I don't know how chainlink fences work, but they are a really annoying tile. Sometimes shots go through, sometimes not. I've once unloaded a super shotgun autoshot on a fence from one tile to have all pellets to through when I was trying to destroy it, only to have it stop all pellets when I tried to snapshot a unit through the still standing fence. Gah! I hate those! (and have no idea how they are rendered in LoF space, certainly they can't be representing the links?).
Sort of on that topic, I have started to move away from sniper weapons entirely despite liking them a lot especially with the damage scaling. I now favor HMG type weapons for support fire. They both require so many TUs to fire that the soldier is stationary, the HMG is heavier but generally you don't need extra stuff since you're far away from the fight. Vulkan bolters, Fatty gatling laser, XG chaingun are now favorites, not because they list crazy high damage values (~65?) but because their outcome is predictable. The RNG can make a gauss sniper headshot into nothing, but when you shoot 10-20 times with 40-50% to hit (so 4-10 hits), the outcome is much more reliable and you can even trust that you will take out power armor, instead of praying for a high roll with a sniper.
At some point, the accuracy of the sniper rifle becomes meaningless (200+% to hit?!). If % above 100 could improve your minimum damage (but not maximum), then sniper weapons would be able to compete again, by allowing the sniper to not only hit weakspots for high max damage, but always hit something relevant and allow you to depend on it. I understand why TftD damage distribution isn't good (too reliable, makes high armor values too strong, low armor values too weak), but snipers have a hard time standing up to heavy weapons. I'm not an explosive fan (!! I like my loot and captives too much) so I barely use them, but those also benefit from doing at least 50% damage and against under armor if hitting. I feel that leaves snipers without much of a niche, except the "no collateral damage" niche, which isn't really all that much.
