So I dropped into desolation - Wonderful, another day of using a wimpy normal shotgun to try and penatrate armor.. Instead of just annoying the reds and purples, i tried to use the guass instead. While it's supposed to be the king of damage, I didn't see anyting that made me go oooh. I'd start shooting something and end up taking a quick dirt nap. Fine. Enough of that. Back to sanctuary and a reassignment of cert's - Since i'm a whopping 3 days old i can untrain certs for free (after 6 days it takes time to uncertify, no more instance character) I played around a bit with my certs and grabbed the uni max cert - Basically it let me pilot all the Max's (or Am's for some) for the price of 6 certs instead of the 8 it would cost to individually purchase all 3.

Uhh.. The best that i can discribe this thing is imagine robocop or a guy in really bulky armor with a huge gun.

There's 3 varieties - Anti Personel - Basically a walking tank with a shotgun. You have 3 fire modes - Wide spread, Average spread and pin point. I tend to use average when taking on bases. Mind you It's definatly weak against anything else with a weapon and there's several weapons that can take it out fairly easily.

Anti Air - Missle launcher on walking Tank. Missles are dumb fire. Or point and shoot. I find this one really a waste of time when it comes to aircraft as they move far, far to fast to even get a shot on the things and you have to be really close to actually hit and hurt them. I'm sure the missles do a lot of damage but the dumbfire option really hurts

Anti Vehical - Cannon on walking tank. Designed to use on vehicals - I spent quite a bit of time in this last night shooting down aircraft and taking out pedestrians. I actually shot down several misquetoes with this - They though they were safe flying above the water in the canyons. Well. Not everyone ignores that spot..... Fun!

It's to bad that there isn't much support for PS these days, apart from a single developer - Though i could be wrong on that point. Swimming and Amphebious assault units could make for an interesting tactical use. Instead of jumping in the water and going to a watery death, Instead slowly swimming along and coming up behind the enemy... Could be cool. Not to mention open up a whole new playstyle. Small islands.. Underwater base assults... The Super Sub 9000 assult craft with 4 gunners and torpedos.. Ahh so much possiblities with the game...

Perhaps in the future.
-B-

Currently masquerading as Splithair. BR 5 Fodder.

We could've reached a three man squad last night, but one of our guildmates continued to have computer issues. For the most part, the two of us that were on stuck on Ishundar, helping the Vanu secure the continent.

I kept with the same spec as last time - Armored Assault 2, UniMAX, medium assault. We actually used the Magrider a lot more this time and to some good effect as I not only remember how to pilot the darn thing but also wasn't trying to do it drunk.

I ended up with a lot of grief from my UniMAX exploits. The biggest problem is the sheer bloodlust for the kill that most people have when they're pushing into a base - everyone wants that "killing shot" and so will dodge in front of the others in order to try to get it. I also had issues ending up in the wrong suit of armor for the situation - for example, being in my Quasar (anti-personnel) MAX when attacked by a Reaver, or in a Comet (anti-armor) MAX and coming up against a bunch of infantry.

The biggest thing in the night for me wasn't the game play - which was fun, mind you - but the problems I ran into.

While fighting around Lahar last night I respawned at an AMS in the courtyard of the base just to have my sound kick out. That means I have to shut down both PlanetSide and TeamSpeak in order to get it to work again, so I /quit out real fast, restarted both programs, and jumped back in...

...and I was in VS Sanctuary.

Ishundar was pop locked, and it had kicked me back home.

So I went to a broadcast warpgate with a Magrider and got into the queue. I was 9 of 9. I took a quick bio break.

When I came back the Terrans had hacked one of our tech plants and now the broadcast warp gate I'd been planning on going through was unavailable. I selected another broadcast gate and I was 6/9. No biggie.

I get up to 1/7 and the Vanu re-secure the base. Boom! The broadcast warpgate that I wanted to go to - the one closer to the battle - re-opens. I click on it again - and get put into the back of the queue. I hastily click back on the original warpgate but same thing, so I resign myself (with much cursing) to going through the queue again.

Eventually I make it through in the far southern warpgate while all the fighting is up north. There was a Terran controlled tower right near by. I used my Magrider to take down the turrets and some of the CE, then a Mosquito came in and hacked it. I then went and cleared the rest of the CE around the tower (mostly mines and motion sensors) before heading back up north.

I managed to make it to Irkalla just as we hacked it, so I went over to Girru to join up with my squadmate. The battle for Girru had been going on for hours, but we finally made some progress and pushed in. The hack went through, despite some half-hearted NC attempts at stopping it (by that point, it was really too late) and we got max XP for the capture.

It was around midnight at that point so I went to bed. I noticed a funny thing in my stats - I hadn't killed a single guy in standard or agile armor yet. Then again, you almost never kill anyone in standard armor unless you happen to be camping a spawn tube, but no agile was weird for me because back in the old days the agile + heavy assault combo was quite popular (coupled with Surge for speed attacks). Now that Surge acts as run-mode for MAXes does (i.e., no weapons allowed while using it) most people go for the Rexo + Heavy Assault combo (and, if I remember correctly, usually the Personal Shield + health regeneration implants).

