Weapons: Infiltrator

Per some chatter in a DPSO platoon earlier, I was asked to post up some information regarding weapon selection for various classes. This entry, as the topic suggests, is for the Infiltrator's wide array of Rifles.



Semi-Auto Sniper
VA39 Spectre
Damage: 400
Mag: 10/50
Reload: 2.6s/3.6s
Speed: 500m/s
The default rifle, and one which occupies a weird place. The Spectre is really a close-range rifle due to its relative lack of accuracy and semi-automatic firing mode, but it has exclusively long-range sights available, meaning it’s kind of hard to use at every range. It hits for 400 damage a shot, meaning 3x body shots to kill or 2x headshots. There are much better options for medium-close range infiltrator weapons, and much, MUCH better options for long-range fighting. Ditch it ASAP, it’s too schizophrenic to be any good.


Bolt-Action Sniper
XM98 (100)
Damage: 750
Mag: 5/25
Reload: 3.5s/5s
Speed: 550m/s
The XM98 is a solid and easily attainable cert-based upgrade for the long-range infiltrator. As with most bolts, it hits for 750 damage a shot, giving 2x body shots to kill and 1x headshot. The only real difference between this and the excellent V10 is a lower projectile velocity, meaning a greater lead on moving targets. If you’re not willing to drop the extra station cash, stick with the XM, it’s just solid.

Note that, with all bolt-action rifles, DO NOT waste your certs on the rail accessories. The Flashlight is good at getting you killed, and the foregrip is irrelevant on a single shot weapon. The Suppressor is arguable – I personally don’t like it. Suppressors lower bullet velocity and long-range damage, which at extreme long range can actually stop headshots from insta-killing against guys with Nanoweave.


V10 (1000)
Damage: 750
Mag: 5/25
Reload: 3.75s/5s
Speed: 600m/s
Literally identical to the XM98 with two modifications. First, slightly faster projectile travel speed at 600m/s instead of the XM’s 550m/s. Second, its short reload is a quarter second slower. That’s it. The only reason I can think of to get this instead of the XM is if you got SC on triple sale and don’t already have the XM unlocked. Anyone who spends certs on this is kind of a tool in my book.


Parallax (1000)
Damage: 800
Mag: 5/25
Reload: 4s/6s
Speed: 650m/s
The Parallax is a slightly different version of the V10. The Parallax sports the fastest projectile velocity at 650m/s, making long-distance aiming easy. This speed is enough to cause a noticeable difference if you’re used to the XM already. Also, it hits slightly harder than the other Bolts, at 800 damage/shot. This still requires 2 body shots to kill though, so personally I don’t see the point of the extra damage. You will probably get something like 0.1% more kills on body shots than you would have with a 750 damage bolt rifle. Vanu weapons in general hit for an amount of damage that makes it hard to do over 200 without doing at least 250, which is the threshold where the 800 damage number helps over the 750 damage number.

Disadvantages of the Parallax include a notable longer reload time (short reload 4s, long reload 6s), which gives a slightly lower sustained rate of fire over the course of an engagement. Also, it has ever so slightly worse accuracy at extreme range than the other bolts (basically, the sights are slightly more off on this than on the other rifles).

Is it worth it? Probably. This one makes a lot more sense to buy than the V10 does, but if you’re buying with cert I say save it and stick with the XM. Those 900 certs can be better used elsewhere. The XM still kills in one headshot, which is the whole point of bolts.


Bolt-Action Scout
Ghost (250)
Damage: 750
Mag: 5/25
Reload: 3.15s/4.5s
Speed: 500m/s
The Ghost is a weird weapon. It has all the characteristics of a bolt action sniper rifle, but it has exclusively short-range scopes available. It’s extremely situational, and really only useful for Infiltrators that want to maintain a mildly sneaky presence while still sticking with their buddies in a base assault. As with all bolt-actions, you’ll kill in 2 body or one head shot, but the lack of an LR scope option means this is NOT suitable for counter-sniping. It excels at screwing with people from a vantage point in a bio lab or on the roof of an Amp station, but that’s about it.

