I haven't seen any help area up for this game yet so here it is. I was thinking more of a place to post up neat strategies you find or have had used against you. Please try and keep banter on this to a minimum so people can have an easier time of seeing relevant info. All of us playing so far each have a wealth of information, but do we all have it? Heavens no! So lets help make eachother the best we can.

So I will start:

Smoke Grenades and You: How to fool and enemy and protect your team

One thing I notice alot during my rush rounds is that no one takes advantage of the smoke grenades. If you are the medic and have the M320 grenade launcher unlocked, you can choose to use smoke grenades. There are two ways that I have found that smoke grenades can tip the tide of war in your favor (favour).

1.) The smoke screen to conceal movement or protect advances: Davamand Peak is the most exposed map for rush players. If it is not the fact that your whole line of advance is down a hill with no trees, it is that there is also a helicopter harassing you as you go. Being able to lay down at least 2 smoke grenades give you a little bit of relief while you are making your across no mans land. Snipers will still be a problem, but to be honest, you will most likely be up against a terrible sniper 75% of the time. In situations like davamand peak, it is critical to get down the hill as fast as you can. With smoke screens you will be able to accomplish it, and gain a foothold onto the mcom stations.
1.b) In urban or enclosed fighting areas the same premise works, except much better. In alleyways or roads you can completely blind your movements to the enemy. If you see a choke point that your team cannot get past, the only thing you can do is obscure the enemies' sight. Destroy thier strategy of defense by changing your axis of attack. In areas like Metro, this will be the only way your team will be able to move past good defenders with explosive shotguns.

2.) The smoke screen to defend your armed mcom: What I've found that works is to rambo up to the mcom and deploy two screens that overlap to create the biggest cloud possible 15-20feet away from the mcom. Choose the most likely place for the enemy to charge. This will slow down the momentum of people charging in to defuse. Not many players are going to blindly run into an mcom. Remember: the biggest fear is that of the unknown. They have no idea how many USAS12 frag gunners are camping an armed mcom. The more time you hold them up with a smoke grenade increases the chances that more of your force can back you up, and that the opposing team will have less time to defuse.

Same idea for smoke rounds and mortars, but you are limited to where you can use them and you show up on the map. Conquest is an entirely different matter, and aside from operation metro, i usually do not bother with them.

Thank you and I hope that this can continue.

So you want to join the artillery corp?

Mortars are a mixed blessing in BF3. They are great for harassing an enemy position, laying down smoke rounds ( dont know how yet, dont ask me! hahaha.) or causing enemies that are in sniping positions to relocate. The negatives are the slow fire rate, weak splash damage, an inaccurate aiming system, and the moment you shoot you become visible on radar/map. Be aware that you can only use them outdoors.
The biggest complaint I personally have is that the game is very picky as to what terrain you can deploy it on, so be aware that you are a sitting duck while you look like a moron trying to fiddle with a stubborn artillery tube.

Be forewarned that using this is not for everyone. The pathetic player count on the ps3 makes it that if more than 1 good artillery person is on the field, it becomes very hard to play the objectives. If you are in the rear with the gear, you cannot possibly be capping a flag.

Rush Strategies:
Attacking: If you know which mcom stations are not hardened ( are not in buildings ) that you can start lobbing shells onto the mcom area to kill any campers there. Be aware of any hit detectors you get, as well as any spotted enemies you see in the area. You can see your troops on the aiming map, so try and give some covering fire if you can. Once someone arms the station, start lobbing shells as fast as you can directly on top of the station to prevent the enemy team from defusing. In between firing take a quick glance around the defender area to see if someone has set up a counter mortar. If they have then you likely will only have one shot more at most so send directly onto it. Hopefully you have bought enough time for reinforcements to swarm the station and keep the defenders at bay.

Do not stay in the same location for too long. You will piss someone off enough to change class just to get retaliation.

Other uses during attacking would be to kill exposed snipers and people hiding behind walls or barricades. If you notice they they are constantly in the same position that will be a dead giveaway. Another useful function for the mortar is to set off enemy explosives. Not only will this save your ground vehicles and troops, but you will get 20 points per explosive. Destroy 2 and you get a 200 point ribbon.

Defending: Most of the same tactics will be viable in the defense. Your main focus will be to kill snipers who will be harassing your advance scouts, while also keeping ever vigilant against the attackers who want to mortar your team. Do not stay in one spot too long. I personally will knock out enemy mortars if I see them killing too many of our troops.

Conquest: Honestly conquest is too fluid to rely on mortars too much. You can kill the odd camper here or there, or go for taking out mines, but I have not had quite the success in this game mode with mortars.

Anti-Vehicle warfare: On the odd chance that you see a vehicle on your map staying stationary for cover fire, you can opt to lob shells in their direction. Please note that mortars are not very strong against MBT's. Against afv's and transports they are more effective, but it is also harder to do anything more than scare them away.

