As a little compensation for my "omg death to 2142 topic" I will put up here some stuff you might find to help you getting started on Northern Strike!
NS Unlocks
Those unlocks are avaiable on 1.20 as Field Upgrades. But not everyone has a high enough rank to reach most of the unlocks on top of the unlock tree. If you buy Northern Strike you can expect to easily get a bunch of new unlock credits. So I will list some details along with recommendations.
DS-22 Sniper Decoy
The Sniper Decoy will mask your UAV signature. You put it down like a Beacon and can pick it up again my pressing G. Put the Decoy down and your UAV signature will be drawn to this point. It has a range of 60 meters. If you go beyond this point the Decoy will still produce a fake sniper dot on the enemies minimap but your own will also be there. Additionally all your cloaking and decloaking actions wont be noticed by the supports netbat helmet. To find out how far you can approximately go you can use items on your 3D HUD like a flagpole.
The Decoy is easily destroyed by random arti, nades and rockets. So you need to find places where it wont be randomly destroyed and is hard for the enemy to reach while still maintaining a good action radius for you. Like Beacons you can throw it while jumping to get it up on cars and other map objects.
Additionally you can make use of the range numbers of your Sniper Rifles and Lamberts zoom mode to dermit the distance between you and your decoy.
While one function of the decoy is to mask your position you can also use it to lure enemies into a trap. A decoy placed into some rather well known sniper hideout trapped with C4 or claymores should get you some kills as well as get some chaos going in the enemies mind.
The backdraw of this unlock is that it is on top of the sniper tree. You need to get the Zeller and the rest of the Sniper unlocks before you have access to the decoy. Thats a lot of Unlocks for people to focus on the SpecOps part of the Recon.
My Unlock Rating:
4/10 to 9/10 depending on your playstyle
TL-S1C Camo Upgrade
Makes your Camo last about 1.5x long. If you wear light armor and sprint streight forward the old camo was just over as your stamina was out. With the new upgrade you have about this much left:
It could be the vital meters in breaking thru that choke point. Additionally this unlock should be easy to access since its right above a cool gun - the Lambert.
My Unlock Rating:
6/10
Assault Advanced Magazine
Whats better than 3 Rockets .....4 Rockets! This is a permanent unlock right above the Baur. It will enlarge the magazines of your attachments from 3 to 4 and give you an additional clip for your main gun. Not much to say here since it obviously has MORE POWER!
My Unlock Rating:
10/10
CM3-N Radargrenade
Well so who has Rockets unlocked and still uses Smoke Grenades? This unlock creates the same amount of smoke as a normal Smoke Grenade. Only it adds 3 "pings" in the size of an Infantry IDS-1 scan into it. Also you only get 1 of the Radar Grenades not three.
This Unlock will have it very hard to find any real fans. Just get the Voss and keep this one open as Field Upgrade if you want to toy around.
My Unlock Rating:
2/10
MMB-5 Motionmine Bait
One of the most game changing unlocks. It looks like a red EMP Grenade but will attract any Motion Mine nearby - including friendly ones. The mines will then circle around the bait till it selfdestructs after around 3 seconds.
It will also kill off any EMP Mine, Claymore or RDX if they happen to be within its blast radius. This unlock has the potential to free whole roads of Berlin from those little mines from hell. Additionally you get a whole lot of 3 grenades in your equip.
While every vehicle driver should have those grenades ready - it is even better if your gunner has them and can jump out for a second to throw them.
Engineers need to counteract in spreading out their mines more and try to hide them along the road. Also keep an eye on the mines with your rocketlauncher out.
My Unlock Rating:
10/10
MP-Clip-Expansion
This little Unlock gives your MP a few more rounds. While it sure can help you need to have the SAWW Anti Air unlocked in order to get it. Most would better want to spend their Unlock Credits on other unlock trees first.
My Unlock Rating:
5/10
IDS-1 Infantry Scanner
Also one of top new Unlocks. It works similar to the Engineer scanner but scans Infantry only. The radius is a bit smaller but still big enough to cover most choke points easily. The outlines of the scan start hitting transparency on the blue area but it scans still a bit further till the red circle.
Nevertheless its destroyed very easily from random grenades and rockets. So try putting it a bit away from the usual rocket and nade spam places. You should also try and hide it well from the enemy eyes.
Ceillings are a good spot to put them. You can also throw them while jumping to the top of some trees where noone will ever find them. Of course it also sticks to Drones and Vehicles! The absolute bonus to this unlock is that ALL your team members will profit from the scan. This is one of the reasons I would call this overpowered but thats another topic. Since its in the game its a must have unlock for every support player.
My Unlock Rating:
10/10
Clark 12-RDX
A whole new weapon - and it fits into a small equip slot - I wish the real Clark could do that. It shots little RDX glowing balls that stick to walls and explode 1 second after. The blast radius isnt as big as the rockets and also the damage seems to decrease faster. Additionally its a hugh "shot me I am here playing with glowballs" thing.
