=============================================================================== Battlefield 1943 Class/Combat Guide 1.0 By FooB / normanlove =============================================================================== ============ CONTENTS ============ 1) Introduction 2) Fundamentals 3) The Classes Explained 4) Rifleman 5) Infantryman 6) Scout 7) Working as a team 8) Vehicles/Encampments 10) Conclusion/Credits/Legal Stuff Version 1.0 - 22/07/2009 =============================================================================== INTRODUCTION =============================================================================== I decided to write this guide because Battlefield 1943 is a very, very good game. However, its different in many ways from its current rivals on the market, such as Call of Duty: WaW. Too frequently do i see people buy or try the game and never play it again in a fit of rage down to what is simple an unwillingness to learn the basics of a new game, because you automatically assume the basics are the same as everything else in the genre, and by extensionyou're automatically awesome at it. The idea of this guide is go instruct and guide new players into becoming better at the game, and therefore giving it more of a chance. As of right now, my copy of the game is for the Xbox 360. I have not played the PS3 version but as of writing this i can only assume that the two versions are nearly identical in everyway now that the PS3 version has unlocked Coral Sea. If i mention something that is correct int he 360 version but not in the PS3 version, let me know and i will amend things where possible. I will be getting the PC version when it comes out and hopefully expanding on the guide when it does, as the PC version will be different in terms of size and content. As of right now though, the PC version is still a few months away. =============================================================================== FUNDAMENTALS =============================================================================== If you're going to play this game, you will have to know what makes the game play the way it does, and what sets it apart from the other games that are available. There is only one game mode and it is known throughout the series as "Conquest". Basically, each team starts out with a full ticket bar, and five neutral capture points (or flags) on the map. There is also one "flag" which serves as a base. Bases are uncapturable so if you find yourself in a 0-5 flag situation, you can still spawn somewhere and continue playing. To capture a flag you must simply go and stand near it. For every person standing near it, the flag will capture quicker (up to 3 people). If there are both you and the enemy standing near it, then it will capture for the team who has to most people standing near the flag. If the number is equal, then the capture will be at a stalemate until the balance is shifted in one teams favour. i.e. if someone dies or backup arrives. Capturing is the primary objective. You will win or lose a game based on which team loses all of thier tickets first, not who kills the most or who dies the least. Keep that in mind when wondering where to go next. The game is very good at giving you the basic instructions on where you should be going, by having the "Front Line" symbol showing at all times during a game. The Front Line symbol indicated which flag is currently being contested and where there is a fight going on. You dont absolutley HAVE to go there if you dont want to, but if its quiet and you're looking for a fight, then head for the yellow symbol with two crossed rifles that looks like a yellow X. Combat in this game is similar to what you would expact, although with more emphasis placed on Accuracy rather than the sheer spray'n'pray approach you get with games like Call of Duty. Guns will do a lot less damage than you would intially expect and you will have to place most of your efforts in making sure as many of bullets hit your target as you can. There is no physical damage counter in this game except for a red-screen effect so it is hard to judge exactly how much damage bullets actually do, but i will outline what you should expect to use vs one target in the individual class guides. As for aiming your guns, the head is of course n instant kill, but should only be your primary target if you are a scout, and are confident enough in your aiming skills. Starting out, you should always be aiming for Centre Mass. This basically means aim for the chest. Getting hit in the chest will still damage very well, and when recoil forces your gun upwards, you will still be aiming at the chest or head. only a Headshot has the power to kill in one shot (not including explosives) so you will want to make as many of your bullets hit as possible. =============================================================================== THE CLASSES EXPLAINED =============================================================================== In the game, there are three classes. You have the rifleman, Infantryman and the Scout. There is no "Generic" class, as each class has two uses and is useful in the different situations you're likely to come across. Any class isfine to choose, so choose one according to your favourite playstyle. However, dont be afraid to change class if your team or squad is in need of a particular