PlanetSide & PlanetSide 2

PlanetSide & PlanetSide 2:

Overview

This is a community-built list of tips and hints that originated in a thread by /u/Loez .

Oh God What In The- HELP ME!

Please watch TotalBiscuit's helpful Planetside 2 - The Absolute Basics - Navigating the world.

General

• Aim at enemies and press "Q" to spot them, making a little triangle appear over their heads for your friends.
• If you aim at a friendly player and press "Q", you will ask them for context specific help: ammo from engineers, healing from medics and a ride from a vehicle.
• You can also keep Q pressed down to open the "commo rose" that allows you to interact with the targeted person in various ways.
• Do not destroy enemy terminals when attacking. Let infiltrators hack them instead.
• Find a squad/platoon and roll with it. You are unlikely to do much or survive long alone.
• Fight in a group, not in a mob. Outnumbering the enemy 50:1 is useless and will result in boring game play and little experience. See "Zerg" in the lingo section.
• One way to find an outfit (a guild) is using ther/ps2outfits subreddit.
• You passively gain certs even when you are offline at a rate of 2 certs every 6 hours for 48 hours after last login.
• Unlocked attachments are weapon specific.
• You can not shoot in to hostile spawn rooms.
• You can shoot out from a spawn room.
• Do the math on the two above points (Hint: Them shooting you while you can't shoot back is usually quite bad).
• Weapons in this game are sidegrades, meaning that no weapon is in any real way better than any other. They just fit into other situations. F.ex one weapon can have great accuracy but slow rate of fire while another has a fast rate of fire but is less accurate, resulting in the latter being better in extremely close encounters, but being much worse in medium to long ranges.
• When you unlock attachments or upgrades, remember to equip them. They won't help you if you are not using them.
• Pressing H toggles a bigger minimap view. The enlargened minimap blocks the capture process indicators.
• You can press ALT to enable and disable a mouse cursor when ingame. Use it to switch chat views.

Infantry

General

• Do not run on roads. Those tank drivers can't really see well and rarely can stop in time to avoid running over you.
• Just like you were told to as a kid: look both ways before crossing.
• You can not equip both nanoweave and improved shields at the same time. You should choose one and focus on it. Same applies to all slots.
• Let the medic heal you to full health after he has revived you.
• You do not take damage when dropping from a galaxy dropship.
• All small arms (even pistols) do damage to fighters. Shoot at them to scare them away, if you are under attack and have no Anti-Air nearby.
• The knife (T) two-shots all non-MAX infantry. Use it on unaware enemies to save ammo.
• Your very first cert should be spent on Nanoweave Armor. It gives +10% health for 1 cert.
• You unlock the Spawn Beacon from the Command certification tree. The certification requires Battlerank 10.
• Never run over vehicle spawn points. You are just asking to be squished under a spawning sunderer.
• Flashlights on weapons only act as a giant "shoot me" -sign.
• Most weapons require burst firing to be effective.
• You can switch fire modes (single shot, full auto etc.) with B.

Light Assault

• Use your speed and agility to strike from unexpected angles. Going head-to-head is usually a bad idea.
• Your jump jets automatically activate when you keep space bar pressed down.
• Using your jump jets when dropping from a galaxy (even for a split second) removes the fall damage immunity from you.
• C4 is extremely powerful against turrets, vehicles, MAX units and clusters of enemy infantry.

Medic

• Friendlies you revive come to life with reduced health. Heal them back up before carrying onwards.
• You can not heal a wouded MAX unit.
• You can revive a MAX unit that has been killed.
• The medic's ability is an Area of Effect (AoE) heal that affects all nearby friendlies. Use it when it does the most good for both you and your friends.

Engineer

• You can heal (repair) a wounded MAX unit.
• Always drop ammo near Heavy Assaults that are firing rockets. They need it bad and you get tons of points.
• You can replace the ammo box on your loadout and still give out ammo by equiping the turret and pressing B (change fire mode).
• Deployed turrets can act as cover for friendlies, even if you don't plan on firing the turret yourself.

