Ok thanks for the cap tips.
You know one thing I really like about this game is friendly fire is on. I think it keeps people behaving a bit better.
Time will tell if certain veteran outfits that understand the game inside and out will just completely dominate the game, I can sort of see that happening. Hopefully there will still be a chance for us casual players to have fun.
You can’t begin a cap at all with no adjacency. The control points won’t flip, not even minor points like outposts. If you’ve already flipped the points before the last adjacent hex is lost, you get to continue the cap, but progress is made at an excruciating pace.
Huh, didn’t know that - guess the points were flipped before the last adjacent hex was lost then. I just remember looking at a map and seeing the place we just finished capturing all alone in a sea of red.
Also, depending on the map filters you select in the lower right corner, you may not see the red, blue and purple at all. You can switch it to a mode that shows red, orange, or green depending on level of activity. That confused me.
Handy tip mostly for aircraft. Above the map slider bar on the left side of the map srceen, between directional arrows, is the icon of a little person. Click that and your map stays centered on you. Useful for pilots when it’s hard to figure out where you are on the map quickly.
After having tested the various liberator packages, the zepher is by far the best turret gun available. In absolute terms, the quad shredder does more damage to vehicles, but it’s not by that huge a margin, and near misses do no damage. On the other hand, the zephr is fairly capable against armor. We had a run tonight where we killed 3 sunderers, 2 magriders, and 2 lightnings with it. With good aim it takes less than 2 full bursts which can be done in like 15 seconds.
And not only that - while you’re killing the sunderers and tanks, you’re also killing their nearby infantry support - often people doing repairs in the case of the sunderer.
The quad is pathetically weak against infantry. I understand that it requires a direct hit to do damage - but even if you land direct hits they’re no more powerful than small arms rounds. You need 10-12 hits to kill someone. Not terribly easy.
So you have the zepher which is great at killing infantry and okay at killing tanks, and the quad that’s good at killing tanks but horrible at killing infantry. The Dalton is somewhere in between but to be honest seems underwhelming to me. If it was a huge bomb with a slow rate of fire, it might be an interesting tradeoff, but it doesn’t seem to have much more impact than the zepher.
So if you’re going to get a liberator ball turret, definitely the zepher. In fact the zepher is one of the single most fun upgrades you can get in the game. We’ve been having a lot of fun with it, and we’re getting better at using liberators properly.
I wish the videos has sound so you all could hear Beef shouting, “Drop pod! Drop pod!” as he tries to correct the liberator after it gets smashed from above.
Inspired by your posts, I went and got the anti-aircraft turret for the Lightning. It is tons of fun! Most pilots are not prepared for taking serious damage from the ground. I took out several aircraft before they wised up and sent a couple tanks to get me. Fortunately, they were not excellent shots. I managed to escape to another valley with about 10% health, but being an engineer I patched it right up. And then shot down several more planes. I finally ditched the thing because I ran out of ammo and haven’t figured out how to reload. 
I also got a ton of xp from deploying a Sunderer with respawn capability between two buildings. Every respawning character gives a little xp, but it adds up fast in a pitched battle.
Yeah, that’s one of the downsides to using the in-game recorder. The positives are that the frame rate impact is much lower (and in huge fights that can be important for me) and it uses a lot less disk space than fraps so I can record a lot more often hoping something cool happens. But we lose the mumble chatter, since it only records stuff that happens in the game client itself.
I’ve been trying to figure out what sort of AA I should get. There’s the heavy assault AA Missile which I’m told also functions as a dumbfire antitank missile with 80% of the damage but higher speed - which actually sounds to me more like an upgrade than a tradeoff, a skyguard, or a second burster arm for the max.
The max seems most effective in raw damage - those things are pretty potent - and there’s a decent chance the aircraft you’re shooting at won’t even see you. But they’re sort of slow and boring otherwise - you can’t really engage any other targets and you don’t move fast. With the skyguard you can chase down aircraft and with the heavy assault you can still fill your normal roles.
Any advice?
I haven’t actually tried it, but apparently the big towers with bullet icon on them reload vehicles.
Well, I’ve only tried the AA gun on the Lightning. It is very effective once you learn to lead the target well. I position the tank one valley over from where the battle is and wait for targets to fly overhead. The tank is pretty much immune to small arms fire, so I ignore infantry, except for spotting them. (Presumably, someone will pop me with an anti-tank round eventually, but it didn’t happen last night. Or, wait until I jump out to do repairs.) If I see enemy armor, I flee.
