f13.net

Since no-one else has done it, and I'm a current player, here's the advice thread - ask away!

Tips for starting (if you've never played planetside):

- Go into your graphics settings (in game) and turn off any options relating to flora/weather effects. Nothing funnier than watching a newb trying to hide in non-existant grass :)

- Go into the VR shooting/driving ranges and try out anything that looks even slightly interesting. You'll get some BEP (battle xp) just from handling new stuff and you get to try anything/everything without having to keep changing certs. Find out what you like.

- You'll start with some certs pre-spent. If you gain some battle ranks from VR (easy to do) don't forget to visit a cert terminal (you can find them in the big HART shuttle buildings in sanctuary) and spend your cert points. You can re-cert as many times as you like, as often as you like in the first week. After that it's 6 hours per cert.

- If you're really new and you have the patience for it, do some of the training missions.

- By default, it's ALT+G to bail out of a vehicle. Commonly asked question from new players.

- You can set access permissions on your vehicle. Driver/gunner/trunk/passengers can have different permissions, from you only, your group only to anyone in your empire. If you're getting mass transport for your group, consider locking passenger access to group until everyone's on board.


I know there are several planetside vets here, I'm sure they can chip in with more advice :)

For those that are playing the free version (Planetside Reserves), you will be limited to battle rank 6, which basically means you can have one primary loadout, and one backup that isn't particularly powerful.

When it comes to squad based play, it's normally best to have a mix of certain critical loadouts, and then a few folks that are more flexible, and can cover multiple roles. There are also a few different "primary missions" (I made this term up, it's not in game), for what you want the squad to do:

Vehicle Assault -- this is pretty fun, especially once you get used to it. Normally you'll take 3-5 main battle tanks, and a support skyguard for anti-air. Since Vanu tanks are mag riders (2 person tanks), and -very- fast, it can be quite fun. The main problem is that if we cert up for vehicle assault, we're limited to outdoor/base courtyard captures--once the courtyard is secured, we won't have much to do since the reserves won't have enough certs to be particularly effective indoors.

For this to work well, we'll want roughly half of the folks playing mag driver, half playing mag gunner, with a skygard or two in the mix as appropriate.

Mag Driver: must have Armored Assault 1 and 2. Should have at least engineering 1, and suggested you have some sort of medium range weapon as well for general purpose. Vehicle drivers can only wear up to Agile armor suit.

Mag/Skyguard Gunner: No particular certs -required-, but combat engineering (Engineering 2) is really nice. Gunners can wear rexo armor if desired.

Skyguard Driver: must have Assault Buggy and should have engineering 1/2.

Combined Inf:  Fun squad mission--basically, it's a mix of heavy assault, combat support, and special assault. To be really good at this role, you need about br 10 or so, but its somewhat feasible at BR6. The Vanu are especially good at this role given their spam/range based weapons!

Max: Anti-Inf and Anti-Armor max at a minimum, but you may as well get UNI-Max since it takes just 1 more point and gets you all 3 types. 2 or 3 maxxes are great meatshields, and kick out some pretty nice support damage as well.

Heavy Assault: Requires Medium Assault and Heavy Assault, and to be decently effective you really need Reinforced Exosuit armor as well. Your primary weapon is the Lasher. 3-4 Lashers focusing on the same or nearby targets is deadly.

Combat Support: Hardest to cert up for starting off, since you really want a weapon capability for personal defense, max combat engineer and max combat medic. This role however is pretty damned critical for sustained fights so we can repair and ressurect those that take damage. I'd suggest we mix up and focus mostly on combat medic (we really want at least 2-3 with the certs), and hope that some of our Heavy Assault folks have certs available for at least basic engineering.

Special Assault: not really required, but damned useful if we have someone with the experience. Chucking grenades around corners and all that good stuff really softens up the enemy for the lashers.

The hardest part about the combined arms infantry squad is transo, but we won't have enough certs to have built in transportation as well. I -may- see if I can squeeze out a gal pilot cert if we decide that's what we want to do.

These are just two of the various "squad missions" we can work on--or, we can just fuck around and do whatever folks want. I'll be honest though, with teamspeak and some practice, the effectiveness of a well thought out squad is orders of magnitude more fun than the zerg!

Important note to new PS players: PS now has a really nice "tutorial mode", where you get battle experience points simply for running the tutorials....in fact, you get BEP for every single "new" thing you do, including every single time you fire a new weapon. In your sanctuary, you also can use the Virtual Reality terminals, which basically lets you use any weapon or vechicle in the game. It is very much worth it to take 1-3 hours and do everything possible within the VR rooms, as you can easily get battlerank 3 (and the extra certs) in that time, and have more cert flexibility.

They also made it that for the first 7 days of your character, you can "forget" and re-learn certs any time you want--which means you aren't locked down to a particular role once you pick it. If it turns out you hate Heavy Assault and want to try Combat Support, you can go to a certification terminal and completely reconfigure your character in seconds.

I'll also be adding my advice shortly...

I strongly advise going to the VR room and trying *everything*.

For weapons, tools, and MAXs you only need to equip them.  Load as many as you can into your inventory, equip one, then move to the next.  For the vehicles you get xp for both being the driver and getting into the gunner's seat (except for the Harasser).  Vehicles take a little longer to do than the weapons, but it's free xp.

After VR and getting to one engagement, or doing some of the tutorials, will get you to Rank 4.  That comes to 10 cert points which is a pretty good start.

If you have a core group of guys, one of you will probably wanna bite the bullet and take an AMS. Its a deployable mobile spawn point that cloaks. Very important to win battles.

Finished the VR, I'm now rank 4.

Two questions.

1. Crosshair while in 3rd person? Is there any way to turn this on?
2. Widescreen support?

This seems like it can be really fun with a bunch of people. I took a sniper and stealth loadout, but I suspect I may go combat engineer like I was in tribes. I've got TS. Let's get it on.

How do I minimize the mindbending graphical glitches and once every 10-15 minutes freezes and crashes (most requiring a hard reboot)?

I seem to recall lack of Widescreen support being one of Sky's biggest gripes.  I could be misremembering, though.

The game IS huge fun with a group of folks.  Even if you're just standing around trying to decide where to zerg next and decide.. "hey, I wonder what <soandso> looks like when full of holes... "

No widescreen support. My monitor cries every time I play.

Edit machine.ini.

(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/images/kahuna2.jpg)

:P

I just went out and shot things, only took me ten minutes to figure out the blue guys were on my side.  Sucks to be Red-Green colorblind, never really was sure which side the aircraft were on.

Going to go in and try all the VR and traing missions, although I'm BR3 just from dicking around for three hours.

Easy way to tell, if you shoot something an an annoying buzzy beepy sound plays, you just shot someone on your team.  Some of the vehicles are unfortunately vague in color scheme, but generally black = terrans, blue = new conglomerate, purple = vanu.  The land vehicles are distinctive enough to tell the faction by profile alone, as it's uncommon to run across hacked vehicles, but the air vehicles are identical for all factions, so you're a little SOL on identifying them unless you get close enough to see the paint job.

Okay, how do I kill people? What am I trying to accomplish? Also... how do I have fun?

If you hear "It's like a FPS MMOG" and that makes you salivate, this may be the game for you. If it makes you wince a little but say, "Well I do like MMOGs..." you might want to give Planetside a pass.


I played for four hours, and had some laughs, but frankly all I got out of it was a headache. Was nice to find out that the F13 crowd is a bunch of nice, patient, tolerant folks. Nothing personal, honestly, but I don't think I'll be coming back.

If you only have access to Medium Assault weapons it helps to get the targeting implant so you can see enemy health bars. That way you can pick off the wounded ones.

Nominally what you are trying to do is help your side capture the different continents. Having fun depends on what you like to do in shooters. The nice thing about PlanetSide is that it supports a number of different play styles.

Edit: typos

My advice is, just get a Mosquito.

You don't really need any other certs. But if you really must, then it goes ok with stealth, or even sniper.

Oh, and the supposedly crappy automatic weapon you get for free, it isn't as crappy as every says (at least not for outdoor combat) - turns out it is insanely accurate.

Unless, like me, a Joystick is required for you to fly in any games.   I spend more time crashing Mosquitoes and Reavers than I ever have flying when I regularly play PS and use the Keyboard.  However, the JS controls in the game are lackluster at best.  Much easier just to buggy around. (For me.)

