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300px-Sniper

Avan as a Sniper in Valkyria Chronicles 2

Snipers are armed with bolt-action rifles fitted with telescopic sights and small Ragnaid canisters. Their primary role on the battlefield is to eliminate enemy officers and provide support for friendly units.

Gallian Snipers[]

While a Sniper possesses huge potential against enemy infantry targets over very long distances they have some of the lowest action points, hit points and defense of all units available to the player and therefore steps must be taken to protect them from enemy action on the battlefield.

While Snipers can evade enemy fire, they cannot intercept enemy combatants, counterattack or join cooperative assaults launched by adjacent allied units; they can, however, be the ones to initiate a team attack with scouts, shocktroopers, engineers, or tanks, though their fragility usually makes this impractical due to the tiny range of shocktrooper and tank machine guns. Lacking explosive weapons, they are also relatively ill-equipped to take on enemies in cover.

Valkyria Chronicles[]

The Sniper class requires a heavy investment of Experience points before they really come into their own; at low levels, use of a Sniper will generally require the player to save beforehand, since their combination of long range, reliance on headshots and low basic accuracy makes scoring a hit more a matter of luck than skill.

At higher levels they become an extremely effective means of removing troublesome individual units from the battlefield, particularly enemy Leaders, Lancers and other Snipers. Snipers are relatively poor at eliminating enemy Aces due to their high evasion, unless the player first "turns" the Ace by attacking him with a different unit to make him face away from the Sniper.

The only way to compensate for this low evasion is with the "No-zoom" bug; if snipers don't zoom at all when firing at an enemy, their target can't evade. However, only Marina Wulfstan, with a permanent accuracy boost via her potential Ultimate Accuracy, is reliably accurate enough to take advantage of this; none of the other snipers' accuracy-boosting potentials activate reliably enough to take advantage of this bug. This in itself is a late-game tactic, since Ultimate Accuracy is only unlocked once snipers are classed up to level 16.

Enemy Ace sniper rifles in the main game typically sacrifice range and accuracy for power and zoom levels; this is seldom a useful compromise, since a Sniper should be aiming for headshots anyway and their fragility makes them vulnerable at close range. The DLC missions include two Aces with unique sniper rifles, the ATR-01 and ATR-03. These give the sniper enhanced anti-tank ability at the cost of accuracy, range and anti-infantry capability; they're incredibly useful in the Upper Fouzen Expert Skirmish, as they're capable of sniping the Medium Tank + from a distance.

Standard equipment

Progression[]

Level Experience Unlocks
2 276 1st Potential
3 1029
4 2225
5 3843 Order: Aim Boost
6 5874
7 8305
8 11132 2nd Potential
9 14347
10 17945 Order: All Units Aim
11 21922 Elite: +11 HP, +50 AP, +10 acc, +5 eva
12 26275
13 30999 3rd Potential
14 36090
15 41547 Order: Penetration
16 47367 4th Potential
17 53546
18 60084 Order: Attack Weak Spot
19 66977
20 74223

Total upgrade cost: 524,006 experience

Valkyria Chronicles 2[]

In Valkyria Chronicles 2, snipers became a 2nd tier class of the Scout Class Tree and can be promoted to either Sniper Elites or AT Snipers. They are very useful and very accurate even at low levels, unlike their VC1's counterparts who need certain investment to actually become effective.

Standard equipment:

Valkyria Chronicles 3[]

Snipers return in Valkyria Chronicles 3 as their own independent class, first available after purchasing the GSR-1 sniper rifle from R&D at the start of Chapter 4.

Snipers level up to "elite" as in Valkyria Chronicles 1/4, though not through experience points, but rather through a background "level" specific to each unit that increases every time that unit rescues a downed ally, kills an enemy unit, or capture an enemy base. Unlike VC2, this means that players don't need to rely on random chance to obtain the credits necessary to reclass units into more powerful forms.

Snipers in this generation become far more versatile, able to wield either single-shot rifles and 3-shot auto-sniper rifles the moment they become available. Once a unit is leveled up to Sniper Veterans and Sniper Elites, Snipers can be rearmed with anti-tank rifles, replacing the AT Snipers of Valkyria Chronicles 2. For all intents and purposes, these Veteran and Elite Snipers are identical to regular Snipers except for their increased stats and AT-Rifles. They do lose the ability to ragnaid, which can either hurt or help players depending on one's playstyle.

Imperial Snipers[]

Imperial snipers image

An imperial sniper

Imperial Snipers were sharpshooters attached to various Autocratic East Europan Imperial Alliance infantry units during the Second Europan War.

