Multi Battlefield 3 Guide - from Virgin to Veteran

Absolute Basics (for those new to Battlefield)

Points/Ranking/MVP!!
This game isn't all about getting the highest amount of kills, it's certainly not like "every other shooter" and is very focused on team play, you gain more points for securing objectives than you do for kills. You can also gain a lot of points from team abilities, spotting enemies that someone else then kills, having players spawn on you, suppressing an enemy (shooting near an enemy will blur their vision making them disoriented), healing/reviving team mates, supplying team mates with ammo, all of these things you should consider doing BEFORE you think about killing people. Spotting is the single most important thing you can do, whilst you don't get very many points it gives your whole team a MASSIVE help by letting them know where the enemy is.

Control schemes
Make sure you have a control scheme that suits you, for example if you're a CoD player you may find it useful to switch your melee and crouch buttons around. If you have come from Bad Company 2 you will probably find it useful to tweak your helicopter controls (Legacy sticks is the BC2 default).

Unlocking Weapons
Unlike most games where the better players who can rank up and unlock guns are rewarded with far superior weaponry, this game is relatively balanced, there is no one super gun, those with the patience to learn to use their guns are the ones who will do well in a fire fight, not those who have unlocked the best guns. When you're getting your ass handed to you it's because the other team are playing as a team not because they have better guns. Stick with it and you'll soon have a veritable arsenal of weaponry at your disposal. Alternatively you can play the Co-Op game to unlock some co-op exclusives which will help you to feel less underpowered on the battlefield.

Scopes
Choose the right attachments to suit your play style, if you are going to engage people at close range then any scope attached to your weapon is going to increase how long it takes to get a bead on your target and decrease how much you can see, try Iron Sights/Red Dot Sights/Holographic Sights, if you're going to engage at long range then a proper Scope is a must and it matters less that it takes a bit longer to look down your sights. Remember that a man at the side of the battlefield sniping and getting a good kill to death ratio is as good as useless in this game and by doing this they are making it harder for the rest of their team. Also worth noting that scopes over x4 magnification give a reflection that the enemy can see and they also have scope sway (where you need to press a button to hold your breath to take a steady shot)

Attachments
There are various attachments that you can unlock and there’s often misunderstanding on what they do, the effectiveness of an attachment varies on a per gun basis too, but the general gist of it is as follows:

• Front Grips - reduce left/right recoil.
• Laser - increases accuracy when firing from the hip only.
• Suppressor - stops you from appearing on the enemy mini-map due to firing, also reduces bullet velocity, which means greater drop off over distance and also reduces damage over distance quicker.
• Flash Suppressor - removes the visible muzzle flash when firing, making it harder to see you when firing, decreases vertical recoil but also decreases accuracy when firing from the hip.
• Heavy Barrel - Improves accuracy, whilst also increasing vertical muzzle climb, great for burst firing at distances.
• Underslung Rail - when used in combination with the grenade launcher or underbarrel shotgun it provides much quicker switching between rifle and secondary weapon.
• Bipod - massively decreases vertical recoil when deployed and completely stops scope sway, once deployed it will undeploy if you move your character at all.

 

Stuff you should do that will make you a better player (and earn you more points)

Squads
A battlefield team of 12 can be made up of 3 squads of 4. There are many benefits of joining a squad (which is optional). You do not have to assume a particular role in a squad, and can play whatever class you like, but a good squad of complementary skills can work together to keep each other close to the action (see Dying/Spawning below), alive and ammo-stocked.

An action that gets you points, healing, reviving, ammo-stocking, kill-assists etc.. is worth more points if undertaken for a squad member. It’s not uncommon for the top scorer to be an Assault class getting loads of points from squad revives at 100 pts a crack, especially on tight maps like Operation Matro

Comms
There are two options available here, squad comms (default) and team comms, both are open comms, but if you set it to team comms you can here both your own squad and anyone else on your team who is also using the team comms option, very useful for combining efforts across the whole team.

Spotting
This is the ability to make the enemy visible to all players on your team by pressing the select button with your crosshairs over the enemy. This makes a red triangle appear above their heads,until they run out of sight, into a building, die etc. This is the most important thing you can do, even more important than killing enemies. Get used to flicking the select button with your thumb and Do this ALL the time. Even if you don't make the kill, you will still get a spot assist.

Giving Orders
Similarly to spotting you can press select whilst pointing at stuff to give orders, from attack/defend orders by highlighting objectives to ordering a friendly tank to wait for you or ordering friendly troops to drop med kits and ammo packs. Only Squad Leaders can set objectives and they can also see a count of how many other squad leaders have also set the same objective.

