Snipers and Sentinal Frigates: Am I missing something

[pheonix89]

I've been messing around with these two ships, and I cannot figure out why on Earth I would want Snipers over over Sentinel Frigates. As best I can tell, the only things Snipers have going for them is being slightly cheaper, their attacks hitting instantly and damage bonuses. Sentinels build faster, are far harder to kill, aren't effected by counter snipers and have some useful fringe bonuses. More importantly, Sentinels have roughly triple the DPS of a sniper, so even when snipers get bonuses, they only are hitting for double a Sentinels damage, and Sentinels can actually threaten Command-grade hulls, while snipers have a .01 mod versus those. So, what am I missing? I'm pretty sure that I have to be overlooking something.

[TechSY730]

I've been messing around with these two ships, and I cannot figure out why on Earth I would want Snipers over over Sentinel Frigates. As best I can tell, the only things Snipers have going for them is being slightly cheaper, their attacks hitting instantly and damage bonuses. Sentinels build faster, are far harder to kill, aren't effected by counter snipers and have some useful fringe bonuses. More importantly, Sentinels have roughly triple the DPS of a sniper, so even when snipers get bonuses, they only are hitting for double a Sentinels damage, and Sentinels can actually threaten Command-grade hulls, while snipers have a .01 mod versus those. So, what am I missing? I'm pretty sure that I have to be overlooking something.

Unless this has changed, Sentinal ARE affected by counter-sniper effects, as sentinals have infinite range. Confusingly (thanks to its name), counter-sniper effects counter any infinite range shot.

Can't speak to any other points.

[Winge]

Browsing the stats on the wiki (which is probably NOT up-to-date) shows that the Frigates are indeed much stronger.  Their cap base damage matches a modified Sniper's cap damage, and their cap HP is double that of the Sniper's.  The Sniper is slightly cheaper in terms of resources, and uses half as much energy.  The main benefits of the Sniper are faster move speed (74 vs 64, for reference, Fighters have a speed of 76 and Flagships have a speed of 64) and, as mentioned, no projectile delay.  Looks like Snipers may need a place in the next "Worst Unit" poll.  Which I will most likely regret saying the next time the AI has them...

[rabican]

some people don't like sentinels because of the low projectile speed, as things die before the shots arrive.

[TechSY730]

Oh, how did I not notice this before?

Welcome to the forums.

[pheonix89]

Unless this has changed, Sentinal ARE affected by counter-sniper effects, as sentinals have infinite range. Confusingly (thanks to its name), counter-sniper effects counter any infinite range shot.

Can't speak to any other points.

They are? I know they can't hit things with sniper immunity, but I had a hard time telling if they could go through counter-sniper flares, considering that the AI barely uses those. I had to try to guess from AI sentinal targetting. The wiki specifically states that they get past flares by being energy wave shots.

some people don't like sentinels because of the low projectile speed, as things die before the shots arrive.

Eh, I hardly think thats a big deal. They engage so much before other units that it hardly hurts their ability to fight at range. Now if you bring them alongside a spire fleet with those rediculous railguns, then its noticeable.

Browsing the stats on the wiki (which is probably NOT up-to-date) shows that the Frigates are indeed much stronger.  Their cap base damage matches a modified Sniper's cap damage, and their cap HP is double that of the Sniper's.  The Sniper is slightly cheaper in terms of resources, and uses half as much energy.  The main benefits of the Sniper are faster move speed (74 vs 64, for reference, Fighters have a speed of 76 and Flagships have a speed of 64) and, as mentioned, no projectile delay.  Looks like Snipers may need a place in the next "Worst Unit" poll.  Which I will most likely regret saying the next time the AI has them...

Nope, wiki's up to date. Snipers do out damage sentinels against their bonuses. Sniper dps is about 1/3 of sentinels, and they have 6x multipliers for their bonus damage. The real dealbreaker is that sentinals are better at snipers in snipers only role, and can do other things as well. They have advanced warp detection and tachyon beams, even if those have horrible range. So if you don't need them for an attack you can just pop one on each planet for an extra sniper turret and advanced warp sensor.

Although, I'm not sure snipers are actually underpowered. Being able to oneshot bombers at infinite range is pretty handy. It's more a case of being overshadowed. Snipers are occasionally a bit better and a lot worse the rest of the time.

[Hearteater]

Give Snipers cloaking or camouflage?

[Kahuna]

I got my first 10/10 win with Snipers as my bonus ships and I found them to be very useful. They were the first MarkII ships I unlocked. Both Snipers and Sentinels are very good. Good damage and survivability because of the infinite range. Also because of the infinite range their dps doesn't drop during a fight because they don't get destroyed (like Fighters for example). Sentinels' have better survivability because they're immune to insta-kills (Ion Cannons) and have more health. Snipers are better at kiting because they're faster.

