A high end AEG, A semi DMR and a bolt sniper. A lion, a witch and a wardobe..

[Groot]

Hello,

So, prepare for some ramblings of a seasoned and extremely jaded airsofter.

I have played since.. Wow 2001ish with AEG’s and a Gspec but before that I used to play somewhere near reading with Rebel Troop with a TM Glock springer and 2 mags at some point in the late 90s.

So, while I am no expert. I have seen the sport change and evolve ( perhaps not for the better but hey ho ).

I have had most airsoft guns in one form of another, I was there when the chinasoft replicas appeared, making the sport far more accessible and when people suddenly discovered joule creep over the tried and tested.. Just use a 0.2 and you’re golden.

I mean I remember when we didn’t even chrono and when crow scarers - £20 for 400 and a wind proof lighter was accepted pyro.  

( I wish I knew more about ear protection back then but that’s a different story )

 

This is mostly about my view now on a Sniper with a bolt action vs a tuned AEG lobbing a heathy stream of BB’s.
Then vs now.

 

Back in the good old days everyone had an AEG with the biggest Nicad they could get away with and glorious Hicaps.
We all ran Excel 0.2s and if you were fancy, you ran 0.25s and pretended you could really see a difference.
No one had any clue about hops and an upgraded gun was a systema gearset, a tn barrel and a bigger spring ( tell me I’m wrong ).

Everyone was equal and the sport was definitely more niche, I think had a better community but rose tinted and all that.

Certainly, the availability of truly excellent sites was at its prime and the people running the events were doing it for the love of the sport, rather than the financial gain.

That all has nothing to do with my ramblings but going back to everyone being equal.

A 350 FPS on a 0.2 with a stock hop or biro mod for the roller if you were fancy. All ranged about the same, accuracy.. sure.. ish.
When the TM G36 rotary hop appear on the market, there was a clear improvement over the normal M4 and AK versions.
But for the most part.. It was a level playing field.

Back then,  your sniper rifle would have been measured on .2s. So we were probably running around 550fps by the time you had throw in some Maruzen .29 SMG bbs or the 0.5 teflon coated beauties. But the difference in range and the accuracy back then was noticeable.  You hugely outranged everyone and could hit with relative ease.  
There was usually like a 20m engagement range and snipers were few and far between. Not like today when I see 15-20+ of them on a field.

Flash forwards to today and my experience last weekend. I did try and help as many noobs as I can with actually setting the hops on their new guns or rentals. That shit seems get massively over looked and I like to help where I can ( not a total asshole )

I dusted off my tuned springer sniper. A gspec with all the innards running at 2.26Jz, new hop, running .45s.
I had a sniper friend setup it up and for the last game, busted it out rather than use my perfectly tuned Systema PTW ( yes I am better than you ) and its mags of 0.32.s

Now I had a lot of fun and that is probably the reason they do it but the difference between the range on my PTW and the range on my Sniper.

When you add in the reduced firing rate and the forced engagement distance of 30m.
It just didn’t feel like it was worth the effort anymore. I felt hampered and I got far less kills than I had gotten every previous game ( I’m amazing by the way, so i still got lots )
Yes, there was a wonder sense of satisfaction from landing a scoped shot and seeing it ping off a player but it just wasn’t as affective as the snipers used to be back when everyone else was running AEGs and .2s.

Additonally, DMR’s just seem like a scam. People running them and spamming the shots regardless of what the safety brief told them, about how many bbs can be in the air at any time for that extra sweet sweet 70fps.
Also far too many people running around with DMR and even normal AEG’s in Ghillies. Bushwookies all of them.

Anyway.

TLDR. Unless you are a sweat. I just don’t think with how good a tuned AEG is these days, that a spring sniper is worth the effort.

Edited August 15 by Groot

[Impulse]

I'd try and change your mind if I didn't completely agree.

 

I've been ghillie sniping since about 2008ish (I still use webtex concealment vests as my ghillie base because they're great!) and general airsoft sniping since about 2005ish, eagerly navigating the field with my unupgraded Warrior L96 flinging "heavyweight" .25s; the kind of airsofter that I see so many people turning their noses up at nowadays. I definitely have similar memories to you, where you could really feel the difference in range between bolt action sniper rifles and regular AEGs and the community in general was better. I never remember there being any drama outside of when a bunch of kids in the year below me and my friends at school came around and refused to take their hits, but outside of that there were no dramas. Not even when I moved to Spain and we played with no marshalls, no chrono and not on any official sites because none existed; we were just a bunch of people who played BB wars in abandoned urbanisations. Again, no issues whatsoever. I remember I played alongside a pair of Germans who both had upgraded KJW m700s and their rifles outranged everything by a country mile.

