NC medics, light assaults, and engineers don't have their optimal starting weapons, but for engineer and medic you have radically better upgrade options than a weapon, and light assaults are a really poor class to start on and the NC upgrade is cheap anyway.
Luke Cox wrote:Only faction I played was Vanu. How are their starting weapons?
Two of our classes start with either their absolute best weapon or one of the best. The NC Heavy assault's SAW is probably the best LMG in the game
IF you know how to use it properly (Reset spread every second or two) and our bolt action starter sniper rifle is our one hit headshot rifle. The infi obviously has sidegrades but it means that our skilled Heavy and infi players can lock down utterly. Most fights with NC either have us cripplingly outnumbered or us holding the line, neither taking nor pushing, until the enemy relents.
The vanguard starts with an ok primary but its not the AP god tier. Its top gun is the crappy one. Our plane starts with an ok gun, but obviously has better upgrade paths and if you plan to be a fighter pilot you either are making an alt just for it so you can get the extra early certs to get your weapons anyway, or are pay to play.
Our max's starting loadout leaves a lot to be desired, as it lacks any real ability to be effective with its starting guns. The shotgun is great at anti-max, but anti-max requires two primaries and its lack of ammo capacity and range means you auto lose at any range above 10 meters anyway and at choke points anti-maxes suck. Playing as a starting AV or AA max still sucks with the shotguns because you can't reliably protect yourself from enemy infantry with the shotguns.
Standard NC tactics is to maintain strong fire lines mained by our heavy assaults and backed up by medics, we legit have the best heavy assault teams in the game, its insane how far from behind they can fight. Meanwhile our infiltrators either help hold the line or are set up to assassinate enemy medics, like most factions, though our better than normal sniper rifles mean that we obviously do deceptively good at range. Vanguards tend to play as either snipers or the critical hammer NC needs to push ahead, because our weakness is mobile combat, with weaker than normal LAs to start, and with poorly armed engineers. The SAW also loses a lot of its main draw when mobile of extreme damage and accuracy, and our maxes cant spearhead very well. Our fighters often wildly vacilate in power based on the meta.
Compared to the Vanu you require a lot more discipline with our guns. Bullet drop is in play and if you just hold down the trigger recoil will kill ya. You must also resist the urge to run and gun on most classes, unlike the vanu if your not ADS by the time the fight starts its over for a HA. However we do much better at vanu in almost every regard beides our MAX and fighter. If Vanu can't flank our medics, which can't happen if the Heavy Infantry is practicing good zone fire, we win without a crushing numbers gap beyond a 3:1 fight. However you will likely find our vehicles sluggish, and despite our ability to outfight lone NC do very poorly unless they are light assaults or infiltrators. Obviously skill matters a lot but we aren't TR, we can't constantly spin about and expect to win a fight just because we saw the guy before we died. That said it doesn't mean you are a slave to your outfit, though obviously for any faction outfits are king. Not everyone needs to be focusing on teamplay for you to benefit, you just need enough people so that you can be aware of problem areas before they kill you. One Heavy firing well supported by a medic and surrounded by idiots still fights and wins in 3 to 1 odds.
Our theme is essentially "Do your thing well, and make sure there are bodies on site, and you will crush it."