While I hear from the uneducated so called snipers running through the game in 10 hours, my question is from the opposite side of the fence.
Is it possible to stealth your way through, reach your objective without being detected? I allow the silent kill (pistol or broken neck - this doesn't allow others to know). I realise, such as in the first mission you blow up a convoy with your rifle (why is everyone blowing up the first vehicle - the mad scientist is in the third truck - isn't it better to wait till THAT truck gets to the explosives and extract the maximum damage??? - less to shoot - more ammunition to keep) but is it possible to get to this point on the top of the building undetected - including by the snipers?
Now this would be a great achievement!

Actually yes it is possible, esp if you allow stealth kills, which technically include masked loud shots, since they can be done without detection. If anything the game is a bit over the top stretching gunfire masking. If you go further and allow sniper detection, since the ground troops aren't alerted by their firing at you, it's definitely possible. It's not necessarily going to be possible on ALL maps, but possible.

As for the convoy in the demo, what I do is shoot the first explosive pack on the sandbags as soon as possible, which can take out one or two of the rear vehicles, then shoot the one on the truck right after the first convoy truck passes it. The only one that is sometimes left is the armored car at the front. The ammo to keep mindset is a bit moot though, because even if you're left sniping the scientist and a few troops, there's an ammo box nearby.

The only time ammo is an issue in the game is if you're so bad at sniping that you have to use the MG and pistol a lot. That would really only be a problem if you're using weapons other than the enemy have. Even the limited ammo Welrod can be restocked with ammo regularly via corpse looting though, esp in maps where stealth can be used like the flak tower.

As you play more you will likely find as I did that the stealth, or more specifically the AI, is not all that great. At times it makes me wonder what they were smoking in coding it. I had a bizarre encounter in the church mission for instance. Just before getting to the church while stealth working my way through a building prior to getting to it I had neck snapped and silent pistol shot my way through to a spot where I'd crouched behind a vault-able visually concealing low wall in waiting for a troop to pass before vaulting over it and snapping his neck from behind. He walks by without flinching a muscle, yet the enemy proximity indicator turns red and I hear him say something as if alerted. He continued to walk past so I was still able to snap his neck, but it left the guy in the next room whom was totally out of visual range searching for me.

I've also seen times where you'll come into a room with two guys talking and when you stealth shoot one from behind cover, the other will walk over to a wall and stare into it, rather than investigate the only likely direction the shot could have come from. I used to think the only real problem with the AI is poor audio detection, but it gets FAR worse than that. The AI coding is nowhere as deep as it should be for challenging stealth work. Their patrol routes are easy to get past to begin with, esp if you crawl, but rock tossing makes them even more dense, like those comedy movies where you see a vicious attack dog go docile if you pet them or give them a treat.

Where the game really shines AI wise is when you have to stalk or get past a gauntlet of snipers, esp on Sniper Elite mode. Other than that the stealth is too arcade to be taken seriously for a sniper game. I thought use of stealth was far more challenging in Sniper Ghost Warrior than in this game.

If it were modded or patched it could improve AI dramatically, IF they have already laid out enough pathways for the AI to do thorough search routes, and IF the AI engine is at all adaptable to making them less limited in their response. It's easy to say just make them more sound direction aware and make them search more places, but if the AI engine is limited to begin with it may not be possible to do that without problems. I'm not in favor of them making the AI any easier to get by stealth wise if anyone is suggesting that though. The only reason I carry on after blowing stealth sometimes is it's possible in a lot of maps and actually a bit of an adrenaline rush too.

Even as is the AI often get hung up running in place trying to get around something, so proper pathing is key. I also had a weird instance where the AI were alerted in one map, as they should have been after my having blown up their tank patrolling their command post, but the doors they were supposed to come out of did not open and there they were running in place behind them, sometimes seeing me through it and shooting at me. I had to shoot at them while they were partially no-clipping through the door. After they were all dead the doors finally opened so I could go grab the intel.

Once in a while AI is also able to shoot through things they shouldn't be able to. As for tips though, the color coded enemy awareness indicator helps you initially recognize distances and angles at which they can see you from, and shadows do help conceal you. Their patrol routes aren't that hard to get around though, because they generally are limited in how big an area each troop walks, and it never varies. You add crawling, rock tossing and masked shots to that, and it's pretty easy.

My two toughest missions on Elite were probably the map with the ruins where you have to take out the sniper teams, but more so the mission that culminates at Kreuzberg HQ. The rooftop escape from there after getting the intel is brutal on Elite, esp with the often lackluster cover system. I had to replay that part several times on Elite and get the hang of popping in and out of cover briefly to make each sniper take a missing shot and check their exact location. Even losing stealth on the early part of the V2 rocket mission with all the ground troops and fixed MG gunners in the distant trenches raining hell fire down on me while holed up in the chapel was easy by comparison, and much of what made it that way was poor AI. Once you get in that chapel, you can go loud all you want from it's elevated vantage point, and they'll not toss grenades or come searching for you. I never have to use trip or land mines, except for the Kreuzberg HQ challenge map.

Masked shots are too easy actually. Just look for the pulsing icon in the upper right of the screen that looks like a sound wave indicator. As long as you fire while that icon is still showing, it's all good. Keep in mind however that you still need to be visually concealed, and on Elite it's hard to tell sometimes whether you've been spotted or heard, because there is no enemy awareness indicator, which is visually based.

