Guide: Infantry – Defense

Introduction

OvD has pretty specific expectations when it comes to the duties expected of your class choice. Unfortunately, much of this information is stuff that you can’t possibly know unless someone takes the time to tell you. This series aims to provide comprehensive class-by-class information in a permanent and easily-accessible format.

Defensive Infantry is my primary class. However, I use Carapace exclusively, by choice, an armor that 95% of current players avoid completely. I will explain the differences between the two types of armors, the advantages of my armor choice, and the difference in playstyle required for each armor type. In addition, I will explain how differences in gun and armor choices between D inf partners/trios can affect the way a defense works, and offer an unpopular hypothesis regarding CAW!

First step is to buy the recommended items. Please note that you will have to set up your class in Public1, and log out of the game once you are set-up in order to save your changes going forward. Otherwise you will have to buy all of this again every time that you enter the OvD arena.a

Items

Maklov AR mk 606
Maklov G2 ACW
PF Generator
Enhanced Sensors
Suit SuperCharger
Carapace

Ammo buy macro, to be used everytime that you go to the dropship

SG: ?buy repulsor coil:3,ammo rifle:#185,ammo shotgun:#80,maklov rg 2:#4,frag grenade:#4,repulsor charge,energizer:2,stim pack,bullet mine:#10

CAW: ?buy repulsor coil:3,ammo rifle:#55,ammo pistol:#500,maklov rg 2:#4,frag grenade:#4,repulsor charge,energizer:2,stim pack,bullet mine:#15

Ammo drops, to be used everytime you attach to medic

Another important aspect of your job as D inf is to bring ammo to the base for your support classes whenever you die or go to the dropship. Good medics and defensive heavies won’t die very often or get a chance to leave the base, since their job is to stay operational at base as long as possible, so they will need some ammo to continue performing their duties. Engineers can’t usually get enough sentries on their own for use as walls in front of the turrets. The more sentries on the ground for the engineer to use, the more stable your base is going to be before taking critical turret damage. The importance of dropping plenty of ammo cannot be stated enough. Getting a couple drop piles down at the very beginning of the game is highly advised to get a jump-start on this.

?buy ammo mg:250,rocket:40,sentry,tranq:10
?drop ammo mg:250,rocket:40,sentry,tranq:10

job description

The workhorse of the defense. Defensive Infantry partners are in charge of slowing the pace of the offense by draining and killing or causing the deaths of offensive players before they reach the next choke. Preventing offense from capturing chokes with full numbers is your primary objective most of the time. Make sure that if you die, it’s because you have caused severe damage to be taken by one or more offensive players such that when you come back from the dropship, your team has a clear advantage on the push. Defensive Infantries work as partners or trios in a closely coordinated unit, and requires good decision making. Usually, one of the Defensive Infantries will be designated to use CAW and provide drain, with the other fighters on the defense focusing more on damaging HP. I will cover some Shotgun D inf and CAW D inf strategies separately.

Armor/Generator types

Choosing your armor and generator types can drastically affect how you play and what it is that you want to accomplish. I am going to outline the benefits and detriments of the three good combinations available to defensive infantries.

CMP6 Assault Armor + PF Generator

The most widely used armor combination. This armor has no penalties to rotation or acceleration, leaving you a little bit lighter on your feet. It is built around maintaining high energy, and using the high energy for tanking explosive spike damage. It reduces the amount of energy drain you suffer, and doesn’t weigh a lot, allowing you to carry a vast arsenal of ammo, grenades, and even mines. This armor excels at medium and long range tanking, because not much is going to kill it without a concentrated draining effort. However, once you use up your two energizers, your ability to engage in toe to toe combat is significantly reduced until you die and refresh.

Carapace + IDF Generator

The Boss/Phasar setup. Pure, unadulterated physical bullet tankery. Slows rotation/acceleration. Cannot sustain explosive damage, so requires good awareness and dodging of explosives, even if it means strafing into kinetic bullets. Too much weight to carry ES or much ammo, so expect shorter life spans. Operates at low energy constantly, can be used to pick on CMP6 infantries by damaging them with a shotgun just out of their RG range, so that their only real options are to shoot you back with SG that doesn’t hurt, or try to hit you with assault rifle which you also tank. Also works well for wall tanking. Will get more in depth about Carapace tanking in a later section.

Carapace + PF Generator

A nice all around armor. This is the setup that I use. Carapace makes you immune to shotgun damage, while the PF generator offers some explosive damage protection, especially if you energize right before you take something large like an RG or RPG. Between the shotgun immunity and the explosive protection, you get a really nice balance fit to use against an offense. Less heavy than Cara/IDF, you can carry a medium amount of ammo and Enhanced Sensors.

The weakness of this armor is actually Assault Rifle. It drops like a brick to Assault Rifle, so try not to get stuck dueling unless you know you’re gonna win it fast.

~Shotgun Defensive Infantry~

This job requires striking a balance between draining, damaging, finishing, and repulsing. A well-rounded defensive infantry can do all of these things, and know when to do which.

If you are playing with a defensive heavy weapons, adjust to draining a bit more. Your job is to slow the pace of the offense, and cause them damage and deaths. The cause of the damage could be them getting nailed by your D heavy while they are distracted trying to kill you. It could be them taking damage from your turrets, because you’ve already drained them down. The point is that you don’t always have to be the direct cause of the damage to the offense, you just have to decide at every moment what action will slow them up the most.

