NSO Assault Rifles

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by ZeroVeroes, Aug 28, 2022.

  1. ZeroVeroes

    The NSO Assault rifles, or at the very least the NS-11a (the one with the Heatwave skin) is a poorly designed assault rifle that brings a lot of frustration to players using it. If playing as an NSO the weapon selection you have as a medic or any other class is limited. So we can not be picky when it comes to farming kills for directives.

    The NS-11A has awful bloom, the bullets spread out really far. Its a lot worse in my experience than TR weapons. If you zoom in or fire from the hip. If you have attachments that increase accuracy and reduce bloom it is still awful. On top of the awful spread of bullets the NSO weapon damage is underwhelming. When compared to the fast fire rate of the Terran Republic, the accuracy and precision of the Vanu, or the raw firepower of the NC, a lot of NSO weapons just aren't up to par.

    So the best way to play with the NS-11A (heatwave) is to be at close to mid range... as a medic. And even then at close range it is just "meh". I have asked experienced players online, looked through guides and from what i've gathered in the words of my fellow community members "NSO Assault rifles are trash". Other opinions include: NSO is only used for carbines, NSO has great pistols, NSO is a unloved filler faction that will never compete or be real.

    The community's opinion about the NSO is pretty negative. At least for the USA East coast. With no unique heavy weapon of their own but a thumper shared amongst everyone, a defective Defector that is still out gunned by all other MAX's. A Chimera (heavy tank) that has no unique features and is very big making it an easy target the NSO suffers from a lack of direction, purpose, and identity. The two only redeeming factors of what I consider a great faction is: Robots are cool and being a Mercenary to help repopulate lower pop factions is good work.

    But in a game where the purpose is to kill and conquer with friends or alone, the NSO is not a faction balanced well enough to serve as inspiration and aid for its allies. Instead when people see NSO, they see burdens, wannabe's, and sometimes to the very tribalistic playerbase "Traitors". The best way to make the NSO more appealing is to make its weapon unique, competitive, and fun. Having your weapon's especially the assault rifle be inferior to everything else is not the way to go.

    I do want to thank the Devs of daybreak for making the last NSO update and I am grateful for that. It really did boost popularity into the NSO. But I feel as a community between Dev and Player we can do better, we must do better. So please buff, balance, or redesign some of the weapons in the NSO, the exclusives and the ones shared.

    Also I made some suggestions for unique heavy weapons for the NSO on heavy class discussion forum. Feel free to check it out!
  2. Somentine

    ?

    The NS-11a is one of the best guns in the game.

    The "community's" opinion on NSO weps are about NSO specific weps; NS-11a is an NS weapon.
    • Up x 1
  3. ZeroVeroes

    Will you give me advice on how to use it then? Which attachments, how to engage and so on?
  4. Somentine

    1x, laser sight, always.
    SPA is okay but optional since the damage only drops off 1 tier and keeps the 4 headshot model.
    If you want suppressor, run HVA with it.

    Like most automatic weps, you don't want to be firing long range anyway, even if the weapon says so. You don't want to be barrel stuffing with it either, as it loses a lot of DPS races even though it has very good hipfire accuracy. Try to stay around 10-30m and abuse the extra ADS movement speed.

    Handling is anywhere from 5-7 bullet bursts when ADS. Pull down and to the right for recoil. What may not be obvious is that the NS-11 weapons have .75 ADS move speed instead of the .5 that most weapons have, which can throw off your aim if you aren't used to it, but it does make you a harder target to hit.

    The DPS is lower than the beast weapons like Tar or GR-22, so you have to be aiming for the head even with NWA nerf, but the weapon's handling allows this.

    40 bullets and 2 sec short reload is very good, reload often.

    My NS11 stats
    • Up x 4
  5. InexoraVC

    NS-11A is a reliable mid range weapon. 1x is preffered but 2x is surprisingly good for some scenarios. Just aim for the head.

    I personally like NS-11A more than TAR.
  6. JibbaJabba

    This is a great post and the kind of thing I hope people get from the forums.

    Yes, ns-11a is a fantastic gun. In the top X list somewhere for sure. Hope the OP comes to enjoy it.
    • Up x 4
  7. ZeroVeroes

    I like the Heatwave skin and used money on it thinking it was really cool. However My struggle intensifies from a lack of knowledge on handling a lot of weapons outside shot guns and snipers. On top of that my difficulties increase even more so while facing the NC. I find TR the easiest to fight. Defiantly gonna try the advice the nice person gave me and hope i can make this assault rifle work.
  8. ZeroVeroes

    So no barrels or ammo attachments? as i was thinking short barrel would help a lot with the bloom issues at mid-long range.
  9. Somentine

    The bloom is the exact same as most ARs, 0.05 when ADS. Idk y it feels like more for you, but I'd just suggest playing in the training continent and clicking heads for like 5-10 mins striaght.

    No barrel unless you want suppressor.
    SPA ammo is okay alone. HVA ammo if you do suppress it. But you can run with neither; though SPA keeps the 7 bullet body shot a little farther out, you aren't really going for body shots with this gun.

    Small note, since the horizontal recoil is all left, it is harder to track left and keep recoil down, which is why you burst 5 when tracking left (or longer range) and around 7 when tracking right.

    If you need more info, or other info/guides, there is an 'official' unofficial PS2 discord server that you can find from google. Lots of really good mentors there to.


    If it helps them, which I hope, it would be one of the only positive things to come out of these forums recently. Still sad that people with a lot of knowledge (like TobiMK and a couple others) avoid these forums because it's typically worse than even Reddit.
  10. ZeroVeroes

    a
    ah i'm very bad with headshots outside snipers. I usually aim upper chest. I'm just dedicating to assault rifles as medic so i can grind to rank 100 for aps and directive weapons since i heard those were best weapons in game. I try to use every attachment cause i thought more attachments = better weapon.
  11. Somentine

    You're going to want to go for headshots with nearly every weapon in the game. Some weapons are just really good at bodyshotting as well due to their high RoF/damage model. In the end, taking some time to do it correctly (setting up sensitivity, graphics settings for stable high FPS, learning to move, learning meta loadouts, and practicing aiming for the head) will net you a lot more fun later on for a little pain now.

    As for attachments, they typically come with downsides. For nearly every weapon you want laser sight because you can't control CoF accuracy besides bursting, and even when you aren't trying to be extreme CQC you will still run into situations where you are forced to hipfire. Except for niche cases, the only good barrel is suppressor or compensator (where the negative is canceled out by the laser sight).

    I usually only run 1x scope and laser sight alone on a lot of weapons. The ammo and barrel are usually for specific weapons or use cases.