I did kill a couple of infiltrators. One was running out of a tower just before I lost sound and half damaged already so I finished her off with my Punisher. The other I found in a base while I had my Sweeper shotgun out, but he was immediately followed by a ScatterMAX that blew my sorry butt all across the tunnel. Oh well!

So I logged into Vanu last night to meet up with my guildies - both of them. Before they got on (and before I did my other game's beta) I jumped on first just to refamiliarize myself with the Vanu.

I have two Vanu characters - TheLadiesMan and DiedAgain. I picked TheLadiesMan because he was already BR 6, and therefore had an implant slot. I headed over to VR and into the shooting range so I could work my way through all the weapons. There's a new weapon in there, the Heavy Scout Rifle, which is a slightly weaker sniper rifle with more ammo in a clip and a faster rate of fire.

In PlanetSide, each time you use a new weapon/vehicle/etc., you get experience for it, so it's important to do as much as you can before that.

I then headed over to the Vehicle section of VR and tried out a bunch of them. I missed the BFR shack, and forgot to sit in the tail gunner position of the Vulture, but other than that got caught up. With that, I returned to Sanctuary.

There I remembered that they added Training Missions. They teach you the basics of the game, but each one also gives you 500 XP - not an insignificant amount at BR 6. I ran through some of those.

The missions are very buggy. A lot of times they wouldn't recognize one step, and I'd have to cancel and re-do them. That got really frustrating later on, when I did the vehicle mission. To end it, you're supposed to get out of a BFR. However, when I did, it didn't work. Another mission actually crashed PlanetSide on me.

The more interesting one (to me) was "how to use the HART" (which takes you between what used to be continents and are now planets). I landed on a randomly selected, secure continent (errr, planet) just to find that I'd landed right next to a tower that'd been hacked by the TR. I'm stuck in Agile armor, with no certifications AT ALL, meaning the Punisher assault rifle in my rifle slot (put there by a training mission) is unusable. Still, I pushed on, hacked the outside door, walked upstairs and hacked the control panel (which takes FOREVER when not an advanced hacker, which my main character on TR was), then went out the other door...

...over a mine. Boom. Didn't kill me, but owie. I used my one and only medpack and ran over to the bio lab nearby, where I healed up, visited some of the components of the base I hadn't before (therefore getting the XP for them) and recalled to sanctuary.

So finally later that night I was on with my friends. One was in VR, working his way up to BR 4 with a brand new character. I did a few more training missions, certed Armored Assault 1 & 2, Medium Assault, and Uni-MAX, then instant action-ed my way onto Cyssor.

I came into a base that was under heavy attack. I swapped between MAXes, attempting to defend the base from (mostly) NC attack, but only managed one kill. Frustrated (and out of beer), I recalled to Sanctuary, but when I instant action-ed again it sent me back to the same place.

I did a bit better but then we squadded up with my guildies and headed to Esamir. There we worked on re-securing some bases. It took us forever to push in on the back door against embedded Terrans, but I helped a good bit (I'd like to think). Then I remembered I had jump jets and ran up to the ceiling and the front door to help with those pushes. At one point, in a Quasar (the anti-personnel MAX) I busted in the front door, turned to the left, and managed to kill 2 infantry before falling to the MAXes and others nearby.

It doesn't lead to the greatest stats in the world, but it does help break the stalemate and helps your side. That's what I'm really there for - I died a ton to lasherbunnies on my own side who were so desperate for kills that they'd shoot their own people to get some. But oh well, that's how PlanetSide has always been.

So I tried to log in to meet my guildmates last night and was immediately hit with the patch from 8/16. They've bumped the BR cap to 25, though you don't get another implant at 24. They also changed the implant BRs (6, 12, and 18) so that you don't get a cert point on those levels - but you get those three cert points at BR 1.

In other words, you start off with 3 extra points.

Since I'm still BR 17, that means I get an extra cert point. By the time I got in I hadn't seen anyone in my guild on, so I did the first training mission and logged. I'll probably log on tonight and do more of the training missions for the free XP they give.

So, some of my guildmates started looking back at getting into PlanetSide again, so I decided to join them. I patched yesterday (which went a lot faster than I'd remembered it going before) and jumped into VR.

Since I've left they've upped the Battle Ranks to 23 (and I'm still 17!) and given everyone a cert reset, so I had an inventory full of weapons I couldn't use. I cleared it out and went back through each weapon, reminding myself how it worked, what the controls were, etc.

There's a new rifle - the "Heavy Scout Rifle" - given to players that have been there 2 years. It's like a lower powered sniper rifle with a 10 shot clip and better "from the hip" accuracy. I didn't dig it too much, but then again, I've never really been the sniper type.

They've also added in support XP. I think that's great...I'm interested to see how, if it does, work with Hacking, which was always my thing. I know for Medical it's based off the person you healed getting kills.

I also tried the vehicles again - had to remember how to bail out of a plane. I was disappointed I couldn't find anywhere to try out a BFR in VR, but I did try the new Liberator variant (the Vulture, if I remember correctly) and ME LIKEY! That nose cannon is amazing. I might just have to see about getting me one of those...

I didn't actually get out into the field as I wanted to figure out my certs first. I also lost sound pretty quickly, but given how I'd been using my computer that day, I'm going to hold off at getting overly upset at that yet. We'll see how it goes.