[Guide] Things you might not know.

Thought I'd do a quick run through of some of the less obvious mechanics that a lot of people don't know about. Some basic and some more advanced things that you might not be aware of that could be useful.

Grav Lift Speed Boost - When using a Grav Lift, you can increase your speed by looking in the direction you are traveling, holding sprint and pressing W. For the horizontal tunnel lifts jump and look slightly up while sprinting for max speed.

Grenade Launcher Beaning - The under barrel grenade launcher can do damage within the minimum arming range. If you hit your target with the actual grenade the impact will do significant damage even if the grenade doesn't explode.

Engineer Always Have Ammo - If you are playing the engineer class, you always have ammo, even if you equip explosives or medpacks in the ammo slot. To access your ammo pack bring up your Mana Turret and then press B to change to your ammo box.

Destroyed Turrets Aren't Cover - Due to the way the game renders units, destroyed turrets will not provide any cover against snipers or tanks. The wreck of the turret is considered a low priority object by the game client which means that anyone who is sufficiently far enough away for the turret not to be shown on their screen can shoot straight through it. Keep this in mind if you are repairing or sniping from behind one. It might look to you like you are safely behind cover, but you aren't.

Holding the Handbrake Increases Grip - If you are trying to drive up a hill in a Flash or a Sunderer and just can't quite make it, try holding the handbrake. Counter intuitively holding the brake on actually appears to increase your grip, stopping you from sliding backwards and giving you a very slight increase to your climbing ability.

Flash Rocket Jumping - The NFI Turbo upgrade for the flash is less of a turbo and more of a rocket booster. It will cause you to accelerate regardless of if your wheels are touching the ground. This feature can be used to drive up vertical cliffs and to jump extreme distances (I've managed to jump over the wall of an amp station.)

Speed is Superior to Grip for Climbing - The way the descriptions of the certs are worded it appears as if the Rival Chassis for ground vehicles would be the best at going up hill. This isn't the case. If you want to be able to climb steeper hills or go faster up hill generally then Racer is the way to go.

Squad Leaders Can Mark Objects - If you have the Squad Objectives cert you can mark more than just the lettered capture points. If you are in line of sight of an object like a generator or an SCU you can mark it as a defend or capture objective by holding Q while looking at it.

1000 Kill Medals - Getting one thousand kills with a single weapon rewards you with 100 cert points. If you are struggling to get certs sticking to one gun and going for a medal can be a good solution. You can see your progress by going to the Weapon Stats page on your Profile.

Skiing Down Hills - Holding S to run backwards while sliding down a steep slope can save you from taking fall damage that would otherwise have killed you. Additionally, if you are Heavy Assault turning on your shield will reduce fall damage.

Jetpacking Efficiently - Jetpacks will go much higher if you don't try to move with them. Running to the bottom of the object you are trying to get onto, jetpacking vertically by holding nothing but space and then pushing forward at the last second to move onto the top will use much less fuel than attempting to fly up at an angle, allowing you to reach much higher surfaces.

Drop Pod Bombing - Hitting an aircraft with your drop pod when you instant action or spawn on a beacon will instantly kill both you and the aircraft. A worthwhile sacrifice to take out a Liberator and something to avoid doing to your own team.

C4 Tips - C4 has two main uses that make it one of the first thing that you should unlock for your favourite classes. A single C4 thrown at the feet of a MAX unit will instantly kill it (this can be countered with flak armour but will still nearly kill the Max) allowing you to avoid a fight that would otherwise be stacked heavily against you. C4 can also be used in combination with a rocket launcher to instantly destroy tanks. Running up behind a tank, placing C4 on it and then shooting it with your rocket launcher will 1-shot any tank. Unlike using a launcher by itself, the tank driver has no chance at all to retreat and repair between shots.


Deciphering Your Minimap

- A capture objective, standing next to this will begin capturing the region for your faction. Standing next to one of these during a capture or defence will increase the speed you gain influence over a region. Additional friendlies will increase the speed further until you reach the maximum for that point which is displayed in the bottom left of your hud. eg A 0/6 would means 6 people standing next to the A will give you maximum capture rate. More than 6 will not increase the speed of capture, fewer than 6 will capture slower.

