jepzilla

Infantry

I'm sure you can all figure out the basics of infantry combat. But remember that this is a game that rewards smart movement rather than twitch. Your best chance is to get the drop on your opponent because the weapons are effective and can kill quickly. You can be popping heads with a sniper rifle, but a guy with an assault rifle is going to kill you first 90% of the time if he sees you first. Weapon selection and twitch are advantages, but stealth and observation are more important.

Essentially you have two choices to make about your equipment: your kit and your role.

Kit is effectively just what gun you'll be carrying. Your choices are shotgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher. The primary purpose of each of these weapons should be obvious and their range is in the obvious ascending order, shotgun, SMG, assault rifle, sniper rifle. Ultimately, unless you're have a weapon vastly unsuitable for the kinds of range that you're fighting in, skill and stealth is more important to victory than the weapon choice itself. If you spot someone else first, you're probably going to kill him before he kills you, unless he's a mile away with a sniper rifle and you're sitting around with a shotgun and your finger up your ass. So you don't need to pick weapons based on what threat you're worried about encountering - i.e., don't take a sniper rifle for counter-sniping - but pick based on the kinds of ranges that you expect to be engaging at. Largely this means concentrate on assault rifles on big maps, and SMGs on small maps. I personally never take a shotgun because it just isn't flexible enough.

These aren't vanilla BF2 guns, they do have some accuracy. Although since the lag compensation is weird you might have to lead your target unusually; this isn't hard to adjust to though and the random deviation of weapon fire is quite small.

For roles I wouldn't bother with ground support for an infantry role. Its rank 1 tool is a repair device, and the static emplacements aren't particularly useful since they leave you too exposed- you'll be dead before you have a chance to accomplish anything. The one item that is useful for infantry is the rank 3 RS gear- the sentry gun. But a sentry gun is fairly easy for an experience player to disable/destroy and you're giving up a lot to get it, so don't bother.

Air support is definitely nice at times. Precision strikes recharge in about a minute so you can use them on basically any piece of armor you encounter. However since there is about a 10 second delay between calling in the strike and the actual bomb detonating, it's not very useful against moving targets (although vehicles travelling on predictable paths along roads from back flags can usually be hit with some reliability, after some practice). Cluster/carpet bombs are quite devastating but you'll only get 2 or 3 per round. The ZMBI FAB is very devastating but you'll only get one a round, because it takes so long to recharge. The rank 3 W.S. weapon is pretty sweet, it's like having a smite button... you point at something, anything and you go 'smite' and it dies. yar. But you need LOS to aim at anything so you stand a good chance of being spotted and getting your head blown off very quickly if you try using it against any sort of reinforced position. Worst of all any time you call in air support a aircraft is plainly visible overhead and is clear warning to any observant player that they should expect an incoming airstrike soon... and it's enough warning to get away if you're quick.

Drones are fun, no doubt about it. Your basic recon drone recharges fast enough that you can detonate them for quick infantry kills almost constantly. Usually by the time I've found a target, the drone has already recharged and I'm ready to deploy a new one. The W.S. ground drones are impressive at first although not so much against more experienced opponents. Over open territory you have a definite advantage given that the drones armaments will kill much faster than the drones themselves can be destroyed. However, since they do have a notable lack of manoeverability compared to a normal soldier, in an urban environment they're not going to last very long. And they're vulnerable to EMP in all environments which good players will be using a lot of. The rank 3 R.S. drone just blows; the rockets don't do enough damage and you can't hit the side of a barn with them. On the other hand, the R.S. C4 drone is kinda scary since it's a small target to destroy, it moves fast and it does a lot of damage when it explodes.

Finally there's EMP. EMP has fewer 'toys' than the others, but IMO is the most useful for an average grunt. Most importantly, you're not going to be detected by one of the bazillion drones that will be flying around, and it allows you to have some ability against vehicles while not sacrificing your primary weapon for a rocket launcher. On defense, drop the EMP devices around corners and places they won't be immediately visible. It will save your ass and keep the air above you clear of enemy drones. Conversely, on assault destroy any of these you come across, just run up to it and hit it with your gun to knock it over. EMP isn't fancy but it gets the job done... at the end of the day the most dangerous weapon you have as a soldier in this game is your own gun, and the EMP role helps you at that... basic and effective.

Tanks

First rule: Take ground support. If you have a repair tool your tank will automatically repair itself after about 15 seconds of not taking any damage.

Second rule: Don't stop. Quickest way to get killed is to stop and have someone drop a precision strike on your head. Move at full speed, full turbos the entire time.

Third rule: If you get locked on to, pop your flares immediately and run for cover. Flares don't break locks (although if you have flares in the air a missile will head towards those instead of you), but LoS will. So as soon as the missile locks, pop your flares... and you'll have about 5 seconds of safety before the flares burn out... use that time to break line of sight and the missile lock. If you're following rule 2, this shouldn't be a problem.

Fourth rule: Engage from a distance. If you get close you're going to get your ass kicked by a guy with a rocket launcher. Stay away and your flares will give you enough safety to hide.