No disrespect man, but that's a particularly misleading statement, especiallly for new players. Flying in PS may appeal to a few, but it's commonly one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of the game for many people. It also of course gives you zero capability indoors, and even one anti-aircraft enemy will put you up at the flight cieling, or running for your life.

Meh. Crashing a mosquito is at least as much fun as not crashing in anything else. :)

As for AA, it may have changed, but when I played, Mosquitoes could out manuevuer most AA fire just by randomly shaking the mouse around. If an AA player takes a bead on you I normally find you can just loop around a mountain and back again (which is a < 10 second process in a Mosquito), this time coming in lower. There were usually half a dozen Reaver kids buzzing any hot base, and the AA guys would take any opportunity to switch targets to the those flying whales anyhow.

Plus you just get to mess about flying really fast through gates and rocks and stuff while everyone else sits around waiting for that last guy to get back in the damn Galaxy.

If you can put up with agile armour, Mossies are the only way to travel.

The addition of another aircraft with AA capabilities, the Wasp, makes certing mosquitos a little more problematic.

My observations from 4h last night:

1) I have no idea what I'm doing even after completing all of the training modules and reaching BR4.  Many of the descriptions in the training were pretty insufficient. I think time will help... I'll figure it out through practice. 

2) There are many high BR people out there with tons of toys at their disposal.  They even know how to use them.  It was humbling.  We had a base defended by 3 people and the 5-6 of us couldn't really do much to take it from them.  Should I get used to this being only BR6?

3) Getting 2 shot is no fun.  Especially when I unload a full clip on someone and they turn around and kill me instantly. 

4) Apparently there are people that can see me but I can't see them... and I'm not talking about stealthers.  Are there mods for this game that people use like radar and targeting bots?

5) This game seems very vehicle dominated.  I prefer to play infantry.  Can infantry ever be competitive?

6) BR 6 doesn't seem like it's going to be enough to contribute.  I'm guessing they know this and it's why they limit free play to BR 6.  Any suggestions for a BR 6 wishing to play infantry?  I got a cert for some armor with vehicle weapons... but it took forever to actually kill anything.

1. There's a lot to it. Spend a lot of time trying stuff out, they never seemed (years ago when I was a nub) to explain things like the rules for combat engineer placeables (certain distance between certain placeables, how to place more than one boomer, SOI placement rules, etc). You can figure it out with trial and error, but it's a pain. Maybe the new tutorials help some, dunno.

2. I got into this in the other thread. These folks know the game cold. Get used it for a while, no matter your BR. Even my BR12 guy doesn't have a lot of utility, especially compared to BR20+ guys with CR ranks.

3. Learn the cone of fire quirks, and how each weapon works. I have a burning hatred for the Jackhammer, there's a crazy triple shot it can do that just shreds you. If you open fire, every shot after the first is more inaccurate up to a certain max wide spread. Learn why lots of fps players bitch about the cone of fire, we had some big brouhaha about it here a couple months ago iirc. I like the thumper (grenade launcher).

4. Not sure. You can zoom in and sometimes see players beyond your normal zoom clip plane. Also, snipers have a long zoom. Most weapons have at least 2x or 4x zoom. Most players know how to exploit this to its fullest benefit (I don't, I'm 'experienced' but I suck, I just play for funs). There is an implant that allows people to see you when you're moving, and engineers can place radar so everyone sees a red dot on the minimap where an enemy is, and mosquitos flying slow will also lend radar abilities to everyone in the area. Everyone will be looking for the red dots.

5. Don't call attention to yourself. Lay low and let vehicles pass by if you can. Infantry rules base caps. Infantry also fills out vehicle crews between base caps. There are some anti-vehicle weapons, not sure how everything is balanced right now since they've tweaked it a lot since I played last. Infantry is also more important in the stupid caves.

6. Your best 'infantry' bet might be UniMAX. Technically you're not infantry, but HEAVY infantry :P They're fun newb roles, I started in MAX armor. They also have some anti-vehicle capabilties and the Vanu version have jumpjets. Sniping can be a PITA, playing infantry without REXO (reinforced armor) is a PITA. REXO gives you two rifle slots, so you can whip out the AA or AV gun when needed, and pistol slots for hacking tools or med tools or whatever.

Even being BR10 with my guy is limiting. I wish they just removed all 'exp' from the damned game, but mmogtards need their achievements, I guess. But again, if we roll some vehicles, you can rack up experience as a gunner without certing for anything. I personally dislike the hover vehicles :P You can also jump into turrets for base defense and be pretty effective in a limited way.

Bandit: I noticed that new aircraft, might cert my flier alt to check it out. The slowness of recert is another bummer for newbs (self included).

I did exactly this last night and got a cert in the vehicle based Max armor.  I was hoping that it may help take things down a bit faster.  I'll experiment more. 

Thanks for the input Sky, it's appreciated. 

One of the best pieces of advice I was given about Planetside was "Specialize you Tard. You're not fucking Rambo, so stop trying to do everything."    Play around in live combat a bit, find a weapon you like based on its description/ use and build yourself around that.  

Skys right about the UNI-MAX cert, though.  It's one of the BEST ways of specializing without limiting your options.  Anti-Personnel, Anti-Armor and Anti-Air along with high-survivability for only 6 points.

Ed: - ALSO: be very very sure to use some time to set-up "favorites" at the load-out consoles.   These make reequiping while in a sieged location MUCH MUCH less painful and so much quicker it's insane.   Hit console - favorites popup - hit # of loadout, you're done.  It sets-up your inventory, armor and ammo based on whatever you setup.

It also makes it much, much quicker to specalize your role if you use the favorites.  I recall I had one specific loadout just for killing Vanu tanks.  I was toast against infantry, but when getting blasted to hell and back inside a tower by a tank camping outside, it was easy to just load that up and take care of the fucker, then go back to the anti-inf loadout.

A BR25 playing with implants is definitely going to have an advantage...but not to the extent you might think.  A player can be certified for everything in the game, but you can only use so many certs at any given time. 


There are certainly "hacks" in the game (not experienced it myself that I am aware of) and Planetside seems to be hell bent on getting rid of hacks at the moment, not sure to what degree of success.

There seems to be a complete counter-argument to this on the PS boards.  Apparently there was an Anti-Vehicle buff sometime recently, and people claim that vehicles are severely underpowered compared to AV Infantry.  Can't substantiate this at all though, as I have only played once in the past year or so.

Take the UniMax if you suck at FPSs. You can usually get at least 1 for 1 kills with it. You can also take the two engineer certs which lets you drop mines and turrets in addition to repairing vehicles.

The Rocket ATV is kind of fun and the rockets are pretty strong. You can take out a Lightning with it easy but it is somewhat hard to control as you are moving so fast.

I disagree. For infantry, you can have a lot more situational utility. Having two rifle slots and two pistol slots, and enough certs to have several loadout presets is powerful, even if it's not directly more powerful in pure firepower damage terms. Like my stealth engineer who is specialized into combat engineering, having enough certs for rexo to carry more ACEs doesn't help in combat because I don't have a variety of weapons (indeed, I'd take the newbie rifle and a repair gun). It's the ability to combine cert utility and especially the ability to quickly change loadouts entirely.

And to underscore what Merusk said, having presets is an essential skill. Even with a limited guy, I'll fill my presets. One good thing at the bottom is an 'armor reset' with the newbie agile armor and a pack full of healing kits. Switch out of damaged REXO into that and use the heal packs, then switch back to rexo at full armor points. But even with the same loadout, I might change things around so I have a pistol out on equipping, or one loadout with grenades, etc. Mix and match and maximize those loadouts!

You wanna be infantry? Get Rexo. Get Medium assault. Get Medical. EDIT - Get Engi, to repair vehicles and your extra rexo armor.

Standard assault setup for a BR 6  should be something like : Pulsar (Slot One, standard rifle) - Shotgun (Slot 2, up close and personal)

The Pulsar is a sweet little gun. Learn to kneel, zoom then shoot. Do not hold down the fire button, do a "super tap" until your cone is too large. Switch the Anti armor mode versus MAXes and light armor, or run your ass off.

