Planetside 2: The Ideal Squad Composition

Dave, are you still writing posts about a game that is 5 years old? Yes, yes I am XD

At any rate, I've given quite some thought over the past 4 years to what the ideal squad composition in Planetside is, and I'm finally ready to start articulating it. I always dreamed of having a squad where everyone could specialize into roles and know their place, and with 6 members in the Arkansas Rangers all approaching level 20, I can start doing that.

To be clear, this is a general squad comp, aimed at being able to deal with a wide variety of situations. Primarily though, this is an all infantry squad composition aimed at being able to take or hold a point, and as such this squad comp doesn't call for any maxes or vehicle support.


Fireteam Diamonds - Command Section

1. Squad Lead
    Class: Any
    Equipment: Squad Beacon

For the time being, this will generally be the role I will fill, and as such, it requires a great deal of flexibility in contrast to other roles. Indeed a decent amount of the time I will need to be an infil to hack a terminal and pull a cloaked sundy for the squad, or a light assault so I can put the beacon in a good place. The main skill for a squad lead is being able to read a map, and about 40% of your time will be spent with the map screen open and making sure you're in a winnable fight and everyone is where they need to be.

2. Pathfinder
    Class: Infiltrator
    Equipment: Sniper Rifle/DMR and Sidearm you are comfortable with, Upgraded Cloak, Squad Beacon.

The eyes and ears of the squad. The pathfinder will be typically called upon to pull a Flash or Valk and go ahead to the next prospective base to scope out the opposition. As such, this role requires a level of independence and self-sufficiency. If called upon to scout out an enemy base, in the time between scouting out a base and the squad arriving, the Pathfinder should try to hack turrets, vehicle terminals, and pull a sundy is necessary. The Pathfinder will also be responsible for placing a beacon so the squad can drop in when there are not other spawns available. When the squad arrives/in the event it is a friendly base you are trying to defend, the Pathfinder should find high ground overlooking the point. Once their, their primary role is to call out threats approaching the point and attempt to thin them out with their sniper rifle. Finally, if the point has been held and the squad is starting to push out, the Pathfinder should scout around the base and attempt to find and mark any enemy Sunderers. In sum, the role of the Pathfinder is to be the first in, and to vector the squad towards targets/alert them to threats.


Fireteam Clubs - Assault Section

Both fireteams will have five members are be similar in a lot of ways. However, Spades will include a couple specialists and for that reason, Clubs is the fireteam charged with being the front line. If there is a point hold and a close range knife-fight to be had at a pair of doors, this is the fireteam that will be charged with holding it.

3. Assault
    Class: Heavy Assault
    Equipment: Jackhammer, Crow

To really deal with a given situation, the squad requires at least one shotgun. To that end, the assault will be the tip of the sperk for Fireteam Clubs. If there is a door, the assault is the first one in.

4. Gunner 1
    Class: Heavy Assault
    Equipment: LMG, Hawk

While the Assault will sit in the front of the squad, the Gunner will hold the mid-field and lay down suppressive fire. They're also the one charged with combating air should it appear.

5. Combat Engineer 1
    Class: Engineer
    Equipment: Auto-Turret, Hardlight Barrier

The assault engineer is charged with supplying ammunition to Fireteam Clubs, and setting up their hardlight barrier and auto-turret in an advantageous location to help with the hold. Intelligent hardlight barrier placement is the key to a hold, as it impedes enemy movement and protects the Assault.

6. Combat Medic 1
    Class: Medic
    Equipment: Upgraded Medic Tool, Revive Grenade, Fully Upgraded Grenade Bandolier, Shield R egen, C4

The most important member of the squad in any fight, the combat medic is charged with staying in the back, providing covering fire and keeping the squad healthy and on their feet. Revive grenades are essential to this end, alongside a fully upgraded bandolier so you can carry 4 of them. Combat medics should also place their shield regen devices in advantageous spots, one near the door to support the Assault, the other near the middle of the zone to cover the other squad members. Finally, Combat Medics are charged with carrying C4 for the squad, for countering maxes in a knife fight and taking out enemy vehicles and hardpoints.

7. Combat Medic 2
    Class: Medic
    Equipment: Ditto to Combat Medic 1

Ditto to Combat Medic 1


Fireteam Spades - Support Section

In contrast to Clubs, Spades contains a number of specialists and consequently has less raw firepower at their disposal. In the classic example of an indoor point hold, Spades will be charged with covering "Long Stairs" and "Short Stairs" while Clubs protects the "Double Back" and the point itself.

8. Gunner 2
    Class: Heavy Assault
    Equipment: LMG/SMG, Hawk

Without an Assault in the Squad, Gunner 2 is the focal point of Spades, and will serve as the squads front line. For this reason, they have a bit of flexibility in their loadout and can take an SMG if it fits their playstyle better.