Fifth rule: Run if you get hit. As a general rule the tank that gets the first shot will win the fight. An undamaged tank will survive two shots from another tank. If you see a single enemy tank get your shot in first. If he gets his shot in first, run, repair then come back. If you're following the second rule you should be able to get behind some cover before he reloads.

If you're engaging more than one tank, disengage and flank. Destroy one tank at a time and follow rule five.

Sixth rule: Once you get a shot in, close and kill the other tank. Get your shot off as SOON as it is reloaded.

Tank driving is as simple as that.

Helicopters

Combat tactics in the two helos is different.

The W.C. helo is stealthy but not very armored. As the pilot, middle-clicking will retract or deploy your weapon pods. While retracted you can't fire any weapons, but your helo is in stealth mode and cannot be locked onto or tracked by a missile. Fly high when hunting and only go low for the kill... when you get a missile lock, pop your flares and go stealth. It takes a few seconds for your weapons to retract, but the flares will keep you alive in that time. You don't want to fly low since the aircraft is very poorly armored and machine fire will do a lot of damage. Stay high, out of sight and out of the firing arcs of the tanks on the ground.

The R.S. helo is big, and has thick armor. You fly this thing low... very low. You have the armor to survive a lot of machine gun fire, but it only takes two missiles to blow you up. So the name of the game is stay low to keep as much terrain between you and any infantry guy with a rocket launcher. If you fly high like the W.C. helo should... every W.C. rocket guy on the map is going to have you lit up. So yeah, stay low... when someone gets a lock on.. you need to hide... try to figure out where they are and go low and get behind something to break the lock. Remember that unlike a tank you don't have as much obstruction so the person locking onto you is probably further away. This means that it'll take longer before a missile hits you... your best bet is to wait about 4 seconds after getting locked onto (don't panic when you hear the locking tone, you're only interested in actual locks) before you pop your flares. You should have about 10 seconds of safety and this should be enough time to find cover unless you did something dumb. If you do take a missile, which will happen, make like a tank and run away. Stay low, keep out of line of sight and get over some friendly territory. You should be ground support so in about 20 seconds your helo will have repaired and you're ready to go and kill the guy who shot you.

I've not had a chance to fly with a decent gunner in either helo so I have no experience in piloting for a gunner to share.

Concr3te

Very good guide, thanks for writing it. When I played the beta my favourite role was EMP as well. It's really handy to have a EMP Launcher to back you up, when you encounter enemy armor.

Zoopy

I think ground support is a useful role in both vehicle and infantry maps.

For the Red Star Alliance, the minigun is very good anti-infantry. If placed well can make for some devastating CP defense. A good place I've seen is at the Tent CP on Streets between the bus and the building (ie: right on the capture radius). This gives you a view of people coming in from the subway point and some view of the enemies main CP route (although they can get behind you easily, but that is what squad members are for).

The sentry on the Red Star Alliance is also very good at damaging vehicles. Since it is small and not very noticeable, it will always get a couple shots off before the driver knows what is hitting them. This brings it down to about a quarter or half health, which will allow the rest of your squad to easily neutralize the vehicle.

And lastly the torch. Its awesome killing infantry with it, more humiliating than meleeing.

Santa

Also, the ground repair guy can repair drones very quickly. Very effective if you have the assault/mortar drone out. Although the recharge rate for them isnt all that slow, youll want your SL (who probably is the drone guy) far away and having to send the drone out every time it dies can cost the squad quite a bit of firepower. Since the drones have significant amount of armor, a good drone user will be able to back off into cover for repairs and then quickly fight again.

I think it will be pretty rare that youll ever want duplicate roles in a 4 man squad. Its just too useful to have all 4 imo.

Also, i had no idea tanks repaired themselves after 15 seconds if they have the repair role. Is it a quick repair, or very slow? Slow enough to warrant getting out and repairing it yourself?

Zoopy

I believe it is the same rate as repairing it yourself.

jepzilla

I don't agree. The minigun just makes you an easy target.. it leaves too much of you exposed. Weapons are already pretty deadly in FFOW... extra firepower over an assault rifle is into serious diminishing returns territory. You know, I hated EMP when I first started using it since it was so boring in comparison to the other roles... and I tried to like G.S.... but if you're not driving a vehicle, in my experience it's just not worth it.

At the end of the day your personal weapon is sufficiently deadly for almost all purposes, and there's not a lot of room for the toys of G.S. to improve on it. You don't need to make infantry guys more deadly because with the guns in this game, a decent player isn't going to have any trouble killing other players. EMP is unique though, because it gives you toys which make it easier to survive.

It's very fast... works in helos too. I kept a single tank in combat and fighting for almost an entire map once, entirely relying on fast auto-repair (and knowing where all the ammo boxes are). Also there are repair pads that'll do the same thing if you stop on them.

The best part about repair pads is that if you time it so that your auto-repair has started by the time you get to one, you'll instantly regain 50% of your vehicles health back the moment you touch it; you don't even have to stop... just drive straight over and get the instant 50% repair. You can take a tank from almost destroyed to fully repaired very quickly if you time it right.