Receiving Orders
Listen to teammates nearby calling out for ammo and health, asking for a lift in your vehicle or giving attack/defend orders, working as a team is always better and if you help someone out they're far more likely to return the favour.

Dying/Spawning
This is a very important part of play in Battlefield, you can choose to spawn back at base or with a squad member. Spawning on a squad member is nearly always better as it means you can assist them, also really useful if your team gets pinned back into their spawn but one of your team has pushed through enemy lines. Also do your best to stay alive if you've pushed through to a good position and keep your head down until your squad spawns on you, it's easier to take an objective with a squad of four than it is solo.

Picking up kits from downed troops
This is a very useful thing to do, you can pick up an assault kit and use the defib to bring your teammates back to life, you can pick up a support kit and drop an ammo box if you're low on ammo, you can pick up a recon kit and drop a tactical spawn. You can switch back to your preferred kit afterwards but this tactic will help you and your squad to survive.

Destruction
Most of the environment in BF is destructible, so use it to your advantage. Noob tubing or GL spam in this game isnt bad, it's encouraged! If the enemy are camped in a building and you have a Rocket/Underslung GL/ Explosive, no need to go in after them, blow the hell out of the building, and bring it down on them or hit them with debris.

Make your own doors, there’s always more ways into a building than the doors that are there, blowing out walls can surprise any enemies in the building or give you quick access.

 

Classes of Battlefield 3

Assault
The role of the assault class is to heal and revive team mates, they have good all round firepower with their assault rifle and can switch out their medi-kits with an under barrel grenade launcher for sheer demolition!

Reviving downed team mates with the defibrillators (not there at the start of the class, but an early unlock) is particularly useful for squad contribution (and your own points tally). When a teammate dies, for a short while after they are downed they are marked with a little ECG icon. Select the defibrillators- Right D-pad - and hit them to revive. As with all the points earners, doing this for a squadmate earns more points than a general team mate.

When reviving the team also gets the 'ticket' back (one of the remaining team lives) - so this is particularly useful when for instance playing on attack in RUSH, where team tickets determine the round.


Engineer
The engineer is there for vehicles, both the demolition of them and the repairing of them. This class comes with the option of bringing some form of rocket propelled grenade or land mines for taking out vehicles and a repair tool for fixing friendly vehicles which can also be used to damage enemy vehicles or enemy troops. You can also switch out the repair tool for the EOD Bot which can be used to damage/repair vehicles, set/defuse charges and kill people!!

Recon
The Recon class is a very important role in Battlefield 3 as it comes with some very useful tools in it's arsenal. You have the mobile spawn point, which allows troops to spawn on it or parachute in above it (depending on level and whether you place it outdoors or not), this is the most useful thing a Recon class can do (since they are useless if they sit at the side of the map doing bugger all). You also have the MAV, which is a remote control aerial vehicle almost purely used for spotting, although it does have the ability to fire at the enemies small equipment, such as enemy MAVs, enemy T-UGS, enemy mortars, you won’t see a projectile, but the equipment will be destroyed. A good tactic with the MAV is to fly it to a hot spot and land it out of sight on top of a building, this will act as a motion sensor and light up the enemies nearby on your teams mini-maps. The T-UGS is a deployable motion mine and acts the same as the MAV when stationary. The T-UGS, MAV and Mobile spawn emit a beeping noise and the enemy can find these and destroy them so be wary of this. Finally this class has the SOFLAM, which is a laser designator system that can be placed, aimed and then left, you can remotely access it once placed to re-adjust it's aim. This is a VERY useful tool when combined with any of the laser guided weapons in the game… it can also be used as a very useful distraction technique by pointing it down a road that tanks must come down as they will be automatically targetted and think they are being attacked.

Support
The role of the support class is to suppress the enemy, their weapons class gives a constant stream of bullets which give the suppress effect on the enemy (health doesn't regenerate and their screen becomes very blurred to the point of disorientation) and they can and should drop ammo packs for themselves and teammates. A very basic class, but one that every squad should have for it's massive firepower on troops and the ability to replenish the engineer and assault classes with explosives from their ammo drops. This class also has C4 and Claymores available, note that C4 and Claymores are removed from play the instant you die (this will probably be changed in a future patch)

 

Game Modes

Rush
The Attacking team must destroy several pairs of M-Com Stations, once all sets have been destroyed you win. The Defending team must try to stop the M-Com stations from being destroyed until the attacking team run out of respawn tickets. Respawn tickets are renewed after every pair of M-Com stations are destroyed. Destroying an M-Com station involves planting a bomb on it (by standing next to it and holding down circle until the thing arms) , which can be defused by the defending team in the same way.