9. Scout
    Class: Infil
    Equipment: SMG, Upgraded Motion Darts, Upgraded Cloak, Flash Bang

To supplement the spotting of the Pathfinder, the Scout will continually fire motion dart trackers around the combat zone (resupplied by Combat Engineer 2). They will generally play on the edges of the combat zone, using their cloak and SMG to surprise and flank opponents. However, they should not wander so far as to be unrevivable. Their flash bang should be used in conjuction with the main push into an enemy held point, or in response to a major enemy push. Their primary purpose, however, is to keep the squad updated on threats and incoming enemy waves through use of motion darts.

10. Archer
      Class: Engineer
      Equipment: Archer, Sidearm you are comfortable with, MANA Turret, Hardlight Barrier

The Archer (Anti-Material Rifle that is very strong versus MAXes) generally has limited usefulness. But when you need one, you need one. To that end, the primary purpose of the Archer is to combat enemy MAX threats, and should be called up whenever an enemy MAX is encountered. On a point hold, their secondary purpose is to set up their Hardlight Barrier and MANA Turret in advantageous positions (preferably the latter with a long avenue of fire), and serve as a base of suppressive fire for Fireteam Spades. Since they will be likely sniped quite a bit on their turret, Combat Medic 3 should keep a close eye on them.

11. Combat Engineer 2
      Class: Engineer
      Equipment: Ditto to Combat Engineer 1

Ditto to Combat Engineer 1

12. Combat Medic 3
      Class: Medic
      Equipment: Ditto to Combat Medic 1

Ditto to Combat Medic 1, but with the added note that as the only medic in Spades, you have quite a bit more pressure on you. Moreover, you should pay special attention to the Scout so that they aren't wandering outside where you can revive them, and to the Archer to keep them off the ground.


In sum, this squad setup has:

3 Heavy Assault
3 Medics
3 Engineers
2 Infiltrators
1 Flex

And in terms of equipment has:

1 Sniper Rifle/DMR
1 Shotgun
1-2 LMGs
1 Anti-Material Rifle
2 Auto-Turrets
1 MANA turret
3 Hardlight Barriers
1 Crow
2 Hawks
2 Beacons
3-12 Revive Grenades
3 C4's

While this squad isn't specialized and is not the best at punching into a room, it can handle a variety of situations well and is very well-rounded. Whether it needs to attack a point, defend a point, face MAXes, chase off air, fight in close quarters, or suppress at 100 meters, it has tools at its disposal to tackle the situation.

Charterstone Chronicle, Game 4

After over a month's hiatus for Daniel being in Japan, we finally resumed our Charterstone game last night. To that end, having this blog was super useful as I was able to remind myself of where I was and my general plans before we started the game. And, in a surprising turn of events, I was able to tie Daniel for the win at 55 points each. This allowed me to finish filling out the glory needed to start next game with an additional peril - which, I'm beginning to suspect may not be very strong because by the time you've finished seeding the map with them, there may not be any of the color you want left, but eh, c'est la vie.

At any rate, junkyard was super useful this game, and indeed, my opening robot placement (enabled by my saved resource and my free resource) netted me two guests - although only one of them granted VP. No worries, I already had one going into this game and was able to net another one soon after. Then I scored a coup and got the friend who helps me with gold generation within my charter, perfect for making the granary not suck. Between these four advancement cards, I netted somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 VP and ~15 Gold, a very respectable haul and the major factor contributing to my tied win. I was able to get the number up that high through using the Chalice of Immortality to get an extra income proc, which benefited me more than my competitors.

All in all, robots seem to be the best minion. The free market indicates so at least, as all six were taken up this game. I will say, having to constantly pass the advancement hand around the table does slow the game down dramatically though. The amount of each minion people bought this game (3 robots, 2 chefs, 1 golem), does seem to roughly correspond with my power ranking for them. I feel bad for Megan with her ghosts, but she's still doing okay. Megan's big achievement this game was not only unlocking all three of her final tier 20 point buildings, but then constructing them as well. Coalumbia has become an industrial hellscape, but it pushed her to win this game's guidepost. I think myself and Daniel had aspirations of beating her on the guidepost for this game, which we quickly discovered was to no avail.

Daniel got out to a big lead early by leveraging his persona that granted VP and automatic worker pick-ups for reds, then cashed those in at his armory. Combined with Booker, this put him in the lead for the entire game, and it was only the slow build up of my Guest VPs combined with 10 points from the Reputation track that allowed me to tie him at the end.

This week on the whole had a much narrower spread, with everyone really hitting their stride and finishing between 40-55 points. All but one slot in Dani's charter have now been constructed, and I think a total of 7 buildings have additionally been built over.

