What is the point of the ronin sniper? I cannot see a clear difference between the ronin light and the sniper. The new ronin sniper just seems like a cheap reskin of the light. What does the sniper do that the light cant? Cant we get something more creative like an attack dog or something?

This game doesn't have "classes" so why do we have a dedicated sniper? Whats next, a medic class, a rocket class, and engineer class?!?! Sorry but I don't want battlefield 4, I want cortex command and in cortex command we don't force characters into classes.

The ronin sniper has a longer default sharp length than the normal ronin sharp length (this adds to the sight range to any weapon) which arguably makes the ronin sniper better suited then the standard ronin. That aside, nothing stops you from using ronin lights to snipe

If I'm not wrong, I read somewhere that the sniper class has a special AI, that allows them to pick targets faster and use long ranged weapons better.

I'm not sure how much different that would be from regular dudes, and how more useful would it be considering the randomness of Cortex Command, but oh well. Just something new.

If that's true that's new to me

Source.

There's LOTS of interesting information right there.

EDIT:

So we should eventually get snipers for the other factions, right? I kind of wanna see more "standard" content for all factions. *cough* brainbots for everyone *cough*

it would be nice if we could select this AI in hub menu.

Sims, it's "automatic", as in the sniper's AI is different from the regular AI, so it's inherently better at sniping. Just by adding "AddToGroup = Sniper" should be enough to make the sniper AI kick in. There's nothing to activate.

So, What your really saying is just make a mod to convert all units to sniper.. i like this idea alot.

..................................what??????????

I think its saying all AI should pick up on enemies quickly.

Probably its that or make a switch that can be toggle between Default AI and Sniper AI.

No, sniper AI is for snipers and default AI is for default soldiers. There wouldn't be a point in having snipers if sniper AI could be used by everyone.

Do mods ever serve a purpose beyond being amusing and changing gameplay that would otherwise be limited? this would be just opening an avenue.

I can confirm, the only difference between snipers and other actors is in the ai lua. Specifically, snipers (and brains) calculate whether or not it's possible to have line of sight to nearby enemy actors, whereas normal actors just check in front of them to see if they spot an enemy.

However there are far better ways of making the AI stronger and better than messing around with the sniper group.

The first 25 lines of HumanBehaviours.lua control the AI aim speed and skill. Edit these to make the ai just straight up harder. The math on lines 15 and/or 22 and 23 is what you'll want to edit.

If you really want to make all actors find targets the same way snipers (and brains) do, then you'll need to edit NativeHumanAI.lua at line 42 (just make line 42 the exact same as line 40). Honestly though, I'm not sure if this is a good idea. The sniper and brain spot target function seems to be a bit more complicated and probably takes more resources to calculate. If your game suddenly runs a lot slower after doing this edit, you'll want to undo it.

Sidenote: I haven't tested any of this, so if this suddenly messes up your game, well, then it's a good reminder that you should have made backups before editing base files.

If the only difference is a different AI, then wouldn't it be better to just automatically apply that AI on any actor currently using a sniper weapon. Instead of forcing you to use a completely different actor that only one faction has access to, just make it automatic for any actor using a sniper. There are so many better things they could have given us for the third ronin actor, but instead we got a reskinned light with a slightly different AI.