Personally, I prefer a Scout Rifle for this role, but to each their own. This provides a rather interesting middle ground where you can still sort of do bolt action sniping if you want, but can also be slightly useful in an assault scenario. The cost of that is that you will never be anywhere near as good at either as someone with a rifle built for that role.


Semi-Auto Scout
Phantom (500)
Damage: 400-250
Mag: 10/50
Reload: 3.6s/4.6s
Speed: 500m/s
The Phantom is what the Spectre should have been, really. It’s an identical weapon, except it sports the full line of short-range sights. It’s a suitable introductory semi-auto Scout Rifle. The Phantom will three-shot any infantry at close to medium ranges, and will four-shot any infantry even at its maximum range.


Nyx (1000)
Damage: 334-200
Mag: 10/50
Reload: 2.32s/2.9s
Speed: 500m/s
The Nyx is a more up-close version of the Phantom. The Phantom hits undeniably harder than the Nyx does, but the Nyx does it with around half the reload time. Within its maximum damage range, both rifles will kill in 3 hits, although the Nyx loses this ability almost immediately beyond the 10m max damage limit, whereas the Phantom retains it into medium range. Supporting this closer-range ability, the Nyx has the option of taking a laser sight, which the Phantom cannot.


Full-Auto Scout
Artemis (1000)
Damage: 143
Mag: 20/100
Reload: 2.25s/3s
Speed: 500m/s
ROF: 652
This thing is amazing. If you want to play an assault infiltrator, here’s your answer. The Artemis sports the same bullet damage as almost every Vanu Carbine/LMG/AR, with a comparable rate of fire and a good selection of close-range sights. What sets it apart is that it has excellent medium-long range accuracy, and AMAZING recoil control, especially if you kit it with a Foregrip and Compensator. Honestly, I wish I could put this on my LA, as it compares favorably with all of the long-range Carbine an LMG options. Despite its accuracy, the number of shots you need to land make this a pretty crap sniper, although the hits can harass an enemy with a bolt action from actually being able to land a shot on you. It also suffers from a relatively short ammo pool for its rate of fire.



Overall recommendations:
--The stock VA39 sucks. Ditch it ASAP.
--The XM98 is a fantastic basic bolt-action, and is pretty inarguably the one to go for if you’re buying with certs. The V10 and Parallax are good, but ultimately unnecessary improvements. If you are going to get one of the two, which one is a personal choice. I have a slight personal bias toward the V10, but that's because I bought it before the Parallax was a thing.
--The choice between a semi-auto or full-auto scout is a personal one. I like the full auto better given its incredible recoil control, but your mileage may vary.

Excellent write-up! Makes me want to start playing an infiltrator more.
A lot of people complain about render and draw distance detrimenting their ability to snipe at long range. Have you run into this problem at all? How do you deal with it?

It's a massive issue, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's a few things to note about the problem:
--The MO for calculation seems to be, more or less: Start at the player; expand a circle out until the circle either contains X number of people or has a radius of Y meters; send the player information on everyone in the circle.
--Infantry render distance CANNOT be adjusted upwards by tweaking any of your settings. The distance is calculated server-side and is based on the population in your immediate area. The more people, the smaller the radius it considers. Infantry render distance CAN be adjusted downwards by tweaking settings, but this is a disadvantage for sniping.
--Render distance CAN be affected by loading boundaries on the maps, but this is extremely rare. The biggest culprits for this are on Esamir (due to the base placement there). Jaegar's Crossing comes to mind -- there's a place to the North where NC snipers can set up and fairly reliably remain unseen by exactly half of the tower due to this. It's difficult to distinguish between this and your client being laggy and stupid though, so I'd hesitate to blame this ever.
--Some people have claimed that changing render distance in the .ini from its default of 999999 ("no cap," basically) to around 3000-4000 gives a slight increase in render distance. I've tried the hell out of it, and I think they're wrong. It MAY work on lower end systems due to the way the distance is calculated though, but I don't have one of those to test it on.
--Infantry draw distance can be roughly guessed at any point by looking at where the carets for your allies are (squadmates are extra helpful here). If you can't see the caret (which shows up through walls all day long), you can't see far enough to shoot where they are.
--Vehicle draw distance is much, much higher than infantry draw distance. For a sniper, this has exactly one application: engineers using their MANA turret are considered a "vehicle," and thus can be sniped off their turrets from extreme range. Incidentally, this is 90% of why it's idiotic to use your turret outdoors (especially up on the Crown).
--In 99% of circumstances (eg, anything short of multi-platoon vs. multi-platoon fights), render distance will be the same for you and your enemies, meaning that while its limitations are annoying, it's not actually a problem.

