A rifle with the Rileman-6 skill built right into the gun ...
CNN - $27,500 Gun Hits Targets at 1,000 Yards
CNN - $27,500 Gun Hits Targets at 1,000 Yards
Rifleman-6 built into the scope
- Thread starter atpollard
- Start date
Bad luck for your rookie sniper that gets hit by an EMP, or the sight gets fried some other way, or their batteries run out.
Bad luck indeed. Then he'd be useless in a fight (assuming no other relevant competencies). But at least he'd have been useful up until his electronics got fried; without the rifle he would have been useless all along.
Hans
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Never totally useless, Hans. After all, you can always use him to draw fire........
Yes, but going into that would distract from the point I was trying to make, so I put in that assumption.
Hans
I am no military genius, but I agree with Hans on this one.
I suspect that an army that can turn out 'inexperienced snipers' as fast as it can indoctrinate raw recruits has a tactical advantage over an army that must invest years of special training to deliver a few good men with that level of marksmanship.
The issue is not 'elite sniper' vs 'raw recruit with super gun' ...
... the issue is 'common grunt' vs 'common grunt with super gun that lets him shoot like a sniper'.
I suspect that an army that can turn out 'inexperienced snipers' as fast as it can indoctrinate raw recruits has a tactical advantage over an army that must invest years of special training to deliver a few good men with that level of marksmanship.
The issue is not 'elite sniper' vs 'raw recruit with super gun' ...
... the issue is 'common grunt' vs 'common grunt with super gun that lets him shoot like a sniper'.
For mil use just shield it and use betavoltaic batteries.
See, that's not hard when you think for a couple seconds to solve those problems.
This is a great tool, but would have limitations
The shooter still has to re-align the crosshairs with the dot. That, with a difficult target is going to be difficult. Also, at 1,000 m, the target can move significantly, to include changes in direction or acceleration, in the time of flight of a round.
I would say this might enable a trained rifleman to achieve an advantage to hit, over a telescopic sight or electronic sight. But not a huge one.
The shooter still has to re-align the crosshairs with the dot. That, with a difficult target is going to be difficult. Also, at 1,000 m, the target can move significantly, to include changes in direction or acceleration, in the time of flight of a round.
I would say this might enable a trained rifleman to achieve an advantage to hit, over a telescopic sight or electronic sight. But not a huge one.
It's an old concept. I think Dave mentioned it on the Dragon's Bane RP thread. I think the earliest Traveller iteration were the high energy weapon sights on BD, predating this thing by thirty years.
In addition, the wind measurement is only where the rifle is. Not downrange.
Neither I am a military genious, but I'm aftaid you're confusing here a marksman with a sniper. To be a sniper you need more than just good accuracy shooting, and part of it is more mentality than training.
AFAIK (there are many people more able to talk about this than myself in this board) a sniper needs also to be able to hide, reccon, target discrimination and adquisition, etc... and last but not least, a sniper is the one able to act alone or nearly so, many times outside regular chain of command (or at least with nearly full tactical freedom).
Or at least that's how some wargames describe them, and discriminate them from just sharp sooters.
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
A combat rifleman fires at silhouettes, aiming for center of target and usually missing. Very impersonal.
A sniper (and snipers usually operate in pairs) can usually see his target chatting with his friends, showing pictures of his wife and family around, laughing...
a very personal kind of killing requiring a very special psychological profile and training.
I have the sneaky suspicion that robotic/drone snipers controlled by the playstation generation thousands of miles from the frontline are on the drawing board.
A sniper (and snipers usually operate in pairs) can usually see his target chatting with his friends, showing pictures of his wife and family around, laughing...
a very personal kind of killing requiring a very special psychological profile and training.
I have the sneaky suspicion that robotic/drone snipers controlled by the playstation generation thousands of miles from the frontline are on the drawing board.
They are already off the drawing board and in testing...
THe US Army and USMC snipers I've known also have one thing the average grunt doesn't - a borderline psychosis, every one.
It takes a cold man to shoot a guy whose face you can see and stay calm and disconnected. And snipers, unlike the average grunt, do take time to aim, and use powerful enough scopes to see the face clearly.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
100% correct.
[snip many other neat details about snipers]
Not so much 'confusing' as being very sloppy with terms.
Others started taking about snipers, and I lazily continued saying Sniper when I simply meant Sharpshooter.
In my defense, I suspect that being a Sharpshooter is a prerequisite for becoming a Sniper, so the super gun will give the a mediocre or poor shooter the accuracy of a Sharpshooter or Sniper ... but yeah, no way does the gun grant any of the stalking, patience or mental state of a sniper ... just his trigger finger.
