The Sniper Rifle is a powerful Weapon that the player holds at all times in the Smart Weapon Patch or can be acquired with an impulse 9 cheat in the original modification.
This Weapon is selected by pressing impulse 9 (impulse 10 in the Smart Weapon Patch), with impulse 13 being the original "All Weapons" cheat. Note that the player spawns with 10 Nails in the Smart Weapon Patch, allowing for a single shot, but will need more to use it multiple times.
Note that neither the original modification nor the Smart Weapon Patch includes any support for death messages, meaning the player will instead get the name of the target and the name of the attacker with no spacing.
Strategy
The Sniper Rifle is extremely powerful, causing 90 damage in a single shot. This means it causes the same damage per Nail as the Nailgun or Super Nailgun, but done in a concentrated shot as opposed to rapid fire. Unlike either of the aforementioned guns, the Sniper Rifle is very slow to reload, meaning that it will take several seconds before it is ready to fire again. This means that the Weapon highly promotes proper aiming to not waste Nails.
Furthermore, the Sniper Rifle's rounds are Armor piercing. This means it will entirely ignore a player's Armor value and instead injure their health directly, nearly killing a player in a single shot if they don't have a 100 Health. This means that the Weapon is quite lethal in Deathmatch, especially since every player spawns with one to begin with, making it harder to kill players that just spawned into a level.
This Weapon is extremely silent when fired, making a sound similar to a Nail projectile hitting a wall. The Smart Weapon Patch adds a silencer mechanic to the Weapon; Monsters will not be alerted if the player fires this Weapon as long as it kills its foe in a single shot. This means it is extremely useful for picking off weaker opponents, such as the Grunts at the start of E1M2: Castle of the Damned, without alerting the stronger Ogre.
Properties
Advantages
- Useful for stealth and picking off opponents without alerting Monsters to your presence.
- If accurate, players can cause a severe amount of damage to opponents.
- As players spawn with 10 Nails, allows for a free shot, and Nail Ammo is not too uncommon.
- Armor piercing means this Weapon is extremely powerful in Deathmatch games, no longer can players take advantage of spawn killing each other.
Disadvantages
- Stealth in Quake is relatively limited, there aren't many opportunities where the Monster has their back to the player, making the stealth mechanics a rare feature to use.
- Unlike the Nailgun or Super Nailgun, this Weapon requires the player to be highly accurate, it is pump-action like the Shotgun and thus cannot be spammed.
- Fires at a rate even slower than the Shotgun, not good for opponents charging towards you.
Sounds
| Sounds | |
|---|---|
| Sniper Rifle being fired (original) | |
| Sniper Rifle being fired (Smart Weapon Patch) | |
| Sniper Rifle projectile colliding with a solid surface |
|