Sure Sentinels have 3,1x higher base dps than Snipers but Sentinels don't have damage bonuses. They're good at destroying everything but not very good at destroying anything.

Snipers' damage bonuses are what makes them very good: 6 Light, 6 Medium, 6 Close-Combat, 0.1 Command-Grade, 6 Polycrystal. So Snipers will destroy Fighters and Bombers and thus protect your Bombers and Missile Frigates. When fighters are destroyed Bombers can destroy Missile Frigates and when Bombers are destroyed you don't have to worry about (at least not so much) losing force fields and Missile Frigates can do their job.

[pheonix89]

I got my first 10/10 win with Snipers as my bonus ships and I found them to be very useful. They were the first MarkII ships I unlocked. Both Snipers and Sentinels are very good. Good damage and survivability because of the infinite range. Also because of the infinite range their dps doesn't drop during a fight because they don't get destroyed (like Fighters for example). Sentinels' have better survivability because they're immune to insta-kills (Ion Cannons) and have more health. Snipers are better at kiting because they're faster.

Sure Sentinels have 3,1x higher base dps than Snipers but Sentinels don't have damage bonuses. They're good at destroying everything but not very good at destroying anything.

Snipers' damage bonuses are what makes them very good: 6 Light, 6 Medium, 6 Close-Combat, 0.1 Command-Grade, 6 Polycrystal. So Snipers will destroy Fighters and Bombers and thus protect your Bombers and Missile Frigates. When fighters are destroyed Bombers can destroy Missile Frigates and when Bombers are destroyed you don't have to worry about (at least not so much) losing force fields and Missile Frigates can do their job.

Um, Kahuna, I don't think a factor of two difference against 4 hull types, even if they are very common, is quite enough compensation for half vs everything else. I don't think snipers are bad, per say, just almost completely worse than sentinals. I just noticed by the way, that snipers will completely murder sentinal frigates in a fight. Snipers drop a sentinal in 3 shots = 18 seconds from engagement. Sentinals need 5 shots = 24 seconds from engagement. Focus fire makes this a lot worse between caps, especially at extreme ranges, because the later salvos will be fired with more sentinals dead, and at long enough range, a sniper may get a shot off even after it has a lethal number of sentinal shots in.

Actually, now that I think about it, the shot speed is a decent benefit, especially if you have focus fire snipers on. The problem is that it is more beneficial on the defense, where you can place snipers at the edges of the well, forcing the enemy to split forces while under instant fire, while Sentinals get all the defensive fringe perks.

Just to clarify my position, I don't think snipers are bad, just that sentinals are better at their job almost all the time, plus have additional capabilites. Snipers are certainly a very good unlock. It's just that I rate sentinals not much below wtfhax ships like SSBs, blade spawners and shield bearers.

[Hearteater]

Maybe a more interesting would be to remove the Armor Piercing on Sentinel Frigates.

[Bognor]

I don't think a factor of two difference against 4 hull types, even if they are very common, is quite enough compensation for half vs everything else.

But Snipers have infinite range, so in offense they can practically always hit something with their 6x bonus.  Sentinal Frigates never get a bonus.  Snipers ought to be superior when supporting a mixed attack fleet, though you need the other ships to save Snipers ever having to rely on base damage.

Also, consider the utility of an instantly-firing ship with infinite range that gets a huge bonus against most melee ships...

[Kahuna]

Focus fire on for Snipers would make them useless.

[pheonix89]

Focus fire on for Snipers would make them useless.

Um, What? Focus fire prioritizes kills over bonus damage right? So basically snipers decide what to target based on how fast they can kill it? Thing is, snipers one-shot both triangle ships (fighters and bombers) they have bonuses against anyway, assuming equal marks, so the only time they might not engage those is if there is something else they can one-shot. The only time I can think of where there won't be triangle ships present is a non-schizo wave, and in any case the damage bonuses snipers get are so huge that as best I can tell focus fire only diverts away from bonus targets if the bonus targets are a hell of a lot tougher than the non-bonus ones.

[keith.lamothe]

Hahaha.  Focus fire was actually implemented specifically for snipers, because they were the ones that were closest to the theoretical ideal to make that work (can always target, and always instantly hit).  The reason non-sniper-focus-fire is on a separate toggle is that I thought it would mess up at least some non-infinite-range cases.

[Kahuna]

Snipers' base damage sucks. Sniper shooting ships they don't have damage bonuses for would thus make them "suck". That's what focus fire could make them do. It would make the Snipers shoot ships they don't have damage bonuses for more often. Why would I want my Snipers to do 63333 damage on a Missile Frigate when they could do 379998 damage on a Bomber?