- Introduction

-Fundamental gameplay mechanics (3 parts 7 subsections)

(( the next section of this guide, regarding optimal counter gameplay, is currently in progress and will be added too once i can be sure said mechanics have not changed from any updates ))

- Legacy Fix for Ballistic Overkill and Steam Apps.. (doubt it will help but does grant more permissions)

--

this guide is currently current in its uncompleted state.

First Person Shooters (FPS) is an extremely competative and complicated video game that
generally revolves around using equipment to eliminate a target in order to gain points while being in a first person perspective ( you see out of your in game players eyes )

In this guide i will introduce basic and advanced game mechanics that will help you quickly identify
problems in your current gaming strategy and hopefully it will help you evolve into a more lethal player.

The information contained in this guide will not make you a professional FPS player but will help you improve your game by giving you the tools you need to identify mistakes.

This game is in Early Access and as such new features and content will be released on a regular basis as such this guide will recieve updates which will be edited in. the date any particular section in the guide was written will be added to the bottom of the page.

some sections of this guide can be adapted or applied directly to other FPS games, those sections will be clearly labled for easy identification via this symbol in the section title. "(+)".






19/03/2016 version 1.1.2

==FGM== (+)

In all First or Third person Shooters there are basic fundamental gameplay mechanics at work, memorizing FPS/FGM principals are essential to becoming a truely competative shooter

when engaging the enemy the first and most important aspect of initiating a fight with an enemy player is "point"!

"Point" is in refrence to the dot in the center of your hip fire reticule and there are only 2 things you need to figure out as fast as possible in regards to it...

1. Do you have Point?
having point means that the dot on the center of your screen that represents where your bullet will travel is now pointing directly at the enemy target BUT the enemy target is NOT currently pointing exactly at you with his target dot. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT as having point on a target increases your chances of killing the target or otherwise surviving the engagement by about 75% which brings me to the next part of point...

2. does the enemy have point?
has the enemy shot you while you where not looking at him, or was able to start hitting you before you could hit him? well now the enemy has point which using logic from the previous statement we can assume means that you only have about a 25% chance to win the engagement.. now sure, you can try and dodge and fight back but most likely you will sustain near fatal damage however..

YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR K/D RATIO SIMPLY BY RUNNING AWAY IN THOSE SITUATIONS!!!

there is no point in trying to kill an enemy that clearly has a marked advantage on you and most of the time escape is going to be your top priority but if you are going to try and engage the enemy thats got point on you....

Point Breaking

if your being attacked and escape is not an option when an opponent has point your next move should be to move or place yourself in a position where he can no longer aim at you/see you.. you can duck behind any small cover anywhere around you.. doing this prevents your enemy from having point, and gives you a chance to randomly pop out behind cover to get point on your enemy.. which in turn gives you a 75% improved chance to win the engagement with said enemy.


(+) following the point engagement rules should improve your ability to get a positive Kill/Death Ratio considerably and should always be considered.

Risk Assesments and Engaging Multiple Enemies

now that you know when and when not to engage a single enemy, we will start to look into engaging 2 or more enemies at the same time which leads me to my first point of discussion...

1.identification of targets
a simple but important premise.. what kind of enemies are you engaging? vanguards.. tanks.. snipers? shadows? do they have shotguns are they using a grenade launcher? a sniper? a sword?? these are all very important pieces of information which brings me to..

2.Risk Assessment
there is always risk in engaging an enemy, there is even risk in leaving your spawn shield if your on the badside of a base camp.. putting that aside there are certain things you can do to avoid being killed so quickly while engaging enemies, categorized below in order of threat (greatest to least)

1. is the enemy pointing at you? (they die first or flee if you take first hit)
2. are there any snipers at extreme distances? (go for cover)
3. are there any close range 1 hit weapons (shotguns/swords) in range?
4. if they toss a nade at you, can you get away? (avoid multiple engagements in confined spaces)
5. how likely is an enemy to knife you in the back in your position (back turned to enemy spawn?)
6.do you have enough clips/rounds to eliminate all targets and have some left over

(never engage multiple enemies when low on health or ammo, always return to base to recover and reload)

eventually these rules become second nature, but its good to record your gameplay and see for yourself how much risk assesment plays into multiple enemy engagements and where you slip up.

how to stay alive when taking fire!!!

there are a few tricks here, so i will label them as basic/intermediate/advanced survival mechanics. these are your saving grace because often you can defeat an enemy simply by moving properly and being in the right place.. and these moves are..

[basics]

1.Jumping
yes yes, the dreaded halo jumping is number 1 on this list and for good reason.. its one of the best ways to protect your head by causing it to rapidly move up and down but note that it also decreases your accuracy to be in the air.

2. sidestepping
spamming the left and right movement keys (default A and D) helps protect your head and body by making it harder for the enemy to lock onto, dont be afraid to mash the keys but if u mash them too quickly you will not actually move.

3. strifing
a trick thats best used against snipers and ranged enemies, moving only left or right while returning fire causes the ranged enemy to have to follow you and does not provide them a chance to return fire by having you move into their target reticule.

[intermediate]

1. pulse firing
pulse firing your weapon in 3-4 round bursts increases your hipfire accuracy and helps you conserve more bullets which in turn will help you stay alive much longer

2.nading around corners
if you bounce a grenade off say the side of a door, or a wall. it can bounce around the corner and hit enemies going for cover as well as damage campers hiding around a corner.

[advanced]

1.the kill history
the list of deaths and kills on the bottom left hand of the screen, if it suddenly fills with enemies you can then rush the enemy spawn and initiate a camp, thats because when they die it takes a moment for them to spawn and then move out of their own bases.. this allows you to be more aware of your surroundings

2. enemy reload
when an enemy is reloading his gun will point up into the air so his avatar can have access to the gun clip, during this time they are vulnerable to attack and you should rush them.