Sniping in this game is one of the best I have found. You have to be steady, and aim where they are going to be. Hell, you even have to factor in the velocity of the sniper shot. I believe they added a noob sniper weapon that any medium assault can grab. Fuck that, get the real deal :)

If it were me with a BR 6 guy, I'd probably go Engi, medium assualt, Tank driver. I think that would fit....

Also, grenades FTW. You can bounce those nice plasma nados down into spawn areas for some nice AOE damage (a wanna be thumper whore)

Completely agreed, they are more flexible and certainly more dangerous.  I was just trying to point out that at one point in time, you can only be using so many certs.  Like your stealth engineer for example...you can only carry very limited weaponry, basically a pistol and some CE stuff. Which would be the same limitations as a B25, with an inflitration suit on.  He could go change equipment on the fly and have more options, but a BR25 stealther essentially has the same limitations for carrying equipment as a BR6r (implants will help though). 

Not really arguing that a BR25 is tougher and they generally kick my noobish-FPS ass, just they have to pick and choose what equipment they must be using at any certain time like everyone else....they just have better options and better weaponry when choosing :P

Supporting fire, Sticking with your squadmates, learning to hot-drop, not being shot by your squadmates, being NC with the Jackhammer up close and going full auto, these are the ways to win.

I think I play a lot like Sky, I always am lacking a cert or two to get to the next base in a hurry with the rest of my squad, So I end up going for combat engineering and mining the road one base ahead. It's great seeing 6 kills from a mine going across your screen all at once.

(http://gotr.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10261/PSScreenShot0032.jpg)

This really is the way to play planetside :)

But I'm only in Inf armor because I'm limited in certs. I'd rather go rexo + combat engy + weapon certs + adv hacking + ATV or something to get around in.

Inf would be a nice alternative, too. But for now it's just to fit in other certs.

Slay: Ahh...I forgot about that newbie sniper rifle. I wondered how the heck I had a sniper preset without the cert! And why it was so crappy when I was using it last night. Nice picture  :-o

Other thing I forgot - get in a turret and defend a base - have someone else repair you. Good points that way. Repair and heal everything you can.

Those BR25 people will outscore you most likely. If you heal/repair them you can leech some of their points. (Plus it's the right thing to do).

The Other sniper rifle was a veteran reward.

Ok, for those looking for small tips while you practice:

THE most effective infantry squads have the following strengths:

--they focus fire. Anyone that isn't an FPS uber-expert is going to get owned by those that are when solo. The way to beat this is to work as a team, and have 2:1 or even better 3:1 firepower against single targets--they will drop like nothing.

--fields of fire: cover each other--don't ever get caught by yourself. This is one of the reasons why advanced medic is so very important in a support role--if you have a mini-squad of 2-4 people, and one dies, you've lost what we just talked about above, because the one that died has to go back and respawn. With an advanced med, they can be ressurected in place. This keeps you together, which is critical.

Here's a couple of mini-squads that work really well together:

--3 lasher (heavy assault) and 2 combat support, defending inside bases. You are going to own pretty much everything except for an Anti-Infantry max. Your combat support should have at least 1 adv med (preferrably 2, but you deal), and at least one eng, combat eng nicer. Vanu are wierd, in that their infantry simply dominate at medium to long range indoors, but their maxxes dominate outdoors. Vanu defending an Interlink facility is an NC's worst nightmare, and TR aren't very excited about it either.

--2-3 max (two anti-inf and one anti-armor is awesome) with 2 support. Repair is critical here. Again, defend inside (although tbh, I'm not really good with Vanu max tactics--they are pretty powerful outdoors with their jump jets if you can use them well).

If/when we get 10+ on, we simply have either 2 of the above mini-squads, or even 2 of the same. They take up mutually supporting positions, and can even share their support teams once they learn to work together well.

The big thing really in being effective in any cert level, any squad combination is to pick the right fights. Lashers against reavers is bad news, infantry maxxes against vechiles is really bad news, and charging 3 locked down TR anti-infantry maxxes in agile armor is just plain funny.

If you aren't in the right configuration for a particular fight scenario, avoid it. THAT is why having more certs is so nice, because you can reconfigure very quickly to adapt to a fight situation.

That's not even close :P

I've participated in a 4 gal, 20 tank, 5 ams and 20 skeeter base takedown, with a flight of 6 libs softening up the target area for 5 mins prior.

Was the most amazing fun I've had in a computer game playing with others, ever.

Ok, I think I have a pretty good formula for a Reserve, if you just want to be a grunt.  You can do this pretty much from the certs you earn in the training stuff.

Basically, go Uni-MAX.  You'll have to sell your starting certs, and you will suck if you have to respawn at an AMS, but it works otherwise.

With the Pre-reqs, you will have the two tanks (I prefer the 1-man Lighting, but I'm anti-social) and all three MAX armors.  You can blow things up real good, but you will draw attention to yourself.  In both armor and Max, Sklar made a BRF run and hide.  Until the infantry came and shot me.  Combined arms works pretty good in this game.

You win teh game.

Seriously, it's -all- about combined arms.

When people actually get organized in PS, it becomes the awesomest thing in the world.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, though, they're all running around like kittens and accomplishing similar.

As far as the paying people go, the higher-ranked folks have a big edge in the implants they're carrying.  A BR 6 is likely not going to be the one walking away from a fight with a BR 12+.  However, getting in one-on-one fights in PS is for losers.  Goofus runs off on his own, thinking he's playing Quake; Gallant has eight other guys backing him up to cut down anyone who steps into the hallway.  A good squad > BR and individual FPS skillz.

For insanely serious squad tactics, go here (http://ps.warriornation.net/).  I used to be in that outfit, and everything mentioned in the manual works beautifully as long as everyone follows it.

Oh, and as far as advice goes, specialize.  If you're sticking with the freebie game, you won't have enough certs to be the pilot/gunner/medic.  If you're wanting to be in vehicles, get the vehicle certs and basic engineering so you can fix the vehicle, first.  After you have those, you can spend the other points however you like.

You can't drive most vehicles in heavy armor, with the exception of the cycles and the buggies.  If you're planning on being a tank driver, reinforced armor is probably a waste for you.

Anyone who means to be infantry should put priority on reinforced armor and the medic or engineer cert.  REXO absorbs a lot more damage and lets you carry a lot more stuff, and a squad full of medics and engys can hold an area for as long as their ammo holds out.  MAXes especially love having engineers in their squad.

Always, ALWAYS carry a hacking tool.  You never know when you'll be the only person in the command room with one.

If someone is healing you or repairing your armor, for the love of God don't just stare at them.    Keep an eye out for the guy who's coming up behind you with a grenade.

Voice macros can be heard by the enemy.  If you're trying to sneak a squad into the base, don't use them.

Those big box planes automatically repair any friendly vehicles that pull up close to them.  But not too close.  Do not ram them with your tank, it annoys the pilots.

If you're in a two-person vehicle, try to pick up a gunner rather than zooming off alone to wherever you're going.

If you're in a MAX, put a couple repair gun ammos in your inventory.  It only costs a single box of MAX ammo, and it can help the engineers keep you alive longer when they run out of repair juice.

If you don't have a squad, you can make one simply by following a random friendly soldier.  Two guns are much better than one, just stick with him and shoot at whatever he shoots at.  If he has any brains at all, he'll notice this and reciprocate.  This also applies to vehicles and aircraft, should you be piloting one.

If you run across one of the mech things, toss a jammer at it and shoot at the glowy spot on its back with the heaviest weapon you have.  They hate that.

Watch for mines before walking out a door.

Always plant mines near the corner of a doorway, not in the middle; that makes them harder to notice for the lazy people who don't follow the above rule.

Don't stick mines around an AMS, that just begs for an infiltrator with a jammer to come by, blow them all up, and get a dozen free kills.

If you're an engineer, stick around after a base capture to repair the stuff and lay mines/turrets.  The base won't do you any good if it's taken back ten minutes after you leave.

If you think there's an infiltrator in the room, a plasma grenade can tell you for sure.

Disclaimer: I haven't played PS in over a year so some of my translations/comments may be wrong now.

Translation: Unlike the other armor classes, MAXes can't self-repair their own armor and so are dependent on other players to keep them in combat for as long as possible.