 

Nowadays when it comes to bolt action sniper rifles, you get maybe 15 - 20m over a well-tuned AEG. Typically, I zero my 1.14J rifle builds at 60m and an accurate 50 - 60m is the performance I chase, while my 2.32J bolt action rifles I typically zero for an accurate 75m, but with the ability to fairly easily hit the 85m target as well with a tiny bit of elevation. DMRs (my local limits are 1.88J) I typically zero to 70m with a 75m slight elevation target, so you can see the distance in ranges is minimal between the 1.14J rifle, the 1.88J DMR and the 2.32J bolt action. You can't even use the "a bolt action's strength is how quiet it is" any more, because HPA setups are quieter than most spring bolt actions. Combine that with saddling yourself with a 30m radius of "not allowed to shoot" and I can see why it's just... not great. Plus, it's very easy to angle an AEG and just spray full auto and you'll reach out to the same distance the sniper is trying to shoot. I have a friend who plays LMG who says "yeah, but I'll just angle my gun and I can hit out to 70m too" and he's not wrong. While you can angle your sniper rifle to get more range as well, it's a lot harder with a single shot and a bolt pull than simply squeezing the trigger and spraying full auto like a mortar strike  

 

So why do I keep playing bolt action and DMR? Personally, I really enjoy the long range stuff where it basically becomes archery and don't really care too much about body count. If I get a single shot at 85 or 90m, or a single shot that I post through some small gap in my first attempt, that's more enjoyable for me than going on some crazy 10 player killstreak. As one of the German guys I played with all those years ago said: "it's not how many you hit, but how you hit them". Also, excuses to use my pistol more are always welcome as I love pistols too, and a 30m MED forces me to use my pistol a lot, especially during summer where most of my local site is so overgrown it's unplayable with a 30m MED  

 

I also agree on there being way too many ghillies nowadays. I like using a ghillie with DMRs as well, because I tend to use my DMRs more like semi-auto sniper rifles and still play the same role as with a bolt action, but I hate seeing so many ghillie + HPA m4 combos, I do think most people who use DMRs spam the trigger way too much and I think there tends to be way too many bolt actions on the field sometimes. I blame social media for it, as people see the videos on youtube and think "wow, he got all those kills? I want to do that!". A lot of them aren't great, because they rely too much on their over-engineered suits, but it's still no fun to leave spawn and get laced up by a bush wielding a 25rps HPA m4.

Edited August 14 by Impulse

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

A day with a bolty set to aeg levels is great fun.  

 

The first skirmish I played with my K98 included a newly dug 'trench clearance' game.   The satisfaction of getting a solitary hit was immense.   

 

As Impulse's German friend said, 'it's how you hit them.'

 

The actual overall performance is not a factor in fun per pew.  

[Rogerborg]

tl;dr, sounds like a skill issue.  

 

Fewer hits, more satisfaction per hit.

 

 

[Groot]

57 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

tl;dr, sounds like a skill issue.  

 

Fewer hits, more satisfaction per hit.

 

 

[Cannonfodder]

I've been playing for 20 years now and I agree. AEGs have certainly come along way in terms of performance in that time.

 

I think alot of the changes have happened as a result of airsoft becoming less of a niche hobby, whether those changes are positive or negative can and will be debated till the cows come home. For example youtubers are loved and despised in equal amounts but there's no denying they've brought new people into the game and I'd even say they're probably part of the reason so many newbies want to but sniper rifles. Combined with the rise in online gaming many get the false impression sniping is just putting the cross hairs on the target and pulling the trigger. It's a similar situation with ghillie suits, people buy them thinking they'll become invisible and forget about fieldcraft.

 

The thing is though, for an average sunday skirmish everyone has paid the same green fees and so are free to play how they want (within site rules obviously). Mind you I'd rather be surrounded by M4 wielding Bush wookies than speed softers with their day glo drum fed hi cappas 

[LMKipper]

4 hours ago, Cannonfodder said:

It's a similar situation with ghillie suits, people buy them thinking they'll become invisible and forget about fieldcraft.

 

At a game the other day, there was a bloke in a ghillie just standing in the open, or in wooden structures, as if it was an invisibility cloak. Couldn't help but laugh at him really.

 

 

Edited August 15 by LMKipper