Firstly, manners.
Independent of what class you play, you should still be classy. Use Alt+e to access the radial menu to say “Good job!”, “Thanks.” and “Sorry” to your team. Also, make sure to spam the i key to allow your enemies to know where you are at all times and boost the moral of your bot squad members.
Second, practice.
There is a handy practice room that is very helpful. Use it if you want to know how a weapon, class or vehicle works.
Third, infantry.
I will assume that you know how to play a first person shooter game, but I will mention that you will do well if you learn to lead shots and figure out if bullet drop matters.
-Grenades are best used to counter what your squad is weak against, which is most likely assaulters and flame troops.
-Molotov’s are best thrown onto tanks to obscure their vision or thrown at entryways to prevent the opponent from seeing through and from walking through.
-Smoke, cheap and better than nothing. Rather underrated but understandably so when compared to the lethality of other options. Can be used to obscure a friendly position, deny opponents vision and call attention to an area.
-Frag, very good against flesh. Chuck whenever you are close to an enemy or through windows. Alternatively, hold onto incase a flame trooper or assaulter is nearby. You can hear their distinctive weapons typically whilst they are pushing a point.
-TNT pack, destroys most tanks when it explodes on top of them or on the side. Can also be used as a smaller blast radius frag grenade. Notable tanks that the TNT struggles against: KV-1. KV-1 requires the TNT to be explode on the drivers hatch, so good luck.
-TNT charge. Basically C4. Use to defend capture points, set traps and blow up tanks. Don’t bother using on a KV-1, it doesn’t work from my experience.
-Anti-personnel mine. Drop in doorways, preferably in the middle of a room or on corners the enemy will use as cover.
-Anti-tank mine. I wouldn’t use the AT mine. Only tanks I have knocked out with it were from pure chance and me placing it randomly in the middle of a street somewhere.
-Shovel. If you have the time to dig a trench to the objective, then do so. There are no points for doing so, but it does benefit your team and is fun to do.
-Mortars. Best to ignore the high explosive rounds unless your team is marking enemy locations. Instead, use the smoke rounds first to judge distances and obscure enemy vision. Remember, if you are defending, smoke your allies approach and if you are attacking, smoke your teams approach.
-Flame troopers. The candle that burns brightest for a blind man can burn out too quickly and often be useless in the first place… But, in the event you make it to the point safely, you can start painting the walls with fire. Torch entrance floors to prevent pushes. Torch the air to obscure enemies vision. When you are engaging an enemy position, make sure that every direction gets a spray of flame and use the hit indicator to judge where more is needed. If you catch on fire, do a cost benefit analysis to how much ammo you have left and either find cover or continue spray painting.
-Toolbox. If you have the space, pack a toolbox to get some decent points from repairing a friendly tank.
-Engineer. Place rally points in buildings or near objectives. Build sandbags to protect rally point and much more. Sandbags can sometime be stacked on top of one another to make things harder for the opponent to deal with. Build ammo boxes near rally point and on the objective. Place barbed wire on perimeter of objective and hopefully not in the way of your team. Build AA guns in open areas away from the objective and place a double high sandbag structure in front of it to block enemy snipers if too exposed. Build AT guns in cheeky locations and flanks to spam HE at the objective and annoy enemy tanks.
-AA guns. Get used to the lead and bullet drop. Shoot in two round bursts so as not to overheat and most planes require only a few hits to take down now. AA guns and rally points are super important.
Fourth, tankers.
-Know your tank and it’s strengths. Good HE? Good AP? Good reload? Good traverse? Good speed? Good vision options? Ect…
-Know your enemy and it’s weaknesses. Mostly where their ammo is and if you can penetrate them. If you can’t penetrate them, do something else like smoke the objective or disable their tracks and barrel. Or smoke them so they can’t shoot back.
-Switch to the driver for better view of where you are going. Typically*
-Switch to gunner to aim better and have a better zoom and a better view of where shot is actually going to land. If shot indicator is red, that means it won’t penetrate.
-If you have the ability to give your crew SMG’s, do so.
-Equipping binoculars on the commander may be useful.
-Learn how to drive. Watch out for trenches, the map typically shows where they are. Learn which things you can run over and what you can’t, cars are an example of what you don’t want to run over as your tank will likely rotate obnoxiously when you teeter on the car chassis. Acquire some short term memory for when you need to back out as there is no back up camera outside of turning the turret or whipping the commander around in his cupola.
-Angling can help.
-Shooting on the move can work sometimes, but it is best to stop and wait.
-To quickly stop and train your gun on a target, hit q until the gear is in reverse, then tap e once to go into neutral. There is a button for neutral, but it hasn’t worked for me yet.
Fifth, planes.
