Battlefield Protips #12 – #485: Use your equipment FFS

Look, we can’t all be great at Battlefield 3. Hell, we can’t all be good at it. Personally, my aim is mediocre, and my reaction speed is somewhere between molasses and sodium benzate.

But even with a negative kill-death ratio and the game sense of a 300-year old Galapagos tortoise, I still top the scoreboard time and time again.

What’s my secret, and how can you profit from it? It’s simple.

Use your fucking equipment.

Wait, what is equipment, anyway?

Your assault rifle isn’t equipment. Neither is your pistol. Or your grenades and knife. Those are weapons, which turn your enemies’ corpses into points.

Instead, equipment turns helping your goddamn team into points. If I’m still not clear, I’m talking about the items bound to keys 3 and 4. Or, for our console playing friends, the machines that don’t go pew-pew when you squeeze the fun lever. While a few items are still technically weapons, the vast majority don’t easily kill people.

Most equipment isn’t hard to use. In many instances, it’s fire-and-forget. Yet the large majority of Battlefield 3 players are very good at the “forget” part and very bad at the “fire” part. If we can start working together to remedy the situation, we’ll enjoy a more team-oriented gameplay experience with fewer random deaths and more remote controlled robots.

And who the hell wouldn’t want more of those?

Stop assaulting our honor and heal us

Many players refer to the Assault class as the Medic. If this isn’t giving you a shred of a clue where I’m headed, you need more help than I imagined. In addition to some fancy rifles, the Assault/Medic class has the ability to defy God’s will and undo death and injury with magic.

Yes, Assault is, by definition, the conjurer class of Battlefield 3, and if that’s not reason enough to play him, I don’t know what is. By summoning up all your strength and pressing the 3 button, you can throw a “health kit” to the ground that will undo bullet wounds, chemical burns, and PTSD within a large radius. Does it harness the power of Satan? Is it a relic of an ancient, Atlantean civilization? Who the fuck cares – just spam it whenever you can. Allies in your godly vicinity will quickly find themselves topped up at 100% health, ready to send the enemy forces back where they came from – disadvantaged Midwestern American towns.

In the event your reflexes aren’t good enough to pre-emptively stave off death, you can call upon the might of Dr. Frankenstein to revive your teammates with a defibrillator. Unlike in Battlefield Bad Company 2, your newly-zombified friend can choose whether or not to accept your miraculous work, meaning there is never a reason to not revive someone. Just like in real life, if you see a corpse on the ground, start pumping it with electricity and save the ethical ramifications for eggheads and necromancers.

Yes, you can technically use your defibrillator to kill enemies. And you can technically choose to wield an underbarrel grenade launcher instead of a magical device that rivals the very might of the Grim Reaper, but why would you ever make such a choice?

Don’t retcon the reason for recon

Look, I get it. You really like sniper rifles. So do I; they’re adorable! I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t warmed whenever I see a young child pick up a scoped weapon and play “put a hole in the enemy’s skull.” It’s truly an American pastime.

But it’s not called the “sniper” class or the “camper” class. It’s Recon, short for reconnaissance, French for “tell us where the hell the bad guys are so we can summarily execute them.” On a side note, my French is rusty.

Every Recon player spawns with one radio beacon that, when placed, gives the whole team an alternative spawn location. Find a cool camping spot? Why not share it? Got behind enemy lines? For fuck’s sake, put down the radio beacon. Don’t have a good place to put the radio beacon? Put it down anyway! You never know when your location could become a strategic point of interest.

Aside from the ability to make army men materialize out of thin air, the Recon has a whole slew of toys that provide intel on the opposing team. There’s a stationary motion sensor that shows enemy positions on the minimap (free points for spots), guaranteeing “psychic” reactions on your part. You have the SOFLAM, which is essentially a Virtual Boy that lets you spot foes from across the map and enable lock-on missiles (spot points, laser painting points, free Virtual Boy game emulation).

And let’s not forget the MAV, a motorized flying drone that gives you motion detection, heat vision, remote spotting, the ability to destroy enemy equipment (yes, it’s true), and a giant metal ram that can crush skulls by falling from the sky. It’s essentially a point-generating machine that grants your team knowledge of what’s around the corner without risking the bullet sandwich that normally accompanies a first person peek.

Support our troops: give them bullets

I’m not going to get into all the explosive weapons the Support class has. They’re great, if you like killing enemies. But for those too inept or too pacifist to pump lead into virtual human beings, I’ve got good news. You can score giant bonuses by abstaining from war while supplying the real men with an endless stream of bullets, rockets, and robots.

Just as the Assault player can wish health into existence, so too can you press the 3 button to bring munitions to the battlefield. And just like the Assault player, there’s no reason you should ever not be doing this. Not only do you constantly increase your score as your teammates empty their clips; you’ll also be able to replenish your own magazines. Hell, if you wait long enough, you’ll get back grenades, C4, and other goodies as well. Seems the only thing these supply crates can’t provide is an end to the meaningless military struggle between these warring factions.

It’d be funny if the death toll weren’t so high!

War has been re-engineered

While half the Engineer’s “equipment” consists of explosive ordinance whose use is fairly obvious, the other half can be used to best effect when (gasp!) helping one’s own team. If you prefer doing the dirty work yourself, there’s a welding torch capable of repairing vehicles on the spot. How does a torch undo the damage caused by laser-guided rockets?

Who cares? Just shut up and keep welding! You’ll earn points for helping out your buddies’ mechanical contraptions, and you can apply the repair tool to enemy vehicles/skulls for additional reward.

If you’d prefer to get in on the remote control toy fun of the Recon, you can summon your own EOD digipet to scoot out into harm’s way for you. He’s tough as hell to control, but boy can he repair. Hell, he can also defuse MCOM stations or, when needed, set up your opponent the bomb. And just like your own repair tool, he’s just as good at “repairing” enemy gastro-intestinal tracts.

Does it count as murder if your robot did it for you?

Do your part: Spam those buttons!

What’s the key takeaway of all this nonsense?

When in doubt, put equipment out.

There are very few circumstances when extra ammunition or health or information could hurt your team, and fewer instances still where it wouldn’t net you free points. You like expensive military hardware. You love low-effort, high-scoring tactics.

What are you waiting for? Flood the battlefield with equipment today!