Conquest
This game mode has two set team spawns and several flags or capture points. The aim of this game mode is to have the opposing team run out of respawn tickets. If you team hold more than half of the capture points the opposing team will slowly lose tickets, as well a losing tickets from dying, so the aim is to always hold more points than the opposing team, the more points your team controls the faster the enemy team will lose tickets. Capture points can be captured and/or recaptured by standing nearby a point, the more players on your team standing by the point the quicker you will capture it.

Squad Deathmatch
A special version of deathmatch which consists of several squads all out for themselves, first squad to a set score ends the round.

New DLC game modes
Conquest Assault
This is a variant of the standard Conquest mode and is available on the Back to Karkand DLC. This differs from the standard version of the game mode as one team starts with all the points already captured, but they have no "base" point to fall back on if the opposing team capture all the points, they would need to spawn on a squad mate / spawn beacon or wait for someone to re-capture a point to spawn on.

Gun Master
This is a completely new mode for the Battlefield series and is only available on the smaller maps of the Close Quarters DLC. In this mode it is a race to the finish line, you start with a handgun and a knife, netting two kills with the starting handgun will automatically switch you to the next weapon, two kills with the next weapon progresses you further, this continues through various weapon types until you eventually hit level 17 and are left with just a knife, whoever gets a single knife kill at that level wins the game.

Conquest Domination
This is another variant of the standard Conquest mode and is available on the smaller maps of the Close Quarters DLC. This differs from the standard game mode because the capture points only take a few seconds to capture and you need to be very close to the flag to capture them, making for a much faster paced game.

Tank Superiority
This is an entirely new game mode that is essentially king of the hill. Both teams have a spawn with an almost endless supply of tanks and there is a central capture point that both teams are required to fight for, as with the other game modes the central point is captured by having more of your teams players in close vicinity to the flag. Getting out of your vehicle can be useful given the general mayhem of having so many tanks as you can often sneak and hide.

Scavenger
Yet another mode similar to the core Conquest mode, Scavenger has a large amount of capture points and the capturing happens very quickly at a similar pace to Conquest Domination. The same rules apply as other capture point modes where the objective is to drain the opposing team of respawn tickets by killing them and holding the majority of capture points. The very big difference here is that you get no class gadgets and you start with just your sidearm, choose your sidearm wisely as you may be stuck using just that weapon if you are unable to find one of the many weapons pick ups scattered around the level. Weapon pickups replenish after a short time and weapons picked up generally have either one or two clips worth of ammo requiring you to pick up another weapon to replace it or finding the ammo crate of the level to fill up.

 

Vehicles

There are a whole host of vehicles available in this game and each one takes some time to master, it's easy to jump in a tank and start to blow holes in things, but to really excel you need a good team to help spot enemies and to repair the tank when it gets damaged. You can practice flying helicopters in mission 2 of the co-op, this will make a big difference once you're in the battlefield.

All vehicles have two stages of damage, once damaged enough they will be disabled, once disabled they are unable to move normally, ground vehicles slow down to a crawl, air vehicles lose their turning capabilities, the next stage is blowing up, if you get disabled that's the time to consider your option of bailing out or trying to fight on with the weapons systems in hope that you can stop the assault on your vehicle and it will get it's health back.

Getting some weaponry for your aircraft
Jets are difficult to get initial unlocks for, fortunately you now get flares as default but will have to work for the rest. It’s probably best to pick an easier target than a fast moving jet with equal capabilities as what you’re flying. Getting a lot of altitude and flying down towards capture points and firing at tanks is a good way of scoring points in a jet, but the easiest target whilst learning is enemy Helicopters, taking these out are why Jets are in the game and the default guns are the weapon of choice.

Helo's may be difficult to fly, particularly when learning, but they’re easy to score points in, just hover or land at a capture point, provided you're in the helo then anything you score goes towards unlocks, this even applies to passengers of attack helo’s, so if your pilot is heading for a capture point don't jump out if there's no-one around, stay on board and grab those points.

Anti-Vehicle
Engineer is the primary class for taking out vehicles, they have the Anti-Tank mines available to destroy land vehicles and they have the ability to take an RPG or a SAM with them for the choice of taking out land vehicles or targetting onto air vehicles.
A tip when locking onto air vehicles with the SAM's, don't shoot your load as soon as it's locked on (although we know that goes against every fibre of our being for the blokes here), let the pilot sweat it out and hopefully they will deploy flares because of the pressure, if they do they are unable to deploy more flares for a short while, this is the time to strike!
Support is also a class for taking out vehicles as they can be equipped with C4, this is a little more risky as you have to actually walk right up to a tank to place C4 on it before running away and blowing it up, but provided you get two sticks of C4 on any vehicle then it’s dead in one swift movement without a chance to repair. If you happen to be in a tank and you see the message on screen of “Hold O to remove” then it means someone’s just put C4 on your vehicle, time to bail out!


