I've been playing 2142 for a while now and some of the most frustrating things that happen involve team mates doing things which are, how can I put it, mildly useless or entirely counter intuitive. So I thought I could use a thread to rant a bit but also maybe allow some of the newer players who may read this improve their gameplay. I hope it ends up being a bit therapeutic, let me know if you think I'm talking nonsense and I'll be happy to hear your replacement tactic.
Titan
1. On first round spawn, let someone who is good pilot the gunship for the first run, a good pilot will take out the first enemy gunship and the first 2 or 3 transports, that's a big advantage to your team.
2. If you are piloting the first transport of the round, take it to the best points, the ones with walkers are the most important, followed by ones with good aa positions.
3. RUSH positions on first round, if your team gets 3 out of 5 silos or more, the team gets an extra 1 or 2 missile launches than the enemy and that gives you an immediate advantage. So don't take your full transport to the closest point and then hover over it until the point is capped, then wait for everyone to get in and then go to the next nearest point.
4. Defence. This isn't like BF2, if you defend, they will come. People think it's more fun and more productive to go around capping every enemy silo, well that’s fine but the enemy is doing exactly the same thing behind you, everyone is running round in circles capping the silo that was just capped by the enemy while the enemy caps the silo that you just capped, what’s the point in that? It will be blind luck who gets launches and how many. If you get into armour, particularly a walker then you'll get loads of kills if you sit and wait for the transports to come and hover right in front of you while you gun them down. Most importantly this destroys the enemy team's rhythm, at worst you'll be taking fast moving transports out of the air, at best you'll annoy a squad or two so much that they'll waste time and effort capping your point while the rest of the map goes blue.
5. This leads on from 4, it isn't as important that a silo is blue, it's how long until the silo launches, if a silo is 30 seconds away from launch (check by pressing 't' and looking at the times under the silo icons), why not sit there and wait for it to launch, rather than letting a full transport come in and cap it before you get your launch. If that transport comes along, you'll either destroy it and get lots of points, or slow it down long enough to get the launch.
6. Titan attack and defence has an important balance. If your titan's shields go down then you need to get into the console corridors asap (no matter if you are winning or not). You can either recon it and drop an apm in 1 and 2 to stop the first wave (usually a loner or a couple of early attackers) or better still, go support and drop a turret. It's important that you don't have to defend both corridors 1 and 2, one or the other will do, but once you lose both of them 3 and 4 are much easier to destroy. Ideally there will be enough of you to defend both 1 and 2, if not try to get everyone there into one of the corridors and defend it hard. If the enemy titan's shields get destroyed first, get in there quickly to destroy the first 1 or 2 consoles for free. If you want to be sneaky, watch the enemy shield, once a sliver is left you want to be on your way (assuming you have enough capped silos to finish the shield off). If you get into the titan within 60 seconds of the shield going down, 9 times out of 10 you will destroy at least 1 console before the enemy shows its face. If you are late onto the titan and you are getting repeatedly owned by the team, keep a close eye on the silos, as soon as the enemy has more than 2 silos, your team is losing, it doesn’t matter what the shield situation is, go and cap a silo or two and then come back if you want to. Similarly if you are defending the titan and waiting for the enemy shield to go down, you can't possibly win without the majority of the silos.
6. If you are defending a core, your chances are now slim if you don’t have at least 5 or 6 people in the core with you. You need turrets and you need APMs out front, if you dont have either of those then spawn as a different class and provide them.
7. If you are attacking a core, you need to have got in there quick, go either recon, anti tank (good for core attack without hurting team mates) and support. Support is the most important here, you need to replenish the demo packs and pilum ammo of your team mates. If the core is now full of the enemy you are unlikely to ever get in again, you can spam it with grenades but a well defended core is pretty difficult to get into. But there is an upside to this, 9.9 times out of 10, once you breach the core all you have to do is leave the enemy titan and caps silos, the enemy will go so defensive to protect the core that they will not have enough men on the ground to defend properly.