Translation: The Hacking cert + the hacking tool allows you do capture command terminals (needed to switch ownership of a base or tower to your side) and open doors in enemy bases/towers. The Adv Hacking cert speeds up hacking of the above plus you can do fun things like hacking enemy vehicles to put them under your control and hacking vehicle and equipment terminals temporarily so that your side can use them.

Translation: You'll see a message when somebody is trying to heal you or repair your armor. For some reason a lot people like to turn and face that person. That's bad. You should move into a position that keeps the healer/repairer out of possible lines of fire if possible. You'll break the heal/repair temporarily but that's okay and it'll start back up again when you stop moving. Also if you need healing/repairing and you see that message don't run away from that person. I can't count how many times I had to give up chasing after people cause they didn't stop running.


There are keyboard shortcuts for activating the voice macros. Learn the most common ones so you can do them quickly.

There's a voice macro for calling out that you need a gunner.

Inventory management is a fricking PITA in PS but you'll need to master it if you want to play the game well.

Translation: Jammers are a type of grenade that are very versitile. They temporarily shut down certain electronic devices within range of the blast. Against vehicles they will shut down the weapons (yes that means if a tank is shooting at you and you hit it with a jammer they won't be able to shoot you for a short while). They will also shut down turrets, detonate mines and boomers (manually triggered bombs) and disable implants. If a jammer from out of nowhere is thrown at you for no apparently reason that almost always means a Stealther is about to knife you -- better get moving.

With some practice you can stick them in the "slot" where the door opens and closes which makes them even harder to spot.

Translation: An AMS is vehicle that you can respawn at if you die within range of one. They are necessary for capturing bases, otherwise players have to travel from the closest base/tower to get back into the fight at the base.

As mentioned above jammers will detonate mines and are a useful way of clearing minefields. That can also be used against you if you are standing next to a "friendly" mine.


Translation: Plasma grenades will "coat" players caught in the blast for a short period of time (it's like a DoT) so you'll be able to see a cloaked player that's hit with one cause their outline will be flashing green from the plasma residue. There's also an Implant called Darklight that allows you to see cloaked players. It gives off a distinct "hum" when turned on so if you want to be a stealther you'll need to learn how to recogonize that sound quickly so you can take evasive manuevers and as mentioned above tossing a jammer at the Darklight user will turn it off and players won't be able to turn it on for a short time.

You don't need the hacking cert to use a REK to hack doors or control consoles (base and tower). Anyone with a REK can do this. Side note - some MAXs have been known to carry REKs (as they can usually spare a bit of inventory space) for those situations where no-one has one and then drop it on the floor.

You do need adv. hacking to hack anything useful like equip terms or vehicles. Just the basic hacking cert by itself is pretty pointless, I think it only adds the ability to hack things like med terms and speeds up hacking a bit, so either spend 5 on adv hack or don't bother would be my advice.

Its called granny hacking, and happens quite often :)



Oh, and that wasn't even one of our bigger raids.

Other fun stuff. Bombing. Oh my this can be just invigorating. Even better when you get a couple bombers working together to soften things up.

Make sure you know what your eject key is though.

If someone's coming at you with a bigger gun than you have, shoot them and keep moving.  Being shot widens the cone of fire considerably, as does chasing a moving opponent.  Don't let them just stand still and hose you, you'll be dead in seconds.  If you're slippery (and shooting them), they won't be able to hit the broad side of a barn.  (This does not apply to some weapons.  The Lasher, Thumper, various rocket launchers, and lockon weapons are unaffected by cone of fire.  Better off just dodging when you see one of those.  But against chainguns and assault rifles, this is golden.)

Running over people with vehicles hurts them, but not as much as one would expect it to.  Don't expect to be able to mow down pesky infantry in your path.

If you're hacking something, hold down the fire button.  If you get shot and aren't holding the button down, it'll disrupt the hack.

If you see a medic reviving a downed soldier, DO NOT RUN BETWEEN THEM.  A person walking through the healing beam breaks the revive and forces the medic to start from scratch.  Kindly step around them rather than through them.

You can repair someone's armor even when they're dead.  It's a good idea to fix a dead MAX's armor before reviving them, because a revived MAX with no armor is likely to die again in seconds.  You can repair a dead soldier's armor while they're being revived, it won't hurt anything.

Do not hang out in large groups in the open, you'll be hit with an orbital strike.

If you hear the sound of an orbital strike charging over you (it sounds like a proton pack from Ghostbusters being turned on), RUN.  Hit the sprint implant, fire your afterburners, do whatever you have to do to move as far as you can in the time you have before the strike hits, preferably into a base.  If you hesitate for any reason, you'll be killed for sure.

Don't be a jackass and dawdle when boarding a troop transport.  People love to hit those with orbital strikes, and the longer you take in getting on, the more danger everyone's in.  Get your gear and get in the damn plane/truck so they can go.

Do not stand still when outside, odds are that a sniper is watching you.  A moving target is much much harder for a sniper to hit.

If you're jumping from an aircraft, you'll be in third-person camera, which is useless.  Hit a weapon hotkey and you'll go back to first-person camera when you draw your gun.  You can steer yourself a little bit in midair, so make sure you actually land in the proper spot.  Nothing's more embarrassing than missing the roof of the base/tower you were trying to jump on with your squad.

If there's an advanced medic nearby and you die, don't hit the respawn button, they'll be coming to revive you ASAP.  That is, unless you're out of ammo.  A revived soldier without ammo is pretty useless, so unless someone in your squad has ammo to spare, better off respawning.  There is a voice macro to call out for a medic to come revive you, (VVR for 'I need reconstruction.') if you use it you'll show up on their radar as a flashing cross so they'll know to come to you.

For that matter, experiment and learn all the voice macros.  They're very intuitive, a V to open the macro window, then letters that are usually based on the words involved.  VNR - V for voice, NR for Need Repair  VWC - V for voice, WC for Warning Cloaked enemy.  If you just mash the V key you'll get VVV for HELP!  They're helpful for 'talking' to people around you without taking the time to type out the words.  Even though your voice macros will appear to you to be directed to your squad in your chat box (if you're in one), they will be heard by everyone around you.

Is wise Kitsune going to join in? I don't see you on the roster.

This game has so much micromanagement.  Is there a build you guys can recommend where I just log on, hit the gear terminal, grab a saved set of gear and go kill shit?  Maybe time will heal most of this as I adjust to all the power sets/eq/vehicle crap.

That's what favorites are for. Your time at an equipment terminal once your favorites are configured should be < .75 sec...g to use the term, 1/2/3/4-9 for your favorites, and run away.

I understand and use them.  I guess I'm saying that I prefer to specialize rather than be a jack-of-all trades and PS seems to cater to the later.  I'd like to be a one-trick pony... albeit a very deadly one-trick pony rather than a generalist.  Is that even an option?

Sure - get a inf suit and go stab snipers. Also works good to get the AMS skill so you can set yourself up behind enemy lines.

And then if you get the retail, continue that with combat engy. Park your AMS and set up a nice defense grid around your hunting grounds, lead guys into minefields, etc.

What do you like to do? Do you have enough of a feel for the game to understand your options?

I like to play infantry and No.  I tried max suits but it's so slow to turn and move.  I'm not much of a vehicle person either.   I guess I'll just have to keep trying things.

Try Rexo and Heavy Weaps or Special Assault.  Spec assult along with the Punisher was a fun build as Terran.

For the stealthing types, one of the most rewarding experiences for me was to cert

Advanced Hacking
Quasar (Anti Inf MAX)
Inf Suit
AMS (optional)

Medical is nice too with this setup, as well as mosquito to get around. Basically, you want to sneak behind the lines toward the equipment terminal. In all the chaos of a tower battle, many times you can sneak down and quickly hack a terminal, then spawn in your quasar MAX loadout. You can singlehandedly turn the tide of a tower battle like this, and smoke like 10+ dudes. You can also sneak past defenders and hack it right under their noses. The AMS cert is for 2 reasons. You will die a lot, so you bring your own respawn point. Or my favorite, the "AMS snag and deploy". Find enemy AMS, hack it out from under their noses, hop in driver seat and deploy. Do not move from driver seat and they wont be able to rehack. Your friends will start spawning there and you can turn the tide of a fight.

The rush of hacking when there are enemies all around is pretty sweet. The bar seems to move soooo sloooooowwwwww.

Or you can hack an enemy vehicle terminal and get yourself an AMS that way.

