[Guide] NC for beginners

So, you're new and would like to know how to play NC as a beginner?

After 40 levels I can say one for sure:

Don't. Just don't play NC.

Play other fractions first and than maybe consider NC.

Their basic weapons are hardest to use for beginners and only after certing into them fully they get sort of good, but not better than other fractions. If you look at the stats, they all do similar range of damage with NC doing the most per bullet (but at similar times to kill). The difference is that NC needs to shoot in super accurate bursts, preferably remaining still at all times even at close range for the stats to add up. It's due to horrible cone of fire, bloom per shot, movement penalties etc. and since every bullet counts (with their horrible rate of fire), while other fractions are more spray n' pray n' dodge friendly and definitely better for beginners.

NC weapons have use which may be counter-intuitive for beginners - for example NC6 gauss saw (nicknamed GodSaw by trolls), the stock machine gun for heavy assaults. You would think that you can just, you know, do a heavy assault run into a base with your machine gun and open continuos fire at the first thing you see? Right? Well, that's a horrible way of playing that gun. After full certification process ends up being unusable in close quarters combat, relying on single-shot long distance kills or 2-3 bullet bursts at max while standing absolutely still. Or the NC specific Phoenix guided rocket launcher introduced as an anti-vehicle weapon, which can't keep up with moving vehicles and has too short range to serve it's purpose. It got even nerfed so it won't kill infantry now when directly hit (!), the only thing it was good for. Now 3 pheonix rockets do as much damage as a single decimator rocket, making it even more pointless.

It is obvious that TR and VS were considered first, while NC got added as a afterthought. NC seems to be a mix of bad ideas glued together with the mindset that it just needs to be different than other fractions, no matter if it is actually any good or serves a purpose. While TR for example gets a chaingun as their fraction specific weapon which is good at any range, we get a pomp-action triple-burst shotgun which is only good at point-blank range if you're extremely accurate. To remind you my dear beginner, the game is all about mid-long range with a few interval fights in close quarters. Even in biodome or techplants you're more times than not fighting at medium range.

NC is very bad for beginners also due to our fraction specific fighter - the reaver. It has the best afterburners, but it has the worst handling, manoeuvrability and a hitbox so 'blobular' that even the distance advantage you get from extra speed will still make you an easy target (comapred to small / slim hitboxes of other fighters). Not to mention that it doesn't help you much in dogfights. Prepare to save thousands of certs to make that playable... or go to TR and fly their aircraft, the one with best cruise speed, handling and smallest hitbox straight from of the box with no upgrades! Much more beginner friendly.

MAXs are in a similar situation. Out of the box you are hardly competitive at anything further than point blank. You get a shotgun and a slow rocket-launcher. Everything will just run away from you or in case of heavy armor it will just outmanoeuvre you, well, maybe besides deployed sunderers or turrets. No surprise that nobody cares to use MAXs to support their troops, as other fractions do.

I could go on but I think you got the idea, my dear beginner. There's a lot of people (two fractions of them) that will not agree, but you know how it is when you're in the minority. This, however doesn't stop other fractions from targeting mostly NC, since they just find it too competitive fighting against one another. It also explains why a lot of experienced players run away from NC into other fractions, like most of my friends playing this game. But it's the general trend, you see NC was once the most popular faction, but it's slowly getting the least popular one. No matter what are the populations (in favour or against) we always have the lowest kills per empire. When NC population was booming, it was explained that a large population has smaller proportion of enemies per soldier, when NC population dropped, the low kill count is explained by being out-populated by other fractions in fights, thus loosing more. NC is always accused of having stupid and non-experienced playerbase which needs to stop complaining and "L2P", which of course statistically-speaking makes no sense when numbers of players goes into thousands. I guess it goes well with the lore of NC being the underdog having the hardest job on and off the battlefield. Do Dev's know about this? Well, current developments suggest that they find NC in order and no changes are planned. That's why I ask you - do you really want to be part of this, my dear NC beginner? No you don't, so go play other fraction and no worries, you will thank me later.

How to play NC:

Each and every time you lose go to forumside.

1st post was most insightful than the OP.

No surprise here from TR/VS players.

Can you loose in PL2? It's not a single death that made me want to prevent someone a lot of crap in the future, it's playing all 3 fractions and gathering info scattered around the forum. NC is just bad overall, especially when beginners are considered.

NC is actually IMO much more interesting to play than the other factions.

Yes it may be harder in the beginning but once you master the ES weapons (especially the default ones), most of them are amazing ! This much bigger margin of progression as compared to other faction is what keeps me playing this game. If I had begun playing VS or TR I guess I would have reached the skill ceiling very quickly and I would just have gotten bored and go to another game...

