Basic Training Directives

Basic Training directives will help you get familiar with the game, and provide a few useful rewards at the same time.

Novice

1) Redeploy

2) Change Class

You can switch classes by interacting with an infantry terminal.

This could be a good time to explore your starting loadouts.

Loadout name should give you an idea what you are supposed to be doing with it.

In general, starting loadouts are competitive, and an experienced player would have no trouble using them effectively. However, by default, they do not contain all of the equipment you get for free.

Your starting weapons will use Iron Sights by default, which are bad for many reasons. Fortunately, you are granted 1x Reflex Sight for free. All you have to do is equip them.

You are also granted a couple of free Implants: Target Focus 1 and Safeguard 1.

This video will show you how to equip all of it. You have to do this manually for all loadouts that you intend to use.

3) Join Combat

While just starting out, try to pick fights where number of allies is equal or slightly higher than number of enemies, preferring defense over attacking.

Huge 96+/96+ fights can be epic, but often devolve into an incoherent spam of explosives and often cause performance issues on weaker machines.

Adept

1) Base Defense

A “base defense” is scored when an enemy starts capturing one of your allied bases, but then you or your allies retake control of the Capture Points, and the base capture timer fully resets. All you have to do is to be in the region of that base.

During any base attack, the capture timer usually resets several times, so you are very likely to score a base defense automatically, without even noticing – simply by fighting in a territory of an allied base.

2) Base Capture

To capture a base, you or your allies have to take control of the Capture Points by standing near them for several seconds. Once your faction controls the majority of the capture points, you have to protect them from enemies until the base capture timer is filled and the base is captured. That will count as “base capture” for the purposes of Directives and Ribbons.

Capturing a base is generally harder than defending, because you do not get access to a safe Spawn Room, and instead you have to rely on deployed Sunderers to provide spawns. If all Sunderers are destroyed, the attack is likely to fail.

3) Score 10 kills

Ah, the first directive where you actually have to accomplish something by yourself.

If you are completely new to FPS genre, you will find these First Person Shooter Basics useful.
If you already have some experience with First Person Shooters, you should be able to handle it, eventually. Watch this video.
If you’re an FPS expert, these Infantry Guides will help you up your game specifically in PlanetSide 2.

Expert

Time to learn about vehicles.

1) Pull a Lightning

Lightning is a light one-manned tank. It has good armor and mobility, but it will lose to bigger tanks in a straight up fight. By default, Lightning is armed with a C75 Viper automatic cannon, effective against vehicles at close range.

Tanks are instrumental when both attacking and defending:

When attacking, tanks must push into enemy territory, and protect allied Sunderers.
When defending, tanks must hunt enemy Sunderers to make sure that enemies cannot gain a foothold.

The directive only requires you to pull a Lightning, which will cost you 350 Nanites.

2) Pull an ESF

ESF stands for “Empire Specific Fighter” – it is a one-manned jet for air superiority and close air-to-ground support. Check out Aircraft Handling Basicsbefore getting into one. Each faction has their own ESF. They look and handle a bit differently:

3) Score 15 kills from a vehicle’s gunner seat

Most of PlanetSide 2 vehicles are equipped with secondary weapons. So in order for a vehicle to reach its full firepower, it has to be occupied by several players. Your best bet for accomplishing this directive is to be a gunner for a more experienced player. This directive will test your communication skills, whether you can coordinate with other players to be someone’s gunner for a while.

Check these tips on being a decent gunner. Redeploy to a Warpgate, or a fight where your faction is defending a base, and then use /regionsay chat. State that you are a new player on your Basic Training Directives, and you wish to be a gunner for someone. You will likely get a squad invite, and then you can use the /squadsay chat or personal messages to coordinate with your new comrade.

Here’s a video example of me doing this incognito.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get the hand-holding service. You can still manage:

Use Sunderer’s weapons to defend it when it is under attack.
After any base fight is over, your allies are likely to pull Sunderers and Main Battle Tanks, so just try and jump in to someone.
When your allied base is getting particularly overrun by enemies, you can redeploy to another nearby allied base, and wait near a vehicle terminal. Sooner or later, someone is likely to come and pull a Main Battle Tank, and then you can jump in.

If you’re a mute sociopath, that’s okay. You can accomplish this directive on your own. Pull a Sunderer or a Harasser, drive it up to enemy positions, then switch to gunner’s seat, and engage enemies.

Switching seats: when you are inside a vehicle, you can use F1 – F12 keys to switch between seats. If a seat is already occupied by another player, he will get a prompt, asking if he wants to switch places with you.