Larger groups are definately good.  Bhodi and I had a chance to play some last night and we did a little damage, but got overwhelmed several times.  Also the enemy was always in the wrong vehicle, no matter how many times we switched up.

Expect to die often.  It's part of the game, don't let it get to you.

While in a MAX, 'Q' will put you in run-mode, you can't fire but move quick like a train.  It makes MAX a lot better, but there is no way noobs like us would know you could do this.

I found that my mouse sensitivity was WAY lower in MAX than in normal armor.  It took me a long time to turn on my axis to shoot things in Max where heavy infantry armor I could pan on a dime.  I assume this is intended. 

Yes, it's intended, but you can partially counter-act that by editing your your key/mouse sensitivity. I have a couple of different keybinds for sensitivity depending on what I am driving/doing--for vanu,  I have max sensitivity set for mouse on maxxes, min set on planes, and low set on mags (they have a wicked recoil).

Escape, k (for keyboard), click on the mouse, and set your two sensitivities. you can then save this, and load is similar to favorites later, although it's a bit of a pain.

The most basic lesson is, if you are new, find someone to follow and stick with them like white on rice.  Join their squad (or form one first if you need to), gun for their vehicle, provide covering fire while they hack, and so forth.  The first obligation anyone has in that game is deciding who to follow.

If you are stumped as to what to do first, go with a MAX (power armor).  MAXes are something anyone can do, they require few certs to be an expert in, they operate well both alone and as part of a squad, and there is almost never a situation where someone says, "I wish we had fewer MAXes."  Any new player can pick up a MAX and do reasonably well.  You'll be able to assault a base as a shock trooper with Anti-Infantry, be able to defend a base and provide air defense with Anti-Aircraft, and be able to assault and defend towers and base courtyards with Anti-Vehicular.

Unless you _really_ know what you're doing, don't bother with an Infil suit.  Cloakers are pretty much worthless in the really big battles, and in a squad you're usually a detriment.  The only time I have ever seen cloakers both matter and be effective, it was in the squads who were exclusively cloakers.

If you decide you want to drive vehicles, especially tanks or BFRs, pick up Engineering as soon as possible.  Engineering is a great support profession for people who prefer outdoor combat, and its an easy way to earn XP while helping an entire offensive.

If you are infantry, and you are going into a Meat Grinder, bring shotguns, Heavy Assault, or Special Assault.  If you don't have that, get it or go away.   

Pay attention to what your outfit, platoon, or squad is doing before listening to a CR5 (anyone giving you orders on a global channel).  The only person in the outfit who should listen to the CR5s at all is whoever is currently leading an outfit or a platoon. 

I'm worthless!

Actually, I'm starting to get the hang of my stealth guy again. I had been playing my rexo TR grunt for so long, and that was a couple years ago... I still blow a lot of knife kills, but I was getting some decent boomer kills. Found one interesting loadout preset named 'omgnades', my inf suit with an inventory full of frag grenades. That was actually pretty fun and surprisingly effective.

Don't quite have enough certs yet to transition over to a rexo grunt the way I'd like, but getting there. Dinged BR11 last night with some of those boomer kills and a little help from my friends.

I'd like to hit those stupid caverns to qualify for BFR if we have enough people to stomach it for a few hours some night.

I had a question...I know what most of the stats in the session stats mean. What is A: and SEP: ?

A couple of folks have asked about caverns, and we can do that if ya want--just realize it can be -very- frustrating (they are CONFUSING), and hard to get around. You'll want infantry or max almost exclusively in there, although flyers do pretty ok as well.

"A" stands for Assists, and you get those by healing/repairing someone who then goes on to make a kill. Support exp is the same concept--doing support stuff that helps leverage kills in the future. It's simply a subcategory of battle exp--counts towards your main exp, unlike command exp, which counts for your command rank.

Aren't the reserve accounts locked out from the expansion content?  Or is it just that they can't pilot BFRs? 

Cavern raiding is a very different game from base-fighting, very little cover and lots of outdoor combat.  It's a paradise for snipers and Phoenix users who can hide on a very high ledge and plink people with impunity, or for Vulture pilots, who can just blow the hell out of everyone.  And it's very bad for ground vehicles; the terrain is a bitch to drive through.  Everyone should try it, but few will likely come to like it.

On the up side, though, since few people actually hit the caves, a couple of squads can pretty easily dominate down there.  I don't think I've ever seen a big organizes unit down there.

I hate the caverns but I want to unlock the mechs :)

Save the time and trouble.  The BFRs are walking deathtraps, they got nerfed right out of any useful degree of power within two weeks of their release thanks to the volume of whining about them.  I had a character with the cert unlocked, and piloting one of those things was much more trouble than it was worth.  I got better results from driving a Magrider. 

Even the pre-nerfs models I felt weren't especially strong; I blew out the shield generator of a NC BFR with nothing but an infiltrator suit and a BEAMER.  I crippled the thing with a fucking pistol.  The pilot was spamming the help voice macro, and I was about to plop a boomer on its feet when a second BFR showed up and killed me.  A couple of organized infantry could completely own a BFR, but because having two people work together was an unrealistic expectation in Planetside, people bitched about them until they became even more useless.  Now they're target practice and easy experience.

Kit's pretty much dead on with biffers. If piloted right and running in an armor column, they can be devastating. (Mostly because they've got the tanks spamming any potential infantry that might get close enough to do harm) otherwise, walking death traps. Hell, I took one out with a sniper rifle and a well-placed spitfire once.

I managed to somehow flank one in an Infantry MAX once. Popped on the AP rounds, and aimed for the glowly. I have no idea how close I was to killing it because I didn't have the implant at the time, but he sure as hell ran away in quick fashion.

He probably would have been dead if I happened to have had the anti-Armor MAX.


Also, today I was sniping and eventually drew the attention of 2 NC BFRs and a Vanguard MBT. Seeing as I was in Agile armor and only had my Bolt Driver, a REK and some nades, I did the best thing I could think of to try and do some damage:

I simply started to run around the feet of the BFRs, hoping they would fire upon each other as they tried to kill me. It was pretty funny for about 30 seconds.

Yes, IF a BFR is in a cohesive unit, they can be a decent tool.  Their anti-vehicle weapons will tear up other vehicles in short order, and their secondary guns are typically well-rounded against vehicles and troops.  The handful of times I've watched half a dozen BFRs come crashing into a base, they laid some waste.  However, ninety-nine percent of the time I see BFRs acting in ones and twos, and they get reamed hard.  And honestly, most anything you could accomplish with a group of BFRs could be accomplished at least as well by a group of tanks.  Unless they've un-nerfed the BFRs at all since I bailed close to a year ago, and I really doubt they have.

WARNING

If, for whatever reason, you feel like logging onto another character in another faction (don't know if this holds true if it's only on the same server), you will be locked out of any characters from other empires for something ridiculous like 11 hours.

All I did was try some different weaponry in the VR training, but now I am locked out of my Vanu character until some time Monday morning.



This is very, very shitty. And I couldn't find it in the manual either. Thanks, SOE!

Ah, they should make that a bit more clear. It is a wargame, after all. It's to keep people from spying too much. It makes sense, but sure is frustrating if you don't know about it!

Iirc, when the game first shipped you could only make one faction per server. They had to implement something when they merged (my TR guys were on Konreid, thus the -K on Komoto-K).

Yeah, I don't remember seeing any sort of warning tell me about a lock-out timer. Also, I couldn't find anything in the online manual.

Oh well. I have other ways to burn time anyway. The only bad thing to come of this is that I cannot log on if we get another squad together today/tonight, and two - I lose a day of being able to re-cert for free. And I'm not sure how many days I have left yet.

To be more specific, you can log in a character, log off and immediate log into one of a different faction.  The second faction is what starts the timer.

It me hit last night.  See as I won't be exceeding BR6, I decided to delete Ailuridae, create a new account, and recreate her with it.  Now I can swap between them without that silly timer.

I have discovered that I;m only good at dying.  I think I might cert combat eng and see how that works out.

Seriously, the hour or two I ran support I actually had a lot of fun as well. It kind of reminded me of playing a priest in Dark Messiah, which I had tons of fun with.

EVERYONE loves a good support guy. As a MAX, if you can keep me healed and repaired, I'll give you my little Vanu babies.