Most jobs that a Clark RDX may do can be solved by simple Grenades anyway. The actual uses of this unlock are still beyond me. Maybe it needs more time and people to toy around with to find its special place to rock. But at the current point:
My Unlock Rating:
5/10
SAB-1b Shock Absorber Boots
These boots will lessen your damage on falls by a few points as well as let you regen stamina a bit faster. Doesnt sound much but they always active. If you can afford it you should climb up the permanent unlock tree up anyway. Often the 3rd grenade is pure gold.
My Unlock Rating:
8/10
SL RPU
I admit I do not have experience with this unlock. But it seems like you are throwing tickets at the enemy while taking out the last few seconds of beeing able to be revived. Someone with more experience on this might give an insight.
My Unlock Rating:
???
NS Awards
So you have all the fancy new unlocks but how will you pay for them? Northern strike introduces 2 new badges, 4 new ribbons and 1 new pin. If you are able to get one of them you get awarded with 1 full unlock credit. You are also able to spend this credit on all unlocks - not just limited to NS items.
EA made the new awards easy. So if you get NS you should get a flood of Unlock Credits!
Super Easy Awards:
Arctic Combat Badge Bronze - 6 Kills in NS - How anyone can NOT get this one is beyond me
Vehicle Excellence Badge Bronze - 5 Kills in NS Vehicles
Cold Front Unit Service Ribbon - Win each NS map 2 times and get 5 Kills IAR
Easy Awards:
Arctic Combat Badge Silver - 2 hours of NS and 10 Kills IAR
Vehicle Excellence Badge Silver - 2 hours in NS Vehicles and 9 Kills IAR
Transporter Duty Ribbon - 2 hours in Goliath and 9 Kills IAR
So that are SIX unlock Credits you can easily get within the first few hours of playing NS - most without even trying!
Medium Difficult Awards
Arctic Combat Badge Gold - 5 hours NS and 14 Kills IAR
Vehicle Excellence Badge Gold - 4 hours in NS vehicles and 12 Kills IAR
Meritorious Winterstrike Ribbon - 4 destoyed Speeders, 2 destoyed Goliaths, 5 deaths by Speeder, 5 deaths by Goliath - All very doable but getting the last kill shot on a Goliath is a bit tricky since you usually have like 2 walkers and 3 AT pounding it.
Harder Awards
Assault Lines Attack Pin - Get the enemy home base in Assault Lines - This means you have to totally annihilate the enemy team AND take their now unlocked UCB. This will be a very rare sight unless you are on a low populated server with a very bad enemy team.
Operation Snowflake Ribbon - 40 Kills in Speeder and 5 Roadkills IAR - 5 Road kills could be hard on NS maps since there are quite a lot of vehicles for people to hide in. Additionally you can bet on 3-4 other Speeders trying to run over people at the same time.
NS New Vehicles
NS features 2 new Vehicles. The Speeder will only spawn on PAC controlled points while the Goliath spawns in the EU UCB and is spawn protected. Meaning no PAC solider is able to steal it.
(Note: The data of the 2 vehicles is already included in 1.20 and they can be included into custom maps even without NS and be played)
Speeder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjS5YvMsYL0
It drives like a hover tank with an incredible handling and agility. The driver has two frontal machine guns that can only be moved up and down. Those guns arent too great and you are usually better off trying to run someone over than hitting them with those guns. The gunner has a 360° grenade launcher that is very effective against infantry. The real gimmick is the TV guided missile. It seems rather easy to control and do about 50% dmg to any vehicle. While the driver has as least a bit of protection - the gunner is killed very easily - he even acts as sort of meatshield to motions mines following. You should use this Speeder more as an Anti Tank Sniper. The gunner is just too easily killed by random fire.
The Goliath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aala5PtzDk
It has 5 positions and acts as spawn point - even tho it is almost always filled up anyway. The driver seat has a shotgun cannon and a motionmine launcher - the only way to damage other vehicles - even tho it is nice since it will ignore enemy shields. There are 2 grenade launcher positions to the front and 2 machine gun positions to the rear. So it really is an anti infantry vehicle. The Goliath is really slow moving. A walking soldier is faster - there are some rumours you might be able to "help" the goliath a bit by pushing it forward with a walker
The real clue about it is the autorepair shield. The Goliath has 7 plates at its sides with each of them speeding up the autorepair. Those plates can be destroyed by enemy fire, mines or RDX and NOT be repaired! The Goliath itself can be repaired the normal way tho.
The Autorepair itself is just brutal with most of the plates active. You can slowly drive over carpets of motion mines without getting into serious trouble. You will need some coordinated attack of walkers, speeders and ATs to pump in as much damage in a short time as possible to bring it down.
So i hope you will have some fun on Northern Strike!
Northern Strike Compilation
