, bordering on pig headedness and/or OCD - if your gun is shit then you can go through the motions of fieldcraft and, no doubt, learn plenty... but just like you can't take a guitar that wont stay in tune and an amp that sounds like a brass band in a biscuit tin to perform on stage, pig headedness alone wont dominate shit in the field. So while it's perhaps no longer true that you need to spend several hundred pounds in upgrades on top of a minimum hundred and fifty quid for the base gun, it is true that unless you have at least a 10m accurate effective range advantage over just about any AEG you will be up against, your low rate of fire and having to reacquire the target after every missed shot, to some degree even when you've got recocking down to a fine art, is such a disadvantage that you will get pwned so often that it will more than likely soon loose the novelty factor and become bloody depressing.
Svetlana my SVD does have a lot of upgrades and some of them have proved fairly pointless, or at least premature in as much as I replaced bits which i knew would wear out with more robust parts before the originals were even close to heading for the great plastic box in the sky, but I began skirmishing her with just an upgraded hop unit and rubber, a cocking handle extension, and a Madbull 6.01x590mm barrel - oh and CT-2 grease, the bang-for-buck-ness of which cannot be propounded enough. I still don't have a full ghillie suit (i sometimes use a veil) and initially i just wrapped some scrim around her front end to break up the hideous two tone covering tan paint job i inherited from her previous disappointed owner. I wouldn't call myself an expert sniper by any means, but i have managed some spectacular shots**, the memory of which is all that sustains me on days when the wind is against me, the light is all wrong for seeing where my misses went, my team mates have so little tactical awareness that i have to be my own security detail, and a marshal decides to take more of an interest in watching me for the rubbernecking than any game management reason, since i was, until they stood there staring at "a bush", completely unnoticed by the opposition... but I do love it...
However, despite what seems to be a degree of natural aptitude and my love of sniping, with a gun which could do the business from the get go, I nevertheless do get pissed off. I always take an AEG to the skirmish as well, even though I may only use it once, because there's only so much exercising fieldcraft skills but failing to get hits or prove tactically effective and living on remembered glories that I can take before I start to feel like the laughs/quid has proved to be a poor investment of funds. I can't imagine that I would have learned even half of what little i know now if my gun had not been good enough to get some successes early on and, if that were true, I would not have the pleasure of exercising that knowledge in the field now either... I'd have given up for sure - like most people who buy a sniper rifle and either don't bother to upgrade it or don't go far enough.
*it's a thankless task usually - people don't often realise that their bull-by-the-balls-grabbing assault and subsequent run of 15 kills was made possible by perhaps one or two hits you got or even misses which nevertheless shat the opposition up - you have to enjoy knowing what you did and having a secret smile about it, because nobody other than other snipers wants to hear the...
**minutiae of difficult shots with which i could bore the arse off almost anyone if i didnt have a modicum of self control :lol:
But hey, when it goes well, when the angle of sunlight is working for your direction of attack/defence against the particular background colours of the terrain, when the wind conditions are relatively stable, or even when it's blustery if the direction of blow is at least consistent within say 60°, when the marshals are watching the game not gawping at your uberness, when your team mates do take advantage of your force multiplication and muller the opposition, when you're aiming, for the sake of easy conversation, a metre high and a metre wide, to compensate for range and wind, and leading the moving target by say another 5m and you get the hit, when your target looks around confused and cant see you so doesn't take the hit and you pop him/her again... when even then he doesn't take the hit but swerves off behind cover and never comes back... when you are basically owning half a field and nobody else really understands it... you are fucking |33†.
We have touched on some of the other things surrounding sniping other than the gun and IMO the role of a sniper is about a different mindset to typical airsofting: it is true to say that success as a sniper is gained more through mastering fieldcraft than the particular gun you use; not just the obvious skills like estimating range, windage, predicting target movement, camouflage and concealment, hidden movement, etc. but things like when to shoot so that you don't give your position away whether you hit or miss and selecting a kill zone which you can hit effectively from as unassailable a position as poss and thereby deny access through it to the enemy, giving your team an advantage out of all proportion to how many people it takes to gain it (force multiplication, ie you and perhaps 1 or 2 assault rifles, to prevent a rush attack knocking you out, can dominate an entire flank/zone, meaning your team can use sheer force of numbers to dominate elsewhere on the field - and they do not really even need to be in on it*, to be tactically aware, they can just find themselves owning because even totally uncoordinated fire has a suppressing effect in sufficient volume and sooner or later someone will grab the opportunity created to get forward and shoot around cover, then the momentum takes over).