As a side note: You cannot win a battle with a mortar. All teams will not be the same skill level. You might find that while you may be able to bring death from above on dozens of people, your team will be better off with you up in the battle lines refreshing ammo stocks and getting direct kills. I have seen idiots on a mortar, and I have been the idiot on the mortar. It will be up to you to make the final call on it.

Nice Work! I will hopefully pick up BF3 this weekend, and I know I will need all the help I can get! Keep up the good work.

i would like dingo to contribute an advanced tank trollfare topic if he would be so kind ^^

The Rocket Propelled Grenade/ SMAW and You!

Is an enemy ground vehicle giving you fits? Do you find yourself feeling inadequate against clustered enemies? Tired of wall campers? You are not alone.

The engineer class comes fully equipped to harass enemy vehicles and soldiers from afar with the use of rpg's (US forces have the SMAW rocket, but that name is dumb, and one letter more than rpg). The first thing you are going to want to do is figure out exactly what kind of vehicle you are facing. I cannot count the times that I have thought I was going to fire on a light tank, just to see that it was an amtraac instead!

As you can imagine, the different classes of vehicles have different amounts of armor. The classes are IFV, light tank, and main battle tank.

Against vehicles: I always find it helpful when attacking vehicles to fight the enemy on my terms. I will always put buildings or rocks in between me and whatever I am attacking. This way once you make your first shot, which should surprise the enemy, you can quickly get out of sight and get to a new firing position by the time your next round is loaded. Be warned that you will leave a telltale trail of smoke from each shot, giving away where you fired from. If you can keep the element of surprise, and you are facing an unskilled driver, then you will be able to get off multiple shots before enemy infantry ruin your party. If there are no infantry present, please proceed to finishing off the vehicle. Always look on the radar to make sure the vehicle is still occupied. If the icon has turned white, than the crew has bailed and you should consider your position compromised. Most drivers will bail out after the vehicle has been disabled, unless there is an engineer to repair it.

Does it matter where you hit it? Yes! ALWAYS strive for the perfect "dead on" shot, which hits the tank with little or no angle to the impact. Think of the vehicle as a compass. You will want to aim for each cardinal direction to do the best damage. For tanks, you should fight the urge to attack and go for a rear shot. If you can get a perfect rear shot in, the tank will be disabled in one shot.

Destroying ground vehicles is key in both conquest and rush. This keeps the fighting to infantry vs. infantry. Also note that unless a support runs up to a vehicle and puts c4 on it, no other class is able to fight vehicles. So go out there and make metal bleed!

The RPG as a corridor clearer:
The rpg can be used to kill multiple people in hard to shoot places. Since there is a big splash damage radius to each rocket, you do not have to be too accurate to get kills. Look at your radar and send round after round into your enemies. Hit markers will show you if your shots are hitting close to home. Just make sure you are near someone laying down ammo boxes or this fun will not last long. Also take caution because you do not want to be in a compromised position during mid reload. Don't get cocky just because you have a rocket launcher and they don't!


In conclusion:

If this is your first battlefield game, don't try and snipe at targets from extreme ranges. It takes some time to be able to get a feel for the bullet drop. In most urban maps, the ranges will be quite short and this will not be a factor for you.

I don't play the engineer a lot since it tends to be the favourite class and other players use it, so I end up playing either assault or support instead. I like the support class since you have the option to pick C4 as a gadget which comes in really handy if there are a lot of vehicles on the map. If you can sneak up behind vehicles and place C4 on them they're usually done for. Three C4 packs is a safe bet and destroys tanks easily.

I wish I could help out with the flying aspect of this game but all I can really do is fly sideways into mountains.


Fun Fast Tips for Conquest

This game mode is not about slaughtering as much as it is territory. In the maps with 3 objectives, you will want to make sure that your team is in control of the one closest to your deployment, and B. Without that you might as well sit on your own grenade. This will ensure a steady ticket bleed of the enemy.

On the larger maps its much harder to keep your defenses up, especially with air dropped troops. If you find yourself constantly having to zip between points just to recapture them, then you need to pull that stunt on the enemy. Dingo showed me that just by zipping around in a jeep to the different points has a much bigger impact on the outcome of the game than by camping a single area.

"Should we spawncamp?" Well in this game you can spawn camp to a point. More of what you would be able to do is deny the enemy entry into the first objective on their side. If your team is competant there is a chance that you can totally lock down the enemy team and get a fast victory. More often though what I have seen is my team get greedy and stupid. Once we had all the objectives they would line up on the border to the enemy spawn area. You cannot do that unless you are positive that there are no enemies that are going to just swoop behind your entire team and capture a bunch of points.

Questions you need to ask yourself are:
"Are there any snipers on the hills that could be spawn monkeys?"
"Are vehicles going to slip past us?"
"Are there any defenses like mines or claymores to prevent a speedy capture?"
"Can our air cover deal with anyone using a jet or chopper as an apc?"

Never Assume anything.

Stay mobile, stay smart! Keep your enemy guessing, and make sure they guess wrong!

Keep 'em coming!