here are some tips somebody posted on reddit for newbs. i have a few hours and know most of this NOW, but it woulda helped before.
This
thread is largely going to be directed at people who haven’t played
Planetmans before or spent too much time reading about it.
So I’ll start I guess.
Factions. There are three of them.
New Conglomerate. Apparently they’re overpopped pretty heavily for
you guys. Their arsenal is very solid, very few weak guns or gaps.
Thematics are blues/yellows and rectangles/hard edges. Their weapons
tend to have a lower rate of fire, with higher bullet damage (Including
the exclusive 200 damage tier, and little horizontal recoil and lots of
vertical recoil. This is good.)
Terran Republic. Their arsenal is aggressively average, but overall
perfectly useful and you won’t notice unless you’re a true MLGpro.
(Except for long range infantry AV, which TR has nothing reliable for)
Their theme is red/black and rounded edges. Their weapons tend to have
large magazine sizes and sometimes higher rates of fire. Their weapons
tend to have little vertical recoil and lots of horizontal recoil. This
is bad.
Vanu. The faction everybody loves to hate. Their arsenal is average
to above average (Regardless of what they’ll tell you) with many best of
guns. Their theme is spandex, purple, and angles. Their weapons tend to
have rates of fire on par with Terran Republic weapons, they also tend
to reload faster, but have less bullets per magazine. They tend to have
very low recoil.
Weapons in general are sidegrades. Almost all of the stock weapons
are very good. Stay away from Battle Rifles and burst weapons, those are
by and large pretty bad. (Except for the SABR-13 Assault Rifle for the
Terran Republic, which is a great gun and the only good burst weapon in
the game.) Almost every weapon class has options tailored for close
quarters, range, general purpose, etc.
Don’t waste your certs. You’ll get 100/level up to battle rank 15.
Choose a class and invest your first 1,000 into it. Keep the stock
weapon, pick up attachments, invest in suit slots. (Pick up some
equipment and probably a couple ranks of Advanced Shield Capacitors in
your suit slot. Nanoweave Mesh looks tempting, but isn’t a big deal
unless you can max it out and that’s like 2k certs)
Avoid certing out a MAX early unless you really, really want to.
They’re very cert hungry. (As are vehicles, but less to actually be
competitive.)
NS weapons are a great deal if you’re going to spend dollars on
things. They unlock across all factions if you do this and the NS
weapons are by and large stellar. They’re all accurate with very low
recoil and other nice features, but tend to have less killing power to
make up for it. (Also they have faction neutral tracers, which is nice.)
You’re going to die. A lot. Especially to things you don’t feel you
can do anything about. (Tanks, aircraft, random grenade, etc.) Trust me,
you will learn to deal with these things and will learn how to kill
them if you want to. (Pull armor from a nearby base, pick up a burster
MAX, paths to avoid, etc.) Don’t be discouraged, you will learn. The
game has a lot to learn, but it’s very satisfying. Trust me. Faith.
I can’t speak on outfits much. I’ve played solo basically all my time
(Which is a lot) except for stints in Drunk Division to do ridiculous
Mosquito balls while yelling, “SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS” But they’re definitely
a good time if you’re into that.
Vehicle things to know. Main battle tanks are relatively balanced no
matter what anyone tells you. NC have the most “tank” like tank. It’s
the most durable (The other two tie, the NC gets slightly higher
resistances.) but the overall least mobile. TR get the equivalent of a
Siege Tank from Starcraft. Vanu get a floaty hover-tank that wins out by
having lots of burst damage from its secondary anti-vehicle option and
overall mobility so it’s somewhat of an assassin tank, but overall it
does main battle tank things well.
The Valkyrie is pretty bad. Almost all of its weapons are bad.
ESFs are almost without a doubt overpowered, but I hear your flight controls are hard.
Pull a Sunderer. I believe they come with AMS now, so drive it up to a
fight, park it somewhere nice, deploy it. Now you can all spawn off it
and you’ll get certs for it.
Harassers are great. They’re super fun to. Try not to get one unless
you’ve got a buddy to drive or be your gunner. Randoms make terrible,
terrible gunners. (I once parked next to an enemy Sunderer to have my
random gunner trying to hit aircraft with my Vulcan. It won’t work and
seriously, just shoot the damn Sunderer.) You exceed in ganking lone
tanks by starting behind them and outmanuvering them or by zipping
around infantry fights dumping anti-infantry fire into them.
Wraith Flashes are almost definitely too good for being able to be
pulled indefinitely. Pick up Wraith Cloaking and a Fury or Renegade and
go to town. (Note, Wraith Cloaking only works if you’re an infiltrator
and you cannot shoot while cloaked.)
If you need certs, try Engineer and Medic, be generally supportive.
If you’re a slayer of man, Heavy Assault is the way to go. (I average
~100 certs/hour or more without any exp boosts as Heavy Assault)
Infiltrator is kind of a trap for new players and you’ll very rarely be
effective. (Start NC if you want to snipe, they get to start with a Bolt
Action Sniper Rifle, the other two factions start with crappy
Semi-Automatic ones.)
Bullet drop exists. (Vanu doesn’t have it on non-Snipers or Launchers.)
I know this is a lot, but there’s a lot to know and I’d hate to see
someone drop the game because they got scared off by the amount going
on. The game is huge. If you have any other questions, shoot me a PM and
I’d be happy to answer them. I play a lot of Terran Republic and a
little bit of New Conglomerate. (And a little, little bit of Vanu
sometimes.) I can probably answer whatever your question is.
Happy Planetmans.
Bonus info that you should know that nobody is tossing around.
Infantry has 500 health and 500 shields, Infiltrators are the only
exception with 500 health and 400 shields. (The Heavy Assault
Overshield, to my knowledge, is worth 700, but that’s actually 630 since
it costs 10% to activate it.)