However it's also like learning the guitar: if it sounds shit it takes a particular type of stubbornness to persevere, bordering on pig headedness and/or OCD - if your gun is shit then you can go through the motions of fieldcraft and, no doubt, learn plenty... but just like you can't take a guitar that wont stay in tune and an amp that sounds like a brass band in a biscuit tin to perform on stage, pig headedness alone wont dominate shit in the field. So while it's perhaps no longer true that you need to spend several hundred pounds in upgrades on top of a minimum hundred and fifty quid for the base gun, it is true that unless you have at least a 10m accurate effective range advantage over just about any AEG you will be up against, your low rate of fire and having to reacquire the target after every missed shot, to some degree even when you've got recocking down to a fine art, is such a disadvantage that you will get pwned so often that it will more than likely soon loose the novelty factor and become bloody depressing.
Svetlana my SVD does have a lot of upgrades and some of them have proved fairly pointless, or at least premature in as much as I replaced bits which i knew would wear out with more robust parts before the originals were even close to heading for the great plastic box in the sky, but I began skirmishing her with just an upgraded hop unit and rubber, a cocking handle extension, and a Madbull 6.01x590mm barrel - oh and CT-2 grease, the bang-for-buck-ness of which cannot be propounded enough. I still don't have a full ghillie suit (i sometimes use a veil) and initially i just wrapped some scrim around her front end to break up the hideous two tone covering tan paint job i inherited from her previous disappointed owner. I wouldn't call myself an expert sniper by any means, but i have managed some spectacular shots**, the memory of which is all that sustains me on days when the wind is against me, the light is all wrong for seeing where my misses went, my team mates have so little tactical awareness that i have to be my own security detail, and a marshal decides to take more of an interest in watching me for the rubbernecking than any game management reason, since i was, until they stood there staring at "a bush", completely unnoticed by the opposition... but I do love it...
However, despite what seems to be a degree of natural aptitude and my love of sniping, with a gun which could do the business from the get go, I nevertheless do get pissed off. I always take an AEG to the skirmish as well, even though I may only use it once, because there's only so much exercising fieldcraft skills but failing to get hits or prove tactically effective and living on remembered glories that I can take before I start to feel like the laughs/quid has proved to be a poor investment of funds. I can't imagine that I would have learned even half of what little i know now if my gun had not been good enough to get some successes early on and, if that were true, I would not have the pleasure of exercising that knowledge in the field now either... I'd have given up for sure - like most people who buy a sniper rifle and either don't bother to upgrade it or don't go far enough.
*it's a thankless task usually - people don't often realise that their bull-by-the-balls-grabbing assault and subsequent run of 15 kills was made possible by perhaps one or two hits you got or even misses which nevertheless shat the opposition up - you have to enjoy knowing what you did and having a secret smile about it, because nobody other than other snipers wants to hear the...
**minutiae of difficult shots with which i could bore the arse off almost anyone if i didnt have a modicum of self control :lol:
But hey, when it goes well, when the angle of sunlight is working for your direction of attack/defence against the particular background colours of the terrain, when the wind conditions are relatively stable, or even when it's blustery if the direction of blow is at least consistent within say 60°, when the marshals are watching the game not gawping at your uberness, when your team mates do take advantage of your force multiplication and muller the opposition, when you're aiming, for the sake of easy conversation, a metre high and a metre wide, to compensate for range and wind, and leading the moving target by say another 5m and you get the hit, when your target looks around confused and cant see you so doesn't take the hit and you pop him/her again... when even then he doesn't take the hit but swerves off behind cover and never comes back... when you are basically owning half a field and nobody else really understands it... you are fucking |33†.
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I have an A&K svd and it was double feeding bb's quite often until I fitted the ASPUK hop up and then it worked perfectly.
The A&K uses AEG parts which means you don't need pricey sniper bits. Also on the svd, if you break your scope, you can resort to using the standard iron sights.
I will also say that you don't need the svd type sights, I fitted a regular 4x40 scope which gives superb clarity and light gathering abilities.
On the l96 and others you have a 28/30 round magazine, the A&K svd has 60rnd mags and these have metal outer casings.
The A&K uses AEG parts which means you don't need pricey sniper bits. Also on the svd, if you break your scope, you can resort to using the standard iron sights.
I will also say that you don't need the svd type sights, I fitted a regular 4x40 scope which gives superb clarity and light gathering abilities.
On the l96 and others you have a 28/30 round magazine, the A&K svd has 60rnd mags and these have metal outer casings.
Last edited by a moderator:
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