PSA: Sniper stealth in the Balance Preview Patch

I hope this better explains to people:
- That the Snipers can still stealth within 4-6 seconds (depending on the sniper)
- Why we choose the 10 second penalty when firing from outside camouflage.

1. The primary reason for the changes is to address the stealth bug. The stealth bug allows the sniper to immediately return to stealth after firing, bypassing any and all guards (stealth cooldown/diminishing returns) put in place to allow snipers to be counterable.

The stealth bug looks like this:
https://youtu.be/yRB1vIvTIE0?t=1m8s

2. The secondary reason for the stealth nerf is the light vehicles nerf. We didn't want the, already powerful, sniper to grow out of proportion. Thus, we wanted to see if a bugfix would address the issue of sniper dominance.

Here are the stealth notes from an internal working copy that better explains the issue:

- - -

We feel that Snipers’ cloak ability allows them to be too effective against infantry. Even with highly skilled micro, players tend to have little chance of pushing a sniper, regardless if executing a flank. This, in turn, makes fielding light vehicles a necessity for all factions in order to effectively counter a sniper.


The primary reason why the Sniper feels so overwhelming vs infantry flanks has to do with a set of features that surround the stealth mechanic in the game.


Before we get to the abusable part, let’s first examine the part of stealth cooldown that does work:
Stealth units will enter a ~6 second cooldown (depends on the unit) when firing a shot from stealth
Stealth units also enter a similar cooldown when knocked out of stealth by infantry that walks within detection range.
Firing successive shots “too soon” triggers diminishing returns on the stealth cooldown


Unfortunately, the aforementioned cooldown has absolutely no effect in the following situations:
The sniper firing their shots from out of stealth
Sniper being open, engaging infantry
Infantry focussing down/chasing the sniper


In each of the aforementioned situations, the sniper will be able to benefit from stealth immediately when entering cover. To make things worse, some of the top players have discovered a way to make snipers able to fire while benefitting from stealth near-perpetually (thus, making snipers immune to small arms fire).

Suppose that you control an OST sniper and are trying to attack a conscript squads. The sequence of actions that will trigger this abusable feature is as follows:
Move your sniper out of cover.
Just when your sniper is about to leave stealth, order it to attack the conscript squad
If you time this well enough, and the shot is fired while the sniper is visible, you have not triggered the stealth cooldown
Now you can order your sniper back to stealth immediately


Note that snipers can enter stealth even while the enemy squad is advancing and/or even firing at them at the same time. This makes infantry flanks vs the sniper particularly futile.


To better explain our proposed changes, let’s first differentiate between “proper” firing and “lazy” firing. “Proper” firing occurs when the sniper fire from stealth as it is intended. “Lazy” firing occurs when the sniper is firing from an exposed position, with no regard for stealth. “Lazy” firing is easier to execute than “proper” firing since it does not require for the player to monitor the status of their sniper. Unfortunately, in the live version, “proper” firing is penalized, whereas “lazy” firing is not.


To address the issues we outlined, and make the system less amenable to abuse, we have decided to add the following:
Require that snipers be out of combat for 3 seconds before they can benefit from stealth again
Give snipers a 10-second cooldown to stealth every time they do “lazy” firing.
The same 10-second cooldown penalty also affects snipers when they are using offensive abilities (OST Incendiary round/UKF sniper snare)


The former makes it so that when a sniper is successfully flanked by an infantry squad, they no longer have the option of diving into cover. Thus, a successful infantry flank will force the sniper to retreat, or make it risk dying. The nature of this penalty is consistent with the already-implemented mechanic where, if a sniper is “discovered” they cannot immediately jump back to stealth. We are only extending this mechanic to work for cases where the sniper was already visible when the “detection” occurred.


Regarding the latter, The reason why we propose a cooldown for the “lazy” firing pattern that is longer than the “proper” firing pattern is:
As punishment for a sniper player that is just attack moving and not investing the time to micro their unit and use cover.
The fact that it is not possible to attach diminishing returns to the “lazy” firing pattern.

I hope this better explains to people...

So firing from cover, and cloak, how long will be the re-cloak time? I just want to be 100% clear. As this is the biggest change I so far disagree with. If it however, promotes better play then its fine, as it originally sounds like that it made using a sniper receive a 10 second "out of cloak" debuff after every casual shot or ability.

So firing from cover, and cloak, how long will be the re-cloak time? I just want to be 100% clear. As this is the biggest change I so far disagree with. If it however, promotes better play then its fine, as it originally sounds like that it made using a sniper receive a 10 second "out of cloak" debuff after every casual shot or ability.

- Ostheer sniper: 6 seconds
- UKF sniper: 6 seconds
- Soviet sniper: 4 seconds
(We didn't change any of these timers. They were always like that).

Each of these snipers has some diminishing returns that get applied if you fire too soon after entering camo.

The Ostheer sniper has a revert time of 6 seconds.
This means that every time you fire from stealth you are not able to return to stealth again for 6 seconds. This hasn't changed with the mod.

An abusable bug that nearly everybody knew however made it so that the sniper can instantly decloak after firing a shot (if you fire from out of stealth). Combine this with the fact that OST/UKF sniper have sticking camo, this meant that a good player could remain virtually invisible while firing shot-after-shot.

The change in this patch makes it so that:
- If you fire from stealth, you still have 6 seconds of stealth delay. Nothing changes.
- If you try to cheat the system (e.g., the diminishing returns) by abusing the bug, you get penalized with a 10 second delay.

The only things that get a fixed 10-second stealth cooldown regardless of camo are:
- AT guns
- JP4/Luchs
- Infantry offensive abilities (e.g., commando gammon bombs)

Taking the time to explain why and how a change is implement is a thing Relic should have done from the first Patch.

Good Post.

I agree with all the changes but I have a priblem with the Soviet sniper , some times it will take 10 sec to recloak in cover and if the second sniper fire too it won't recloack

I agree with all the changes but I have a priblem with the Soviet sniper , some times it will take 10 sec to recloak in cover and if the second sniper fire too it won't recloack

It's not in-cover.

It's in-camouflage.

If you fire too soon from camo, there are diminishing returns applied. Next shot will be 8 secs, then 12 secs, etc.
Most people have probably never seen the effect of diminishing returns, since from out of camo would trigger neither a stealth cooldown nor the diminishing returns.

Don't you gust think that soviet sniper is underused and could recive a buff while we're at changing snipers?

It is fair that sov snipers pays for additional member with non sticky camo, but I think it doesn't have to additionaly pay with less hp per squad member. Having low hp means that the team can be full health wiped by a single mortar shell and this creates frustrating experience.

IMO both soviet snipers should get 81hp. Recived accurancy can be also adjusted if it happens to make sov sniper OP. The correct recived accurancy would need testing and this mod gives a chance for it.

I just hope it fix one damn frustrating thing.


I remember many times when I saw OST sniper sniping my units.
So I made my own sniper (Brits). Put him into position, waited for enemy's sniper to shoot, then insa click on him and.... re-cloak.

Every single time I was ordering my sniper to shoot at him but before he could aim, OST sniper was already cloaked again... :/

Point is: Sniper stealth is not intuitive.