Taking advantage of render distance:
--The basic issue seems to be that the server is deciding how much information to send you based on your extremely local area. This can be exploited. Consider the Crown, since that's where this applies most. In many circumstances, the defenders will vastly outnumber the attackers. With exactly the right number of defenders, it is possible for the guys up on the ridge to have a slightly lower maximum render distance than people assaulting from the bridge below, which is obviously exploitable by the attackers.


Really that's about it. If you KNOW there are hostiles right over there and can't see them, you need to move up. The current state of affairs are in place both to reduce server load and to prevent people with unreasonably powerful systems from being able to turn the setting up to "render people on the other side of the continent" levels and have a stupidly unfair advantage over people with less pwoerful systems. Currently, the limit is low enough to be annoying in many circumstances, but it also feels like it's fair to me most of the time ("fair" meaning "my enemy and I both have the same limitation").

That said, I also fully agree with the whiners: there are many, many circumstances where my ideal hidey-hole is far enough off that I can't actually see anyone to shoot anymore. There's supposed to be a major optimization pass being made in the upcoming Jan30 patch, so here's hoping they improve things then.

To an extent, since the only recourse is "move up," learning to deal with the problem will help make you a better infiltrator. What it does is force you to be able to find cover anywhere on short notice. Also, while this is a stupid answer, the draw distance issue is the major reason for actually buying a Scout Rifle. Without it, you'd have relatively little reason to ever move up close enough to use one.

I love the NYX, personally. I use it the most. I tried the phantom, but the slow reload time kills me. And I hardly ever use it at medium-long since I have either a 1x reflex or a 3.4x scope on it.

Fluffy wrote:I love the NYX, personally. I use it the most. I tried the phantom, but the slow reload time kills me. And I hardly ever use it at medium-long since I have either a 1x reflex or a 3.4x scope on it.

Out of curiosity, have you tried the Artemis? I play assault infiltrator pretty rarely, so while I certainly have some experience (and an opinion), I'm curious what others think on the Nyx/Artemis balance. My feeling is that the Nyx is probably superior if you're reliably getting the first shot. However, I am awful at actual sneaking in this game (I blame the cloak being really obvious, but it's probably just me sucking) and so I find the Artemis fits my style a little better.

I agree on the Phantom totally though. The added damage is pretty nice, but if you're going to commit to close range, commit to it.

Artemis is on my list of next to buy, actually. (For my FLuffyFluffer acc.) Your right, it is more of a direct weapon, and I love it (I have 2 VS accounts, one for piloting my lib when I fly it lol), he is also an infil all the way upgraded with artemis with forward grip and compensator and NV scope. (I believe so, would need to double check) but he excels even more so at close range than my NYX. NYX is VERY good for stealth\sneaking around, camping. And you are right, the cloak does suck, and night vision scopes disables it completely. It loses a LOT of power very quickly though, it seems. It is definitely a close range weapon, i would say the same range as that one rifle, forgot its name, the light assault gun that has fast fire rate... for close quarters... I don't know. At about 30 meters the person would have to hold still for like 3 seconds straight for me to kill him, and I'm not a noob (ranked #1 on helios). I may just need to try different scopes, though. I will find out soon