U-Sniper

Designer

The **U-Sniper** is a Tier 5 ship in Starblast.io. It fires two pulses from the front that do large damage with very large recoil and slight knockback on the victim. It is best used on a map with sparse, low-density asteroids, and is lethal against most other enemy vessels, and can sometimes make quick escapes with its immense recoil if there is a clear path behind it. When out of energy, the U-Sniper fires with alternating shots, one at a time. A better version of this ship is the starting ship in U-Series (the starting stats are better, and the maxed stats are the same but with faster terminal velocity).

## Strategy

* Strong Against: Most large bulky ships that lack pulses such as the Bat-Defender (beware of asteroids however), all of the Tier 7s (large and inagile,) ships with weak shields, Rock-Towers, H-Mercury (now removed) and Barracudas if skilled.
* Weak Against: Small, fast ships such as Shadow X-2s, as they are capable of dodging the U-Sniper's pulses very easily, and most of the tier 6.

### Playing with U-Sniper

The U-Sniper is a very bad ship, un-upgraded, but overpowered when its shield and pulse stats are upgraded. Many people tend to prefer the FuryStar over the U-Sniper, since the FuryStar is faster, more agile, and easier to upgrade to, but it mines slower. The FuryStar will also crush the U-Sniper In a dense asteroid field even when the U-Sniper is maxed. But in a sparse asteroid field, a U-Sniper will crush a FuryStar even if the FuryStar has defense pods (U-Sniper can back out of their range easily).

When mining with the U-Sniper, it can be tricky, as the recoil that pushes you away means you have to fly all the way back to the gems. Buy mining pods and upgrade agility to make it easier to pick up gems. The Advanced-Fighter can pick up gems easier and mines slightly faster, making it better for mining than the U-Sniper.

As a U-Sniper, often if you are getting stunlocked and getting constantly pushed around, you can often shoot your pulses to recoil yourself away from enemies. Recoil must be used effectively to dodge and must be used carefully, to catch up to a running enemy or to run away from enemies.

The U-Sniper and Advanced-Fighter have 60 energy regen, making them the most effective healers in Tiers 1-6, although other ships are almost as effective and smaller and harder to hit (such as the Howler). Despite their high energy regen, their mass is low, resulting in slower mining compared to other ships.

A good way to steal plenty of gems and fill up your frag count is to hunt bulky ships that can be hit with both pulses at the same time. Bat-Defenders should be fought with caution, so try to turn off your R.C.S and back away while shooting at it. If the Bat-Defender ignores you, chase it and repeat the strategy until the Bat-Defender is dead. Avoid fighting them in dense asteroid fields, as they are bulky enough to crash through the asteroids and corner you.

Sometimes, Tier 6 ships can struggle against a maxed U-Sniper that is used correctly. Especially pulse ships if they are not maxed. If they have all upgrades prepared they can be very dangerous, so try to avoid them and stick to attacking slow ships with no pulses. Before it was removed, the H-Mercury was very easy to kill, but Rock-Towers, Barracudas, and O-Defenders should be assaulted wisely.

Avoid attacking small, fast ships such as Shadow X-2s. The huge gap between the guns will make it hard to hit one. Even if a pulse manages to hit it, it will likely be only one pulse while the other would probably be far off.

This ship can also be enhanced by defense pods. Tier 7s can get crushed by a U-sniper if it's maxed and it has defense pods.

If fighting tier-7 ships 1v1, stay off to their sides, away from most of their firepower, if done properly they won't be able to hit you with their main damage source as they have extremely poor agility. the Shadow X-3 and Bastion may have their aim thrown off when hit, especially if their shields are down. If fighting the Aries or Odyssey, use your longer range to your advantage by bombarding them while out of range of their pulses, or at least far away so you have ample time to dodge. If you follow these pointers you should be able to crush them. However, still, be careful, as just one or two hits from their main artillery can completely change the tide of the fight. Due to their large hit-boxes and horrible agility, it should be easy to hit them with both pulses.

Several maxed/upgraded U-snipers can be devastating to bases if they all attack the same module.

###### Using the pulse recoil as thrust.

As mentioned previously, one of the benefits and downsides of the U-Sniper is the ship's recoil. Said recoil can allow you to both retreat and fire at the opponent at the same time, and can allow you to kill even A-Speedsters with a dose of luck. The keys to doing this is to have every stat on a U-Sniper maxed, **Except damage and agility**. Agility will allow you turn and accelerate faster, but it will also make decelerate faster, thus making you decelerate from the recoil thrust faster. Damage does increase your pulse damage, but will also make your shots consume more combat energy, thus decreasing the amount of shots you can fire, thus lowering the amount of thrust you can get. Damage can be upgraded once, but shouldn't be upgraded further.

Notes from eX0dus-77 (aka X-77): As with any ship or strategy that requires skill to use, it is highly recommended to get practice with this strategy before using it as a mainline tactic in your games. Also, secondaries are almost a hard recommendation with this tactic, defense pods and missiles are my go-to for this, but this strategy is completely executable without secondaries (But it's not for the faint of heart, as leaving unscathed is never guaranteed).

### Playing against U-Sniper

As said before, the huge gap between the pulses and cannons means it will struggle with hitting small, fast ships, especially if they have lots of agility. Shadow X-2's are somewhat effective against U-Snipers if you have agility maxed. Dodge all of the pulses by flying right through the spaces and try to enter the gap between the cannons to quickly finish it off. Its tiny size makes it very effective in doing this. However, the U-Sniper may aim a bit to the side to compensate so be wary.

Due to the low mass and shields of the U-Sniper, the Advanced-Fighter will crush it in a one-on-one battle. Remember that the Advanced-Fighter also has rather miserable shields, so make sure to upgrade the shield capacity. The ADVF's extremely high damage pulse, great energy regen, and good range will be able to throw off the U-Sniper's aim, while its better mass will help it take hits. The Scorpion is also great against the U-Sniper because of its superior mass and shields, giving it the ability to take the U-Sniper's fire.

## U-Sniper MK 2

In U-Series, the U-Sniper MK 2 is often outclassed by its much stronger counterparts, but due to many ships having poor shields it can still be deadly. If Tier 3 or lower, make sure you are maxed to avoid getting trolled or having an embarrassing death.

## Trivia

* It is the only vanilla ship to have a mod in Modding space based on it

* Both Finalizer (one of the best ship builders and the creator of U-Series) and X-27 (most famous Starblast YT) have a crush on the U-Sniper <3

* In Battle Of Titans, the custom deathmatch mode, the only ship you can choose is U-Sniper This is because it was originally intended to be a duel between X-27 and PMGL or Gilles (one of the devs) though PMGL decided to prank X-27 with what is now called Side-Fighter-OP, an invincible and very powerful Side-Fighter.