- A vehicle shield generator. Can be destroyed by holding E while looking at them to overload. Destroying will turn off blue shields. Blue shields allow the owners vehicles through but block enemy vehicles, but not infantry. These shields are bulletproof.

- A building shield generator. The same as the vehicle shield gen with the exception that generators with this icon tend to block entry to the main building in a base where as the type above are generally powering shields on the outer walls.

- SCU Shield Generator. This generator powers the orange anti-infantry shields that defends the SCU. These shields are not bulletproof.

- Spawn Control Unit (SCU). Destroying these will stop the defending team from spawning at the bases main spawn room.

- Spawn Room. Standing next to this point will convert the camp to your faction. These small bases aren't required to capture a region but they can give you a vital foothold in an area by providing your team with a spawn point, vehicle deployers and teleporters.

- Teleporter. Standing inside one of these will teleport you to another location. Generally to an area above you but sometimes across a gap or inside a building.

- Ammo Tower. Parking your ground vehicle next to one of these will rearm your weapons. Aircraft landing pads have the same icon but will a picture of a plane instead of a tank and serve the same function.

Great post.

Yep, I agree with Bill. Just one thing bothering me: When I "drop pod bomb," I've never managed to kill the aircraft. I hit it and get killed and see that the aircraft has 1/3rd of its life left. What am I doing wrong?

If it's a liberator you need to hit it right in the center. If you hit a wing or the tail it'll just flip over and take minor damage. Fighters pretty much blow up if you touch them. It doesn't tend to work too well on Galaxies.

Ah, that makes sense. It's always been liberators.

Awesome post, although sadly Flash-jumping seems to have been nerfed in one of the recent patches. You can still climb most hills with ease, but you can no longer catch as much hang-time as before.

Why did you tell people this . Now SOE is gonna patch it out

Well that screenshot of me going higher than a wall tower was from this morning. So it's not that nerfed.

on grave lifts hiting jump will accelerate you up faster, and croush will slow you down (or accelerate you down faster for blue)

The speed you get from jump and crouch is the same as the one you get from sprinting. I suggested sprinting because for one thing, it allows you to look in the direction you are going. If you jump or crouch you can't look up or down or it throws you out of the lift. Also, with jump you are much more likely to accidentally catapult yourself off the side of a building and it obviously doesn't work in the horizontal lifts.

So I suggested sprinting, but yeah, jumping works as well, try it see which way you prefer.

Great post, I wasn't aware of the trick with handbreak, will try it out later.

Good guide! A couple of things:

1) The medals actually give you twice the certs they tell you they do. Auraxium is 200 certs, not 100. Auraxium also isn't 1000 kills, but instead ~1200 IIRC.
2) You oversimplify podding. It depends on where you hit and the health of the target. I've survived podding aircraft, and survived being podded, so saying it kills both you and the aircraft is incorrect.

As I said it's a very small boost but in those situations where you've driven up a big hill and you just can't quite make it over the final lip, the handbrake thing can sometimes give you that tiny bit you need to make it.

SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH!! They'll hear you.

I'm aware there's more than one result to podding, and it's far from a certain kill. The idea was to let people know it's possible so that they might try it out for themselves. Fair point though. And yeah, I know it's not exactly a thousand, it's 1160. Again, it's just to point people towards it if they weren't aware they could make certs that way.

Pretty sure it's an intended feature, pretty terrible way of implementing it though. Not having the ammo pack as part of the tool slot would be better at least in the sense that people would wonder where others get the ammo packs from.

@ the OP: Seems like they changed the SCU shields to block incoming fire recently (don't remember if it blocks outgoing, probably does), might've just been a bug though since I haven't checked since the hotfixes.

Aim for the nose

Excellent post, mate.

I actually cringe with people bring up the Engineer turret transforming into ammo box thing. It's almost certainly a bug but an incredibly useful one. Especially as you can also deploy a turret too even with the ammo box deployed. I feel like the TF2 Engineer deploying mines, ammo, and a turret lol.

No, it's an ACE tool, not a Turret. They plan on adding to the design not removing functionality. They already made it adhere to the cert level of ammo packs.

Addition: Jump pads and grav lifts will make you immune for falling damage for several seconds after leaving the stream. For example, you can run through the descend lift on a tower and jump off the side of tower without taking damage, even if you go all the way from the top. (Make sure to hit the stream first though, it's possible to jump over it)