They were deployed during battles in order to neutralize enemy officers, as well as regular infantry if the opportunity presented itself. According to the ingame lore, using the ZM SG manual action rifle helped Imperial snipers achieve a higher rate of accuracy than most soldiers during the war which is reflected by the stats of Imperial-only sniper rifles. However, looted ZM-SG rifles are incredibly inaccurate and short-ranged compared to Gallian sniper rifles though they have superior zoom magnification compared to their equivalent Gallian counterpart.

GRA Snipers[]

The GRA Snipers were sharpshooters attached to various Gallian Revolutionary Army infantry units during the Gallian Civil War in Valkyria Chronicles 2. Their role and equipment are the same as their Gallian counterparts.

They are mostly put in detached area or higher places like watchtowers to achieve greater damage against enemy infantry. They wield the Gondul rifle series, enabling higher accuracy when firing.

Federation Snipers[]

The Federation sniper were sharpshooters attached to various Federation infantry units during the Second Europan War in Valkyria Chronicles 4. Snipers once again are their own independent class, with Kai Schulen being the first canon Sniper leader (excluding snipers that can be optionally designated leaders).

Valkyria Chronicles 4 snipers are mostly identical to snipers in VC1, having no specialist sub-classes and only leveling up to elite (a paradigm shift in their capabilities) and then paragon status (solely stat boost). Like their Gallian counterparts in VC1, they're very inaccurate without investing a good deal of experience points into them, and are anti-personnel specialists.

However, snipers are far more versatile in VC4; all snipers are capable joining in team attacks (using ammo). Upon reaching Elite status, they can also intercept during the enemy phase, counter enemy attacks, and wield auto-sniper rifles and Ace-dropped Anti-Tank rifles. One caveat is that their interception is weaker and shorter-ranged than their normal fire in order to maintain game balance.

The VC4 sniper rifle tech tree has three main branches: the accuracy-focused GSR line, the generalist LF Wasp line, and the short-ranged, 3-shot LF-ASR line. Much like VC3, only a handful of reward rifles inflict the Evasion Down debuff.

Federation Sniper M SU VC4


Progression[]

Level Experience Unlocks
2 450
3 690
4 1390 1st potential
5 2270 Order: Aim Boost
6 3320
7 4550
8 5950 2nd potential
9 7520
10 9270
11 11190 Elite: Access to interception, counterattacks, and AT/auto sniper rifles

+10 HP, +50 AP, +15 acc, +5 eva, +3 def

12 13690 3rd Potential
13 15960
14 18410 Order: All Units Aim
15 22080
16 24870
17 27840
18 32530 Order: Penetration
19 37640 4th Potential
20 43190
21 46340 Paragon: +10 HP, +7 acc, +5 eva
22 49640
23 53090
24 56690
25 60440
26 64340
27 68390
28 72590
29 76940
30 81440

Total upgrade cost: 912,710 experience

Trivia[]

  • Regardless of game, enemy snipers may miss, however is this is more noticeable in VCII and really noticeable with auto snipers in VCIII.
  • Though snipers aren't able to intercept in VC1, the game engine (probably the CANVAS system) actually allows for sniper interception; this ability is just disabled in VC1 for snipers. This is likely to preserve game balance - if Imperial snipers were able to intercept with 110 minimum anti-personnel damage per shot at minimum 700 range (see Imperial sniper rifles), one sniper alone could deny a massive area of the battle map to the player and make it nigh impossible for the player to move their more fragile units without being shot to pieces in an instant. The implications of such powerful, long-range interception can be seen in the Gallian Crossfire mod by Busards.

References[]

Navigation[]

Units
Valkyria Chronicles Scout | Shocktrooper | Lancer | Engineer | Sniper
Valkyria Chronicles 2 Scout | Scout Veteran | Scout Elite | Heavy Scout
| Sniper | Sniper Elite | AT Sniper
| Shocktrooper | Trooper Veteran | Trooper Elite | Commando
| Gunner | Gunner Elite | Heavy Gunner
| Lancer | Lancer Veteran | Lancer Elite | Mobile Lancer
| Mortarer | Heavy Mortarer | Mobile Mortarer
| Engineer | Engineer Veteran | Engineer Elite
| Medic | Anthem Corps | Anthem Elite | Melodist
| Armored Tech | Tech Veteran | Tech Elite | Special Tech
| Fencer | Fencer Elite | Mauler
Valkyria Chronicles 3 Scout | Shocktrooper | Lancer | Engineer | Armored Tech | Sniper | Gunner | Fencer
Valkyria Chronicles 4 Scout | Shocktrooper | Lancer | Engineer | Sniper | Grenadier
Other Aces | Artificial Valkyria | Class Change System | Fixed Weapons | Gatling Soldier | GRA Units | Imperial Units | Leaders | Town Watchman
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