Of course the great thing is you don’t have to go solo. You can join a squad. Balanced squads have different roles filled by each person. One person can be a pilot and scout a spot for the ams driver to deploy the ams. Of course you’ll also need a couple MAXs for support, and don’t forget a hacker so you can get inside the base. Another benefit of being in a squad is being able to see where they are on the map at all times. There are also outfits, which are basically clans. You can see whether you outfit mates are online or not which is quite convenient. There are even non-combat roles for those who aren’t good at shooting people, like Charles. Bases need power as running a base uses up power. In order to power up your bases, you have to take a small tanker truck to a warp gate and then deploy it. It collects nanites from the gate so you can take them back and recharge the base. Of course there are no guns on the truck so you may need an escort or two. You ever get experience for it!!! Charles can be level 20 in no time flat.
When I was on the battlefield, gameplay was pretty smooth, but I admit I was using recommended graphics settings. Cranking up the settings seem to produce some frame loss even on my
Athlon XP 2400+ and
Radeon 9700 Pro. The player models look really good but I think the gun effects and explosions are relatively weak. They kind of remind me of
C&C Renegade. I’m guessing they are done like this to save frame rate, because when you have 50 or so people on your screen shooting all at once, it’s going to slow down no matter what the particle effects look like.
When fighting as infantry, your crosshairs are really tight when crouched, get wider when running and jumping. It’s next to impossible to hit someone when jumping because your crosshairs become about as big as the screen. They also put in a delay between jumps, so we won’t have to worry about any bunny hoppers. Also when firing most guns the crosshairs get wider so you’ll have to burst to keep them tight.
Another big thing they added to the final version is benefits for having command ranks. As you go up in command rank, which is different than battle rank, you gain new abilities commanding your squad. You earn command rank by leading a squad to take a base. You can set waypoints on your squadmates map and even draw on it and make notes. They are planning on adding EMP pulses and even orbital strikes. I’d like to see that when one of those goes off.
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