task. Team play is far more important in this game than just lone-wolfing it around and you will find that no matter what class you play as, you will play a far better game working in conjuntion with other people, rather than just wandering around alone. Do not be afraid to use your classes special abilities either. For instance, that lovely sniper rifle the scout uses is great for long range combat, but the demolition charges are actually the most potent explosive in the game, and useful for being up close and blowing the hell out of things. The best ways to make your classes as effective as possible will be explained in the next few secions. As a first for battlefield games, there is now no medic class present at all. Both health AND ammo is regenerated automatically and there is no need for ANY resupplying of any kind. As a result, there is no reviving a dead ally, however squad spawning is still there so you can still operate as a unit quite effectivley. =============================================================================== RIFLEMAN =============================================================================== This class is the easiest class to begin with, and is your best chance against other men. The loadout for the rifleman is as follows ;- 1x Semi-Automatic rifle, 8 bullet clip size. 3x Rifle Grenades 2x Frag Grenades 1x Bayonet The rifleman is best used for assaulting points directly. Although still deadly alone, two or more can effectivley neutralise any moderatley defended flag and snatch it into ally control. Your rifle is your best friend, and although the rifle grenades are tempting (and aso very effective) the standard rifle should be used in most situations. 8 bullets are enough to take down two enemies with some good aim and an effective Rifleman can eliminate about three enemies with minimal effort. When faced with a combat situation, the rifleman should always aim for Centre Mass, or the chest. 3 centre mass bullets will drop someone more often than not and recoil will direct the crosshair up towards the head, so lucky headshots can be commonplace. Stagger your bullets, do not just fire everything in your clip as quick as you can as your recoil will usually get the best of you and you will end up facing the clouds whilst reloading, and that pretty quarantees your death. Should you find yourself in a situation where you still have enemies present but you are reloading, tap your RB button and switch to your rifle grenades. Your first one will always be primed and will not require loading, and is excellent for finishing people off, or even killing in one hit. If you are forced to do this, aim for the feet. If you miss, the explosion will still damage your opponent and if you have previously hurt him from a few rifle rounds, it will ensure the kill. The rifle itself is actually pretty long range, and you can hurt people defending points from a distance. However, this is only recommended if there are two are less people defending. You can kill them before you get there yes, but that will require some pretty good aiming to plant at least 3 bullets at centre mass from range and if you dont get the kill, it will alert the other enemy to your presence. If those enemies are in a squad, by the time you arrive at the base he will have respawned on his squadmate and will have the chance to choose an adeqate class to eliminate you with minimal effort. The rifle should be used from medium to short range ideally, and only used in long range fights with a single enemy, usually a sniper or someone camping on a hill defending a flag. The rifle grenade should be used for taking out enemy groups, encampments and jeeps. One rifle grenade will kill anyone sat at an HMG encampment, an AA gun and even better, will completey destroy a jeep and all the soldiers it is carrying. If you manage to land a full jeep, you will get three kills + another 10 points for vehicle destruction, so keep them for incoming assaults and people using the mounted guns. Although they wont do against an enemy tank, still use them against if you face up against one, because all damage done to a tank will reduce the amount of rockets an anti tank class will have to use to take the tank out. Another handy use is thier power can be used to level non-concrete buildings. If you need to run to a flag but a building is in the way, make your own doors. If an enemy is using a house for cover when capturing (happens often in Wake Island), then remove his cover immediatley and finish him off with a bullet or two to the chest. Frag Grenades are pretty straight forward. use them to clear out bunkers and assaults when you have to run uphill. If faced with a vehicle and your r-nades are recharging, use them to chip away at the HP of the vehicle so anti-tanks can get in there and finish it off. The bayonet is just your standard melee weapon. There is vew few chances to use a melee weapon given the ranges of your weapons on this game so the most common use is for stabbing a scout in the back without alerting him via noise. ill explain why this is important in the Scout secion. =============================================================================== INFANTRYMAN =============================================================================== This class is your up close and personal class, and is better used in a squad rather than