Compendium of Tactics for Ace of Spades

Shooting

1. Keep a low profile, literally. The enemy is looking for 3 things: Your speed, distance, and head. When you climb along the top of a ridge, your silhouette gives the enemy a great visual for spotting you. As you move, use all of your abilities to confuse the enemy. Run, walk, duck, jump, and generally make yourself difficult to observe accurately.

2. After you shoot at someone and they are still alive. Move over a few feet, before you fire again. Every time you shoot, you're giving them a better idea of where you are. By moving slightly, you make it harder for them to locate your face with their bullet.

3. Spotting. If your allies are nearby, you can use your gunfire and tracers to alert them to an enemy presence. Use a whole clip quickly to point out to your team mates where you saw the sniper! A waste of ammo? Not really, you probably die faster than you can use it up, incompetant worms!

Building

1. Build first! You are given 50 blocks, and most people die with 50 blocks. Why not use that up at home before moving on? Don't waste your country's resources! It doesn't have to be something big or crazy, but 10-20 blocks added to a bridge makes it stronger every time you cross it. If you're using a bunker, add to the walls.

2. Roads! Roads and paths that are outlined and marked are important to help direct your team mates. A well maintained road, with obvious landmarks can funnel troops to the enemy quickly and in greater numbers. Both teams should utilize different architecture. If Blue (Barbaric Hoardes) a path might be straight passage through the mountains (like rats tunnel,) or across the shallow hills of a plateau. If Green (Glorious Master Race) a series of stairs can quickly be carved into a mountain to give our soldiers quick access to the high ground, where the invaders are easily picked off in the open.

3. Camouflage is useful for bridges, and small sniper positions. It is NOT useful when trying to get a building noticed for your team-mates to use. The colors you use are important, and dependant on the function of your construction. When hiding in a spider-hole and using it as a sniper position, you can color the surrounding blocks in your room to firther disguise your location. If defending from an outpost, you can create small decoy blocks with your team colors. These blocks should be placed further back (5-6 blocks) from the main vantage point so they give the appearance of movement from the perspective of an enemy looking through a porthole.

4. Buildings die when they are no longer useful. They must be maintained and used often. This is why most players generally concentrate on a singe structure at a time. Use your time wisely, and build what will most help your team.

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I wrote this first to help my buddy, who is new to gaming in general, play. More tactics and advice, please share!

you for got one thing move while shooting so not to be an easy target

Well, that's cool bro, but I'll continue blitzing the enemy out in the open like a boss, regularly pulling out three or four times the amount of kills as anyone else.

The ultimate tactic: don't be a pussy. You will get shit tons of kills if you don't spend the entire game hiding your ass in a little hole.

Walk out guns blazing like fucking rambo. It works. Tremendously. If you are good at FPS that is.

He's right, you know. Rambo tactics work quite well if you've got the accuracy to back it up. That's why I like it so much, it's not a crouch fest chest-high-walls game unless you want it to be. When you don't, it does run-and-gun very well too.

It works great until you realize you've shot your way into their spawn and the five guys you just shot are right behind you

Rambo tactics seem to be way more effective than defensive tactics, yeah. The rambo has way more options than someone defending, say, a bridge, who can either run (and die) or get out of defensive cover and get headshot (unless they can aim well); rambos can throw a grenade, flank, tunnel under you, etc.

tl;dr: Defense only works some of the time, and not well -- Rambo is much more versatile.

I agree with the above about Rambo style. I have no problem admitting my own deftness and craft with the skill. fuck it, I'm a god when it comes to shooting people in the face in this game, and yea, I'm saying it. So you see how thoroughly I understand your point. Seeing as how this is a constructive attempt, I will apply some thoughts to our new heading. Therefore we add:

Rambo:

1. Always move. Never stop. If you're spotted moving in one direction, change it. If you pop-up once on the landscape and make that headshot, remember never to pop-up there again. Your advantage is your speed and ability to flank.

2. Flank. The edges of the map are hardly patrolled. The closer to the enemy spawn, the more stealth will play a role in your attack. The game has a sort of built in anti-spawn grief, in that populated servers tend to have too many spawn points for a single person to cover. Again, movement is your best option if spotted, but stealth can play a role as well.

3. Stealth is still a factor, especially when you're a fast moving target in enemy territory. A quick 10-15 second rest can keep the enemy off your tail. The best target is an unsuspecting target.

