The problems

1. Hiding in a bunker hinders your ability to move.  This basically means the enemy will figure out were you are eventually and there isn’t much you can do about it.
2. When hiding in a bunker, you can’t see where people are.  If they move, you have no idea.
3. When you pop up from a bunker, it takes a couple of moments to figure out where your enemy is, aim, fire, and adjust your shot to get it on target.  A smart enemy will take a couple of practice shots at the bunker to get there fire near where it needs to be and wait for your head to pop up.  Just takes a moment for them to fire and your still looking.

What to do?

Well, sometimes your only option is to take cover.  In these causes you need to be smart.  NEVER stick your head out.  Always find an angle where you can see someone coming and when you have the opportunity, pick a bunker where someone else can watch your blind spot.

If your up against one or two people, DON’T hug the bunker!  Instead, back up from it and try to use a tree or other obstacle down field as your cover.  If you can see either side of where the enemy is, but they can’t fire at you, well, you can take aim and wait for them to move one way or another.  In addition, this frees you up to move closer if you don’t think they know where you are for a quick up front surprise or retreat and move to where you want to be when your out of range of their fire.

One last bit, don’t underestimate the power of a hill or tree cover.  Anything that blocks the line of site or causes the balls to break before reaching you can be used to your advantage.  Use anything that keeps your enemy from landing a hit to help you move and position yourself.

This is a learning process in the end.  You need to get good at keeping aware of your surroundings even when wearing a mask that limits your visibility and hearing.  Some times the environment will effect what works and what doesn’t, but the key is to start looking at the field a little different and I hope this helps some get you started.

Paintball – Cover is a post from: tallraz.com

The basics are:

• Cover - not just what you hide behind, but what you keep between you and someone shooting at you
• Movement - You can run, you can hide, but can you hide while your moving?
• Team work – Use a buddy to keep your enemy where they should be… namely hiding behind something and not seeing what your doing.

I will take each of these and discuss in turn.  If I am REALLY good, I will remember to change each of these items into links to the next articles.

Paintball – basic tactics is a post from: tallraz.com

OK, the bad news first… OH MY GOD!  This game was SUCH a pain in the @r$ to get to where I could play!  I played the beta and everything was fine.  I purchased the prerelease version and ended up sitting on the sidelines for the first 2-3 weeks all because PunkBuster either would not initialize or would keep booting me because it didn’t think it was installed. (Part of the problem was that I played the Beta and punkbuster’s installer kept installing itself in that directory)  Recently it’s finally letting me in, so I am running with it.

So the good news, I LOVE push games!  Having the field shift as you achieve objectives is GREAT!  I also LOVE being able to destroy buildings and tries.  Still not to the full extent you should be able to do this, but better then anything else I’ve seen.

They have also done some major re-balancing of the classes and worked in an imporoved leveling system that seems to keep things interesting for the vets playing, but still playable for the newbies who jump in for the first time.  Beyond that, it’s a battle field game with better graphics.  If you’ve liked any of the other BF games you will love this one.

Lastly, just because I thought it was interesting I could get a stat banner of all my less the stellar play, here is my banner.  It seems to be updating as we go.  So for the record, at the time of my posting this, I was at just under 11 hrs of game play, had a kill/death ratio of .71 (ick), 18 dog tags (from getting kills with a knife), as well as staying alive for just over a minute on average.  Cool and if I see this keep improving I will blame it on the late start.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is a post from: tallraz.com

Technorati – 43H9CWGSRD9A is a post from: tallraz.com

1. You can’t see your enemy
2. It will delay how quickly you can fire on an opponent
3. You have no way of knowing if an opponent is moving up on your position

It really doesn’t matter where your positioning is, if you can’t see your enemy, you loose.  They will find an angle your not aware of and take you out.  If you pop up from behind a bunker to fire, they know where you are, but you don’t even know where to start pointing your marker if they moved since the last time you looked.

So, how do you avoid all of these pitfalls when taking cover?

1. Get a buddy you trust
2. Protect your buddy
3. Keep track of where your opponents are

The key to success on the field is having people around you that you trust to look out for you.  If your playing an open game and you forced to pick someone you have not played with, find someone you like and work with them game after game so you can pick up how each of you moves.

When getting to your bunker, position yourself so you can protect your buddies blind spots and they should be doing the same for you.  This will take care of anyone running up on your position.

Lastly, unless your taking fire from all sides, NEVER hug a bunker!  If you know where your opponents are, always stay as far back from your bunker as you can and still see as much of the field.  You want to keep something between where your opponents ARE while preferably letting you see on either side of that position.  This way they have to move out from behind their cover to fire on you and you only fire back on them when they are exposed.

Cover – barricade is a post from: tallraz.com

Basic lingo.

• Marker – a polite way of referencing a paintball gun. (some people get nervous about the phrase gun)
• Hopper – the container that holds and allows paint-balls to enter your marker
  • Gravity feed – a hopper that just uses gravity to let paint-balls fall into your marker.
  • Mechanical feed – some device usually included in a hopper that speeds up the rate in which paint-balls enter your marker.
• Propellant – CO2, Nitrogen, and Compressed air is what is primarily used in paintball.  These substances are loaded into a tank and attached to your marker.  There is a chamber behind the paintball that will fill with the propellant your using.  When you pull the trigger it is released and quickly refilled depending on the behavior of that particular propellant.
  • CO2 is the grand daddy of propellants in paintball.  It is notable in that it is a liquid when put into your paintball tank and requires an expansion tank in order to turn to a gas and be ready to fire.  On the upside, you can find CO2 pretty much anywhere and the tanks used are extremely inexpensive.  On the down side, your shots will tend to be less consistent when your firing rapidly and can some times freeze up your marker.  It takes some time for the gases to expand, plus the process produces frost which can sometimes cause issues.  This propellant does not work when temperatures are below freezing.
  • Nitrogen & Compressed Air Tanks – often times referred to as Nitro for both types, all three tend to be used interchangeably and the equipment used can handle either Nitrogen or Compressed air.  Nitrogen is a dry gas and can easily be compressed into tanks.  Compressed air is just air in the environment that is dried before pumping into a tank.  If you can afford the cost of the tanks this setup does not suffer the same issues as CO2, namely that it won’t freeze up your gun, tends to produce more consistent accuracy at the higher rates of fire, and functions during winter.

This list is not complete, so expect a revisit… or maybe a conversion to an actual permanent page.

PaintBall – introduction is a post from: tallraz.com