How does buying weapons work?

[Venoxile]

Aight, they've gone into the complex stuff with the game info, but my question is: Lets saying you join a game, you'll start out i think at one of your side's bases, so what do you do from then? Is it like counter strike where you buy your weapons, and then gain money to get better weapons by killing? Or is it like renegade, where you buy your class by getting money by killing stuff? I really hate the renegade class system, it's just fruity. I'd like it if you just bought whatever weapons and armor you'd like, and could be dropped off at whatever point you choose.

So how do you choose your weapons/equipment?

[m0rphiu5]

i think its similar to the CS system, start off with basic weapons and possible get given some by team mates.

then as u kill people u get money and BEP, with BEP u can learn new certs, and i presume will be able to use more and better guns.

u would then uyse this money to buy weapons, which u can use at your current BEP level.

i may be wayyy off here, but it seems logical to me. I dun think any official info has been posted, or has it?

[Nubi]

Everything is free

this is war, your government buys everything for you, you don't spend a dime

There's no economy

The only thing you could relate to an economy are the CEPs (Commander Experience Points) and the BEPs (Battle Experience Points)

With X amount of EPs you'll be able to "train" under a certificate

You have to certify with the weapons before you can use them

So to drive an airplane you have to Certify in piloting

Make sense?

[Camping Carl]

:stupid:

[Venoxile]

aight, but lets say you have a certain number of certs, and you buy a gun, will that lower your number of certs? And say you die after getting dropped off somewhere, you'll have to keep using certs to buy guns?

[Hamma]

Im sure there will be a max amount of Certifications, however I dont know what that is. What you will do is fight and earn BEP's for killing tanks, people, etc. With those BEPs you will buy certifications for certain weapons. ONCE you have that cert, you dont need to "buy" new guns, there is no economy.

CEPs are seperate and are used to gain access to new command features, overhead maps, command channels.. etc

[Marsman]

I believe Hamma is right on a max level. There has been talk of having to "un-learn" certs in order to learn or achieve other ones.
This way you aren't bound to a particular set of certs forever and allows one to change their specialty.

[Ir0nRaven]

right, hamma & nubi are correct. They tried doing an economy system, but I believe they said that it started to get like the community features in Tribes2 - nice, but taking up programming time, and kinda pointless. So, you spend a certain amount of BEPs (which are aquired by killing) on, for example, the bolt driver cert. Then you can use the bolt driver, and the gun is free. Never have to pay for it again.

Cool system, methinks.

[Warborn]

There definitely is a maximum number of Certifications. Hopefully pretty low too, to keep people specialized to an extent (an infantry guy would have mostly armor/weapon certs, while a pilot would have very few armor/weapon certs but many pilot ones).

[snipe]

I think that the maximum number of certs will be around 9. This will make since because:
A. There are about 27 certs
B. They don't want to lock you down to just 3. that would be maybe 2 guns and an armor!!!! That is very small when you look at it

[Warborn]

The things which take Certs are:

Tools (Skills)
Weapons
Armor
Vehicles

So, I agree, around 9 seems about right. A regular gunslinging ground-grunt might have 4 or so weapon skills, two armor ones (MAX and Heavy), and the rest in some kind of utility and perhaps buggy piloting also. They should have enough that people can have some diversity to do different things with one character, but few enough that you NEED to specialize if you want to actually have a specific job as something. For instance, someone with only a Stealth Suit Armor Cert shouldn't go too crazy with their weapon Certs. They can only hold very limited weapons while wearing a Stealth Suit, so investing in a bunch of rifles and anti-vehicle weapons is a waste.

