Some of you may remember the guide I put out in the beta talking about explosives. Here's a revised version, which is a work in progress as I work to include every single explosive in the game. Infantry explosives: C4, or how to blow up sunderers in quick order C4 is very powerful, but requires a huge cert cost to unlock in the first place. They also are only available on everyone except the infiltrator. They are best used by LA, though if you are good at sneaking around a battlefield, anyone can use them. To use c4, you first need to place one. Placing one is as simple as a right-click. To detonate, left click. Running away is optional. The damage done by C4 is immense, it will almost instantly kill a lightning from behind and will damage a sunderer massively, from a single C4. If you have enough certs to place two of them, you can almost instantly kill a sunderer, at the very least setting it on fire. Any infantry unlucky enough to be caught in the blast will die, and if you somehow manage to place some c4 on an enemy galaxy, fun times are to be had. The problem is that you need to get close to your target to place C4, otherwise you will seriously damage the ground, not your intended target. This is why LA is decent for this, as you can create avenues of attack not previously thought of, sneaking around with the third dimension. Heavy assault also works and gives you the ability to cut through swaths of enemies while doing it. When you deploy C4, it is a short toss, but it sticks to any surface you place it on. You can stick it above doorways, you can stick it on forcefields, you can stick it to your buddy's tank, you can even do the patented battlefield suicide buggy! However, C4 can be shot at and destroyed, nullifying it. They will explode when destroyed, either through bullets or explosives. Do note that the damage is according to who detonates the C4, not who placed it. So if I place a C4 next to an enemy squad, and that squad shot the C4, killing themselves, they get penalized for it Additionally, C4 persists through death and can be triggered at any time. This means that a single soldier can have a bunch of C4 placed on a target through resupplying or dying. It doesn't matter if you die before you press the detonate button, as long as you have placed the C4 prior. Each C4 must be purchased, like grenades. You can store a maximum of 20 Grenades or how to weaponlock you very, very quickly Grenades in PS2 are a little bit wonky, but they are very deadly and very effective. What is a grenade, you ask? Press 'g'. Now respawn. The default grenade you are given has the ability to wipe out whole squads. WHOLE SQUADS -- FRIEND OR FOE. Each resupply you are only given one, and have to find a terminal or sundy to get another one, provided you haven't gotten the grenade armour upgrade. Many of my kills have been done by grenades, and since they bounce, they allow you to kill opponents you know are around the corner. However, I also have had a lot of deaths from people on VS throwing grenades randomly. Some rules of thumb: 1. Never throw a grenade when your squad is rushing a room, unless you are absolutely certain that grenade is going straight through the room itself. 2. Do not attempt to bounce grenades off of walls/corners when your squad is nearby unless you are confident about the bounce. Bounce physics are odd. 3. Do not attempt to throw grenades into windows if your squad is nearby and you are not confident about landing the grenade in the window. 4. Never, ever, throw a grenade into a forcefield. It bounces. Also, when rushing a spawnpoint, don't throw a grenade into the room. (See #1) A lot about grenades is simply about awareness. Throwing grenades randomly will occasionally net you a kill, but more often than not, it will kill either you or your squad. Dying to enemy grenades is annoying. Dying to friendly grenades is infuriating. There are also different types of grenades, each with different effects. Flashbangs Makes a lot of noise, blinds troops temporarily. It's useful for storming a room, toss one of them in prior to rushing a chokepoint you know the enemy is waiting in. Anti-Armour This is an interesting grenade as it isn't a traditional frag. It actually applies a DOT to vehicles, while doing virtually nothing to infantry. This can nullify repairs from an engineer, but the downside is that you have to be close enough to toss the grenade in the first place. EMP This is an amazing tool, as it can shut down weapons, vehicles, basically anything hit by this grenade. Make sure you don't hit anyone on your side, however. Healing Limited use for this grenade, does exactly what you think it does. Potentially can be used to lob health across a firezone. Revival grenade This is more or less a counter to regular frag grenades. Someone wiped out your squad with a frag? Toss a revival, and your whole squad gets up! Decoy Infiltrators can use this to have a fake radar dot appear for the enemy. Mimics the sound of gunfire, adding to the confusion. Limited use in large fights. Smoke Limited use, since smoke does not obscure everyone's vision. A better deterrent would be flashbangs, stun, or emp Each standard grenade costs 45 infantry resources. You can store a maximum of 40. Grenade launchers, or how to ruin a HA's day. For a few weapons, you can cert into a underbarrel grenade launcher, taking up the rail slot. It has two contact grenades that are unlimited as long as you have an ammo kit, and these grenades do serious damage. If you hit infantry with it directly, it will generally instantly kill them. Additionally, you can headshot with this. Even HAs with their shield active. There is very little an enemy can do about this weapon, as long as you can aim correctly, it will kill an opponent. Mines, drop and forget. Someone blows up Mines are a weapon which often are forgotten about. You drop them, forget about them, and then realize you killed a few people across the map. They come in two major flavours, and they perform oh so maliciously well. Proximity mines Blows up infantry real good, generally instantly kills a bunch in range. Can also blow yourself up. Tank mines Blows up tanks, but requires two to take down a MBT. Can be combined with c4 for additional amusement's sake. The pew pew laser, or an