wandering around alone. The loadout is as follows ;- 1x Sub-Machine Gun, 30 bullet clip size. 3x Recoilless Rifle rounds (More commonly known as bazooka or RPG) 2x Frag Grenades 1x Wrench The infantryman is best used in a squad enviroment, usually to defend a flag rather than take one although if a flag is being defended by a tank or other heavy vehicle, and Infrantryman can make short work of it. The Sub-machine gun is good for taking out enemy personnel but unfortunatley it is pretty useless at anything other than close range. Staggering bullets can take out medium-range targets but if your target is a scout or a rifleman, the odds will be heavily stacked in his favour. If you do face yourself in a close- combat situation, your clip will be enough for one kill. Half a clip will drop someone and it is possible to kill two in one clip, but given the in- accuracy of the SMG, it is very unlikely that all of your bullets will hit thier intended targets and you will be faced with a reload halfway through shooting at your second target. The infantrymans Recoilless rifle isnt very effective at finishing people off in a reload situation like the Riflemans rifle grenades are, so try and avoid forcing yourself into that situation. Ideally, and infantryman should be stay in the shadows and let the Rifleman take point, and then eliminate any vehicular threat that arises and pick off any weakened or sole enemies that are around when the rifleman has to reload. If you do have to go up against an enemy vehicle, two Infantrymen are recommended, as it will take a full compliment of three rockets to take a heavy vehicle from full to no health, and the rockets have a smoke trail which will give away your position after your first shot. if you do have to go up against one alone, then use your frag grenades on it first, as this will chip away at the HP of the vehicle and in some situations allow only two rockets for a kill rather than three. Using the frag grenades will not give away your position immediatley either, so you can stay alive longer in the hope that any dead rifleman in your squad have enough time to squad spawn on top of you. The Recoilless Rifle should always be kept with a full compliment of three rockets where possible. If you have to use one to take out a jeep and you are about to assault a flag, Force a recharge on your rockets incase a tank should arrive. If you only have two rockets and a tank does arrive, you will be forced with two reload times AND the recharge time of the ammo, and will most likely not live long enough to see that happen. If you ever get a quiet moment to yourself, set your rockets recharging. To do this, press your reload button whilst you have you rockets out and ready to fire. The Frag Grenades should be used as mentioned before. Unlike the rifleman where they should be a last resort behind your rifle mounted grenades, your fags should be going at a stationary vehicle first to weaken it without giving away your position. Given reload times for rockets are pretty long, any chance to reduce the amount of rockets used to kill something from three to two should be taken at every oppertunity. The Wrench is the most useful melee weapon in the game. Although slighly less powerful than the bayonet or the sword, it can be used to repair vehicles. An excellent squad-based strategy involving two Infantrymen is to attack with a Rifleman and a Scout in a tank using the main howitzer and secondary sunner positions, with the two infantrymen using the tank itself for cover while walking behind, fixing any damage caused from defending anti-tanks. One can do it, but can rarely repair fast enough to keep the tank going. In squads of two or more, there should ALWAYS be at least one anti-tank, unless you are running a specific scout/sniper party. Many unskilled players will instinctivley abandon vehicles that have less than half health, which are just crying out to be repaired/stolen and used against them. If you have an Infantryman present, more often than not you can steal a few of the enemy tanks that have been abandoned and shift the balance of heavy vehicles heavily into the your favour. If you manage this, you can defend flags very very well. =============================================================================== SCOUT =============================================================================== Although not as hard of a class to play as the infantryman, A scout will still face more of a challenge than a rifleman. A scout is actually effective at both long and short ranges, as the class doubles up as a demolition class. The scout loadout is as follows ;- 1x Bolt Action Scoped rifle, 1 zoom mode and a 5 bullet clip. 1x Semi-automatic Pistol, 8 bullet clip. 3x Remote Demolition Charge + Plunger. 