Linubidix's Guide to Weapon Placement - Snipers

A lot of the great people of forgehub know that I know weapon placement.
But I thought I'd create some guides to silence all if any naysayers.

I will create a series of guides to weapon placement, to help the forging community with their maps.

Last time's guide was on the Shotgun and can be found here.
This second guide is on



This is a guide to proper/effective weapon placement by yours truly, Linubidix.
I and possibly others get frustrated sometimes when I am on a great map, go into forge mode and see that the shotty or rocket or sword have a 30 second respawn. These things destroy your map, not aesthetically but gameplay-wise. It seems people make maps and use the weapons as decorations, "the sniper would look great there", NO. The sniper would play much better if over there. Never spawn a power weapon in its prime position. Like having the shotgun in narrow hallway or spawning a sniper in its prime vantage point, away from the combat and with a clear sight of the main battle area.

So here are a few tips from my experience.

Keep in mind these guides to weapon placement are for Competitive gameplay.
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Snipers

Ah Snipers, the nubs’ biggest fear. Undoubtedly the sniper rifle is the weapon that requires the most amount of skill in all of Halo. That means that it should be placed to cater to the amount of skill what I mean by that is, as it is with all other power weapons, place it away from its best location, I’ll get into that a bit later.

First thing I’ll do is distinguish the differences between The Beam Rifle and the Sniper Rifle. When in your hands, there isn’t too big of a difference, they feel similar. What you should notice is that the Beam Rifle has a slightly wider cross hair than the sniper rifle, the fact that you do not need to reload when using the Beam Rifle and that the Beam Rifle overheats when shot frequently with no pause between shots. What you need to know is that the Beam Rifle is an asymmetrical weapon. Not that it must only be placed in asymmetrical games but that there should only ever be one on the map. Either give to one team or make it the central weapon. The (human)Sniper Rifle on the other hand is a “Both” weapon. What that means is that it can be perfect as a weapon that spawns as the central/focus weapon and it can also be perfect as a weapon that is placed for both teams.

Overlapping and Intersecting. What’s that you may ask? Something I made up but...
Overlapping is why you cannot place more than one Beam Rifle and intersecting is why its acceptable to have multiple Sniper Rifles. Here are a couple scenarios to give you an idea. Two people, both equip with Beam Rifles, are charging at each other, one of them lives and one of them dies. There’s nothing that the surviving player can do to prevent the other Beam Rifle from being used by someone else. Another Scenario: Two players, both equip with Sniper Rifles, are charging at each other, one dies and one survives. The surviving player is able to pick up his fallen enemy’s ammo and assure himself that there isn’t another guy running around with a sniper.

If you place multiple Sniper Rifles you are able to place them with 2 spare clips but keep in mind, you should probably make sure that their respawn rate is set to above 120 to completely avoid some having a full Sniper Rifle and possible overlapping. Generally, you wouldn’t place a Sniper with 0 clips unless the map you place it on is rather small and close-quartered. So try make it have either 1 or 2 spare clips, baring in mind that if is 2 spare clips it’d work better if it had a longer respawn.
Because you're able to alter the amount of shots in the Sniper Rifle but you are unable to do so with the Beam Rifle it kind of makes it so that the Beam Rifle’s spawn settings and guidelines should be about the same for each map. So I’d recommend to not have your Beam Rifle’s respawn rate under 90 seconds. But what’ll work for almost all situations is a 120 second respawn, this should work fine.

For the final section of this guide, I’ll talk about placement. If you notice, when you pick up a sniper, you keep on flowing, what I mean is that once you’ve picked it you’ll head to a vantage point like a man on a mission(that may be some people, not all though). It is best to place your sniper on the ground, far away from key vantage points. Spawning a sniper on higher levels in most cases will not work, but sometimes it can. Take Construct for example, IMO, that is one of the best placements of the sniper rifle on any of the default maps. It may be placed up high but its at the end of a walkway which offers no cover. Once taken there are several possible ways to go from there, the player can drop to the level below and strafe back and forth between columns and make their way to the sword spawn, the player could jump to the very bottom level and use any of the grav lifts, the player could jump straight to orange grav lift and then some. The placement of the Beam Rifle on both default and HC Snowbound is a great example too. They’re sitting on the ground, once they’ve been picked up, there are several opportunities for terrific sniping but the player must make their way to them, risking their life in the progress.

It is also a terrible idea to place your sniper near equipment such as power drain or regen, it allows the player to be able to stand still and keep their postion while sniping. The bubble sheild is acceptable because obviously weapons are unable to penetrate the bubbley goodness of the bubble sheild. But still, dont place any weapon directly next to equipment, its just a bad idea.


On MLG Foundry maps, its best not to have a sniper on it, the sniper just will not work on it. The size of Foundry doesnt offer good MLG sniping.

What can you take from this guide? Place your sniper on the ground, make sure its able to lead to several opportunities, make sure that it does not spawn on its “opportunity”. Don’t place multiple Beam Rifles. Keep the respawns above 90 seconds. The larger your map the more acceptable it is to have a shorter respawn, the smaller your map the more unacceptable it is to have shorter respawn.

What’s great to do for help and ideas is to have a forgethrough on the better forged maps, or better yet the default maps you enjoy. So go onto Guardian(for example) and check its settings, use those as help for your weapon placement. This can also help with spawns as well but this isn’t a spawn placement guide.


I thought I’d take the liberty to add the settings for the snipers on each default map.
...To help you out - Human Sniper Rifle, Beam Rifle, No Sniper

Avalanche – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on Map – 2.
Blackout – Spare Clips - 2. Respawn Time – 180 seconds. Placed on map – 1.
Cold Storage– Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
Construct – Spare Clips – 1. Respawn Time – 180 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
Epitaph – N/A
Foundry – Spare Clips – 1. Respawn Time – 90 seconds. Placed on map – 2.
Ghost Town – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
Guardian – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 180 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
High Ground– Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 90 seconds. Placed on map – 1.
Isolation – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on map – 1
Last Resort – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on Map – 2.
Narrows – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 150 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
Rat’s Nest – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 60 seconds. Placed on Map – 2.
Sandtrap – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
Snowbound – Spare Clips – N/A. Respawn Time – 150 seconds. Placed on Map – 1.
Standoff – N/A
The Pit – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 120 seconds. Placed on Map – 2.
Valhalla – Spare Clips – 2. Respawn Time – 180 seconds. Placed on Map – 2.


Now think about the maps you enjoy and hate, and look at their sniper Placement.

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I hope this guide helps some people out.
If there's any mistakes in here, point them out for me to fix.

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Cheers, Linubidix

 

ugh, I know. I just wanted to watch Batman.

 

Check again.

 

Yeah twas edit, I spent most of the time writing it between the hours of like 2am-8am
then a thorough re-read before I posed it.

 

lol, I'm glad its helping people, the next guide will be on Melee weapons(sword and hammer)

 

In case you ask about the needler later, I will do a guide for it.
I'll try and get around to do a guide for pretty much everything weapon related in Halo 3.
After Melee Weapons will either be 3rd Person Weapons, Heavy Weapons or Duel Weildables.

 

Taken before you said it.
Shotgun, Snipers and Melee Weapons were the first 3 that I planned to do.

 

I think I've decided, that after Melee Weapons, I'll do 3rd Person Weapons.
It'll be a little more easier to write up.

Edit: Oh Yeah, I keep forgetting about Power-ups. Scrap that then. 3rd Melee Weapons, 4th Power-Ups

 

too true, I'll discuss the Camo and Oversheild, I dont see the point in doing the CP, unless I add stuff on MLG.