[Li-Ion]

Snipers are the most different when it comes to usefulness in early and lategame. As rookies, they are absolutely useless. Once they get squadsight that changes somewhat, but they still miss half the time. But as soon as they get to a high level, they wreck aliens left and right and it seems they score critical hits most of the times.

And yes, there are much tougher ships coming up later. Those where a firestorm with plasma is the absolute minimum required to shoot them down reliably. Better get a fusion launcher.