4. If you're on the attack, the high ground is most helpful, but you must be aware of it's disadvantage. The enemy will spot you more easily if your head is in profile (see Shooting #1) with the sky. If you keep moving, this will not be an issue (more than once.) The advantages of having the high ground are numerable. The most important is your ability to judge enemy movement. As stated before, to kill your enemy you need an accurate estimate of his speed, distance, and face. His advantage will be camouflage, so keep moving forward and don't let him have the chance!

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questions to Rambos:

Do you prefer to aim, and headshot calmly, or fire all your rounds at once when you see an enemy? Or perhaps a bit of both?

aim and headshot calmly

Yeah I take my time to get that one perfect headshot. It takes a tiny bit longer, but for a prolonged trip into enemy territory, ammo is precious. Plus having fire barely miss you all around when you drop them in just one shot? Badass.

Only take the shot when you can see the whites of their eyes.

Only take the shot when you can see the whites of their eyes.

Amazing quote :)

But there are no whites :<

Well I guess he never shoots then.

god, i wish my aim was steadier. i keep missing dudes right in front of me.

jumping does help. specially if you get the "jump" on them, ive survived a hip fire shootout thanks to the element of surprise

I don't know if this would help with people who's mouse sensitivity isn't absolutely horrendous and flies all over the screen, but for me it does. Throw your cursor relatively close to the target and line it up with wasd. It works at long distance but the tactic really falls apart up close, shooting people at the edge of the render distance is MUCH easier than shooting someone right infront of me. I would like to see some kind of sensitivity setting implemented because right now I feel pretty limited being unable to really aim.

My tip is throw your grenades before you die. That is all

@demodrago
You can change sensitivity in control panel, though it is a big pain to change it back after playing and before.

I feel inclined to speak up for defense.

Good defensive play will net you many, many kills. The key is to do it right. Sitting in a hole hoping an opponent runs by isn't defensive play. Camping intel tower is poor defensive play.

Good defensive play is about controlling space. The farther forward you can do it, the better. In an ideal situation, you will be 'defending' the opponent's spawn zone. Be counter-offensive: take the rambos and set up to punish them for when they push. Move around and construct trenches / small bunkers to help teammates at you move, and roads to help your team organize. If you do it well, you can not only defend but also help offensive players get the intel by supplying them with roads and good routes to control positions like mountaintops or lowland trenches.

You assume that teammates will work together, and not enough of that is going on;
That's why ramboing is so popular - you might as well be run&gunning if you're being forced to control space by yourself.

In defensive you also need to have a tower large enough to move between windows so you don't present the same target every time you appear to shoot at people. A castle with five or six unique windows to fire from at different heights provides a very powerful position to snipe from.

I don't assume teammates will work together. I assume that if they see a structure that's useful to them, they'll use it.

And I manage to control lots of space on my own. Just don't stand at the spot you're controlling, stand at a spot where you can shoot the people who try to move into the space.

You don't need to have a tower at all...having a tower just makes it obvious where you are.

That kind of teamwork encouraging defense takes far too much effort on the part of one single player - I do agree with most of the things you've said, yet I disagree because those tactics all take large portions of time to put into practice. Going on the offense for the intel is usually lucrative, but *attempting* to get the help of your team through time killing building will never see consistent results.

Defensive success relies largely on how much time you have unless you counter-rambo... In which case you're just ramboing, snuffing out potential invaders to whatever area you intended to defend.

inb4 it lies on "how well you do it"

Defensive tactics work well when your team is outnumbered.

I can get dozens of kills just by sitting in a small hole near the intel if we are outnumbered. They just keep ramboing the intel defense, and I just keep dropping them like a boss.

Nothing more satisfying that being accused of hacking.

^ Amen to that. I switch between Rambo and defense all the time, but I love when you just hand the enemies their own asses on a blood-stained silver platter and it causes them to claim you are hacking. I especially love the "mouthy" ones who have something "special" to say or feel the need to drop their (unwanted) two cents after each death. Then you annihilate them 20 times in a row (give or take 1 or 2 deaths; I ain't perfect) and they rage quit.

Galaxy here (if it wasn't obvious enough).

I decided to bump this up, since this topic is pretty important. We should improve the wiki, so it could be helping new players even more, than it does right now.

@LapisLazuli

The problem is, that people find different buildings to be useful. Some like towers, some like walls, 2block walls, 3block walls, 1block widow 2blocks form ground, roofed bunkers, unroofed bunkers, bunkers with 360 degree walls, bunkers with 270 degree walls.

I personally like walls, and find towers pretty useless (unless its really important to see through an obstacle), i also hate bunkers with 360 degree walls, and little 1 block widows 2block high, because i find them a lot less useful, than simple 2 high walls.
And when i start to convert these defenses i don't like into ones that i like, i'm considered the griefer.