Megan clearly had the most point value in buildings at the conclusion of the game, and she chose to not expand into the sky islands without the increasingly sinister Forever King's permission. I think she passed up an opportunity to score herself about 70 points here, but we'll find out when the game ends. At any rate, we now have sky islands! The least well hidden "surprise" in the box. I think we've actually discovered all the game systems at this point, as there are no empty rule slots left so its likely the only changes coming will be rule changes.

Amanda discovered income associated buildings, but there is only one currently available for players in her charter. At the very end, Danielle discovered items, which seem good but hardly game breaking or paradigm shifting. This was all despite players charterstoning at just about the same rates as before. I'm secretly really glad the feature explosion is finally settling. We still really need the last two minions though, I really want to see what they do.

Caralee it seems has the "Charterstone" building equivalent that she can place in The Lab. Dani's Constructor was very popular this game, and the possibility of combining it with the treasure that allows you to skip a building's cost seems extremely strong. In the south, Megan has turned her charter into a treasure collecting and exploiting juggernaut. Amanda has the Grandstand replacement, but objectives and cloud port are both still being I think a tad underutilized. I also expected I would see people try to go for more private objectives (which we ruled this game you may keep hidden), but to date, it's a feature people aren't making much use of. We'll see how this changes as the building slots and charterstone boxes dry up.

One thing to sort for next game will be whether or not you need to place sky islands over your charter at the outset of the game to build on them, and whether this effects what buildings you get access to. For my part, I really like where my Charter is at currently (completed the Windmill this game in a vain attempt to win the guidepost), and am very content with my current raft of buildings.

For my part, next game I will be trying to utilize my Famine busting persona, as I finished the Pastry Shop on the second to last turn of this game for the possibility of mimicking Daniel's opening from this one. However, my first move from now until the end of this campaign will probably always be placing a robot on the Junkyard. Starting off with two extra advancements, especially two extra guests, is just amazing and promises to allow me to rake in a lot of free stuff in the games to come.

Final side-bar: Dani and I got to finally have our joke a few weeks in the making with this game. We went to a pumpkin patch over fall break, and spend $3 on a half dozen mini-pumpkins to use as the "pumpkins" in this game instead of the little wooden miniatures. Totally worth it, and the highlight of the night :)

Dave's Cert Guide (PS2)

So, recently I've been trying to pull friends into playing Planetside 2, an aging MMOFPS, with varying degrees of success. It's a game I've played off and on for years, but that I keep coming back to as a it scratches my itch to for a casual FPS. This round of playing it has been a lot more fun thanks in large part to Daniel, Hubert, Luke, and Michael. The game is just a lot more enjoyable when you have a squad to coordinate with, and the bigger the better. While I've been a member of a number of outfits over the years, it's really nice to finally be in one with friends, even if we just play on a weekly basis.

At any rate, for as much as I love it, PS2 is at times a deeply flawed game - and nowhere is this more apparent than the new player experience, which many of the recruits for our unit, the Arkansas Rangers, are currently experiencing. Perhaps most unclear is what you should be spending certs on. Certs, and the proficiencies and abilities they unlock, truly are what make the game pop and allow you to be able to be effective on the battlefield. But, without premium, they are an incredibly precious commodity - so efficient investment of them to get the most bang for your buck is a must. With this in mind, here is my quick guide to what you should be investing in right off the bat. These are not hard and fast rules, but should be taken as strong suggestions.

If you realize you haven't invested your certs well, never fear, at BR15 you can get all your cert spending refunded to spend again.


Planetside 101

1. Nanoweave/Flak Armor

You should at the very least invest in level 1 (preferably up to levels 3/4) for one of these in all your classes, depending on whether you are encountering more explosive damage or getting in more gunfights with that class. The reason you keep losing 1v1's at low BR levels is because your opponents have these suit slots fully upgraded and can simply out-tank you. The low levels are cheap to invest in, and will go a long way towards increasing your survivability.

2. Lock-On Launchers (HA Only)

For the NC, grab the Crow for ground units, the Hawk for air units. Or you can save up and grab the Annihilator to be able to lock-on to both at the cost of being able to dumb-fire your weapon. I would recommend just grabbing the two specialized ones and equipping the one you need as necessary. I would generally recommend the Hawk first as you can still fight ground units with it (or with your default Shrike), while the lack of a lock-on launcher leaves you completely helpless when facing air. Having these tools on hand will also go a long way towards increasing your Cert income.

3. Medical Tool (Medic Only)

Having trouble getting kills? Support your team by being a medic! In all seriousness, medics and engineers statistically get the most income of any class and are completely invaluable. Indeed, a squad that rolls in without at least 33% of its composition being medics is headed for trouble. Each level in your medic tool decreases the time to revive, increases the range at which you can revive, and gives the person you revive more starting health. Each revive is essentially 80% of a kill XP-wise, and leveling up your tool means you can do it more often and more safely.