Heavy Assault

• Shooting at the rear of a vehicle does insane amounts of damage. You can two-shot a main battle tank by shooting at it's rear with the default launcher.
• Your shields also negate damage suffered from dropping.
• The default rocket launcher does most pure damage. The anti-air launcher does least damage. The anti-tank lock-on launcher sits right between the two.
• Both lock-on launchers need three rear hits against a main battle tank. The default destroys it with two.

Infiltrator

• Hack all the things! Every hacked terminal is free exp for you, a resupply station for your friends and a nuisance for the enemy.
• Shift steadies your aim for a moment when using a scope.
• Hacking an occupied turret forces the (confused) enemy out of it.
• Cloak is not an invisibility: you are only harder to see. You are easier to see when moving than when immobile.
• Do not play like a sniper, shooting from behind friendly lines. Play like an infiltrator and get behind the enemy positions for maximum effect.
• You can not be healed when cloaked.
• IRNV scopes see cloaked people just fine.
• You can not fire while cloaked.
• Enemies can not spot you with Q when you are cloaked.
• If you have been spotted by an enemy (with Q), you can remove the spotting by cloaking.
• Consider cloaking into an enemy held base, hacking a terminal and spawning an AMS equipped sunderer. If you have a platoon/squad that can then instantly spawn when you deploy your vehicle, the enemy won't know what hit 'em!

MAX

• Wait for a few seconds if you die: a friendly medic can revive you!
• Everyone starts with a single Anti-Air Buster on their MAX loadout. Use this if you need AA and there is nothing better available.
• When doing Anti-Air duty, lead your targets. It's no use having the bullets fly past behind him.
• You can use the MAX units charge ability (F) to quickly move from place to place. Great for getting closer to enemies, running away and just changing location.
• Switching out of the MAX suit invokes the acquisition timer.
• You can, however, change your weapons at any terminal without any penalty.

Vehicles

General

• Setting a vehicle to "squad/platoon" allows your squad/platoon mates to drive the vehicle.
• You can use the Vehicle Management menu (Page Down) to lock a vehicle down (only you can enter) or to only allow people in squad/platoon to enter.
• All vehicle weapons have a 1 cert each upgrade for basic ammo capacity and added zoom.
• HE = High Explosive. Great against infantry. Less effective against heavy armor.
• HEAT = High Explosive Anti Tank. Great against light armor, okay against infantry.
• AP = Armor Piercing. Great against heavy armor. Less effective against infantry.
• You can use cruise control with vehicles to make them go forward without having to press any buttons. Press the = key to enable and disable cruise control.
• Use the function keys (F1-F12) to change seats in a vehicle. If you try to change to an occupied seat, the person on the seat will be can choose wether to change seats or not.
• Set up your personal waypoint by right clicking the map screen. You are less likely to make a wrong turn if you know the general direction you wish to go to.

Ground vehicles

• You need to unlock the 50cert Sunderer Advanced Mobile Station (S AMS) to be able to deploy your vehicle. Remember to equip it after unlocking it.
• When driving close to infantry with no nearby hostiles, press T to enter third person mode. This gives you more vision on possible nearby friendly infantry.
• As a gunner, do not shoot at everything moving. This will only alert the enemy to your presence without really doing any damage to that Liberator flying a mile away.
• The default 20mm dual-barreled machinegun on main battle tanks and sunderers does damage even to main battle tanks. Help out your gunner when he is engaging armor. You shooting at the tank too can be the deciding factor.
• Parking a vehicle where people using a jump pad land on kills the people coming in flying. Avoid doing this to friendlies.
• Do not park vehicles on vehicle spawn points. It will only end badly.
• Turn off your lights by pressing L. Using them only attracts attention.