1x Sword The scout is best from long distances. Simple. The scoped rifle has the most powerful bullet out of the three classes and will kill in two shots, but the rifle will also allow for easier aiming at the head. Unlike the other two classes, your main target should actually be the neck. Sniping requires a lot of skill because there is a buullet delay. A sniper bullet will have to travel longer for the further away a target is, and it is not uncommon for a target to shift his position slightly before the bullet reaches its destination. If he shifts downwards, the bullet will strike his head, and if he shifts upwards it will strike centre mass. Rarely will your target be standing completely still, so dont count on it. For a moving target, aim about half a second infront of where your mark is going, A headshot is unlikely, but more often than not a hit will spook him into taking cover, which is usally from the wrong direction. This is most apparent when sniping off the two islands looking at the Fishing Village flag on Iwo Jima. anybody defending that flag that takes damage will almost always assume that the damage came from the neighbouring point of moust suribachi, or the hill from lighthouse, and will take cover behind the house closest to you, or the rock there as well. There, a second bullet will easily down your target. A good scout will not choose simply to get as much distance from the action as possible, but to find some shady cover and defend it with your remote charges. The further away you are from your target, the harder it is to hit due to the travel times, so the closer you are the better. Hiding behind cover after each shot should reduce the change of you being spotted, and if you ARE spotted, most people will have to come in closer to be able to kill you. Place your demo charges in common entry point to your spot and just wait for your would-be assailant to arrive. Even splash damage from jsut one of these charges is an instant kill so get yourself dug in. You should frquently check the area behind your spot though, and ideally pick one with a good view so you can see people sneaking up on you. An idiot will try to shoot at you from behind, a skilled player will walk up and use his melee weapon which means you'll be dead before you realise he's even behind you. Keep checking your six and if someone does manage to get in close to you, whip that Semi-automatic pistol out and put all 8 bullets into him. only about six are needed for a kill, but you will have to reload if faced with more than two enemies, so you may as well just empty your clip to maximise the change of a kill before you have to reload. Ideally, a well placed demo charge should stop you having to resort to the pistol but it is handy in a fix, so dont forget about it. a Higher position is ideal but dont be too obvious. Sat directly on top of the biggest hill in guadalcanal will make you stand out like a massive beacon saying "SHOOT ME NOW" and any other scout at any direction on the map will be able to shoot you back. Now, a good scout is not afraid to get up close and personal. You should remain hidden as much as you can, but an unknown scout can wreak untold damage on an enemy flag. Just a single Demolition Charge will annihilate anything it is stuck to, so if you can manage get close to a tank without it seeing you, it has absolutley zero chance of survival. Laying charges around a flag before starting your assault is awesome too, as if enemies manage to spawn before you can neutralise a flag, set your charges off and light them up. Be careful as they are just as vicious to you as they are to the enemy, and an easy way to blow your own legs off. Assaulting a flag alone with nothing but a pistol isnt the greatest thing to be doing, so use those charges wherever possible. You can lay all three by tapping your left trigger to place them and your right trigger to detonate when ready. Another handy thing to do is to place your charges onto a friendly vehicles, such has a makeshift anti-tank jihad-jeep. if you have no infantryman present, stick your charges on the front of a jeep and just drive it right into side of a heavy vehicle. a swift rifle grenade to the jeep with send the tank flying. You can also create chokepoints along roads. Find yourself a rock (such as in wake island) by a roadside, and plce two demo charges at each side of the road. Most roads will not let you place charges directly in the middle so use three if you want to maximise your destructive power, and then just sit in wait for something to drive past. Then, watch it explode in a massive fireball. Your sword is just the same as a bayonet, and will very rarely see any use as usually you will have no need to sneak up on a scout, as you have equal range so ideally an enemy scout should be shot in the face. =============================================================================== WORKING AS A TEAM =============================================================================== The main thing that sets this apart from its rivals, is the emphasis on team based gameplay. You will function in this game MUCH better as a unit than on your own, even with just two people in a squad. The maximum you can have is four, and there is nothing more fun than having a squad of four mates operating around a map, wreaking team-based havoc on everything you come across. Squads are useful because of the squad respawn feature. If you are in the respawn menu, pressing Y will switch you squad spawn which will enable you to spawn directly on top of any squad member of your choice, providing they are still alive. The only exception is when a squad member is alive but inside of a vehicle with no more positions left. Such as a tank or a plane. Squads should work together to attack from less-travelled positions and stay alive as long as possible, in order to keep the squad as strong as possible. Assaulting a base from behind will give you a place to wait for a moment whilst your squad can spawn on your position and reinforce your assault. The same is present after an assault. IF you find your squad near eliminated, the best course of action is find cover and stay alive long enough for them to respawn. Enemies can respawn directly on thier flag as much as they like if they own it, so you wont be able to do too much on your own at all, especially if they are wise to an attack. Squad formations are entirely up to you. ANY combinations are good, as it all depends on how comfortably you each play your respective classes. 