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Maybe I'm being too picky, but it feels like I've stumbled on the overlap of two issues this class has: you must be using a land speed for a lot of feats 'n features, and sniper rifles invalidate a big chunk of feats.
Building a Barathu Operative for a 5th level one-shot, but building them as if they're in a long-term game. I'd like to play as a flying Barathu and invest in fun Barathu feats, not just pump up land speed to a functional level. I'm also going with Sniper for fun, naturally grabbing the Shirren Eye Rifle. It feels like those two choices have pretty much determined most of the other choices.
Subclass feat: Keep Them In Your Sights and Scope Sight. It's not really much of a choice, because keeping a scope on your sniper rifle means losing out on 1d6 damage for a narrow 20 foot window of +2 to hit.
1st level: Already addressed why I'm passing up Scope Sight. Needing to reload every turn means no actions for Creative Cover. Using a fly speed means Elusive Target and Mobile Aim don't work. I've got Keep Them In Your Sights already. Instinctive Aim is solved by... carrying your weapon? Good for social games where you're okay carrying a sniper rifle as long as you aren't wielding it...? Weakening Shot it is.
2nd level: Hair Trigger, Kill Steal, and Double Tap all don't work with sniper rifles. Swift Reposition doesn't work with a fly speed. Reloading every round, we don't have room for the action cost of parry weapons, so Defensive Gunner is out. That leaves Danger Awareness and Peek. We need all the action compression we can get, so Peek it is.
4th level: Bloody Wounds is... useless? Two bleed damage on a crit? Double Draw doesn't work for two-handed weapons like sniper rifles, and Switch Target doesn't work for Unwieldy. We have to reload every round, so we don't have the actions for Stop Them In Their Tracks. That leaves us with the best yet, three feats- Always Ready wins, since it saves us one action per fight. (Or two in the rare case we have our weapon on us but not out.)
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Feature-wise, using a fly speed means we don't even get to use Mobile Reload. Our bonus movement does bring us from five feet to ten, so when we are on the ground and given a step, we can actually take it. On The Move's bonus speed doesn't help our flight, though, and Tactical Advance is just the same as a Step for us.
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Also, just a little gripe about the Recoil trait- the one damage it give doesn't scale up, so we're dropping two boosts into Strength to use a sniper rifle.
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Yeah, this is a particularly poor combination. I didn't set out to make it bad, though- I wanted to play a Sniper Operative, and also try out Barathu. There are a lot of rakes in the path.
It feels like Operative should have some support for fly speeds, given all its mobility. Even if that's a first-level feat that says something like, "If an Operative ability would let you Stride, you can move half your fly/swim/climb speed. If an Operative ability would let you Step, you may Step even with your fly/swim/climb speed, as long as it is at least 10 feet."
Sniper Rifle feels pretty punished as well, but I'm going to try it out. That Deadly d12 might need to be compensated for, but we'll see how it stacks up against the Magnetar Rifle.
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Kickback scaling is kind of addressed via the high caliber barrel allowing it to keep up with propulsive, but I don't know how Pathfinder 2e's version of gun mods will interact with Starfinder's Upgrade system.
Barathu (And climbing skittermanders) have a lot of movement compatibility problems in the various classes. A lot of feats and features need a clause to allow characters to use fly/climb/swim/burrow instead of stride.
There's definitely a few 2e standards the devs need to properly incorporate into Starfinder, and that includes having mobility feats let you use alternate movement types if you have them. RAW, unless a Barathu Flies at least once on their turn, they immediately start to fall when their turn ends, so this compounds with those lack of alternate movement effects to force the class to spend an action every turn on top of Aiming and Striking to not turn into a sack of lead, limiting their effectiveness with 1-magazine guns.
I also tried to make a sniper operative, and I agree that the biggest issue is that there aren't enough things that can be combined with reloading. You can move, but you can't fly, sneak, take cover, or hide.
This is particularly irksome since a lot of your turns are going to some combination of aim, fire, reload. Kill Steal does work, but then you're going to start the next round with your chamber empty so your loop is then reload, aim, fire (i.e. you get to use it one time per combat.)
It's the gunslinger issue again of "you have to spend actions reloading regularly" with the additional tax of "you have to spend an action to aim."
Pretty much everyone at my table disregarded Sniper Operative because Kill Steal and Hair Trigger were so good that the bigger dice size was not worth only a single shot per clip and if they were to do this they would use a Laser Rifle they mentioned. Even a Laser Rifle sniper they said seemed more interesting because you did not need to reload after every shot which bugs a lot of them.
Also high caliber barrel? Did I miss something here?
So like the IRL reason "sniper rifles" are not semiautomatic is that you don't want the recoil from the action to interrupt your aiming (or give you away.) You reload them when you have decided it is prudent to do so, since "sniping" is not about "putting a lot of lead downrange."
Like the US Army's M24 SWS is the standard "sniper rifle" in use, and while it is bolt action it also has a 5 round internal magazine. So I'm not sure why future guns need to go backwards here. Like in Mass Effect the hardest hitting sniper rifle is the M-98 Widow, which has a 3 round magazine.
Also high caliber barrel? Did I miss something here?
*Checks* Okay, turns out I misremembered the name. Large Bore Modification, not high caliber barrel.
Just going through and building the character now. I'm sticking to my guns because I both like the concept and am annoyed by how much trouble it seems to run into. Selecting a background, it gets a little frustrating. Doctor? Nope, we would need a hand free for Battle Medicine, which won't work with a sniper rifle and our action economy. Even with Peek, Trooper's Barricade feat runs into the same issues. Anything with Intimidate is out because Demoralize also conflicts with our action economy. It's gotta be something out of combat.
Looks like I missed that the Assassin Rifle doesn't have Kickback, though!
Like the US Army's M24 SWS is the standard "sniper rifle" in use, and while it is bolt action it also has a 5 round internal magazine. So I'm not sure why future guns need to go backwards here. Like in Mass Effect the hardest hitting sniper rifle is the M-98 Widow, which has a 3 round magazine.
Yeah, bolt action isn't really the same as "Capacity 1 / Reload 1". In fact it's (rather famously) possible to do 3 shots from a bolt action rifle in under 6 seconds.
Most of the other projectile guns are equally slim on ammo capacity. Semi-automatic pistols and rifles with only 5 shots? Only if you are using a CA compliant magazine. Oh wait whoops, even THOSE are 10 rounds.