EXTERNAL LINKS
http://symthic.com/charts.php> - great site for weapons stats and generally very in depth information.

 

Battlefield 3 Guide - temp

Points Earned for specific tasks

The following is an extract from the guide available to Premium members that shows what points you get for specific tasks, this shows just how easy it is to rack up points from things other than kills, specifically you score a lot of points for playing the objectives.

Code:

Attack Order Followed      20 Have a squadmate follow the attack order.
Avenger Bonus              10 Kill an enemy within 3 seconds of him killing a friendly.
Comeback                  TBD Comeback from a streak of 5 or more consecutive deaths. Score is number of consecutive deaths x10.
Defend Order Followed      20 Have a squadmate follow the defend order.
Designated Target Hit      TBD Score based on how much damage the locked missile does.
Destroyed Explosive        20 Destroy an enemy explosive (claymore, mine, or C4).
Dog Tag Savior            50 Rescue a teammate just as he is about to be stabbed.
Double Kill                40 Kill two enemies in 0.8 seconds of each other.
Driver Assist              10 Have a passenger in your vehicle kill an enemy.
Enemy Down                100 Kill an enemy.
Equipment Destroyed        20 Destroy a stationary weapon that is occupied by an enemy or equipment placed by an enemy. This includes EOD
Bots, MAV, Mortar, Radio Beacon, SOFLAM and UGS.
Flag Capture Assist        50 Participate in a fl ag capture.
Flag Captured              250 Capture a fl ag.
Flag Defend                20 Kill someone while you or the victim is in the radius of a fl ag owned by your team.
Flag Neutralize Assist    150 Participate in a fl ag neutralize.
Flag Neutralized          200 Neutralize an enemy fl ag.
Headshot Bonus            10 Kill an enemy with a headshot.
Heal                      10 Heal points awarded for every 20% health healed on a friendly.
Kill Assist                10–100 Do at least 10 points of damage to an enemy and have a teammate fi nish them off . Note that this caps out at
100, as healing can restore the enemies hit points.
Killstreak Stopped        TBD Kill an enemy who has made 6 or more kills without dying. The score awarded is the number of kills in the
enemies streak x10.
Marksman Bonus            100+ Score a headshot with a sniper rifl e. Score is distance to the target.
M-COM Armed                100 Arm an M-COM station
M-COM Attack Kill          20 Kill an enemy who is disarming the crate.
M-COM Defense Kill        20 Kill an enemy who is arming the crate.
M-COM Destroyed            500 Destroy an M-COM station.
M-COM Disarmed            200 Disarm an M-COM station.
Motion Sensor Assist      20 Enemy was killed while in your MAV’s motion sensor range.
Motion Sensor Assist      20 Enemy was killed while in your T-UGS motion sensor range.
Multiple Kill              100 Kill four or more enemies within 0.8 seconds of each other.
Nemesis Kill              TBD Kill the same enemy 6 or more times. The score awarded is the number of kills x10.
Nemesis Payback            TBD Kill your nemesis. The score awarded is the number of times your nemesis has killed you x10.
Repair                    10 Repair vehicle points given for every 10% of damage repaired.
Repair                    20 Repair vehicle points given for every 10% of damage repaired.
Resupply                  10 Resupply a teammate.
Road Kill                  10 Run over an enemy.
Savior Bonus              20 Kill an enemy within 2 seconds of him dealing 50%–99% of damage to a friendly.
Spot Bonus                10 Spot an enemy and have a teammate kill them.
Squad Attack Order        20 Attack an objective that the leader has designated.
Squad Defend Order        20 Defend an objective that the leader has designated.
Squad Driver Assist        20 Have a squadmate who is a passenger in your vehicle make a kill.
Squad Eliminated          10 Kill all members in a squad.
Squad Heal                20 Heal a squadmate.
Squad Passenger Assist    20 Have a squadmate who is driving your vehicle make a kill.
Squad Resupply            20 Resupply a squadmate.
Squad Revive              110 Revive a squadmate.
Squad Spawn on You        10 Have a squadmate spawn on you.
Suppression Assist        50 Suppress an enemy and have a teammate kill them.
Target Designated          10 Lock on to an enemy vehicle with the target designator.
Team Passenger Assist      10 Have the driver in your vehicle kill an enemy.
Team Revive                100 Revive a teammate.
Triple Kill                60 Kill three enemies within 0.8 seconds of each other.
Vehicle Destroy            50 Destroy a vehicle within 10 seconds of an enemy leaving it.
Vehicle Destroy Assist    10–100 Do at least 10 points of damage to an enemy vehicle and have a teammate destroy it. Points awarded are based
on how much damage was done.
Vehicle Disabled          100 Disable a vehicle.

