This sniping loadout is intended specifically for night time. It will not work so well during daylight.
It can be hard to find enemies in the dark, especially on Amerish and Hossin. Hell, depending on your display and brightness settings, you may face trouble navigating terrain.
Clearly, some form of Night Vision is warranted. Most primary weapons have access to 1x HS/NV scope, but it has a relatively short range.
You also have to be cautious about playing a class with intensive visuals, such as Heavy Assault with bright overshields, Light Assault with their Jet Pack flames or a Combat Medic with green glowing Nano-Regen Device. Bright cosmetics, certain implant effects, muzzle flashes and tracers will also give away your position.
You could just slap a Flash Suppressor and 1x HS/NV scope on your usual gun during night-time and play like you normally do. However, you may find scope’s short range annoying, and bright visuals of your class giving away your position too much, especially to enemies outside scope’s range.
If you have a flanking playstyle, you may also find yourself being flanked yourself by enemies that you couldn’t see through short range of 1x scope.
The idea behind the Nightshade Loadout is to get you something better than 1x HS/NV scope, as well as minimize any visual cues to your position.
6x Night Vision Scope
This scope has longer range than 1x HS/NV scope. Currently, only two weapons in the game have access to it: NSX Tomoe and NSX Daimyo.
Both of these weapons will work for our purposes, though Daimyo is more optimal, because it fires fewer shots, and will make it harder for enemies to find you by sounds and tracers. It also kinda sounds like an NC gun when suppressed, which can be useful when playing other factions. Also, 6x scope is a bit too strong for Tomoe because it has a shorter effective range.
Other Scout Rifles have access to 1x HS/NV Scope, but the Daimyo is the only Sniper Rifle to have night vision.
Rest of the Loadout
() Equip Suppressor or at least Flash Suppressor.
() Adjust your character’s cosmetics to make you less visible in darkness.
This will make you considerably harder to see in darkness, letting you sit still and pick off enemies one by one, almost without worrying about being spotted or countersniped. It is the ultimate “unseen killer” loadout.
() Ammo Belt or Ammo Printer are recommended. So far my biggest issue was running out of ammo with Daimyo.
Other implant options:
- Target Focus 1+ will work well, because all night vision scopes have sway, and Daimyo lets you take multiple follow up shots, so it’s nice to be able to fire all of them in one breath.
- Sensor Shield 4+ is always a great slot filler for stealthy playstyles.
- Catlike 5 is always a great implant for infiltrators.
The rest of the loadout is up to preference. Anything that goes into your usual sniping loadout will work fine.
Gameplay Tips
Use your cloak to safely move to a flanking position not too far off from enemies and plink away. Cover approaches to your position with your Motion Detection Tools, and mines, if you use them.
Normally, you have to be very tight about your cloaking routine while sniping, staying out of cloak as little as possible, just long enough to fire a shot. With Nightshade loadout during the night, you can be much more relaxed. You still should cloak and switch positions every once in a while, though. Remember to cloak while moving.
Note that Daimyo has more drop than other sniper rifles, and Suppressor only makes it worse. You will have to compensate for drop at nearly every distance. However, even suppressed, Daimyo will kill an enemy in one headshot within ~210m.