The fast-moving aircraft seemed to have trouble actually engaging me. If they fly by fast and near, I can’t get too many hits on them because of limited turret speed (insert appropriate Star Wars quote), but neither can they shoot at me much. If they fly straight at me to do an attack run, they’re toast because my gun is bigger than theirs and my armor is stronger. And I can self-repair.
The big slow aircraft (that’s your Liberator, right?) are a better match. It’s more of “who’s a better shot” competition. I should probably improve my tactics and move around some while shooting, so I’m not a sitting target. But I managed to shoot a couple down, without getting killed myself. Again, being able to self-repair is a real advantage.
I haven’t played much vehicle. I should give that as shot.
I agree with Beef about the Zephyr. The Dalton, while powerful, is just way too slow. They did give me a refund, so I can delete the Dalton and buy the Zephyr. I also have the anti-air tail gun equipped.
It’s only about 4 hits to kill typical infantry with the Shredder. If you’re on target, it happens in under a second, but you basically have to hover (and have them stationary) to get that. The big thing in favor of the Shredder is that it’s not limited to just ground targets. If you roll the Lib around to suit, you can get both the tail and belly guns pointed at attacking fighters, and the Shredder lives up to its name against fighters. With one of the cannons equipped you’re stuck with just tailgun, which isn’t a serious threat against a decent pilot (to be fair, there aren’t many of of those out there yet)
The Dalton’s fairly low damage for something that only gets a single shot, but it does have two things going for it: it deals damage to vehicles even with its splash damage (one of the very few weapons in the game with that trait), and it has a fairly high projectile speed. That makes it potentially more effective than the other two on moving targets or from high altitude, and once flak has a presence back in the game again, high altitude will be a lot more attractive than it is now. Not thrilling, but not totally useless either.
Once they’ve got the in-game VOIP working again, it’ll solve all that.
The MAX is the winner in raw damage output, and being infantry, they’re pretty hard to target from the air. You also have the potential advantage (much farther down the road) that the MAX can swap roles easily. Just hit an AMS/terminal and you can go to AT or infantry murdering in a blink. The downside is that you really need friendly troop support.
The Skyguard has more reach. Their projectiles are faster and at a much higher ROF, so they can be effective zone defense. You won’t really be chasing any aircraft, since, you know, they fly, but you can definitely place yourself in areas they won’t expect, and move around to avoid return fire or just reposition so they can’t line up on you from out of sight. They’re more self-sufficient than the MAX. They’re fairly bad against ground targets, dealing only about as much damage as a Basilisk, but not completely helpless.
HA SAM is the least effective of the three at actually killing aircraft. While they’re fairly rare now, eventually you can expect every aircraft to have flares. Since pilots can’t tell the difference between locked-on and missile-launched, all the flares really do is make you delay when you can actually fire at them, but by that point, a decent pilot will have gotten out of the area…which still counts as successful air defense. On the flip side, it’s still a fairly effective anti-tank weapon. You need 3 shots to the rear of a tank to kill it instead of 2, which is a big deal, but the MUCH faster projectile speed makes it a lot easier to land those hits in the first place. You lose all the splash damage for infantry, but a lot of people in Beta used the SAM launcher for everything just because of how multipurpose it is.
All of them are way more effective with multiples, the current AA design is very much based around how well they scale up. A single Skyguard is an annoyance, only limiting what aircraft can do. Three Skyguards, however, is approaching total lockdown of the sky - any fighters that fly into range just vaporize, and even Liberators won’t get many shots off before having to turn back.
True of a lot of stuff in the game, really. The S1, the Heavy Assault’s basic anti-vehicle cannon, has a super-long reload and only carries 5 shots (and I don’t think it can be upgraded). It’s powerful enough that you can solo-kill an MBT, but the reload is so long that unless you’re very skilled or lucky, you’ll either be dead or the tank will be gone before you can land enough hits. But if you have two or three HA on the scene, that tank is toast, and so are the next two.
The Skyguard is definitely a lot of fun; it’s the first weapon I get for the Lightning. It does scream easy target to any ground armor, though.
