Rifleman Archive

After thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that when the rifleman was created a cross between conventional infantry and a sniper was created. This naturally leads to problems with how the class works.

I think what was initially envisioned was that the rifleman was a support character. A squad's machine gunner. That, in my opinion, would be the rational behind strafeshot, suppression fire, flurry shot, etc. However, they were then thinking, hey, rifle = sniper and we get mindshot, headshot, and conceal shot, etc.

So now we have a rifleman that tries to do both, with mixed results. Perhaps the solution could be a new weapon certification that seperates a sniper rifle from a battlefield rifle or assault rifle. Or give a weapon like the T21 dual modes. A default suppression fire mode that allows it to fire faster at lower damage levels and a sniper mode that lets it fire more powerful shots but at a much slower rate.

Probably easier to do would be to seperate the two weapons entirely.

But I am rambling now. In short, I think the rifleman has multiple personalities. He tries to be some who lays down heavy covering fire and someone who tries to move stealthy towards his target for a one shot kill. Since he tries to do both, he is bad at both.

I agree that the rifleman class is a weird hybrid of a sniper and a machine gunner. Having played both ways, we make a far better machine gunner (who can fire the ocasional well aimed head shot) than sniper.

The area specials have a much better damage vs ham modifier cost than the mind attacks. They have damaged modifiers at least equal to and in several cases better than the mind attacks. And they hit multiple opponents. Even though they do random pool damage, this weighted toward the health bar.

In groups the area specials are a much better compliment to the other combat classes. (when you can use them) Generally, when in groups i get equal or better exp than the rest as a machine gunner. I am not competing to mind kill before they body kill the target. I have less down time. It just works better.

I, like most of you, became a rifleman for the sniper aspects. I really hope they give us the ability to do this one day. Until then i will also proudly use the title at the top of the counter-sniper tree: <GUNNER>

Yeah, I'm at ( 4/0/3/3 ) and I have to say, our AoEs are devastating. When in a squad or group, my job is strictly as the heavy machine gunner; I rarely go for the Headshot kills, those are for solo hunting.

Ever see the movie Aliens 2? Remeber the male and female soldiers that had those real bigbody-harnessed Smart guns? That's our role ( once we get 3/4 of the way to Master ), and we do it exceptionally well.