4 riflemen can take over a flag with very little effort, as well as 4 scouts can place enough demo charges to raise an entire base to the ground, as well as providing enough long range firepower to take down a small army. Personally, the best combinations i have found are as follows;- 4 Person squad Generic Assault - 2x Riflemen 2x Infatrymen (works equally well as Flag Defence) - 1x Rifleman 2x Infatrymen 1x Scout Flag defence - 3x infantrymen 1x Rifleman Long Range - 2x Scout 1x Rifleman 1x Infantryman 3 Person Squad Generic Assault - 2x Rifleman 1x Infatryman - 2x Infantrymen 1x Rifleman (not as good in 3 person squad) Long Range - 2x Scout 1x Rifleman 2 person squad Generic Assault - 1x Rifleman 1x Infantryman Long Range - 2x Scout Ideally, you would have more than two people in a squad thanks to the open system in which people can be put into squads with other random people unless they set thier squads to invite only. However, if you play with one friend (as i often do) most other squad members will be off doing thier own thing disregarding the squad, and not be in on the voice comms as you will probably be using xbox lives party system rather than ingame chat. If you find yourself in this situation, use the Rifleman/Infrantryman combo and just take note to be courtious to your fellow squad members. IF you see one running up the road and you two are passing in a jeep, stop and honk (left stick) and let them in. This is a good indication that you are currently operating together, and need as mmuch help as you can get. If you play the infantry role, fix up vehicles where you can. Not only does it show you as a team player, but you'll get a 15 point repair bonus every time you give more than half the health back to a friendly vehicle. Thankfully, the userbase tends to be a lot more mature than your average WaW party so people are a lot more receptive to team tactics and co-operation. Some of the best games ive played have been two friends and two randoms working as a squad. Always take an infatryman where you can. Coming up against a heavy vehicle without one is almost suicide and should you end up in a heavy vehicle vs. heavy vehicle fight, the infantryman that can get out and fire a rocket at the enemy tank will shift the balance heavily in favour of you winning, let alone being able to repair the tank after the fight and getting back up to a fighting standard. More often than not, tanks will be abandoned before they are destroyed, and this is your cue for your infatryman passenger to get out, fill the enemy driver with an SMG clip and steal the tank. When its quiet, fix the tanks and now your squad has two tanks with two secondary gunners, and is incredibly hard to deal with without having to or more infantrymen to cause havoc to the vehicles. Unfortunaley, most random unskilled players rarely pick the infantryman class due to not being able to eliminate tanks in one it, and coming across two or more in one place is still quite rare unless you're up against a fellow squad with some common sense. =============================================================================== VEHICLES AND ENCAMPMENTS =============================================================================== There are plenty of different things lying around in BF1943 and they should all be used where possible. Some have more uses than expected (such as the jihad-jeep mentioned in the scout section). The vehicles present are as follows ;- Jeep Tank Landing Craft Plane A-10 bombers (classed as flying a plane ingame) The encampments Present are as follows ;- Heavy Machine Gun (mounted on jeeps, landing craft and sandbags) AA Gun The encampments are stationary weapons dotted around to help defend certain points, and you will commonly find them sat at the edges of flags pointing towards the main entrance or entrances. The HMGs are for everything except heavy vehicles and the AA Gun is for air defence only. They can both be destroyed with explosive but will shortly respawn after destruction. HMGs are very very accurate and can be used effectivley against both incoming personnel and Planes, although the stationary ones make you an easy target for scouts so if you want to set up an HMG chokepoint, get yourself a couple of jeeps and use the mobile mounted HMGs on there instead. this allows you to change position quickly if your chokepoint gets attacked. While HMGs can take out planes (and should definatley be tried if getting bombed), the AA Guns do a much better job. IF there are any enemy planes around, including the A-10 bombers incoming, grab an AA gun and take him out of the sky. Although there is a bullet delay much like the sniper rifle, the limited range of the AA shells will cause them to explode at maximum range and the smoke you see will make it much easier