Does anyone use EMP nades to take out Beacons?

I was just defending a base. I had pulled AA Max as our infantry was getting hammered by A2G farmers.

Whilst performing AA duties - I noticed tons of drop pods raining down on the capture point. No gimbal lock gal - so must be a spawn becon.

It's ok I thought - somebody will take it out pretty soon........but no - the battle went on and the capture timer counted down. With air out of the way - I pulled my infil and went to where the capture point was.....sure enough there is a red spawn beacon beam being totally ignored.

I lobbed an EMP nade and it was gone. Unfortunately I was too late and the base was captured.

Fell back to the next base (a constructed one around an intermediate point). Again loads of air - so I pulled my AA Max again.....and again a spawn beacon got planted right up against the wall of the base.

Somebody will take this one out surely.......or so I thought.....but again no, it was ignored and the based got a hammering. Again I sacrificed the AA Max to pull infil with EMP nades and take out the spawn becon.

What's going on - do people not know what these big bright light pointing into the sky is? Where do they think all the drop pods are coming from? Do people not know that EMP nades can take out spawn beacons - and even work through walls/doors/floors.

TLDR:

Top tips:

1. Use EMP nades to take out spawn becons - one simple act can turn the tide of an entire battle. As long as the spawn beacon is active - you'll never keep the base.
2. EMP nades work through walls/barriers/floors etc
3. EMP nades have a large blast radious - so much so they can even reach spawn beacons planted on the top of a tower if thrown from a tower landing pad ramp (in most cases).

assuming that infiltrators will use their kit is like assuming a pub medic will revive you

its not going to happen, and if it does itll probably just **** you over more than if they hadnt

*tips hat* @MonnyMoony.

Thanks for the info.

Some people deliberately leave spawn options up so they can farm.

Which is a perfect explanation why this game will never be more than a stupid meatgrinder without any depth or sense.
The fact is most Infiltrators prefer to keep their EMPS for infantry because of kills and xp. Anything that is not strictly related to farming kills in this game is and will always be unpopular because players get more xp and more rewards for farming infantry than for achieving objectives and make sure their faction wins. The whole XP system, stats system and directives system go in this direction.

Basically it's better sitting on a hill and spamming HESH against a spawn room than defending a tech plant crawling with enemies. And as long it will be like this any change to leadership tools will always be pointless.

This is btw the reason why I stopped investing in PS2, because it will never be more than that, as long as devs do not move away from the farming mentality. Instead of encouraging players to stick together, cooperate, and fight where the faction actually needs them, they gradually turned this in game into a dumb shooter where organization and strategy means zero.

Redeploy, farm, zerg. If there's anything else in Planetside 2, that's totally accessory, suboptimal or useless.

The forums need more posts about how to play. Well done.

Sorry for the inbound and already landed crybabies.

Most of Infis never use their radar darts, or use their EMP. Most of them are just running around, trying to get a kill or two. That's a good thing. A good Infi player can be a pain. Most of Infis I see barely have any idea of what they're doing.

Fun fact : I started playing Medic a couple of monthes ago. I realized why most of players' KD is under 1. Just my own opinion here. Most of players don't even use Medkits. Like...never. They'll prefer to rely on people around, hoping for a Medic to be around.

EMPs, Radar tools, Medkits, I'd be curious to know how many people actually use shortcuts on this game. Maybe a third or less of the total player base.

I always save my EMP for beacons or mines. I consider using EMPs to facilitate kills an inefficient use of resources.

I don't use EMP for beacons on towers, I use the Light Assault for that as I still haven't figured out a viable throwing angle. Besides, plenty of devious people don't plant the beacon on the top of the tower, they go right to the top of the antennae and that is way out of throwing range.

As for having to sacrifice the AA MAX, that is unfortunate... in that specific situation I tend to make liberal use or the "/re" chat to motivate my allies to search for, and destroy, the suspected beacon.



OP, you support your allies with air defence and beacon destruction... I like you, keep going as you do.

While we're on the subject, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact infiltrators can hack terminals and turrets through walls and floors too, and anyone can use them through walls. This can minimize exposure.

I agree. My Stalker is my most used subclass next to my Engineer and most of my loadouts are equipped with the ammo printer and regeneration implants or restoration kits ('cause they're cheaper than medkits). My entire gameplay philosophy revolves around sustainability rather than brute force, not just in this game but across the board.

Most of my time in this game is currently spent setting up a Sunderer with either a shield or stealth bubble and anti infantry MGs or AA guns, spotting enemies either directly or with darts or vehicle radar, destroying beacons and mines, hacking terminals and turrets... Oh, and my AA MAX is set up for sustainability too, with fire suppression, autorep and ammo printer.

The whole "frontal charge with guns blazing" isn't really my thing. I hate having to rely on others, only to be disappointed by the lack of support, so I go for self-sufficiency and providing support myself.

Devs aren't the only one to blame, player are faulty too.
But it's true that right know, only the dev can do a thing to change the game toward objective instead of xp/kill farming simulator.