It comes with practice, I swear. I to, started as a goober flying in a straight line, but fear not, I shall impart my limited knowledge and experience onto you in the hopes of having more worthy opponents. Or at least something to that extent.
-Start simple. See “AND NOW FOR THE MEAT AND POTATOES OF ATTACK RUNS.” as having successful attack runs is mostly what you play planes for and what you are expected to do.
-What planes to avoid. I suggest avoiding the HS-123 until you can land on an IL-2 and get the first shots off on an engagement. I also recommend not using the SOC seagull the US uses in the Pacific campaign as it doesn’t have any redeeming qualities.
-Keybind suggestions. Bind middle mouse button to free look for planes and abuse it. Practice roll+pitch turning around a target balloon while keeping the balloon in the center of your screen and not crashing. This will prepare you for keeping your eye on where an enemy plane is. Bind cannons to space bar, as you have limited ammo and your cannons are typically the best way to deal damage to enemy planes. Bind drop bombs to b as it is a handy spot to spot with v and then drop with b. Bind brakes as you like since it isn’t used often.
-Sound. If you hear a plane, it is probably an enemy. Change what you are doing to counter or gamble and complete your attack run.
-Locate your opponent.
-Be above your opponent to easily get behind them.
-When behind an opponent, reduce throttle to stay behind. Make sure not to crash by throttling down too much.
-Use flaps if you have them and try not to destroy them by using them at high speed.
-You can land and deny your enemy points to gain 100 points.<–Most suicide though or run until their engine dies as it is quicker and more helpful typically. Plus, giving the enemy player more points is just nice to do.
-If enemy is on your tail, not much you can do besides roll+pitch to stall their time so your team doesn’t have to deal with them.
-Admit defeat, but still try your best. Suiciding isn’t cool. Try landing or parachuting successfully.
-Engine status. Overheating is bad, reduce the throttle a bit.
-Water leak? You have time.
-Oil overheating? You have a little time.
-Engine dead? You are now a glider.
-Flight controls damaged? You can still fly right? Rudder being bummered out is an issue for dog fighting though.
-Staffing runs are not as effective as you think they are and they tell everyone looking for you what faction you are and where you are from the tracers. Red tracers are allies typically and white/green tracers are axis typically.
-Ju-87 siren is cool and all, but everyone knows now what you are and how fast you are going.
-AA guns wile ruin your plane, even if the gunner can’t aim.
AND NOW FOR THE MEAT AND POTATOES OF ATTACK RUNS.
-Hit Alt+e to request enemy coordinates when you are on your approach.
-Target acquisition. Currently, markers placed by friendlies are seldom used and often not placed in a proper spots. Instead, when you are roughly 1.5 km away form the battle, pitch down and zoom until you can see where targets should be. Look for tracers heading towards your friendlies positions. Pick open spots that are not buildings to drop your payload in the middle of. You can always guess and drop on or past the objective. Use the map. Hit m to bring up the map whilst you are doing nothing, then hit Alt to zoom and pan the map to determine where to best drop your payload from where your friendly blue icons are pointing or disappearing from.
-Cheese, but it’s better than nothing. Tanks can be hard to see, but their muzzle flash is very easy to spot. Check your map when a friendly marks a tank. The tank will often still be there when you get back from reloading. Keep track of the killfeed to see if any tanks were knocked out. If you can’t locate the tank spam the spot key around where it was last spotted and hopefully find it before you pass overhead.
-Rockets are by far the easiest to use. Simply account for lead, distance, trajectory drop and if they fly straight or towards the center of your aim. If the rockets fly straight, aim slightly more to the left or right of the target to hit. Some targets are too armored to eliminate so targeting infantry is a better use of rockets.
-Bombs. Depending on the plane, there are three main methods for dropping bombs accurately that I know of and only two of which I use.
–Dive bombing. Best used when you need to drop a bomb through a hole in a roof or hit a bunkered down tank. There should be a tutorial available in the game. Not recommended to dive bomb with planes that are not made to do so.
–Swoop bombing? There is probably a name for this method, but you swoop to perform it so… Swoop bombing is the number one most useful method to dropping bombs on any aircraft and is fairly simple to get the hang of. Every plane has a slightly different “drop point” that you will need to practice to figure out. For this example I will be using a Potez as it has a very clear cockpit.
—Be roughly at an altitude roughly greater than 300 meters. Preferably 500 m.
—When within roughly 1 km from target start flying directly towards it to give you time to acquire the target and height to pull of maneuver.
—Be flying straight towards target so as to prevent velocity of plane in different directions from being imparted onto bombs dropped.
—(Depends on what plane)When at safe pull up distance, do so whilst dropping bombs at indicated drop point.
—Boom.
–Lastly glide bombing? I heard it from a “fly bro” and I don’t really know what it entails besides flying low or something. May be useful in certain situations.
Thank you for your time.