Armour Piercing Sniper

The AP Sniper is a mid-late game weapon. It requires an upgrade center and a sniper for its construction and is useful for taking out enemy weapons.

Advantages:

 * High Damage
 * Can pierce 1 layer of Armored door
 * Useful for 1v1s and 2v2s
 * Good for taking out light weapons (EMP Rocket, Mortar, Machine Gun, etc).
 * Very accurate.

Disadvantages:

 * Very Slow Reload Speed
 * Low durability
 * No area of effect (unless you activate Eagle Eye or Buster command ability)

Strategy:
While normal snipers need to wait to fire against armoured doors, the AP sniper can pierce through and hit targets behind a layer of armour. While they are useful, they take quite a while to upgrade and so are much harder to replace than normal snipers. This need for protective cover can limit their usefulness. Additionally, Snipers don't advance the destruction of the enemy base, so it may be more prudent to invest in offensive options such as mortars, cannons or even miniguns (the latter being another option from the Upgrade Centre) which can do more structural damage.

Eagle Eye is also a good commander with the AP Sniper, allowing you to deal more damage to exposed Reactors when their command ability is activated.

Due to the high comparative time and resource investment, essentially the AP upgrade helps a winning player prevent an enemy from making a comeback, making them "win more" rather than dealing damage to allow a losing player to contest the battle. For example, a losing player might simply lose the AP sniper before it can even fire. If using missile silos, also note that AP snipers can't laser designate targets and a separate basic sniper will be required.

Campaign
AP Snipers see some use in the Eagleland campaign, for example where they are used to damage an explosive barrel behind armour. The Campaign AI tends not to use AP snipers.