[Tobias]

Certs lesson by Toby:
1) Getting those sneaky Certs, sneaky sneaky:
BEP's: You get BEP's by killing stuff. There is also a VR trainer that will let you practice stuff like flying a galaxy or playing with rockets to see what�s for you, no Certs needed, and with it you can get a few beginning Certs so your not out there in a flak Jacket with an AMP.
CEP's: Only one way to get these little fellows: be the leader of the squad the hacker who caps a base is in. Only way I know of. Can�t be gained in VR.
2) Using Certs & CEP Rank:
BEP's: You will have a max number of Certs, but you can swap out your Certs so if you learn Galaxy flying and its not your can of beans, you want to heal things with your skeeter, then you can swap or if you thought being a medic would be cool then found you were really a TK at heart, and wanted to specialize in Assault rifles and screw healing you could do that. There are also different levels. You could be a jack of all trades, able to use most armor's and weapons, and use some vehicles, or you could be a specialist. Specialization covered latter.
CEP's: These Allow you to use more commander commands and for your commands to be heard by more people. I.e. a squad leader can issue commands to his squad mates and listen in on the commander chat and give input, whereas a General can give commands spanning several outfits. Of course no one has to follow these orders if they don�t want to, but good commander�s words will usually carry a bit of weight. The higher your rank the more commands you can issue and the more people that hear them. Also it is rumored that you might be able to access drop down maps and have more HUD options then the average Joe.
P.S. Everyone can veiw the command channel, but only Commanders of a certian rank can talk in it, keeps it from being spamed.
3) Looks of CEP's and BEP's
BEP's: People with few BEP's will have the basic armor look with the primary color of their empire dominant. The more BEP's you get the more the secondary color dominates.
For NC the primary color is blue, with yellow second. A low ranking NC is almost all blue with little yellow, high ranking would look like a big banana.
TR colors are Black and Red with black being primary and red secondary. TR look pretty cool, cept goggles, at low rank and high rank, with low being almost all black, and high being cherry red with black high lights.
Vanu seem to be purple and black or purple and teal (I think purple and black) with purple being the dominant color. Rank is kinda iffy as with the exception of a few almost totally black light armor suits there is no ranking Vanu picks known. Vanu is the Coolest though.

CEP's: As one gains ranks in CEP's one gains visual enhancements. As in bigger shoulder pads and other things that make your armor look cooler. No known and proven ensamples of these exist that are known of to me.

4) Specialization in BEP's:
One can do two things with BEP's as was covered earlier; be a Jack (or Jill) of all trades, or specialize in a few fields. There will be different ranks in each skill, allowing for greater use of that skill at the cost of less overall skills. For instance a Hacker might have multiple ranks in hacking so that when he is jacking something he does so faster. A sniper might specialize in the sniper rifle so he has a smaller cone of fire. You get the point.

5) BEP's and Implants:
You start with one implant slot. As you gain BEP's and CEP's you gain more slots for implants. The known Max for implants is currently three. More on implants can be found here:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/content.php?p=sdImplantInfo

6) Other things:
It is unknown weather or not you can drive/fly a vehicle if you don�t have the cert, but you can hack without a cert (to the extent of jacking vehicles at least) but it takes much longer, or fire a weapon you are not certified in, but the cone of fire will be MUCH larger. Not sure about other things currently.

[snipe]

very good, but i noticed one part tha was wrong

The more BEP's you get the more the secondary color dominates.
For NC the primary color is blue, with yellow second. A low ranking NC is almost all blue with little yellow, high ranking would look like a big banana.
TR colors are Black and Red with black being primary and red secondary. TR look pretty cool, cept goggles, at low rank and high rank, with low being almost all black, and high being cherry red with black high lights.
Vanu seem to be purple and black or purple and teal (I think purple and black) with purple being the dominant color. Rank is kinda iffy as with the exception of a few almost totally black light armor suits there is no ranking Vanu picks known. Vanu is the Coolest though.


the secondary color comes out as you get CEPs, not BEPs.
Ranks = different colors

[Tobias]

Nope, its BEP's thats colors, CEP's is extra armor grafics.

[Warborn]

Tobias is right. BEPs give you different colour, CEPs change the look of your character by adding polygonal additions. Think of it like the Space Marines in WH40k, with the Veterans having different coloured helmets, and the Captains having the plume on their helmet.

[Sytadel]

Hm, Is there a limit to how much you can carry, ala a backpack? I mean, a pistol or mag cutter would surely only take one or two slots, but I can't see anyone carrying around a devestator, pheonix, and sniper rifle.

[Lazare]

and vanus secondary color is this teal green its stated by the devs somewhere in here

[Jinxmasta]

I hope there is a limit but I also hope I will be able to carry my Lancer and Pulsar. Oh and extra ammo and possibly nades too.