8. Turrets need to be placed where they can't be seen by the enemy initially but the enemy has to go into full sight of them to progress. In titan corridors, the best place is around the closest rib of the corridor to the entrance. If you want to get around a turret in a console corridor there are few options, you have to destroy it or run past it. To destroy it you can use bullets, grenades (slow) or a pilum (needs accuracy and usually results in death). But if you are support then you can throw an emp grenade into the corridor and fry any turret close by (I've never seen anyone do this in 200 hours, but almost every titan attack i do would benefit from it). If they have placed the turret badly then you will be able to throw grenades down the corridor, line up looking down the corridor, but in the doorway, click fire to throw the grenade, don't start to pop into view until the animation begins to draw the hand back, this way you can throw grenades down the corridor relatively free from injury (unless they are grenade spamming). One tactic tht works often is to run into the corridor with no regard for your life, jump once or twice to stop the turret mowing you down then go prone behind the first rib in the corridor, then throw all your grenades over the bottom of the rib. You'd be surprised how well this works, there's no way they can shoot you, they either have to grenade you or rocket you and by the time they have started to change weapons they should have a hissing frag bouncing around their feet. If you're lucky you'll destroy the turret too (thats the one that has been placed at the second rib, wrong place).
9. Get stuck in!!! This is the most important, my K/D ratio is fairly pants, that’s because I play aggressively, if you're on the titan an aggressive play is the best, they may be able to kill one or 2 but a constant stream of attackers over whelms players much better. Camping over the corridors upstairs with 5 other people while no one even looks in the corridors isn't getting your team anywhere.
Northern Strike
1. If you are driving the goliath DO NOT STOP unless you are capping a flag. The damned thing is slow enough without you stopping all the time and it makes attacks much easier, people have to destroy those small consoles on the outside, if they are moving it makes it much more difficult. This is even more important when the artillery starts, you have to move at least one length of the goliath, if not most of the hits will be directly on the goliath and it will be destroyed if it is already damaged or under attack.
2. The goliath will not be destroyed by motion mines if you make sure they hit the front bumper. There are no consoles on the front of the titan, if you see the motion mines running towards the front of the goliath just keep going, if they are going to hit your side, stop and reverse for a while until the mines move in front of you, then go forward.
3. Don't take the goliath to the most obvious flag, always take it to the one slightly further away and take the slightly longer and windy route to get there. This means all those anti tank guys have already dropped all their motion mines on the wrong road and are camping the wrong position.
4. Don't drive aimlessly for ever in the goliath capping the next flag (see point 4 from titan mode). Find a central position where you can keep defence on one or 2 points and stay around there. Your team should get out and actually cap the flags if they are miles away, the goliath isn’t a fast response vehicle, your team do that job. If you can get your goliath to the enemy base around the same time you cap the last enemy flag, you'll double your teams chances of winning, but if that isn’t happening, use it to dominate an area of the map.
Titan
1. On first round spawn, let someone who is good pilot the gunship for the first run, a good pilot will take out the first enemy gunship and the first 2 or 3 transports, that's a big advantage to your team.
2. If you are piloting the first transport of the round, take it to the best points, the ones with walkers are the most important, followed by ones with good aa positions.
3. RUSH positions on first round, if your team gets 3 out of 5 silos or more, the team gets an extra 1 or 2 missile launches than the enemy and that gives you an immediate advantage. So don't take your full transport to the closest point and then hover over it until the point is capped, then wait for everyone to get in and then go to the next nearest point.
4. Defence. This isn't like BF2, if you defend, they will come. People think it's more fun and more productive to go around capping every enemy silo, well that’s fine but the enemy is doing exactly the same thing behind you, everyone is running round in circles capping the silo that was just capped by the enemy while the enemy caps the silo that you just capped, what’s the point in that? It will be blind luck who gets launches and how many. If you get into armour, particularly a walker then you'll get loads of kills if you sit and wait for the transports to come and hover right in front of you while you gun them down. Most importantly this destroys the enemy team's rhythm, at worst you'll be taking fast moving transports out of the air, at best you'll annoy a squad or two so much that they'll waste time and effort capping your point while the rest of the map goes blue.
5. This leads on from 4, it isn't as important that a silo is blue, it's how long until the silo launches, if a silo is 30 seconds away from launch (check by pressing 't' and looking at the times under the silo icons), why not sit there and wait for it to launch, rather than letting a full transport come in and cap it before you get your launch. If that transport comes along, you'll either destroy it and get lots of points, or slow it down long enough to get the launch.