to judge your aiming. Plus, although direct hits hurt a LOT, splash damage will still do a fair bit so taking down enemy planes is fairly using using an AA gun, beear in mind though, even though your body is rotating with the gun, you are still an easy target for scouts. AA Guns are absolutley invaluble against the A-10 carpet bombers, as you can take out the bombers before they get in range of target and massivley reduce the amount of bombs the controller can drop. You can never take out a full compliment of three bombers with a single AA gun but most people will panic massivley when thier precious bomber start massivley losing health, and will drop thier bombs as soon as humanly possible just to even try and get whatever precious kills they can. 75% of the time anybody who panics and drops early wont hit a single thing and will have wasted thier Air Raid. If you have a fellow plane in the sky along with your AA gun, you can take out the bombers before they even reach land. AA guns should never be overlooked. The Jeep The jeep is your average 3-person transport vehicle with a mounted HMG. Excellent for A to B with a squad (why they didnt make it 4 person is beyond me) very quickly, although they have lots of trouble with thier lack of torque. This basically means if you lose speed on a hill, you arent going anywhere but backwards. the HMG is great for assaulting enemy personnel on the way to somewhere, but be weary of riflemen and infantrymen as a single rifle grenade or rocket will vapourise you. The HMG can also a limited defence against planes. The Tank Tank is pretty much a rolling death machine. Only two places inside, one driver who will control the tank itself, along with the howitzer and a small coaxial machine gun. The second player will control a more powerful HMG on top of the tank. The driver is immune to bullets and will only die when the tank blows up, but the secondary gunner cannot cover and is a viable target for bullets and snipers. When using a tank, try and have an infantryman as a passenger as most people will see the tank as the most immediate threat and throw what they have at making it explode. Usually, the tank can win against everything but other tanks and planes, but it will come out the fight battle- scarred and in need of repair. Drivers of the tank should use thier coaxial machine gun against personnel and the howitzer for vehicles and destroying cover/houses. As tempting as it sounds to shoot a man with a tank-mounted howitzer, its very inaccurate and only a direct or very close hit will actually kill, and the coaxial machine gun is BY FAR more effective at killing men than the howitzer. Use the howtizer to destroy the wall the man is hiding behind, and then use the coax gun to actually take him down. If you see a jeep driving along however, let him have it in the face and watch him expode in one hit. Tanks are the most vunerable from the air however, as Planes can drop bombs as well as use a machine gun, both of which are deadly to tanks. A well placed bomb will annihilate a tank in one hit and if you have an enemy in the skies who knows how to fly a plane, you should worry. The Landing Craft These are only really found on carriers and in the middle of the island on wake island. They have 5 positions and the primary function is to travel people from your aircraft carrier to the main shore. Will rarely be used in the actual game, when they are used they can be very deadly. Landing Crafts have two HMGs mounted on the back of them, and working together, they make VERY short work of incoming planes. When a round starts, planes will fly over and meet over the middle of the map, fighting with eachother. This will be in range of your HMGs. IF both of you fire and hit, you will be suprised at how fast the plane will actually fall. The crafts themselves are also resiliant to fire and take as much as a tank to destroy. This makes them excellent for temporary cover positions when assaulting a flag from sea (fishing villiage in Iwo Jima is the best example). Other than that, they arent used for much else aside from travelling between the two points of wake island. The Plane These are the most sought after at the start of a map, and usually you will find people fighting over them as soon as the map starts. Planes are excellent assault tools, but unfortunatley are wasted immediatley when players grab them and fly them directly into the sea in a flaming pile of debris. A planes primary function is air DEFENCE, not air OFFENCE. As soon as someone gets a plane, the first thing they do is go straight for the kill on an enemy plane. As fun as this is, it has absolutley NO bearing on the current game. The best use of a plane is to help ground squads assult flags by bombing and laying machine gun fire on enemy vehicles defending or attacking. Dogfighting should be kept for self-defence rather than offence. If you absolutley must dogfight, then go play Air Superiority mode. As far as flying a plane is concerned, you must take into account the controls. An unskilled player will use solely the right stick for movement, which controls pitch and roll. You can notice these players by how they circle, in which theier wings will be exactly vertical as they turn. The fastest way to turns is to bank your wings to about 45 degrees and engage your left stick, which controls Yaw. Yaw is turn your