Air vehicles

• Fly in third person mode (T) for better view on your surroundings.
• Rebind air vehicle exit to something you won't hit accidentally when reloading.
• There is no parachute, if you have to bail out, get low and get slow, then jump out. If you are going too fast or too high, you will die, the exception being if you are in a Galaxy.
• Consider binding the pitch controls to your keyboard. This allows you a faster and finer control over your aircraft.
• Set your personal waypoint to a safe location you can use to resupply and repair. This way, you'll instantly know where to retreat to if you get ambushed. Many a good pilots have "retreated" straight to an even greater danger in an adrenaline rush.

The World

Continents

• As of now, there are three continents in the game, each with a distinct theme.
• You can change continent by using the terminal with a planet on it at your factions warp gate.
• By capturing all capturable terrain on a continent, your faction conquers the continent. This gives you a continent specific bonus.
• You lose the bonus if another faction succeeds in capturing all capturable territory from said continent.
• The bonuses are -10% on infantry (Indar), mechanized (Esamir) or aircraft (Amerish) purchases.

Bases

• There are three types of major facilities: Bio labs, Tech plants and Amp Stations.
• Tech Plants allow acquisition of main battle tanks from connected territories. You can always acquire main battle tanks from the warp gate.
• Bio labs give the owning faction a small health regeneration in connected territories.
• Amp stations award large amount of mechanized or air resources and reduce the overheating of base turrets.
• A multitude of smaller outposts with no specific bonuses (except resources) exist between these major facilities.

Capturing

• If you see that control points have less than their max number of people on it (not all 6 on a CP, or not all three CPs have 2 on them), go to it, it caps faster!
• Capture process's speed is affected by your factions influence on the base. Check the pie chart on the left side of your screen for for your influence. Influence is based on the adjacent hexes owned by your faction.
• The capture process is a "tug of war". You need to undo all the enemy's progress before your factions capture bar starts to progress.
• The bar on top of your screen is not the bases capture progress. It's the capture progress for the single point you are on.
• You can not capture bases that have no connection to friendly territory. If you lose the connection after starting the capture process, you can still finish it.
• Destroying the SCU (Spawn Control Unit) prevents the owners of the base from spawning in that bases spawn rooms.
• Some hostile shields block only vehicles, some both vehicles and infantry. Owners of the facility can always pass through shields.
• Some shields can be shot through by the owner of the facility. Attackers can not shoot back.
• Shields have icons on them, that correspond to the generator keeping the shields up. Some shields have multiple generators.
• Everyone can hack generators by pressing E for a few seconds. This causes the generator to destabilize, resulting in an explosion after a few moments.
• Shooting (or using explosives) at a generator only damages that friend of yours who was trying to hack it. You can not damage generators with weapons.
• An exploding generator will kill you. Don't stand within a dozen meters of an one that is about to go boom.
• Bio labs can be accessed through teleporters and jump pads from outlying, capturable "outposts" that do not factor in to the actual capture progress of the base. Some bio labs also have towers with lifts under the landing pads.
• You can never enter the bio lab from directly beneath it as an attacker.

Defending

• Stabilize (unhack) a generator as any class by going to it and pressing E for a few seconds.

Resources

• You need resources to purchase vehicles (air and ground), MAX units and infantry items like medkits and grenades.
• Resources are granted every 5 minutes based on the regions owned by your faction on the continent you are on.
• You can see the amount of resources you will gain next time on the right side of your map screen.

Purchases

Station Cash

• When you buy something with SC, you need to log out and back in to for the item to appear in your inventory.
• You can see what is included in a bundle by clicking the "unlock" button. This will bring up a confirmation windows showing the contents of said bundle without buying it.
• You can trial weapons for 30 minutes every 8 hours.
• You can create new characters and trial a weapon, then delete them and trial it again on another newly created character.
• Once you apply an XP boost, removing it permanently removes it, keep it on until it runs out!
• Some weapons that can be purchased with SC are only visible in the certification trees, not in the depot.