Doubt we’re going to stop using mumble. In game has a worse codec, higher latency, no audio normalization, no ability to talk to someone not yet in game or in your channel, etc.
So a rather annoying as fuck mechanic is that if a plane crashes, it’s always a suicide for the pilot, no matter what lead up to it. I’ve been flying mosquitos all night, and I’ve shot down about 25 planes - only about 8 of those were actually scored as kills. The other 17 were planes that I’d damaged heavily who either panicked and crashed into something while evading, or lost engine power when flying low to escape and cratered. In each of their cases, rather than earning the substantial kill scores (especially for loaded liberators), I’d just rack up a modest assist score. Very annoying.
I have the same gripe. Hopefully it’ll be fixed.
Speaking as an Engineer, can I say I love squadding up with 2 and 3 man HA teams. We find a nice vantage point and I deploy my turret as a 4 minute ammo pack. Then I’m free to do what I like. If they need to reposition , they’ll just send me a quick message so I can re-resuply them. Meanwhile every time they reload I’m getting 20+exp.
So let’s talk certs. I’m interested in the best bang for the buck certs - stuff to unlock first.
Here’s what I’ve found so far.
First thing you want is to unlock some sort of sight for any class you’re going to play with the stock weapon. The stock weapons are pretty good - not that I’ve tried others - and for only 30 certs you can make it much more useful. I like the 2x reflex site on the shorter ranged weapons and I use the 3.4x HDS on the LMG which is good.
The light and engineer, at least on TR (don’t know about others) share the same starting gun, which makes any gun upgrades you make here more useful. I got a sight and laser rail attachment before others here.
Of course focus on your favorite classes, but get some basic functions for all classes.
Ugh - now that I’m looking through my cert list, I had 3 tiers of jump jets unlocked and now only 2. WTF? Anyway…
The restoration kit is useful, at least at first, as a 30 point unlock. It gives you health packs that you can give to yourself, and one unlock covers all classes. Problem is - it’s shared with other utility slots, so it’s not useful for every class or once you unlock more stuff. It replaces the medic health gun and the engineering repair gun, so you can’t really use it on those classes. But it’s good for light, heavy, infiltrator because you won’t be using those slots until you unlock C4 down the road. Worth an early unlock I think.
Every infanty class has a tier 1 unlock for suit slot that costs 1 cert, either nano armor (more health) flak armor (less explosives damage received) or shield capacitor (shield starts recharging sooner) - I’m leaning towards the shield generator being the most useful, but since it’s just 1 cert you should immediately get one on all classes.
Speaking of 1 point certs, immediately get the first acquisition timer for all vehicles - takes 60-90 seconds off the respawn time of all vehicles for just one cert. The second rank for 10 certs is probably worth it for most vehicles, and the third rank for 30 is worth it for stuff you play a lot. Depending on how fast you die anyway. On vehicles, the first tier of ammo capacity and 1.25x zoom siting is also 1 cert. Don’t forget to actually equip this stuff in the loadout, you have to put almost every little thing into the loadouts including extra ammo.
Infiltrator has a hacking 1 point cert, medic has an special ability upgrade 1 point cert, heavy has the special ability shield boost cert - just go through the list and grab all 1 cert upgrades.
The medic heal tool and the engie repair tool are pretty cheap upgrades. You can get 2 ranks of them, which make them more efficient, for 10 and 30 certs. Those are both worth it even if you play those classes infrequently. Or at least definitely the engineer one, since you’ll be fixing your own vehicles a lot.
Medic can also upgrade his ability (heal himself and others nearby) for 1 and 10 for the first 2 ranks.
I don’t play infiltrator so far, so need advice there.
For light, I think unlocking 2 tiers (therefore 3 total when you start with 1) of jump jets is worth it. Upgrades fuel 16% and regen 24% for 10+50. If you don’t play light that much skip the 50 one until later.
For engineer, definitely a tier or two of the tool slot.
For medic, 1 tier applicator - 2nd tier easy if you play medic a decent bit. 2 tiers ability slot.
Heavy - ability slot 1 tier.
MAX - everything for the max is inexplicably expensive - none of the upgrades are super cost effective, at least no in the way that the aforementioned stuff is.
