Crimson:
Snipers are harder to play than the other 2, and the starting gun is rubbish. Soon you will be able to buy a better one.
When you attack an enemy with a ranged weapon, the range of the weapon shows up in red, but there is a ring all around you of pink squares. This is the place where you are least likely to miss when shooting, so this is where you want to place your target. Get them 'in the pink'.
For the starter sniper weapon, and any other gun with a range of 6, this pink square is 4 squares away n s e w and 2 squares away ne nw se sw .
To put it another way, you want one square between you and the bad guy diagonally, or 3 squares in a straight line.
The tunnel level bad guys are either shooters, whackers&biters, or red-hatted shooters. Red hatted shooters have the same range as you do. There are none in the vault. Whackers and biters need to be adjacent to you in order to hit you. And regular shooters need to be 3 squares away -- so they need to be adjacent to you diagonally or 1 or 2 squares away in a straight line.
So to prosper as a Sniper, you need at least 7 AP. To get more AP, you need to raise Dex Int and Per, as AP = (Dex + Int + Per)/2 rounded down. You can find your AP on your character sheet.
Go back to Flynn and take jobs. If they are to Los V land cancel them. You only want jobs on the Fennian side -- messages and packages. On the Fennian side you will run into no combat, so you can build your AP up to 7. Keep sleeping at the Gaslamp. Your heat will not be reduced, but you don't care, you aren't running into any bad guys on this side of the tunnels anyway. Cancelling jobs will lower your rep with Fennian, but this is just dandy -- when your rep is low enough he will stop giving you the jobs to Los V that you do not want.
When your AP is 7, practice killing things by taking jobs to the Los V side. You will want to blow off some heat by sleeping at the Canalside Hotel, then back to the Gaslamp and then back to Canalside again, anyway.
But a sniper fight works like this:
The round begins.
If any of the bad guys have iniative, they charge.
You move, using at most 3 AP to put one of the bad guys in the pink.
Any other bad guys charge. All the bad guys are done for this round. You still have 4 AP or more left.
If you are in range of the bad guys -- who are out of AP for now, but who might get initiative next round -- you move again to put the bad guy in the pink. This can mean that you do not get a shot off this round. Next round will be better.
If you are not in range of the bad guys, you shoot. If you have more than 3 AP you either take an aimed shot, or reload your gun and shoot.
The round ends.
better is when you get initiative.
The round begins. Hurrah! You start.
You shoot the bad guy you put into the pink the last time. Save 3 AP to move with, but otherwise take an aimed shot, reload, etc.
All the bad guys move. All the bad guys are out of AP, and done.
If you have 4 AP, reload your gun. Then use your last 3 AP to move so that you are not in any of the bad guy's range, and you have put your target into the pink.
The round ends.
Notice that the bad guys do not get a chance to attack you? This is because, every round, you have AP for 'a-shoot-and-a-move', and they don't. The trick to playing a Sniper is to never run up towards your opponents. If they are too far away, you let them come to you. This is because you should be able to shoot them dead before they get close enough to damage you -- these opponents, at any rate.
Have fun, write if you still have problems.