Ribbons and Medals

Some of the Ribbons and medals in the game don't have a very clear description of how to get them. If there is a specific ribbon or medal you are unclear on or would like tips on, please post a reply here and i'll add it to this list.

M-Com Defender In a Round Defend 4 M-Com Stations.
This one is a little misleading, what classes as defending an M-Com station is killing an enemy who is currently arming an M-Com. i.e. once you hear the beeping to indicate they are arming, that's the time to kill them. This can be easier to achieve with a bit of camping, hiding somewhere so you can see the M-Com with a high damage weapon such as RPG, Sniper Rifle, LMG with Bipod can be highly effective.

Class and Army Service Medals
These are the medals for spending a certain number of hours as the Assault/Recon/Support/Engineer classes and a certain number of hours as either the US or RU army. To contribute towards these medals you need to be on foot. Whilst in a vehicle you will not be contributing towards these.

Combat Efficiency In a round get 3 Streak Bonuses.
This is a very badly worded ribbon and can be a right pain to get. Basically you need to get kills without dying. Once you get to your 6th kill you will get a killstreak bonus, 7th kill will net you a 2 Streak Bonus and 8th kill will get you that 3 Streak Bonus and a Combat efficiency ribbon. Continuing on past your 8th kill you can keep getting ribbons for every third kill. Alternatively if you fail to make it to 8 kills, but get shot at 7, you've already got 2 streak bonuses and just need to obtain one more (6 kills) to complete that ribbon. It sounds difficult but if you simply change your playing habbits you can make this an easy one. If you find yourself low on health after a skirmish then heal up before running into another fight. Pick your fights, if someone has range on you and a better long distance weapon then spot them and retreat, use another route and keep your head down. If your squad is heading to another objective try to take a side route rather than leading the charge. Don't expect to get these in Deathmatch or any of the Close Quarters game modes though, whilst possible it's much harder than on Conquest or Rush.

 

Miscellaneous New DLC bits

The Gunship
Deserving a small section of it's own because of how unique this thing is. This is currently the only vehicle in Battlefield 3 that you can use but cannot drive/pilot. The gunship once in the air follows a set path and whichever team has control of it (based upon control of the gunship flag in conquest or the attacking team in Rush) can choose to spawn from it as an air drop or you can spawn into one of the two gunner seats.

Those in the gunner seats need to know two very important bits of information.
You can deploy flares from either seat using L2, both seats have their own set of flares with their own cooldown.
You can switch between a lower weapon for attacking ground targets and an upper weapon for defending the gunship against enemy aircraft using the triangle button.

The gunship is very useful against ground troops with it's ability to put small explosive rounds on target fairly accurately, they don't do massive damage so unless you get a direct hit it's gonna take a good 3-4 hits to kill. It does lack in tank killing ability though as the main cannon is very difficult to get on target even on stationary vehicles, it can be used as a great deterrent though.

The Crossbow / xbow
This weapon was brought on board on the Aftermath DLC and as with all other weapons can be used anywhere within the online game once unlocked

This weapon once unlocked is available for all four classes, however rather controversially it replaces the slot of one of that classes important gadgets, Health Pack / MAV / TUGS / Mortar / C4 / RPG / Javelin / SAM, dependant upon class. This means you're taking a gamble by not taking your class specific gadget.

However this does round off the classes quite nicely as the crossbow can be used with four different kinds of bolts that allow classes to do things they simply couldn't do before!

The bolts available are:

• Standard Bolt - very high damaging bolt (one hit kill on body/head) with fairly low accuracy and significant drop off.
• Balanced Bolt - less damaging than the standard bolt but with much higher accuracy and considerably less drop off.
• Scan Bolt - gives an instant ping of nearby enemies onto your mini-map, much like the tugs but with a single ping.
• Explosive Bolt - This will damage vehicles but has massive drop off that limits it to fairly close range.

The four bolt types once unlocked can be cycled between at will, meaning all classes now have a method of lighting hidden enemies up on the mini-map, all classes can now engage stealthily at range and very importantly the Recon class can now damage vehicles!

The crossbow isn't overpowered as it seems on paper due to the drop off and inaccuracies of it and it also takes an absolute age to reload this thing. But it does give the Recon class a lot more flexibility.

 

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