Change how XP is gained, so objective become more important than farming noobs,
Make fighting zerg with a smaller force more attractive and realistic. A hard task as long attrition and logistic are unexistant.
Make farming people no the best way to get xp : Not destroying enemy spawn so you can continue to farm should be removed.
More than giving tool for squadleader/platoonleader, give player a REASON to do that.
The only possibility I see is to specialize player so they'll need to form at least a fireteam.

I doubt it have a chance to happens, because dev are moving the game in the opposite direction : arcade / Call of Duty style where you are the hero of the battle, a one soldier-army : something that is not compatible with a MMOFPS were you are supposed to only be a part of your faction's strength, and at least not lonewolfing.

Yep - strategic play needs to be made more valuable.

Throwing yourself into the meat grinder and farming kills is a lot more rewarding (in terms of XP) than taking out spawn beacons, despite the fact that kills in this game mean pretty much nothing. All you are doing is knocking somebody back to the nearest spawn point.

It's crazy how little you get rewarded for taking out beacons - even though doing so can be possibly the most important action you can take in a battle.

If the devs increased the XP earnt for things like taking out beacons, deployed sundies etc by 10x or more, it might make people stop and take note.

It's just common sense that you need to destroy beacons and sundies.
Devs already gave us 1000 tools/abilities/weapons/vehicules and aurax rewards. Not their fault if a (big) part of the player base prefer to ignore those.
After all, the main thing about PS2 is that you can do whatever you want. Total freedom on giant maps.
Make people focus more on sundies and beacons, and this game will end as an undless trench warfare simulator.

That's what makes the main difference beetween the random players and a good / "better than the average" player. It also makes the game more interesting, more challenging. (Just my own opinion.)

They ignore then because you get sod all for going after them. Big risk - very little reward.

Most spawn beacon runs I do end in my death because you have to sneak right up to the point where the enemy are dropping in, then let a nade off in the second or two before you get taken out.

You can earn many many times the amount of certs by just throwing yourself into the meat grinder - or farming spawnrooms from an elevated position.

The reward should be commensurate with the value of the target........but in the case of beacons, that simply isn't the case. You get a tiny reward for destroying a 'deployable'.

Nobody is talking about "forcing" people to do anything - just make the targets more valuable.

Hehe, I myself am pretty much the exact opposite of a good / "better than the average" player when it comes to shooting. I absolutely suck. Which is weird because I really am a good / "better than the average" marksman in real life, doesn't matter if I'm shooting clay pigeons or man sized targets at several hundred meters - I used to be one of the better marksmen in my battalion and in my civilian shooting club. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that I don't have enough space on my desk to lower the mouse sensitivity, or maybe my reaction time is just getting too slow for online shooters - PC games don't exactly reflect reality in that regard.

That being said, playing the objective and providing support lets me exert tangible influence the flow and outcome of a fight, way more that if I just play cannon fodder. It's my way of working around my personal weakness in gaming.





As has already been said, a well placed EMP can make a much larger difference than X amount of kills if the enemy just keeps spawning close to an objective.

Now there are three kinds of players:
1) those who will seek out and destroy beacons (and Sunderers or SCUs)
2) those who know, but want to keep the XP farm/meatgrind going
3) those who simply do not know

Point 3 is a matter of knowledge while 1 and 2 are a matter of choice, do we want XP or do we want to win. If we're in an alert, the prospect of obtaining ISO-4 can be a sufficient incentive for players to play for the objective and therefore kill beacons with the EMP, but outside of alerts, why bother? (in terms of XP)

So yeah, I do agree that the destruction of a spawn beacon should grant a considerable reward. I say, let's set the reward for a spawnbeacon to at least 50% of the XP we would get for destroying a deployed Sunderer. I believe this would be fair, considering the amount of time it takes to find and destroy a well hidden beacon.

I think certain helpful actions\items need to be added to the tutorial, regardless of what the player has unlocked. It would also give them an idea of what they should be getting so that they will help their team.

I EMP everything I can with them, so much so that I run out of resources sometimes on that alone.

Except enemy ammo, I just might need to use that

If you’re an infil and don’t have EMP grenades you are failing as an infil

Yes, and what does common sense say in the case of beacons? You EMP and a beacon and you get maybe 30Xp.
You EMP enemies then open fire and you get 100XP per target.
Without considering that a beacon could mean more targets, and the stats system only counts how many people you killed while it does not keep track of how many spawn points you destroyed. You do not even get a specific title for that.

Do you see the problem? The XP system gives a higher reward for NOT doing the right thing. There are countless examples of this very same thing. Like people preferring to snipe from the spawn room instead of going out and resecure the base. Who gives a **** if the base gets lost? You can get hundreds of XP firing in total safety and improve your KDR while resecuring will probably cause you to die several times and give less XP in the best case scenario.
From this point of view it feels much better to snipe, redeploy and go where you have better chances to kill. Once again the system will reward you to give up and go where you can have better population ratio, instead of trying to help your faction.

Beacons? I use my emps for everything electronic. I'll use them on shield regens, spitfires so i can hack them, and places with mines. One time i killed two prowlers as an infiltrator because of that. Both were holding down a lane and were sitting on some friendly mines until i chucked an emp and both got vaporized. People don't know how to use them to their full potential.