3. out of clip
when you run out of your clip and your still fighting the enemy, consider pulling out your secondary weapon..this will shave a bit over a second over the time it takes to continue firing

4. camping
when an enemy is camping, dont rush blindly out, instead wait for them to get impatient and move away from the spawn, once they can no longer see you, rush out to attack them, this improves your chances of getting a kill and repelling the camp.

5. the enemies gun
once you get really good you will start to notice that you can tell where the enemy is aiming by looking at their gun, always move opposite to the direction the enemy is moving, if done properly the enemy will never be able to aquire a proper point on you.

6. enemy movement control
often times u can cause an enemy to rush straight at you, when this happens from your point of view the enemies head is no longer moving and its a simple matter to shoot it off. this is done by backing away from an enemy that is using a close range weapon.


(if a sword shadow is charging up on you, dont aim down your sites and try and shoot him to death, just spray him with a few bullets and once he gets into sword range melee knife him! the melee knife is faster then all the other swords and with practice u will knife sword shadows everytime!)

Situational Awareness

Its vitally important to be aware of whats going on around you and there are many tools available to help you accomplish this...

1. radar
a very important piece of of your screen is the radar, this gives you a general idea of where enemies are and even where they may be coming from, you should check this every 5 seconds when your not in combat

2. repetative enemies.
often times enemy players will have a "preferred" route, figuring out where enemies like to be can allow you to control when and how you engage your target, almost always granting you a kill.

3. the spawn shield
you must never allow yourself to be in the immediate area of a spawn shield for any length of time. players always have the advantage when exiting their own spawn area, so try and camp away from it or camp doorways outside of the spawn shield that help block it from your view

4. moving with purpose
dont blinding run for the enemy everytime, try and move to places where you will have cover to fire from, or hide behind if you come under fire.. the enemies spawn is not the only place to camp on a map.

5. the killboard
this was outlined before but an active killboard means an empty map, and when players spawn in.. well we know where they are going to be.

6. friendly deadbodies
its important to note that if no enemy is present, and u discover a friendly dead body that has not despawned yet, the enemy that killed him is most likely fleeing for their own base, if your quick you might be able to get an easy kill.

7. sniper hotspots
try and avoid open area's of the map that are often covered by snipers, your no match for a good sniper at range, if u are versus a good sniper in a sniper spot move slowly jumping from cover to cover on your approach until your in range to attack, never move in a predictable straight path.

(its important to note that sometimes attacking an unaware enemy is not the best course of action, situational discretion is advised)

how to gain an advantage once combat has been initiated

there are a few extra things i can point out that help when your in combat with the enemy to increase your chances of scoring a hit

1. pulse firing
this was already covered but i cannot stress enough that you should be doing this.

2. squatdodge
you can squat to dodge shotgunners most of the time, just squat and hipfire spray and enjoy your easy kill

3. height
height advantage is important, being higher provides a greater visibility ratio of your enemies head and in turn increases your chance to headshot while affording you an easy cover simply by squatting.

(at the same height you see a tiny head and a whole body but at a great hight difference you see the same size head and a partially smaller body, due to it being hidden from view by other parts of the body)

4.spawn popping
if your being camped really hard, you can pop out of your shield, and while outside fire then return into your base, causing minor damage to your enemy.. this may not seem like much but you can then heal, he would have to leave your base to heal.

5. healing
if you do not have skill based healing available to you you should return to recover your hitpoints if they fall below 25% for any reason, or you become an easy kill.

final words about fundamentals and gameplay improvements

1. always record your competative games on low quality settings (just for fun does not matter)
its hard to check to see what mistakes your making if you have no video record to refrence. lol

2. deaths are mistakes
simply put, if you die. you made a mistake.

3. take a break every hour, even every match
the longer you play the more stress you put on your brain, and fps do stress your mind and eyes so its important to get plenty of rest

hopefully these fundamentals will help you grow into a lethal player.

Alright, so now you and some other player have begun shooting at each other or have otherwise decided to engage each other.. in this section of the guide i am going to explain how you should handle yourself in great detail.

to start i have one very important statement

THERE IS NO SINGLE "TRICK" THAT WILL SIMPLY MAKE YOU BETTER

instead im going to explain all of the situations you will encounter and what you should be considering when you are looking for the "optimal" counter to whatever your opponent decides to do on the fly, now to start with my personal pet peeve maneuver (featured in the fundamentals section lol)...

STRIFING

this is an attempt to cause you to miss by presenting you a moving target that randomly changes its direction of movement.

at this point you will begin to rather then focus on moving your own body, focus instead on your aiming and then you die. this is not the optimal gameplay for the following reason

1. the target is moving rapidly in respect to the screen which will decrease all but the best aimers ability to score many direct hits.

the optimal gameplay to counter this situation is to fire on the "inside" of their average strife range while moving exactly opposite of them as much as possible.(dont jump you need your hipfire accuracy!!)

what this means is that if a player is strifing and at the most they move 6 feet side to side (rough example) you should fire no more then say 4 feet side to side.. this is the optimal gameplay to counter a player strifing you for the following reason

1. the player is now moving into your aim, once to pass it and then once more to pass over it again! quickly adjusting to catch the enemy in another 2 cross overs on the otherside of the center of his strife zone.

this will take some practice so i suggest having a friend join your server so you can practice against them, have them use a vanguard while you use a weak gun and aim for their legs, this increases the amount of practice you get**

(- under development -)

// will include all ingame settings
// will include images.