Premium (subscription)

• The premium resource/xp boost does not use the boost slot in your profile. You can stack it with f.ex. the Alpha Squad boost for +60% exp and resources.
• If you are in a squad where someone has a squad boost, you will benefit from it too, resulting in up to a 103% extra experience: 50% for full membership boost, 50% from your own boost item and 3% from the squad exp boost your friend has.
• The premium boost starts at a 25% boost to all gained resources and exp.
• For every continous month of subscription after the first month, you get an additional +5% bonus. The maximum bonus is 50%.
• Purchasing multi-month subscriptions applies the additional bonus immediately. A 3 month subscription gives you instantly a 35% boost: 25% + 5% + 5% = 35%.
• Your additional boost resets if you do not have a subscription for a full month.
• You also get 500 SC per month. Unlike the boost, getting a 6 month subscription will not instantly give you 3000 SC. You will get 500 SC per month for the 6 months of subscription.

Commands

Chat commands

Long	Short	Friendlies	Hostiles	Range
/say	/sa	Yes	No(?)	Very short
/region	/re	Yes	No	Same region (base)
/yell	/y	Yes	Yes	Same region (base)
/squadsay	/s	Squad only	No	No range limitation
/platoonsay	/p	Platoon only	No	No range limitation
/outfitsay	/o	Outfit only	No	No range limitation
/tell	/t	Only named player	Only named player	No range limitation
/reply	/r	Only named player	Only named player	No range limitation

Other commands

Command	Effect
/friend add	Adds a friends
/friend list	Lists all friends and their online status
/who	Lists all friendly players in your region (also shows BR)
/who	Displays all the players in your region who have as part of their name (also shows BR)
/squad invite	Invites a player to the squad
/squad kick	Kicks a player from the squad
/squad leave	Removes you from the squad
/squad disband	Disbands the squad, removing everyone from it. Only works if you are the squad leader
/suicide	Kills you, allowing fast redeployment
/outfit invite	Invites a player to your outfit (if you can invite people)
/outfit quit	Removes you from your outfit
/report	Reports the player to SOE (Sony Online Entertainment)

Other

Performance

• Press ALT-F to view your FPS (Frames per second).
• Besides your fps, there is an indicator of wether you are being bottlenecked by your CPU (processor) or GPU (graphics card). If you are [CPU]-locked all the time, you should be able to up the graphical fidelity without a performance hit.
• Playing on low settings is generally a bad idea. It can cause your graphics card to go into a power saving mode out of "boredom" resulting in a performance hit. Try both medium and low settings before settling on low.

Lingo

Term or abbrevation	Meaning
AMS	(Sunderer) Advanced Mobile Station: the utility slot item on sunderer than allows it to deploy and act as a mobile spawn point. Also used to refer to a vehicle with one equipped.
EI	Enemy Infantry
ESF	Empire Specific Fighter: Reavers, Mosquitoes and Scythes.
Gal	Galaxy drophip (vehicle).
Gal drop	Using a galaxy to drop a large amount of troops on top of an enemy position/base. Think paratroopers.
HA	Heavy Assault (class).
LA	Light Assault (class)
Lib	Liberator gunship (vehicle).
MBT	Main Battle Tank: Vanguards, Prowlers and Magriders.
Sundy	Sunderer (vehicle)
Steel rain	The process of transporting a large amount of infantry to a location by drop pods in a coordinated fashion. Done via the Instant Action feature or by Spawn Beacon.
Zerg	The (mostly) mindless mob of players that just rolls forward in a direction without any clear command structure or strategy. Usually results from a buildup of individual people that follow in an organized units wake.

Current bugs affecting play

• 2012/11/26: Hacked destroyed turrets can't be repaired. If you see a hacked turret tell people not to destroy it and hack it back, otherwise the only way to gain control of it again is to lose and regain the base that it's attached to
• 2012/11/26: If you drop an ammo box as engineer, the game will change your weapon back to your primary after the ammo box spawns: sometimes results in you accidentally shooting someone you are repairing.