Rifles useless IMHO. Use shotguns instead

[Todd]

My experience has been is that rifles are kind of useless. They are ok at medium and serviceable at long range and poor at short range.

I use snipers, heavies and shotgunners. Nothing kills an alien like a soldier that runs right up in the face of an alien and shotguns it in the face for 3 hits. And it only takes 18-22 time units. And you get the modifier where the alien doesn't get to reaction fire.

Try that with a rifle. They get to reaction fire. And the cost of the 3 round burst of the rifle is like 55 time units. What's the point?

Just my $0.02

[StellarRat]

You're not the first person that's said that. I think it has a lot to do with your style of play.

[Seafireliv]

Sounds right to me. Keep rifles for mid-long and shotguns for close. I find burst shooting with rifles is pretty effective at mid range\close.

[ViewThePhenom]

I have no problems making good use of rifles. It's a matter of preference.

[quiescat]

rifles vastly improve in utility once you have higher accuracy, where as shotguns are basically pointless out side of the 2-3 tile range no matter how good of a shot your trooper is.

[Orphan]

I have the opposite issue. I generally dislike the shotguns, and so I go with all rifles with the shotgun in my backpack. Eventually I started using a mod that added carbines in, because there wasn't anything that bridged the assault rifle/shotgun gap.

[victorix58]

A rifle is supposed to be mediocre, because it is the general use weapon for this game. I usually do as the OP suggests, i.e. shotguns, HW and snipers, except I have one rifle guy in the squad as a general purpose scout.

[Huntota]

Well, i don't like shotguns and i like rifles. Still, until i started relying heavily on shotguns and ditching rifles on most guys, i usually lost horribly. So yeah.

[StellarRat]

rifles vastly improve in utility once you have higher accuracy, where as shotguns are basically pointless out side of the 2-3 tile range no matter how good of a shot your trooper is.

I think this is quite true. Rifles have good range and in the hands of a skilled marksman they become deadly. Most people probably put their good shooters on the sniper rifle and LMG, but there is something to be said for riflemen with skill.

[Sentinel]

I'm currently using two tems of five men. Each team has one heavy, one sniper, two rifeflman. The fifth man is different on each team. One has a shotgun, the other has a shield/pistol. Works well for me, although the shield guy has a habbit of catching grenades ... but that's a different topic.

I've mulled the concept of replacing my snipers with moderate/mediocre marksman rather than the elite 100 acc guys I have at the moment, and handing them rifles to see if my team effectiveness increases or not ...

[TacticalDragon]

I follow this post for some time ago, I found that your are completely right Rifles are underpowered. I test some modifications of "Rifle Rules" and seems to be bit more comparable in power and use with Shotguns.

Thanks fr this discussion.