[Hamma]

There is inventory space, so yes there will be a limit to what you can carry. If your a MAX thats quite a bit.. considering it has a trunk. :D

[Zatrais]

Anny idea how that trunk works for a MAX? Like could i carry other weapons than the main gun thats on the MAX suit? I hope not because that would be to rambo hehe... Hope only a small sidearm or something.

Bah, if that trunks to big MAX's will become ammo dispencers =P

[Hamma]

Thats one of the reasons they have a trunk, ammo for their squad id assume. :D

[Tolvy]

I wonder if it is possible to give BEP's or certs to another player. Lets say you have a Newb friend who wants to be a pilot for you, so you want to give him a cert for it. Would that be possible? :confused:

[Tobias]

Nope, you cant give BEP's away, its like in real life if you were a tank driver who was an Expert with rifles and a marksman with pistals. But you think pistals are super and your friend quilifed expert with them, he cant become sucky with them by "Giving you his knowledge" and magicly make you better. Its the same in the game.

[afex]

the only problem i see with the BEP system as it is now, is that once you earn enough BEPs to have whatever combo of certs you'd like (i know there is a limit) then whats the point after that?

people need a goal when playing. be it winning the map on a 20 min game of sof2, or reaching level 60 on EQ, realization of goals is a need that is always present.

the EQ team realized that once someone hit level 60, there was nothing left to do. fighting monsters was pointless, b/c they didnt' need any more exp, so all they did was go on quests for items. in order to combat this, they added a whole new leveling system just for upper level characters. they also just released a new expansion targeted at high level characters.

the problem with PS that i see, is that you will probably reach the max cert limit relatively quickely (compared to a level-based game like EQ). so what then? just keep fighting for the same buildings over and over? the devs are going to have to think of something to keep Joe Videogamer playing. the average person needs something to reach for in order to have incentive to play.

[Hamma]

This is true.. they will need to start adding things in. :eek:

Havent really thought about that.

[Zarparchior]

Nor had I. I definitely understand where you're coming from... but that is for EQ. In most servers, it was PvE (Player vs. Environment). That makes it so that once maximum level and items are acheieved, you automatically ask yourself what do I do now? You've "beaten" EQ! Why spend more time on it?

FPSs are much different though. They are generally PvP (Player vs. Player). For most of these game-types out there, the only way to get better is to practise. You don't NEED uber phat lewt or leet levels. You have to learn to play not only against a predictable computer, but against the most random and crafty foe: The Human.

So relatively speaking, a multiplayer FPS that doesn't give you anything other than the satisfaction that you beat your opponents into the ground after all is said and done is not too far off from what PS is supposed to be like.

The primary goal in PS is to have fun. That's what ALL games are about anyway. The means of achieving this goal I'll deem as secondary goals. Secondary goals are usually along the lines of "Winning" and usually not much else. You can have fun at games by just playing them, but the concept of all of them is to be "winning" yet still challanged. For example, if you are "winning" a "game" made for 2nd grade math students and you're in Algerbra 101, chances are you will not have any fun "winning" this "game" over. The means for achieving this secondary goal is usally found by executing Tertiary Goals. These would normally include (for this game type) "Kill as many opponents as I can to achieve victory," "Help my team by using supporting abilities (healing, repair, piloting, engineering, commanding) so they can (as well as myself) achieve victory," or "Perform desired objective to achieve victory" (Defend Base, Distract Enemey Squad, Head to Location with minimal casualties, etc).

So in theory, this game is simply a more massive and extensive multiplayer FPS - and thus should be played as one. You don't worry about topping out of FPSs. People don't stop playing Half-Life or T2 because they're too good. They may quit because that's all they've been breathing/eating/excreting for the past [Insert Amount of Time]. They may quit because there's an even NEWER and MORE BETTER game out there. They will not quit because there is nothing else to be done... Why wouldn't they you ask? Simple: from the moment this game was first played to now, the object of it had been to take down another Human Opponent. And, since we come in all different styles let us just say that you should never run out of different kinds of people to take down. ;)

Despite all of the above, I still have the feeling people won't be able to swallow it as being justification for the "high end" goal of PS. Oh well, I tried. :)