Flash - no upgrades are super cost effective and you won’t be using it that much, but adding a weapon down the road does make the flash more fun. It won’t be too effective, you’ll still be super vulnerable, but flying up and down the hills, trying to run people over, and gunning them down is just great. I got a basilisk as part of the vehicle starter pack and it’s actually reasonably useful… I’ve killed sunderers with it.
Lightning - nothing super cost effective here except the tier 1 acquisition timer, main gun 1.25x site and tier 1 ammo which you should unlcok for every single vehicle for 3 certs.
Same for the prowler.
Sunderer - you should get the AMS utility slot for 50 points. That’s what allows it to serve as a mobiel spawn point and is basically the most essential function of the vehicle. Comes in handy a whole lot.
Mosquito and liberator - I find the first nano self repair unlock for 50 to be well worth it. There are a lot of times you’re somewhat damaged in the air but not worth landing for, and that’ll heal you right up. Or if your engine is on fire but you’re not right at a suitable landing site, it may kick in and save you.
That covers the basic super cost effective everoyne should have type upgrades. I’ll talk about the more costly stuff worth getting in a bit.
I’m not sure if was an organized outfit or not, but I was charging with a group two nights ago that completely dominated the entire continent up to the enemies warpgates. There wasn’t any real communication, just them posting the next waypoint after we cleared a cap point. It took about 1.5 hours to clear the ~40% of the map we didn’t own. This was very early morning e.s.t., so that might have been a factor as well.
Some of your bases/cap points have vehicle reload stations (big towers with a white image of a tank and ammo), drive up and it’ll replenish. I usually try to find the nearest one before heading out to blow stuff up.
I’ve heard that Max w/2x AA guns is a terrible pain for aircraft. Get an engineer to heal/resupply and you’re golden. I haven’t tried the AA or AG rocket launchers yet, though I haven’t really focused on aircraft (though I did get a satisfying kill on a slow-moving Reaver this morning with the default launcher).
Please be sure to EQUIP these upgrades if you’re new to playing! I don’t know if they ever plan to make you auto-equip them, but I spent two days thinking I had armor upgrades that I forgot to equip to my loadouts. :smack:
Generally, go through all your vehicle certs and upgrade to the 1.25x optics, spawn timer, and ammo (if you want). Basically everything that’s 1 cert, I upgraded and equiped to all infantry/vehicles after I found my initial mistake. In fact, I still make that mistake when buying new upgrades - I get so excited that I forget to equip it!
As far as upgrades, I did purchase the HE turret for the lightning and absolutely love it. It can still do decent damage to other tanks, but those damn HA with their rocket launchers go down without much fight now.
I also upgraded my Engineer’s rifle to the Pulsar C (Vanu) and gave it a 2x open optics. I think the optics helped a bit instead of looking down those iron sights. Similarly, my HA now has a 4x scope which is awesome for medium/long distances.
I threw in $10 on Black Friday and got $20 worth of station points. I’m hoping they’ll make our unlocks become available to all classes (Similarly when Tribes:Ascend launched, a lot of upgrades were per class, they removed that later on). If they do, I intend to purchase more. I mean, $10 for hours and hours of awesomeness so far is well worth it for me.
Ah I thought you drove your vehicle back onto the vehicle spawn pad to get more ammo. Needless to say I hadn’t got that to work. Now that you describe them, the ammo stations are very obviously marked.
And yes the equipping thing is tricky. Usually when I buy something I want to use it right away. There should be a check box “Add this item to Loadout 1” or something like that.
I am so thoroughly in love with this game that I’m going to be one of those suckers who pays out the ass for it.
Then again, if it were a regular MMO, you’d be looking at $60 up front and $180 per year at $15/mo, so would spending $100 on it realy be out of line? It’s more like an MMO in the sense that you have huge game worlds, always churning out new content, etc. I’ll probably wait until the next double points day - the Walmart $15 cards on 2x points day makes $15 for 4000 point pretty reasonable.
Anyway, there’s no reason not to try this if you have a good computer. And if you are playing, come play with us on the SDMB. We’ve been filling out 10-12 man squads every night and doing awesome stuff together. Probably the best is when we get cut off in a hopeless alamo situation in some outpost somewhere and we hold off 2-3 times our number for an hour. Sometimes it even buys the time for the rest of our side to break through to us and secure the outpost. Genudine, Terran Republic, add SenorBeef to friends list.