Sniper Rifle (Fallout: New Vegas)

The sniper rifle is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
The sniper rifle is a semi-automatic rifle, designed primarily as a long-range weapon, it deals reasonable damage, has a scope and very little weapons spread. Also, when manually aimed with 100 guns skill and a strength of 6, it has very little in the way of sway, making it ideal for picking off targets at long distance.

Once modified with a suppressor, it becomes the perfect weapon for an assassin when "Hidden" in sneak mode, alerting only those fired upon by the player character at no loss of faction reputation (even if the death is witnessed by nearby non-player-characters). With the added bonus of sneak attack criticals, most targets are usually dispatched with a single shot to the head. Due to the rifle's decent rate of fire, any target that survives the first shot can be dispatched quickly with a second shot before alerting any nearby non-player-characters.

However, the gun is extremely fragile and breaks completely after only 396 shots from full condition.

Modifications

 * Sniper rifle suppressor - reduces weapon noise.
 * Sniper rifle carbon fiber parts - reduces weight by 5.

Variant

 * Gobi Campaign scout rifle, a unique sniper rifle that produces more damage-per-shot, has less spread, degrades slower, uses less Action points, sports a reduced weight, has a faster rate of fire and includes a larger magazine.
 * Christine's COS silencer rifle, a unique sniper rifle that can only be obtained through the Old World Blues add-on. It comes with 17 more base damage, reduced spread, and a suppressor attached.

Locations

 * Vault 34 - Two can be found in the Armory (Accessed by using the terminal in the Overseer's Office) but unfortunately they are in very bad condition.
 * Can be bought from the Gun Runners outpost (At level 11+)for about 5,000 bottle caps, give or take a few hundred bottle caps.
 * On top of a bed inside the First Recon tent at Camp McCarran in the tent where Corporal Sterling is, on the top bunk of the bed he sleeps in, can be taken with no penalty. Sometimes this particular one spawns inside the bed. The third person glitch must then be used to obtain it.
 * Inside a (locked- hard) room in a ruined building, to the east of Mole Rat Ranch. Both of the doors are booby trapped into this building. If you enter from the north door you can disarm the grenade trap and then disarm the two frag mines located next to the south door.
 * Around 3 can sometimes be found inside Gomorrah, in the room containing the gun shipments.
 * One can be bought from the arms merchant at the 188 Trading Post (At level 11+).
 * One can be found on the top floor, first door of the Atomic Wrangler inside a very hard locked case.
 * Can be bought from the Daniel Contreras in Camp McCarran, at less than 50% condition and for 1800 caps.
 * One can occasionally be picked off a legionary assassin.
 * Two can be found on mercenaries outside of Jacobstown.
 * One in poor condition can be found in the Caesar's Legion safehouse

Bugs

 * When aiming, nothing is shown but a blank terminal screen instead of the scope reticle. This glitch can occur after logging onto a terminal in which the terminal screen does not show. Loading a previous save or quitting has no effect. Shutting off the console and then loading a save fixes the problem on Xbox 360 and Ps3.
 * Note that with the sniper rifle suppressor added onto a rifle it becomes completely useless when the modded rifle is given to a companion (specifically Craig Boone and Veronica Santangelo). When it is equipped by the companion the rifle appears exactly the same as a regular sniper rifle and the sounds are the same as well.
 * Sometimes while aiming with the scope, brightly colored shapes will appear instead of the standard scope image, obscuring 3/4 of the screen.
 * Sometimes the game will freeze when equipping the rifle. Turning off the system and loading a save will fix this.
 * Carbon fiber parts modification sets the sniper rifle weight to 3 Lbs., but will still take 8 Lbs. from your carry capacity. NOTE: Bug may be fixed with latest patch as of July 18, 2011.
 * When holding the aim button in third person view while switching to the Sniper Rifle, the end of the barrel will be visible in the bottom right corner of the scope. This also affects the Anti-materiel rifle.