Every single vehicle in the game has more than one seat. Before you go roaring off like Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the first lap of the Daytona 500, take a quick look around to make sure nobody else needs a ride.
For those of you new to the joys of joystick-powered flight, please set your throttle to 50% prior to climbing in the plane. Nothing is funnier (or more sad, to those poor saps waiting their turn in line) than a plane rolling backwards off the cliff at the south end of the runway. Also, flying your plane into buildings and/or trees during takeoff is hazardous to your health.
Speaking of folks waiting in line for planes, there are times when you might want to stop waiting and do something else, such as when the enemy rolls into town and siezes the airstrip flag. True story: I lost a game last night (as the Allies) because of this. We were at 60 tickets, the Axis was at 14. They had more spawn points than we did, however, and they managed to contest the last one (the airstrip). Once they did, the only four surviving Allied players were four dumbasses (and why four? There aren’t even four planes!) sitting at the end of the airstrip waiting for planes to spawn. They obviously weren’t paying attention, and since none of the rest of us could spawn, we were forced to watch them sit around like a bunch of idiots while our ticket counter slowly ticked down to zero. We assailed them with messages (“Attention numbnuts waiting for planes: PLEASE CAPTURE A FUCKING FLAG”), but they really wanted those planes. We lost.
Retreat is an acceptable tactical option. If you are a lone Assault facing an enemy tank with a top gunner, it’s also a really good idea. Sure, you might take it out with three good grenade tosses. Chances are good that you’ll merely lose another ticket for the team, however. Go get help.
Take a look at what kits are active before you spawn. If your team has five active Scouts and two active Assaults, don’t be a Scout.
People who feel the need to do bombing runs need to do a first pass to check who is friendly and who is not. I swear to god I cannot count the times I have been bombed into oblivion by my own team.
I just blew up my first teammate today with a tank. He was in close fighting with an Axis soldier and I didn’t realize he was there. BOOM! So FF is not always intended obviously…
Why wait in line for planes at all? It’s like…I waited all day to play this game, now I’ll wait some more for the chance to fly a plane! Dopes.
I’ve noticed that sometimes people don’t realize when to just play defense. Like at the end of the game when you’ve got a good lead but they have 4 flags and only 9 tickets. All you really have to do is get everyone on that fifth flag and wait for them to come to you. Rack up 9 kills and it’s over. Instead people are still obsessed with capturing a flag so they go in solo and try to take on a tank and two assault guys.
Also, is it just me or do the Axis soldiers fart? I’m not kidding, more than once I’ve been standing on the deck of the carrier and for no reason at all (nobody’s around, full health, etc) my guy just screams really loud, like he’s falling a great height. Then nothing, then a weird sound that can only be a fart. I’m sure I sound crazy, but it happens!
I generally have a lot more fun when I am not in a plane. There is a lot more team interaction for one. Plus I love shooting the engineer’s rifle. It rocks so much. Fixing tanks and laying traps for enemies is awesome too.
Seems like a lot of would-be-pilots forget that you can taxi along the ground for a bit at low speed until you’re lined up with a clear takeoff path. Seems like the vast majority of wasted planes are due to idiots who insist on just flooring it from the starting position.
I’ve also noticed that it’s pretty easy to spot paratroopers. Just listen for a plane engine cutting out and look up. It seems like a goodly number of spawn points are captured this way, so it’s worthwhile keeping an eye out for them.
Paratroopers are also very vulnerable for about 1-2 seconds after hitting the ground. I’ve killed a lot who have landed in the water as well. The guy I shot in the landing boat last night was just sad. He didn’t lower the ramp so he just sat there jumping around till I shot him.
Here’s a question, can paratroopers be shot out of the sky by AA guns? I fired a number of bursts at one and he landed and subsequently came up the beach and shot me. I had to have hit him… but I’m wondering if they’re invulnerable until touching down?
I wish there were an option to hardwire that in your settings. I always use the F9 view when flying, without exception. Given the choice, I’d never use anything else.
The third-person view (F10) also works well during takeoff, but I have trouble using that view to actually fly since it’s hard to gauge your pitch while turning. I definitely prefer the removed cockpit (F9) view.
BTW the chute seems to work semi-safely at low altitudes, I swear I’ve snuck by people who saw me in my planes by not opening the chute until I was nearly building level.
The chute works very well at low altitude. To avoid doing the long obvious jump to capture a point, i crash land at the flag, jumping out at the last second and instantly hitting the parachute key. I did it once where I had no air time, just the parachute then the ground with no noticable time between.
Alan I played briefly with you yesterday. I play online as smokedsausage.
After bailing out a few times using the “How not to bail out” method illustrated on Penny-Arcade, I finally parachuted successfully a few times.
BTW…it’s so nice to be able to have a post-game wrapup with all the people who slaughtered me so effectively last night. I haven’t played any kind of FPS in more than a year, and my mad skillz have been transformed into more like “slightly annoyed skillz.”
There are only two ways to lose tickets. Death, and the other team holding all the flags (except neutrals). Die in a vehicle and you lose extra tickets. So if the Allies have three of the five flags and the other two are neutral, the Axis will start to bleed away tickets over time.
This is extremely important, because there are a good many times when pushing forward and losing lives in an attempt to capture additional flags is just dumb. As long as you have ONE FLAG, you won’t lose tickets any way except by dying.
If you’re up 30-10, don’t go nuts trying to get flags. Just everyone hole up around one or two flags, taking good defensive positions with snipers and engineers and stuff. It’ll be easy to dish out more death than you take when the other team has to come to you and your whole force is in one place, and you’ll get that 10 points knocked off easy.
I’ve lost several games where we were ahead by a good margin approaching the end of the game because our dumbass team made a mad scramble for more flags - which got us all split up, picked off, and eventually our own flags taken.
I actually, found I could “successfully” land a plane by jumping out as soon as it touched down (before it had a chance to ram into anything and blow up).
Oh, and in case anybody missed it, you should find a way to disable the server browser once you’re logged in. Otherwise it’s going to continue to eat up bandwidth, which is a real problem for slowpokes like me. ;)