introductory course to projectile ballistics The S1, a lovely, lovely weapon. Accessible to the HA, it is your go-to anti-armour weapon. It will oneshot aircraft, kill any tank with two shots to the rear and it makes an awesome sound. It also tends to kill infantry who run into it. As a heavy assault, you will learn the curve of the S1. You will love it, you will worship it, and you will rain death and destruction upon your enemies. The lock-on counterparts both do less damage, but make up for it with a lock-on system. Do note that you do not need a lock-on to fire these weapons, and they do not have an appreciable curve to them. You can more or less fire them directly straight. Two shots will take out an aircraft. Do note that you more or less have to get a direct hit with the launchers to deal damage to tanks (Ie: hit the model, not the ground next to the tank). Back armour is preferred. Air Power Rocket pods/Photon torpedoes These are mounted on an ESF and are your usual unguided dumbfire rockets. They have splash, they run out of ammunition quickly and they can seriously ruin someone's day. An ESF against one Phalanx turret with rocket pods wins. It takes less than a clip to take it out. It can take as few six rockets to destroy a turret, as many as eight otherwise. ESF take out turrets faster than a Dalton liberator does, but they require to have a bit of a run to do so. Infantry are especially vulnerable to this, and if you manage to hit the weakpoint of a tank, it will make short work of it as well. Rockets are also very well used against liberators and Galaxies. They can't dodge these rockets as easily as another ESF would, allowing you to do extreme damage against these large targets. Unfortunately, they suck against other ESF unless they are landed or flying straight. Air-To-Air Missiles These put the superiority into Air Superiority. You should not consider these as anti-liberator or galaxy weapons, but more of anti-ESF. Two will set an ESF on fire, but generally all you'll need is one plus some gunfire. This weapon, unlike the lock-on launchers, REQUIRES a lock to fire. The downside of this weapon is the low clip, and are easily defeated by flares. Special note: ESF weapons still reload even when not selected, so you can fire all your rockets, switch to your gun, empty it and switch back to rockets which will have reloaded in the interim. Dalton. MR. Dalton. The weapon that can be considered to project a "no-walk-zone", this weapon will instantly kill infantry, seriously damage armour, can take out other liberators and galaxies, oneshots fighters, and generally has a mean attitude. Don't be fooled by the explosive radius, this is a precision weapon. You must land each hit directly to guarantee a kill. It is highly suggested to get the nightvision attachment for this weapon as it highlights troops and armour, making it stupidly easy to pick out and destroy enemy units. Jr. Zepher, son of Mr. Dalton The Zepher can be just as devastating towards ground units as the Dalton, but again requires some precision. It is more lax comparatively as the blast radius now does some damage and the fact that you have a larger clip. It will absolutely wreck infantry, but fairs much worse against armour. This weapon must directly impact armour to do significant damage. They will take damage from the blast, but not a lot. I like big guns; Vehicle size Work in progress M60-bulldog This can also be used for some aircraft tertiary and secondary turrets. It literally is a grenade launcher, and works to damage armour. Better used to seriously hurt or kill infantry, or to win a fight against another sunderer. Magrider default Large ball of plasma death. Kills infantry fairly decently if a direct hit, also deals splash damage. It's a good overall weapon, but there's a bit of a catch to this. The weapon is located at the base of the magrider, not at the top. Therefore cover or a small hill in front of your mag will block your shot. To damage armour, on the other hand, you are going to have to land a direct hit. Magrider VPC This is the anti-vehicle weapon of DOOM against enemy tanks. It has virtually no splash, but you will be able to take out an enemy in short order from the front, and they cannot do anything about it.It has the same weaknesses as the default, in addition to not being able to kill infantry unless you directly hit them with the shell. There appears to be slightly less drop with this weapon, compared to the default Magrider FPC This has far more splash than the default, but deals less damage in exchange. Therefore it isn't as good against enemy armour, but it is a wonderful thing to shell bases with, or kill enemy troops with wild abandon. Saron HRB The badass turret of the Mag, this is a no-bullet drop anti-vehicle weapon. What is not said about this weapon is that it also slaughters infantry on a direct hit. A magrider using a VPC and a Saron will wreck enemy tanks in fairly short order. A crash course in projectile ballistics Every single explosive, barring the Hades and Nemesis, have a curve. For those of you who took physics, you'll understand this as projectile ballistics. For those who haven't, all of these things have what you like to call 'bullet-drop'. Learning to account for this means that you more or less will have to aim above and lead your target. I will edit this section later and add some footage for educational purposes. Go blow some poor smucker up.
Easy to explain: certs. Grenades all take certs. Tank mines, c4, lots of certs. It takes some work to get that all done, and the grenade section needs a lot of work, since I'm working off of descriptions and what I remember/what others have said.
Good news is the setup for the weapon lock system is now MANAGABLE and you don't have to worry about being weapon locked almost ever. Not sure if you're about to be locked or not? Just go sit in a corner for 15 seconds and your panic is gone. I had SO MUCH FUUUUUN..... when I was weapon locked 3 times in a row during Beta when I was testing NC out, because the "grief points" you accumulate took FOREVER to go down.. So after you were unlocked you still have almost enough points to be locked again. And yeah. That shit stacks. Have fun waiting 60 minutes cause you were weapon locked 3 times in a row. Fun.