The only problem I am running into now is that I am nearing that 7-day mark, so I am going to have to settle on a couple of certs. I think I am going to stick with the Uni-MAX cert, and the Air Support cert to start with. I like to tell myself that I'm ok in a MAX, and I would really like to get better with a Liberator (I really want to get into a Vulture eventually). I guess I would eventually also pick up Combat Engineering, so that I can repair my aircraft.

Why settle?  Make multiple characters with multiple roles.  I had my main character, heavy infantry/medic/engineer, a secondary character, MAX/tanks/BFRs, and a pilot and infiltrator that never got very far because I'm not a good dogfighter or sneak.

I may eventually, though of course I would prefer one character that could do what I wanted.

Unfortunately, everything I want would require BR22. Eventually, I'm going to need at least 2 toons:

1) At least BR12 for Uni-MAX, Rexo, Sniping, and ATV.

2) At least BR11 for Rexo, Air Support, Advanced Med, and Engineering.

(But I'd much prefer to have Air Support on my main character as well)

If you want to make xp in a very safe manner because you're not in the mood for combat or there aren't many of us on, use an ANT to transport energy from the warp gates to bases low on power.

Is it possible to load an ANT into a Lodestar that is not currently being piloted, so that I can both load the ANT and fly it over myself, on one character?

No, a vehicle must be driven into a Galaxy or Lodestar, and once in the driver can't leave without the entire vehicle disembarking first.

Piloting ANTs has made me feel more worthwhile than any other activity I've tried.

It works best to get one from a base near a warp, get it full of NTUs and drive it to the base where it will be required WELL in advance of hack completion. Park it under a bridge inside the base. They're comfortably well armored and not particularly high priority targets.

Actually ANTs are high priority targets if they think you are trying to resupply a base that you control that's low on NTU that's under attack. In a massive attack try and find a Galaxy pilot who can drop you straight into the courtyard (dicey if the enemy has air superiority) but watch out for mines around the silo. The rest of the time I find it more efficient just to cruise around on my own to the bases my side already controls and fill them up rather than tag along with the attacking forces. On attack I find I'm more useful driving an AMS if I'm in a support role. Also, try to get as many people into your squad that need exp if you are doing ANT runs. Everybody gets the same experience no matter how many people are in the squad. Finally if the base that you are refilling is heavily damaged you can keep deploying the ANT to top it off since the base will drain the silo pretty quickly as things get auto-repaired.

Yeah, nothing says, "HOO RAH!" like air-dropping an ANT out of a Galaxy that's being chased by skeeters (they didn't have wasps when I left) into a base where people are still fighting to recharge the silo at the last second.  Of course, the odds of surviving it are slim.  You can bet that they'll drop an orbital strike on the silo the moment they realize you're charging the base, but hopefully you'll get enough NTU back into the silo to hold the base until they can be driven out.

I might suggest the Sensor Shield Implant, available at BR6.  If you aren't shooting, repairing, etc, it conceals you from most radar.  It does take a couple of minutes to come online after you respawn, but I've found it cuts down on the number of times I meet a chain gunner coming around a tree on full auto.  I even won one of those meetings with a few good rounds from my Pulsar.

Another thing I've gotten fond of is the special assault Rocket Gun, which is great vs BFRs, and moderate against armor and aircraft.  The 'fire all in magazine setting' is great for those cases when you are sure you are going to die as soon as you open up, but the delay before the first shot can be a bit tricky, timing-wise.  I've seen the RG turn a number of fights, particularly vs BFRs, which make nice big targets, particularly if they stop to get a good shot.  Don't compare it to the Punisher, the ROF makes a huge difference with the same ordinance, and the AA is much better.

The other special assault weapon, the thumper, can be equally effective in close in infantry fights, but it is tricky to use.  One short round in a base fight racked me up 293 grief points.  Best to take it up front, where only the bad guys are in front of you.  Charging around a corner where 3-4 bad guys are staging for a rush may only get you a couple of shots. but I've seen those couple of grenade rounds can leave those guys low on armor and health before they go into the fight, and the fight may well be following me around the corner, so that can be a real difference maker.

Finally, as an engineer, be wary of planting all your mines and spitfires at your base.  It is the natural inclination, but I'd suggest loading up an ATV with ACEs in the sanctuary when you start, and then warp gating and driving to a forward area, where you plant your stuff near the action, allowing the enemy to do your recycling for you, and plant some stuff at your respawn base after you get killed.

Also, I never seem to run out of Motion Sensors, and I find they are good for wasting the enemy's time.  You can use several of them and a few mines and/or Spitfires to construct a phony position that the other side will probably either avoid or assault.  Also, if something is chasing you, dropping a motion sensor can make them think you are leading them into an ambush.

Set to secondary fire (2 or 3 second delay) and bounce the grenades around the corner. This is one of the main uses of Thumpy. I love Thumpy. Thumpy likes to blow apart friendlies, as mentioned, so it's a tricky one to learn, but pretty nice. You can load Thumpy with three kinds of ammo, I have a couple different presets in my favorites. A little slow on the reload and ammo swapping, though.

Actually, I just changed a BR6 guy (Smokamotive) into a baby version of my TR grunt: rexo, special assault, anti-vehicle (or is it AA?). So that's a decent BR6 setup (I took the adv targeting implant because I like to see the health bars).
I mostly play stealth engineer, and it's mostly mind gaming and misdirection. Item placement is an art, and a good engineer duel is fun. I try to set up an AMS for inventory, though I just got advanced hack so I can use enemy terminals, too, now. If someone's chasing me, I prefer dropping spitfires unless I have a solid emplacement. They'll usually slow up to destroy them so I can drop another.

What armor do you use for engineering?
Stealth and run back to termal often?
But you can't heal buildings/vehicles like that.

As a BR6, I use Rexo armor for the capacity.  I try to fill up on ACEs before a fight, lay down some emplacements, then load up a punisher with full variety ammo except AP bullets and with maybe an extra rocket pack, armor and vehicle repair tools with lots of reloads, 4-5 ACEs, and maybe a REK.  I generally places my ACEs where I go to work, and then concentrate on keeping the troops in action.  Things get quiet, I get some more ACEs.  Things get too hot, I may pull out the Punisher.

I tried the stealth route, but the cargo capacity is so sucky.  If I was going above BR6, I'd add it to my abilities, but the tricks are a bit specialized for general use.  Invis is really an offensive build, I'd say.

I use stealth, that's why I have AMS, too. I have a repair/deploy preset using the regular armor when it's not too hot to deploy. I like to deploy under fire and without backup alot, though. Here, have this lovely boomer.

My guy is BR 11, though.

Lol when Strazos was trying to figure out why the 12hour lock I did it too.  Found out that my original guy (Scuffy BR11 TR Emerald) was a 2 year veteran, had a sniper rifle (the medium power 10 shot one), and a couple of awards.

We need to post what builds most are going, I'll usually be a vehicle guy (tank, lighting, eventually the deliver variants, and air support and engineering).  Game companies love me as I sign up for years and just freaking renew (planetside, toontown, CoX) and play on and off as I feel like it.  I would be willing to go caveing if we have a full squad.

I've been waiting for folks to be able to get a feel for what they like before trying to really organize squad wide loadouts.

We've been having what seems to be a lot of fun with gal drop based takedowns, so if people as a whole do like that we can press that way. Normal gal drop roles:

Hacker--rexo for survivability, adv hack, other : they get us in the doors, and are actually the most critical role--they --have-- to survive, or be ressable.
Max x 2 (or x4 if we have two gals, or we hack a term on the way in)--mix of AI and AV are good, but we are honestly mostly meat shields.
Heavy inf x 3-4: lashers, rexo. Main firepower.
Decimator x 2-ish (3 is really good for the insta-kill)--these guys have one responsibility: kill the maxxes. Deci's are king for this--3 shots to kill a max.
Combat Support: 2-3 adv med + at least normal engineering--these are critical for being able to sustain waves of attacks.
Special Assault--?: good for 'nades, etc, etc.

You can of course swap this up, but it's well rounded and can get us in and secure to pretty much any of the normal drops once we get our teamwork down!