6. Titan attack and defence has an important balance. If your titan's shields go down then you need to get into the console corridors asap (no matter if you are winning or not). You can either recon it and drop an apm in 1 and 2 to stop the first wave (usually a loner or a couple of early attackers) or better still, go support and drop a turret. It's important that you don't have to defend both corridors 1 and 2, one or the other will do, but once you lose both of them 3 and 4 are much easier to destroy. Ideally there will be enough of you to defend both 1 and 2, if not try to get everyone there into one of the corridors and defend it hard. If the enemy titan's shields get destroyed first, get in there quickly to destroy the first 1 or 2 consoles for free. If you want to be sneaky, watch the enemy shield, once a sliver is left you want to be on your way (assuming you have enough capped silos to finish the shield off). If you get into the titan within 60 seconds of the shield going down, 9 times out of 10 you will destroy at least 1 console before the enemy shows its face. If you are late onto the titan and you are getting repeatedly owned by the team, keep a close eye on the silos, as soon as the enemy has more than 2 silos, your team is losing, it doesn’t matter what the shield situation is, go and cap a silo or two and then come back if you want to. Similarly if you are defending the titan and waiting for the enemy shield to go down, you can't possibly win without the majority of the silos.
6. If you are defending a core, your chances are now slim if you don’t have at least 5 or 6 people in the core with you. You need turrets and you need APMs out front, if you dont have either of those then spawn as a different class and provide them.
7. If you are attacking a core, you need to have got in there quick, go either recon, anti tank (good for core attack without hurting team mates) and support. Support is the most important here, you need to replenish the demo packs and pilum ammo of your team mates. If the core is now full of the enemy you are unlikely to ever get in again, you can spam it with grenades but a well defended core is pretty difficult to get into. But there is an upside to this, 9.9 times out of 10, once you breach the core all you have to do is leave the enemy titan and caps silos, the enemy will go so defensive to protect the core that they will not have enough men on the ground to defend properly.
8. Turrets need to be placed where they can't be seen by the enemy initially but the enemy has to go into full sight of them to progress. In titan corridors, the best place is around the closest rib of the corridor to the entrance. If you want to get around a turret in a console corridor there are few options, you have to destroy it or run past it. To destroy it you can use bullets, grenades (slow) or a pilum (needs accuracy and usually results in death). But if you are support then you can throw an emp grenade into the corridor and fry any turret close by (I've never seen anyone do this in 200 hours, but almost every titan attack i do would benefit from it). If they have placed the turret badly then you will be able to throw grenades down the corridor, line up looking down the corridor, but in the doorway, click fire to throw the grenade, don't start to pop into view until the animation begins to draw the hand back, this way you can throw grenades down the corridor relatively free from injury (unless they are grenade spamming). One tactic tht works often is to run into the corridor with no regard for your life, jump once or twice to stop the turret mowing you down then go prone behind the first rib in the corridor, then throw all your grenades over the bottom of the rib. You'd be surprised how well this works, there's no way they can shoot you, they either have to grenade you or rocket you and by the time they have started to change weapons they should have a hissing frag bouncing around their feet. If you're lucky you'll destroy the turret too (thats the one that has been placed at the second rib, wrong place).
9. Get stuck in!!! This is the most important, my K/D ratio is fairly pants, that’s because I play aggressively, if you're on the titan an aggressive play is the best, they may be able to kill one or 2 but a constant stream of attackers over whelms players much better. Camping over the corridors upstairs with 5 other people while no one even looks in the corridors isn't getting your team anywhere.
Northern Strike
1. If you are driving the goliath DO NOT STOP unless you are capping a flag. The damned thing is slow enough without you stopping all the time and it makes attacks much easier, people have to destroy those small consoles on the outside, if they are moving it makes it much more difficult. This is even more important when the artillery starts, you have to move at least one length of the goliath, if not most of the hits will be directly on the goliath and it will be destroyed if it is already damaged or under attack.
2. The goliath will not be destroyed by motion mines if you make sure they hit the front bumper. There are no consoles on the front of the titan, if you see the motion mines running towards the front of the goliath just keep going, if they are going to hit your side, stop and reverse for a while until the mines move in front of you, then go forward.
3. Don't take the goliath to the most obvious flag, always take it to the one slightly further away and take the slightly longer and windy route to get there. This means all those anti tank guys have already dropped all their motion mines on the wrong road and are camping the wrong position.
4. Don't drive aimlessly for ever in the goliath capping the next flag (see point 4 from titan mode). Find a central position where you can keep defence on one or 2 points and stay around there. Your team should get out and actually cap the flags if they are miles away, the goliath isn’t a fast response vehicle, your team do that job. If you can get your goliath to the enemy base around the same time you cap the last enemy flag, you'll double your teams chances of winning, but if that isn’t happening, use it to dominate an area of the map.