Feeling that you actually get better day after day at doing something is really motivating.

Ok, so you like to play as an underdog? Fine by me.

NC forumsiders really need to climb down off their cross and get back to playing the game. It's ridiculous, any more.

Nope, it's rediculous that we still play PS2 and SOE don't give a **** about our UP ES Weapons, overpriced Gear or ****** Starterweapons THAT is rediculous.

Lol just plain Lol
There is some truth in this but guy is blowing up our faction weakness way out of proportion.

Wow, I'm a forumsider now? With my 9 posts? Do I get any freebies?
[/sarcasm off]

So the numbers of unique players for each faction is 7-digit long and somehow NC got all the complaining ones? Out of no apparent reason?

Statistics cry when it reads your post.

How to play NC:

Be Medic

Follow Around Zerg

Get promised bonus checks

Put in pool at home

Bonus checks never come

Get Jello of the month club membership instead

Perhaps you should check your facts before you start saying stuff like this? While the stats page may suggest that the phoenix does very little damage in reality this is only the damage vs infantry. Against vehicles the phoenix gets a large damage multiplier that makes the damage output the same as for the decimator. Rocket damage stats in general are a bit wonky because of all the multipliers involved. How else would you explain the fact that G2A launchers will take only half the health of an ESF while the default launcher will kill it outright, despite the difference in damage being relatively small according to the stats.

The real reason people don't like the phoenix much is the low dps, since you can only start reloading after the rocket has hit. (well there's also the limited range and slow projectile speed but this is the main reason)

The issue with NC isn't that we are fundamentally UP, it is that we have nothing to draw players towards the faction, nothing cool and unique that people like to use and people hate to face,if we were the shotgun faction for example and the others only had access to one semi-auto (ala PS1) but that ship has long since sailed.

All of our facton specific weaponry is either flat out useless, a carbon copy of common pool or so hugely situational than 90% of the time it isn't viable to use, we have no go-to toys that give us an edge and an individual flavour.

The only truly powerful thing we get is the Jackhammer, which is just a slightly better shotgun and the AP Vanguard, which is easily the best anti-tank tank in the game, which is cool, but unfortunately being great at point blank 1on1 tank fights in the slowest tank doesn't really translate into the game very well when they rarely happen and the price for that power is being by far the most vulnerable to a tanks biggest threat...infantry.

That is why given the choice, both of the other factions would rather fight us than each other, if you take TR and remove Mossies, Vulcan harrasers, infantry farming tanks, every grunt being a walking lock-on AV platform and a viable MAX for every situation and you have the NC.

We aren't underpowered, we are boring to use and predictable to fight.

The best you can do for beginners is suggest they go vs or even tr to begin playing tbh. Nc now has the worst kill/death ratio on every single server. Literally nc come in dead last on every single one and its not close. That's very telling of our low dps heavy assault, tough to deal with weapons. We also came in dead last in wds on every server. Dead last on alerts won on every single server. and our tanks and esfs come in dead last in every single scoring category (kpm,kills per hour, kills per unit etc)
SoE is apparently blind to the balance problem so a good idea is to just go tr or better yet vs.
The kdr is the most telling of the balance issue, its measured on dasanfall stats. There is a thread on reddit about it. Basically it measures 300,000 players so is not some small sampling. The fact that nc is dead last on every single server meeds to be a wakeup call for the devs. Ohh and btw its not just new people the gap in kdr actually gets worse in the higher br levels 80 too 100 etc.

my advice: buy a blitz or cyclone asap. now you don't have to actively avoid towers and biolabs anymore.

nc, for some inane reason, does not get a cheap cqc carbine or lmg. even though the default nc weapons are worse in cqc thsn the other factions.

it's re-tar-ded.

After 98 levels I completely disagree with everything you said.

Honestly, I would recommend playing on NC first, since it forces you to learn how to control your fire, burst fire, react quickly, and play smart. Then you can swap over to the other factions and be amazed at how awesome you are with their super-accurate, no recoil weapons.

If you want a close-quarters weapon for your NC Heavy Assault, just get the jackhammer. With the 3-round burst mode, you can basically instagib everything that gets into your effective range.

I did. I've checked here and here. If what you're saying is true (which would be totally cool, but please quote your sources) we're left with "just" low dps, range and projectile speed. So not all is lost!

Had about an hour available near the end of double XP, the NC weapons worked fine for me.

https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428059527740028273/killboard

AF-19 = everything I want from the T-5 AMC
Magshot = a great all around sidearm
Bouncing Betty = much more user friendly than claymores

is that why u are here ?

Faction. F-A-C-T-I-O-N. Notice the lack of the letter "R" in the word.