Another really cool thing to do by the way is mass armor columns--it takes a LOT more practice, but a coordinated column of 6-7 mags and a skygard or two totally dominates an outdoor fight--it's just a bit limited at BR6 when you have to go indoors, since you've used up 7-ish cert points for drivers and repair.

One important trick that they never tell you is that you can save vehicle loadouts at the little vehicle repair silos in bases.  More importantly, you can fill the trunk up with handgun ammo/medkits/hacking tools/ACEs/etc, and save that at the repair silo.  So, if you're a CE, you can take a buggy, fill the trunk up with ACEs, roll over to a repair silo, save the configuration, and the next time you have that buggy you just have to drive over to the silo to instantly get a trunk full of ACEs.  This is a gargantuan time saver.

Also, several vehicles have a crappy default ammo loadout.  Like 10,000 machine gun rounds but only 30 shots for the main turret.  It often behooves you to take a look at the ammo in the trunk and shuffle the numbers around a bit to a more realistic ratio.

Komoto (http://myplanetside.station.sony.com/character.jsp?charId=305574&worldId=15) is inf/ce/hack. Inf armor, combat engineer, adv hack, ATV, ground support. BR11.

Smokamotive (http://myplanetside.station.sony.com/character.jsp?charId=363661&worldId=15) is a grunt. Rexo, special, anti-vehicle. He was my tank guy (armored 2) but I suck at driving tanks.

GelMibson (http://myplanetside.station.sony.com/character.jsp?charId=988955&worldId=15) is a pilot/eng. Air Cav scout/assault, engineering. I'm a pretty crappy pilot.

Mostly I like stealth work :) I played a lot of gruntwork with my TR Komoto-K (http://myplanetside.station.sony.com/character.jsp?charId=315649&worldId=15).

Pretty much the only toon I play now is Diziet (http://myplanetside.station.sony.com/character.jsp?charId=336722&worldId=15)  But she's got the versatility to do pretty much anything in the game at this point, so why go anywhere else. (And also you see why I'm not particularly inclined to leave the NC)

I hear ya there---really really missing my scat max :(

Oh, and for all the would-be pilots out there, practice practice practice flying.  Cert up, grab an aircraft in the sanc, find the closest forest and fly through it.  Weave between the trees as best as you can.  You'll probably explode a bit, but keep at it.  Then do it faster.  Then do it on afterburner.  If you can skim ten feet off the ground while dodging tree trunks at full speed, you'll be in good stead for flying in a fight.  As a side note, hitting the deck and going into a forest is a good way to lose pursuit, just watch out for mines.  They will detonate against aircraft if it's skimming the ground.  Also, nobody really thinks to watch for a Galaxy that's following a road and only twenty feet in the air.

Heheh..you should have seen my lib escape out of all the AA fire last night. Nothing more adrenaline rushing than to go from max altitude to ground level while -within- a city (I had to climb OVER the front door catwalk since there were vehicles in the way), then dropping back down to skimming down the road and then dodging trees...all with a sliver of vehicle health left.

Sadly, I popped a mine on the way to the back of the tower and we died :(

Wonder if this will work for my suspect Galaxy piloting :P Not sure how many trees I will be weaving in and out of.

It does help--a lot. Given that a Gal has a wider wingspan, you'll want to get a feel for how close the trees can be, but I practice low level flying a lot just to stay out of line of sight/radar while on run ins for drops.

I tried a bit of early morning pilot practice, flew in on a base being attacked, there are a Mosquito, a Reaver, and a Lib just sitting over the target waiting for somethjing to happen.  I come in at full speed, start lighting up the Mosquito, don't take my finger off the gas until I've already slid past the Mosquito, and run right into the Reaver, like I'd run a red light at rush hour.  Naturally they blew me right up, but I bet that woke them up a bit.

Came back later in an AA MAX and got some easy xp off the Reaver trying to strafe me.  Afterburner don't help if you fly straight into the missiles.

Yes, I've hit the deck in Galaxies and Liberators before.  It's... quite the experience.  You definitely want to be in third-person view for that.  They can't fit in any kind of dense forest, of course, but you can still weave through fairly tight terrain, canyons, between a forest and a base wall, etc.  Anything to get you cover from people locking onto you, all it takes is a tree limb to block LOS and break a lock.  While if you're way up in the sky where everyone can see you, there's nothing at all to stop everyone from shooting at you.  Good pilots stay low when interacting with ground forces.

Third person is for wussies!

Hehe...I only use third person when flying for doing combat landings inside a base so I can time my flare well. Otherwise, its all first person for me...although I can agree that it might be useful for some while flying low level.

I was with Sturmgrenadier for about a year, and some of those guys treated Gals and galdropping like an art form.  We'd drop entire infantry platoons, with tank and AMS support, into courtyards.  Nothing says 'surprise' like three Vanguards at the vehicle terminal.   

The lesson they learned was that the best way to fly a Gal (and Lodestar) was to learn where allies were, especially allied aircraft.  They would then fly over a target, drop their troops, and bug out either to the nearest concentration of friendly aircraft (Air Towers, usually) or some place where no one would look for them, like the middle of the ocean. 

If enough of the outfit was on, you'd have a squad entirely aircraft for each infantry squad (or two).  Even then, the Gal would still run for that repair station and AA MAX cover. 

Galaxys may be tough and all that, but their capacity to defend themselves, or even to support landing infantry, is an illusion, and that was before the appearance of the Wasp.  The only defense a galaxy has is its armor, and the only way that is worth anything is delaying the inevitable.  Gals are also high-value targets, so people will try to shoot you down even if they are about to be shot down themselves.  So learning where to flee at any given moment is as important as learning how to flee. 

Boomers are fun.  :-)

I got like six or eight stealth boomer kills in a firefight last night. Killed twice from damned darklight guys, but that's a great ratio, and I wasn't teamkilled...Funniest one was a guy who kept spinning in circles with his shotgun, knowing I was there, but no darklight. Right inside a TR base we were zerging.

I hate you fuckers that do that. So I have the audio implant cranked. Hear you move and plant the boomer, get out of dodge, kick in the darklight and light you up. I killed about a dozen cloakers like that the other night.

I haven't seen this suggested yet, but the best exp for a n00b is AMS (Ground Support). You will get support xp every time someone who spawn at your AMS gets a kill. Look for heavy fighting. Put your AMS under some kind of cover if possible. If there is a courtyard battle, put your AMS near the backdoor. It is possible to get 4-6k of SEP in a few hours (but maybe you don't care as a Reserve.) You can also get your Bronze AMS merit quickly, if that matters to you.

I always keep AMS certed. Certs that complement AMS: CE, sniping. Don't surround your AMS with spits/mines as it will become obvious there is an AMS in the middle of them. I like to stagger spits in a line from the AMS towards a base or tower. Anyone with CR3 can reveal CE and figure out your AMS location.

If you stay in your AMS, it cannot be hacked.

f13bhodi is a Rexo Grunt/engineer/AV. The pulsar is my new favorite weapon. I like it better than the lasher, since indoors I'll use the sweeper shotgun anyway.

I have two main loadouts, Rexo Indoor and Rexo Outdoor; Indoor is sweeper+decimator (pulsar in inv), outdoor is pulsar+lancer (sweeper in inv). Frankly, the decimator is almost always better than the lancer, I may just switch out and use decimators exclusively.
I've got two Rexo AV-buster loadouts, one filled with decimators and one filled with lancer and ammo.
Rexo Full ACE loadout (nothin' but ACEs), Rexo engineer loadout (Has medkits, ammo, etc.)

My goal is to always be in rexo armor; I have ATV cert so I can buggy around, but I don't intend on taking any pilot certs with him. When I hit BR10, I'll probably drop adv engineering for sniper so I can be a rexo sniper+lancer. I had fun with that a few days ago.

bhodisupport (only 2 p's) Is a pilot/support. If he's not in a vehicle, he's useless. Still within 7 days, so I'm having fun trying stuff out. I tried it last night and found I'm a pretty good reaver/mosquito pilot. He's got engineering so he can repair vehicles, and ground support and currently the pts to fly a reaver. I'll probably add air transport to the list as he goes up in levels.

I load my reaver with nothing but rockets; I don't generally use the chaingun unless it's versus another air target, and the weapon itself holds something like 200 rounds which is plenty. I don't use 3rd person unless I'm doing a landing. I also found I suck at tanks, I think I'll stick to the air.