4. Repair Tool (Engi Only)

Much of the same logic applies here. Engies are always in demand, especially with maxes around or on vehicle pushes. Leveling up this tool allows you to repair longer before it overheats. Another solid way to provide utility to your team even if you aren't giving kills, and getting yourself lots of certs in the interim.

5. 1x/2x Red Dot Sights

Having trouble hitting things? Improved optics for most guns are only 5 certs away. Play around in the VR room and see which sights you like the most (or maybe you just prefer the iron sights), but  even the most troublesome starter guns can be improved by better optics.

Honorable mentions here that improve certain gun sub-classes: Forward grip for LMGs and Compensators for carbines


Planetside 201


Beyond the most basic proficiency listed above, what you cert more into is often more a matter of your play-style and what niche you seek to fill in your squad. These are the ones that will benefit you in the widest variety of situations and will lead to the most cert income, but can be deviated from if you have something specific you are upgrading towards.

Before we go any farther though,

6. Weapons

Most weapons are strictly speaking, side-grades, having clear strengths and weaknesses that reward a player for maximizing them and punish a player for using them outside their niche. With this in mind, I generally don't recommend buying weapons early, as they are prohibitively expensive and the default weapons you can access are solid in most situations with enough experience using them. To my mind though, there are a couple exceptions to this.

6A. The MGR-S1 Gladius

This is a ridiculous SMG that only the NC has access to, and makes you extremely potent at close-mid range engagements while still retaining some efficacy at range. Slap soft point ammunition and a advanced laser sight on this thing, and you can win most 1v1 engagements at 35 meters or less. What's even better? All classes have access to SMGs. Buying this gun is a solid way to improve combat efficacy on all of your classes.

6B. The MGR-L1 Promise

My big complaint with NC Heavy Assaults is that the Gauss Saw, while a truly godly weapon, is very hard for new players to use. Thankfully, the NC has access to one of the best LMGs in the game in the form of the Promise. It combines high rate of fire and unrivaled accuracy at long ranges while still maintaining good damage. If you play a lot of HA, invest in this gun.

7. Tank Mines (Engy Only)

2-3 tank mines kills most things, and you would be amazed how often you score multi-kills with these them. Just remember to switch to Engi every 20 minutes or so, mine a road that will probably be frequented by opponents, and watch the certs roll in.

8. Revive Grenades (Medic Only)

Want to revive 20 people at once? Invest in Revive Grenades! These are truly the item that take Medic cert generation above and beyond, and the tool that make medics so crucial to holding crowded indoor point rooms where a defensive position can be wiped in a second by a well placed brick of C4. Cert into Bandolier to carry up to 4 of them into combat, and you can turn your medic into a cert generating machine who can singlehandedly save a point hold.

9. C4 (Light Assault and Medic)

I hesitate to recommend this, because proper delivery of C4 is difficult and often ends in your death. However, C4 is the best infantry tool available to deal with vehicles and MAXes in close quarters. A skilled light assault with C4 is truly a force to be reckoned with, so if you want to carve out a niche for yourself there are the ultimate terror of the rooftops and MAXes, grab C4 for your Light Assault (and maybe medic too) - just be aware you that while the certs will be rolling in when you pull it off, you will be dying often in trying to pull it off.

10. Nanite Auto-Repair Systems/Vehicle Ammo Dispenser (Sunderer Utility Upgrades)

I don't recommend vehicle upgrades and air upgrades to new players - there are simply more important things to be investing in, and unless you are coordinating with a squad, you will frequently fall victim to significantly more experienced pilots and drivers in more upgraded vehicles. The cost of making a vehicle combat efficient is very high, and you're better off saving this to later in your career as a player. However, there is a notable exception to this in the form of Sunderers.

You have to learn how to drive, properly place, and deploy Sunderers, full stop. Offensives live and die by Sunderer placement and availability. You'll also find that a properly deployed Sunderer is a cert machine, cranking you out at least 5 XP per spawn off of it. In a large battle, that adds up fast.

Upgrading your Sunderer to dispense ammo to friendly vehicles, or alternatively repair them, is a great way to increase your passive cert income and support your team while already driving a cert grinding monster. For example, a common tactic is to park 1-2 repair sundys around a deployed sundy to keep it alive, and if its being shot consistently, this will make you boo-koo cash while you fight on foot. Think of these upgrades as the bonds or index funds of cert generation while you go out on foot to earn your daily salary killing spandex weirdos.

At any rate, those are my top suggestions for how to invest your Certs as a new player. Feel free to post questions - especially if you want a class specific suggestion.