plane left and right without banking the wings, much like how a car would turn. If you take your finger off the throttle drop to half speed, whilst using both the pitch and the rudder to turn, you will find yourself circling MUCH faster than enemy planes. This will allow you to stay behind them almost everywhere and make them wonder how you are vastly out-maneuvering them. Also, if you happen to be in the sky when an enemy launches thier A-10 carpet bombers, GO STRAIGHT FOR THE BOMBERS. Much like the AA Gun, the planes will make short work of the bombers and pressurise the A-10 pilot into dropping early. The machine gun mounted on a plane however will do more damage than an AA Gun shell, so if you;re quick you can take down two bombers alone before they have a chance to drop. you get 10 points for every one of the three bombers you down, so its an easy 30 points as well. It also counts towards air- based kills even if they dont count as a kill on the scoreboard, so if you want your Air Superiority badges then thats the easiest way to get it bar Coral Sea. The A-10 Bombers. Although not techincally a "vehicle", it counts as flight time in game so i decided to stick it under the planes. The A-10s are a series of remotely controlled bombers that are VERY slow steering, and have a single release of bombs per flight. They can waste to an entire base in one well placed shot and anything unfortunate to be caught underneath the drop zone will be instantly vapourised, be it tank or man hiding under a bunker. To use them, you will notice a small bunker with a rotating radar dish at the Airfields of Wake Island and Iwo Jima, and the Feul Depot on Guadalcanal. There is only one, and anyone for either team can use it. This usually makes the flag associated with the bunker the most sought after. If the dish is rotating but the light is off then the bombers are ready for deployment. If the light is on, there is someone inside already flying the bombers. If the dish is not spinning, then it has been used and is currently recharging. You do not have to capture the associated flag to use the bunker, so you will usually find a lot of people just camping around the back of it waiting for it to respawn. It is the easiest way to get multiple kills in one go so you will regularly see people fighting over it. Use wise, thats pretty much it. Just decide which position you want to carpet bomb when you get in and steer it there and lay your armageddon down. The steering is SO SLOW on these bombers that you must decide which point you want to attack when you are miles out, if you mess up your targeting, there is no correcting it. The best thing to do is to find the Front Line icon and line it up with the top of your crosshair camera, and just head straight there and drop it on the front line. Thats where its usually the most useful anyway. Although, when you are slightly closer in, all enemy players on the map will show as red triangles so if you want just some pure murder, just head for the greatest concentration of red triangles and pull your RT when your crosshair is right over the centre of them and watch them die. Tactics wise, they are very good for assaulting the flags they are located at. If you wait behind one for it to recharge and then duck in before the enemy use can use the carpet bombs to kill everything at the base you are currently at, as you will be safe inside the bunker. Once everything is dead, you can take the flag on your own. Strategically, these points are important to own. With Guadalcanal being the exception, They are located at airfields and will give another extra plane and a few tanks. Be weary if youre seen entering the building, because you will be immediatley killed upon exiting. You will always pop out right at the red door you entered at, as soon as the bombers have left the map, so a sensible scout will place a demo charge and just wait for you to appear. Its not uncommon to exit to a rifle grenade or a rocket in the face. Its up to you wether you want to bomb everyone aroudn your bunker, or bomb everyone assaulting a different flag. =============================================================================== CREDITS/LEGAL STUFF/CONTACT =============================================================================== Thats about it for now. I will add to this guide when i get more information to add. I will add a Coral Sea section when i have played more Air Superiority mode and gathered a bit more knowledge and tactics about it. Please, feel free to email me or message me and give me information that you think would be useful and/or helpful to include in this guide. If you have any strategies i havent mentioned i will try them no problem and put them in here if they are good strategies. Any critisism is appreciated as well and do feel free to point out any errors or mistakes i have made so i can correctly them appropriatley. This guide is copyright me, Graeme Holland, aka FooB aka normanlove and is intended to be hosted on GameFaqs and Giantbomb. Any theft of this guide will result in the appropriate legal action being taken. I take pride in my own work, and id prefer it if people didnt take pride with mine. If you wish to contact me, message me as;- Giantbomb - normanlove Xbox 360 - normanlove Gamefaqs - normanlover email - nofx_norman(at)hotmail(dot)com -- FooB/normanlove 22/07/2009