I also completely suck at stealth work, but my third character will be a stealth hacker+engineer... when i get bored of what I'm doing now.


I'm really loving this game.

I love the liberator. Nothing like bombing the vehicle terminal and getting 4 kills.

Also - is anyone subscribed that wants CR?

There was another guy who rolled up on a tower I was CEing, all Clint Eastwood on his ATV. While he kept busy with my CE, I crept out and hacked his ATV, then ran into him with it, planted a boomer while he was confused, and blew him to bits.

What are the CR benefits, Furious? I've got a sliver into CR0 ;)

Two words. Orbital. Strike.

Nothing racks up kills like a well-placed, "smite the fuckers down" blast from god.

Can't you still draw on the map and scan for badguys?

At the lower CRs, yeah.

CR1: Set waypoints, draw on the map

CR2: Scan for friendlies, use of command chat.

CR3: Scan for enemies

CR4: Small OS. The ability to spam planetwide broadcasts to rally troops on whatever godforsaken piece of land you happen to be fighting on.

CR5: Large OS. Global command chat, The ability to spam all the planets and a lobotomy to the point where most tactical thinking seems to dissapear. (At least for NC CR5s)

I just wanted to comment on one thing here:

Know thine enemy, and know thy self.

While the sweeper has it's uses (it is a nice close contact weapon for those that have really good knowledge of the weapon), at the  best you'll be going against another sweeper (it's common pool, meaning all have), and at the worst you're going against a jackhanner or mini-chain gun...both of which dominate the sweeper in all but surprise flank attacks.

If you're playing the Vanu, I highly suggest you adapt your tactics to use our strengths, which are spam weapons with a medium to long (indoor) range. At medium range you will dominate, at short range you will get owned while playing Vanua, statistically.

Or, in the immortal words of Connery: "Just like a vanu to bring a sweeper to a Heavy Infantry fight".

Whoever mentioned setting up a bomber group, I'm interested. It would be A LOT of fun to find a TS/NC fight and hit that....

I suppose I should rephrase that -- I don't think it's worth, nor could I afford the 4 extra cert points just for the lasher. Since I get dominated indoors anyway, since the jackhammer or mini-chain gun beat the lasher (in a 1v1 or 2v2 context in a 'turn the corner and oh-shit!' way), the best I can do is abuse 3rd person: pop out and try and drop them fast. That, or boomers. The sweeper is "Good enough", especially since in heavy indoor fights I generally prefer the decimator, especially in a defend-the-room situation. I have the sweeper out when I'm moving around corridors. It doesn't seem like a lot of people wield AV indoors, so I try and fill that role.

For outdoors, lasher is simply too short a range to be useful for me with my style of play. Again, 4 pts would be wasted. It's not a 'sweeper is better' it's a 'is the lasher 4 spec points better'. For me, I think the answer is pretty emphatically no. When I get a few more levels and have some pts to spare, I may revisit it.

Bomber groups are fun, we tend to do *something* when there is more than 4 or 5 of us on at any given time.

The only thing I hate more than a volume of space filled with TR MCG rounds is lasher spam.

Fixed CR1.

Can random noobs not draw on the map anymore?

I'm sure I could draw on the map when I played PS?


Maybe I'm thinking of GW.

I walked in to a command room in the caverns that had four TR infantry in it.  For some reason, I was completely on the ball and opened fire right on target.  All of them were in lasher radius. In the split second it took them to turn to kill me, I did enough damage to kill 2 of them between all 4.  But I died getting no kills/BEP and they do.  If I had a chaingun, I'd have gotten a kill before I died.  For me I am putting Lasher away unless I have other people with Lashers to assist.

Thumper! Seriously the thumper is the funnest weapon ever. You don't even have to be THAT accurate. Just don't fire into large groups of your own side.

Thumper for around-the-corner or down-the-stairs plasma grenades are the most annoying thing ever.

Second most. First being a spawn room full of Vanu with lasher certs.

Watch that video that Slayerik referred us to earlier in the thread. PHEAR the Lasher spam. It's ungodly.


Unfortunately, the MCG and Jackhammer still own the living fuck out of us in small, close-quarters combat. Anyway, on to more important matters.



Currently, my main is Strazos, BR9. His main cert is 6 points into Uni-MAX, which I love. I can pull anti-infantry for base/tower assaults, or AA for when they're trying to rape us with air power. I think I am getting pretty good with scaring off casual pilots, especially newb reaver pilots trying to farm kills. I mean, FFS don't fly straight at me. I can pull the AV MAX when needed, but I believe I am least effective with this MAX; the AV blobs don't do a monstrous amount of damage to armor (though pretty good vs enemy MAXs), and they're a bit on the slow side. They're not terribly accurate either. I also have Air Support, coupled with Engineering. I mainly use this for the Liberator. I love me some Liberator bombing runs. My goal is to eventually be able to fly a Vulture, but that's going to take awhile. I also just got Armored Assault 1. I will eventually get AA2 in order to drive a Magrider. I saw a small squad of these in action yesterday, and was later able to hop into the gunner seat of one (courtesy of Vinn). I found them to be very useful, versatile, and a lot of fun. The Lightning is Ok I guess, but the armor is paper-thin.

I will probably make an alt who is going to be a sniper/stealther/support toon. But, just like every other MMO I have ever been in (save CoX), I am loathe to play alts when I could be progressing even further on my main.


As an aside, I'm still sorry that I popped Lantyssa in the head with my AA MAX. I was aiming for the enemy pilot, I swear, and didn't even see you that close to me until I smacked you in the head with a shot (I did a lot more damage than I would have thought a single shot would do to infantry).  :heart:

Do not discount the Pulsar.  In my opinion it's the best medium assault weapon with good damage, good range, good accuracy, great clip capacity, and the ability to turn into an anti-MAX weapon with a right-click.  [PROTIP: Don't stand in front of the MAX you're shooting.]  Its only downside is the fact that firing it pinpoints your position.  A steady hand and a Pulsar will never let you down.  There are plenty of better weapons in certain situations, but in my experience carrying a specialized weapon is an invitation to find yourself in a situation where it's useless, like a Jackhammer in an outdoor fight.  Keep a Pulsar on your back and you can always be confident that you'll be prepared for killing infantry.

In the stupidly close tower fights, I'm vaguely happy with the shotgun.  Seems to be more successful vs the chaingun circle-strafers than any other weapons I can use.  That and the Thumper at least let me dish out a little damage before I collapse in the bullet storm.  Of course, if I actually make it to the door, then I may as well just go back downstairs and change weapons, because I'm not doing much out there.

Which do you people hate more: MCG or Jackhammer? Phoenix camara missiles, or the lock-on TR version?

MCG and JH never bothered me, because they were inside weapons, my contribution to 'inside' was usually limited to providing radar, or going and getting the ANT or Galaxy we'd be needing shortly.

Lock-on TR missles were always more irritating than camera missles.

If you see camera missles, you know there is an operator somewhere nearby who isn't looking out for the Mosquito that is about to kill him.

tbh, it always seemed the decimator was the rocket launcher giving the most joy.

In outdoor infantry fights the Suppressor was the surpise package, fantastic CoF and range, and people always seemed to get so annoyed when they got tagged by a mere suppressor.

I've always loathed the jackhammer.

I had a guy assaulting a tower I was CEing last week, using camera-guided missiles to take out my CE stuff. I kept creeping out and boomerizing him, because they pinpointed his location.

You will learn to phear me and my phoenix skills. I spent the better part of a month learning how to whip those bitches around multiple corners. If I'm in a tower and you're assaulting it, (Especially in a MAX) that's your ass.  :-D

MCG is #1 for me, because if you are within 20 feet of the guy, it's an auto-win for him. MCG is the chaingun right? That thing.

Thumper works if you are part of the zerg, but makes for an easy kill if you are alone. Come up on a guy with a thumper, switch to a pistol and win!

It's got a relatively slow RoF and it's not real damaging, 'tis true.  :cry:

I was laughing at it.  I was running across the bridge, thinking it's finally safe to cross, when *wham*.  I had no clue where it came from, and when I figured it out, it turns out to be one of us.

I dropped Advanced Hacker for Advanced Engineering.  I'll pick it up again with my next cert point, but it is far less useful in the short-term.

The funny part is that we were right next to each other.