Sounds that can mask gunfire include mortar fire, church bells, thunder, and flak guns, the latter being the easiest to use due to it's duration and brief pause in between rounds. The flak tower mission where you take out Muller is by far the loudest map with the most possibility for masking, but it's also not hard to use just the Welrod and neck snaps most of the way through. In fact that is one map that can leave you focusing too much on masking loud shots, when you should be looking for whether troops can see you or not.

In the DLC there's a train whistle you can mask shots with, but it can be frustrating to rely on as it has a tendency to sometimes stop blowing when you want to keep using it, and start up again when you don't need it.

When you consider how the game was made, eg the tools they gave the player, it wouldn't make much sense to make it so you could commonly stealth your way through an entire level. It would mean minimal sniping in a game that's primarily made for it.

That said, have you tried inching your way into enemy territory by 1) first scouting patrol routes from a distance with binoculars, 2) tagging all enemies seen, 3) carefully crawling until you see white enemy indicators, 4) throwing rocks to lure enemies that are hard to get past away from their patrol routes?

I suggest first trying to stealth your way through on Cadet, until you get the hang of patrol routes. On Cadet the AI are not quite as adept. Also, hiding or using dead bodies as distractions can greatly affect the ease with which you can sneak by. It's a given that other snipers will see you though, so it depends how you define "without being detected".

I did a little extra diligent stealth work earlier today, in starting an attempt at a run through with as much stealth as possible. So far I've made it through the Prologue and first level with only the snipers and tank spotting me.

Well I was going to make a thread specifically for my ongoing findings on stealth, but honestly when I hear responses like this, I see no point.

No disrespect, I just mean I think too many are wanting TOTAL stealth all the way through the game, or all the way through certain missions, such as the one you've described, which obviously have scripted moments of panic to keep things exciting. IMO it would not make for a very challenging or interesting experience to have any more stealth than is already possible.

I am at the beginning of the rooftop escape part of the Kreuzberg HQ mission so far on my stealth attempt run through, and I can tell you that most of the way through the game so far I have used stealth. I'm willing to give examples and/or advice on sections I know for a fact can be stealthed through, but I don't wish to pointlessly argue parts of the game where stealth shouldn't be expected.

As for snipers in general, I feel it's very unrealistic to expect them not to often times see you when many of them are looking through their scope for enemies and the game is designed to reveal optics glints when you're using them. However, many snipers cannot in fact see you until you're within a certain range or angle of view, or until you use your optics when they are scoping in your direction, and certainly when you go loud.

I've killed many a sniper with stealth so far this run through, including the last one at the Russian Command Post with the longest shot I've yet made in the game, 360m. So please, enough of this stuff about snipers always automatically seeing you.

When you first mentioned the difficulty of the office section of the 3rd mission, I thought you meant only AFTER the cutscene kicks in where you're spotted and all hell breaks loose. Honestly, if you're having trouble getting TO the office, you need to rethink your stealth work. Much of what makes it easy is A) you get a checkpoint for every charge you place, B) those patrolling are fairly spread out and walk slowly, and) there's machinery to mask noise too if you need it. I always just use the Welrod and neck snaps there though. I could tell you exactly how I do it, but it would kinda ruin the fun of discovering on your own how to deal with it. As far as AI placement though, it's pretty consistent in that map I find.

I know what you mean by snipers shooting at you from behind edges of walls they're using for cover and trees. It makes the scripting look noticeably less than AAA quality. Not necessarily as bad as a true "value" game though really. I've also seen times where when you're prone and a distant troop can't get an effective line on you, he'll be aiming and shooting straight up. Apparently their inability to hit you over an obstacle you're behind sometimes causes them to aim WAY too high. lol

I don't expect snipers to be in the same place all the time. I'm fully aware some of them are scripted to move around, and I like that because it's more challenging, less predictable, and in real life snipers generally don't stay put too long. What I DO have a problem with is some snipers seem to be completely void vs present. For instance last night when I played through the last mission, I got the sniper in the tower window appearing after I blew the tank. He's at the far left of the big square as you drop down through the hole in the ceiling.

Well, since I was playing for stealth, I wanted to try it over to see if I could get him before he saw me. Turns out I'd not hit the checkpoint near that spot, so I had to play over from the previous one. This time after blowing the tank he was nowhere to be found, and the only difference was I was out of his view when I blew it. I crawled way out into the square and kept looking for him, but he was never there. There's another sniper I've seen to the right side of that square as you're heading to the next checkpoint, but this time he didn't appear to be there.

Now on the first, I think he just didn't spawn, but on the second it could be that I crawled more this time and he didn't see me, hard to say. Anyways, LOTS of places you can use stealth. The game isn't very consistent in stats though. That 360m shot I talked about earlier for instance. My binocs showed 361m, the shot distance after taking it showed as 360m, but in the stats after that play through the longest shot recorded was only 265m. The game cheated me a bit there.

The sniper you're referring to that is on the 3rd floor just past the explosives pickup in mission 1 though is most always there, he just tends to crawl back and forth prone, so he's often behind a wall and you can't see him. If you want to always shoot him, either take him out as the first one after mantling up into the building where the checkpoint is, or mark him and get him later, though you may have to wait a bit for him to emerge. I've actually shot him just before picking up the explosives once from a spot in the street just before you get to them, but on the far left side of course.

I'm not quite following why you were earlier saying getting to the office in mission 3 was troublesome, yet are now saying you're having no trouble with stealth. Seems a bit contradictory. Furthermore stealth does not automatically imply sneaking by without shooting (or neck snapping) those in your path. It just means playing a given section undetected. People get out of the game what they want to, and as many differing opinions as there are on stealth alone, I'm thinking a thread specifically on my stealth findings would create an endless debate.