![]() Sniper Rifles are actually objectively weaker than Shotguns, and exactly as strong as Cannons, leaving Sniper Rifles in a terrible place even if we ignore that technological progression always places Sniper Rifles as late to upgrade. Granting the Sharpshooter the Snipecaster directly addresses one of the Sharpshooter's big design flaws: that they're designed around having an inherently clunky weapon type (Sniper Rifles), and its disadvantages are nearly universally relevant (Demanding 2 action points, having an inferior range category, to a lesser extent having only 3 ammo) while it only really has the one advantage (Squadsight) that isn't even that great/isn't necessarily being leveraged on any given turn. Suddenly it's actually viable for a Sharpshooter to take to high ground and make kills from Squadsight distances! And this is all before slapping on a Perception PCS, keep in mind a Superior Perception PCS adds 6-8 more tiles of perfect accuracy! ![]() At Colonel, they'll be perfectly accurate even with 5 tiles of Squadsight, and furthermore it's really easy for them to take to high ground and maneuver to fire on a target in the same turn (Where normally a Sharpshooter is out of luck if their starting position doesn't already have a clear shot), at which point they gain 10 tiles of perfectly accurate Squadsight shots! Put another way, a Squaddie Sharpshooter with the Bolt Caster can get perfectly accurate Squadsight shots on elite enemies who have 10 innate Defense, from up to 5 tiles out. Between the Sharpshooter's naturally high Aim and the Bolt Caster's Aim boost, this leads to 100% accurate shots at Squadsight distances shockingly readily a Squaddie Sharpshooter already has a base Aim of 100 with the Bolt Caster, and then at Corporal it rises to 104, ie leaving them perfectly accurate with even 2 tiles of Squadsighting. Squadsight shots means, in conjunction with a Concealed scout, more opportunities to fire on targets in the open because their pod hasn't activated yet. A Colonel Sectoid is probably overall a bit better than a Colonel of a regular class. Also helping is that their primary weapon runs off Pistol upgrades, which are cheap and accessible. The fact that so many of their abilities are borrowed from Psi Operatives also helps, since their competition takes a while to exist and costs a lot of resources to bring online. why would you?), which is not only inherently a strong skill but then combines well with their overall focus on abilities that don't care about Cover and barely care about position: if you're going to use Fuse to set off a grenade, or Dominate someone, or are in reach to drop Void Rift on your preferred targets, why not fire off a shot first? Movement isn't relevant to any of those after all. but at Corporal they can take Marauder (Or Mindspin, but. At Squaddie they're bad, with Melee Weakness built in, animating Psi Zombies being a dubious use of a turn, their primary weapon being comparable in strength to a Bullpup, and functionally no secondary weapon. Sectoids are, amusingly, unequivocally the best playable alien. Still overall better off than Mutons, though. They remain okay even at the end of the game simply due to their strong start ablating these issues some, and in particular their ability to flank and whatnot is unparalleled, but they do struggle a little to pull their weight at that point. They unfortunately overall degrade as a run goes on their level-up options are largely okay-to-terrible, Bind/Tongue Pull loses relevance as enemy HP rises (They never upgrade) and invalid targets proliferate, and past the early game they're perpetually hampered by the fact that their weapon upgrades are tied to upgrading your Sniper Rifles, putting them behind when first progressing to magnetics and really leaving them in the lurch at the beam tier since there's normally little reason to upgrade Sniper Rifles to that tier when you can just loot the Darklance. Vipers start out above-average, with innate Dodge, superior Mobility, innate Bind, Tongue Pull acting as their secondary weapon, and no major tradeoffs.
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