Battlefield 2 - sniper's guide
- Learn how to be a top sniper from one of the best -
Written by Juxtaposition

Concealment

The second way to remain unseen is by keeping track of your concealment. Concealment isn't a cut and dry answer; you will want to vary how much you conceal yourself depending on the situation. The basic element of concealment is breaking up your silhouette; in layman's terms, you use your surroundings to try and make yourself look like anything BUT a sniper.

Concealment comes in a few forms, trees, buildings, walls, and earth offer total concealment, an enemy on the other side of them can't see you at all, however, you can't see him either. If you can't see him then you can't shoot him and you can't report his location to teammates, either way you aren't doing your job.

Concealment also comes from grass, bushes, and other assorted plants. Concealment is a balancing act between risk and reward. Short grass is not useful for concealment; it's too short and will not mask your silhouette. Medium and tall grass can offer excellent concealment. The ghile suit of BF2 snipers seems to be made to look like grass and as such I feel deep grass is possibly the best concealment you can find. I try to find dark green grass that's at least as high as my avatar, if not higher. The maps between the Chinese and the USMC are perfect for this. In battles between the MEC and the USMC grass tends to be of a lighter complexion and less suited to good cover. If you were to rate grass desirability on color alone I would say first dark green, then shady dry grass, followed by light green and lastly very light green or dry grass in direct sunlight. It's also important to note that most patches of grass have a few little spurts of some kind of plant, it might just
be two or three stalks but positioning yourself under these can go a long way towards breaking up your silhouette and making yourself that much more undetectable.

Grass has two problems though, first, there has to be enough of it to cover you effectively. The grass in BF2 is rendered by using flat grass sprites and making a honeycomb of sprites. If I'm on the edge of a patch of tall grass I try to leave at least two to four "layers" of grass in-between me and the direction I expect the enemy in. Some places grass is denser and you don't need as much to effectively break up your silhouette, other places grass is sparse and you need more to achieve effective concealment. The second problem comes from how the grass is rendered with the flat sprites; from the air grass
begins to look like a mess of interconnected lines as opposed to grass. Imagine trying to hide behind a big piece of poster board. You would logically hide behind the broad side of the poster board because it's actually big enough to conceal a person. When a person views you from the air it's like you were
hiding behind your poster board but suddenly someone turned it a quarter turn so they view it down the length instead of looking at its broad side, needless to say, a sniper covered by grass is naked against a helicopter. It's also useful to note that if you are on a hill that is steep enough you can fall prey to the same effect that makes you visible to helicopters.

The other good types of concealment are the assorted bushes that dot BF2's maps. These can be good or bad to hide under depending on the situation. Some are big and leafy and rendered in 3D while others are a mess of 2D sprites
thrown together. It's my experience that the 2D bushes are much better cover in most situations. A 3D bush can work well if it's surrounded by tall grass but a 2D bush surrounded by medium or tall grass can be more effective. 2D bushes tend to be more erratic and fit better with your grassy ghile suit. The
biggest advantage to being under a bush or keeping one near you is that they are 3D objects and so they provide excellent concealment from the air and are often enough to keep you safe from attack helicopters and Blackhawks.

Here are some tips for hiding in bushes. It can be a bad idea to sit directly underneath the bush for two reasons. You can help break up your silhouette by staggering the levels the enemy sees. There will be your level, the grass level (there is grass, right?) and the level of the bush. This helps remove the
tendency of the eye to linger on things that stick out. If your bush is just a little less of a landmark than the bush next to it then you have a better chance for staying hidden. Secondly, everyone always shoots directly at the bush as opposed to raking it; this means that if you aren't directly in the bush you stand a better chance at survival. This is especially true of weapons like the tank machine gun that have laser-like accuracy. If there is good grass around it can be very effective to sit between two bushes that are close together, the enemy will tend to look at the bushes when he glances your way
and hopefully won't notice you.

Trees offer useful concealment from the air, but don't rely on them to cover you without grass around too.

[previous]    [next]

Table of contents

• Home
• Preface
• Introduction
• General Information
• General Tactics
  • How to remain undetected
    • Appearance
    • Concealment
    • Location
  • How stealth is broken
  • How to use secondary weapons
  • What snipers do aside from shooting everyone they see
• SVD Dragunov/Type-88 Rifle Tactics
• M24 Rifle Tactics
• M95 Rifle Tactics
• Tag Team Sniping
• Snipers as Squad Leader
• What's New
• Contact Information