The Foundry (advice on buying upgrades)

[FIZ]

Confuzzled about buying a new upgrade?  Holla at your mates.  Stickiness please!

[FIZ]

I am about to buy the HEAT upgrade for my lightning.  Any reason I should not merge a high powered cannon with a fast, available frame for Rommely goodness?  I am tempted to go all the way for an AP cannon but I am not Scrooge McDuck.

[Wyld Karde]

Bought anti-tank mines for my Engineer earlier today so I thought I'd use this to let you folks know my initial thoughts.

They're very much a good news/bad news bundle.  The downsides are that you buy individual mines much like grenades, but for a whopping 75 infantry points each time.  In addition to that, they take up the slot where your ammo box would usually go, so you're giving up one of the engineer's most reliable sources of XP.  Final downside, they can be shot and destroyed, either deliberately by an observant enemy, or just caught in the blast when someone's strafing the road.
The good news is that if you use 'em right they pay off nicely.  You get xp for the vehicle and for anyone killed by the blast (such as it's crew).  I scored a magrider and it's pilot while respawning earlier and it took the sting out of that particular death.
As you'd expect, it's a very situational weapon.  Deployed in the right place at the right time you can really mess with an enemy armour column.  Misjudge it and you'll just be blowing resources for no good reason and really missing your ammo box.
Still, for a hundred certs it won't break the bank to grab 'em and give 'em a try.

[FazzBumm]

C4 !!! I got 2x C4 on my medic and i regularly sneak up on heavy tanks and boom them into hell ... If you have nothign else in that slot its really worth a buy.

seeing someone in a base firing one of that strong turrets on ur friends sunderer? Bring ur c4 and give him a present! 2 C4 kill nearly everything ...

[Adept]

I'm saving up for C-4 on light assault. Tanks mines sound interesting as well.

How exactly does one use the C-4? Does it become an additional weapon, or replace your grenades? <-- I have a grenade bandoleer so my LA carries two.

[Wyld Karde]

So I splashed out on SC earlier and bought myself a locking missile launcher for my heavy.  There's three models available; one anti-tank, one anti-air and one that affects both but has a smaller warhead.  I took the third option.  It's always the same, take an anti-tank weapon out and the skies will be filled with enemy aircraft.  Take an anti-air and the flyers have all buggered off but there's an armour column coming 'round the bend.

Cons:
* Small warhead.  You won't be getting many outright kills on anything heavier than a Flash.
* Locking takes a few seconds.  If the target moves out of range, ducks behind cover, or some twit on your team stands in front of you during that time, you'll need to reaquire the target.
* Lock range could be longer.  An anti-air turret or MAX will be able to fire at targets much further out than you can.
* No dumbfire mode.  If you don't have a target locked you can't launch.

Pros:
* It's a fire and forget weapon.  Even a fumble-fingered twit like me can rack up an awful lot of assists and some kills to boot.  If you get a vehicle kill you get points for the crew, too.

That one pro makes up for all the cons for me.  I've had a spectacular time farming certs with it and don't regret spending money on it at all.

[Andon]

I have the Crow and the Hawk, anti-tank and anti-air, respectively.

Pros: Both can fire "Dumb" - Making the anti-air a good all-around one once you get used to the semi-rapid drop.
-Both lock onto vehicles at reasonable range (Crow seems to have a longer range than the Hawk, oddly enough)
-Both have reasonable sized warheads. Two missiles take out most fighters. It's easy to get the last shot in with the anti-air.

Cons: Same as above minus being unable to fire while not locked.

[Koln]

The Hawk has a really short locking range because fighter pilots complained a lot about inf being overpowered against aircraft ^^.

[Adept]

I have the thing that Wild has, and I second his analysis. Knowing what I know now, I would maybe have gone for the Hawk and just used DF mode vs. tanks.

On the other hand the combo launcher does have it's moments, especially if you have somebody feeding you ammo. Warhead is a a bottled fart though. 

Dorjan got C-4 for his light assault today, and it seems utterly sweet. 100 infantry points a pop though.

[Solarflux]

Well Adept, the idea is not that you blow up a tank all by yourself. The power of the weapon lies in the use of multiple launchers. With 3 heavies shooting at a tank it dies really quick. Just need coordination.

The combo weapon does seem useless against airplanes though.

[Wyld Karde]

I wouldn't say it's useless against aircraft.  True, you won't get many kills, but it's an excellent way to deter flyers from your particular patch of airspace.  Two hits and they're off to find a spot to get patched up before something actually dangerous tries to finish them off.  And if there's friendly anti-air operating in the area you'll rack up a lot of assists and one or two kills to boot.

[Adept]

[quote=&quot;Solarflux&quot;]
The combo weapon does seem useless against airplanes though.
[/quote]
Oddly I have to disagree here. I kill more jes than tanks with it. You just need to let the pilots use their counters first, and launch it at their tail so they can't shake it off. Rocket pod fighters doing a ground attack run are almost always easy to hit from any angle, they hardly ever break off their attack to dodge.

[Adept]

I'm looking at getting this thing, and the night vision upgrades for my Reaver

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/M30_Mustang_AH

It's rather underwhelming if you trial it in it's default state, but upgrade to 5 or 6 shots in the magazine, and the experience should be quite different. It's essentially not balanced for the 100 cert default version.