Assault Rifle is stronger right now than it has ever been in the history of CTF, and Carapace is at it’s weakest. Assault Rifle was bumped up from 20 to 22 kinetic damage per shot in one of the late SOE seasons, and Carapace’s ignore was lowered a little bit. This means that Assault Rifle is >always< an excellent finisher if your target is low on HP. 22 damage times 3 shots = 66 damage, to a target with low energy, you’ll probably do 50ish damage, so just another bullet or two from the next triple will deal the fatal damage. It’s still an underrated gun, because it’s drain just isn’t very good. You can’t go around shooting AR at full energy targets and expect to have any success. It will take too long, and the offense won’t be slowed/damaged enough, and you’ll find yourself losing chokes or backed up into your flag room. Helping your CAW D inf to drain is necessary. There’s one trick that many people don’t really know that helps with this.

The 9-2-9 rule. Hold your shotgun key down for 9 shots, release for 2 seconds (one thousand one, one thousand two), then hold your shotgun key down for 9 shots. Repeat to infinity. Your shotgun will never load. If you ever shoot the 10th shot though, your shotgun will be stuck for a full load (3 seconds, and this load gets reset if you use any other weapon/utility during the 3 second load).

Always watch where your team’s Electron Beamers and CAW streams hit. If you see an offensive player take some serious drain, put some damage on them! Even if they don’t die, hurting their HP severely is part of slowing the offense’s choke game.

Lastly, this setup doesn’t have anything other than shotgun that will jam up on you. There is no weapon firing delay between anything. So at all times, you can switch from SG to RG, toss a nade, hit your repulsor instantly. It adds to the well-balanced feel and play of SG D inf.

~CAW Defensive Infantry~

Important cog in the defensive wheel. All of the weapons that are excellent at damaging HP quickly are also pretty bad at draining energy. And targets with high energy won’t take much damage from ANYTHING. So having a great drainer is critical. The engineer and medic’s Electron Beamers are the best drain, but they cannot always be using them. The only full-time energy draining specialist on defense is the CAW D inf. CAW takes pistol ammo, which is light to carry and has a max capacity of 500, a huge quantity that will give you a nice long life if you even manage to make it to 0 ammo. The streams provide excellent drain if you can tighten up the stream enough to hit consecutive shots on a single player. Spraying it at multiple players is fine, it’ll help, but streaming one player at a time and getting them killed is far superior. Don’t expect to land 3 bullets of caw, switch to AR, and get a kill. You need to land 7-8 bullets of caw AT LEAST in a short amount of time for them to be in trouble. This actually isn’t that hard once you start practicing with the weapon. You can land ~70% of bullets from two streams in a row and severely damage or kill a decent CMP6 O inf fairly reliably with some mastery of the weapon.

The tricky bit about CAW inf is that CAW will give you a delay after you finish firing before you can shoot anything else or use any utility item. So you can’t be streaming caw and have a fast-reaction repulsor to save your own life for instance. So try to anticipate a little ahead of time about when to stop firing caw and start throwing grenades, repulsing for turrets, or helping your d inf partner finish targets with AR/rgs.

~Carapace Tanking~

A little bit of a lost art. Carapace allows some beautiful things to happen against uncoordinated or damaged offenses. You can really get in people’s faces and focus on shooting to kill them before they kill you, because you are aware of the few things that have a chance to finish you, and how to deal with them. You’ll want to be tanking within your medic’s range, of course.

The time to put yourself out there and tank is when your D heavy or other D infs are going to stay in position guarding the nearest choke to give you time to get back after you die. The idea is to take one or more enemies out of position to fight you, turning their guns away from their next intended choke and allowing your team to shoot them in the back while you dodge RG’s, RPG’s, and any assault rifle they might shoot. Even if all you do is drain and dodge until you die, if you live long enough they will almost certainly take some good damage from your supporting teammates. Communicating your intention to play aggressively before the game is advisable so they’re ready to hold chokes and look for turned enemies. Repulsor Charge is your get out of jail free card, if you find yourself out of repusors or drained down to 0 energy, and you see lethal damage incoming, just throw it against a wall and it will become your 4th repulsor. Don’t be afraid to sit on top of an Offensive Infantry while tanking. When they try to move, just strafe with them, sitting in their minimum range as they spin around trying to figure out a way to get into a spot where they can shoot you. While this is happening, the other Offensive Infantries will be spamming grenades and RG’s at you, and if they hit, they’ll damage the chump you’re on top of, as well. All part of the drain/damage/slow life of a D inf!

Defending w/Jump Trooper

Playing against a Jump Trooper requires much more passive play and stricter positioning. A Jump Trooper offense means they are sacrificing a brute force fighting class for speed and chance at a flukey one and done win. So you can expect your defense to be able to handle the fighters themselves – they will probably only have 2 offensive infantries, so your 2 D infs+D hvy (with medic heals) or 3 D infs will have no problem dispatching them in a heads up fight. The key is to not let the speedy infiltrator and Jump Trooper split your positions, isolate your teammates to cause a couple of bad deaths, and then flag it. All it takes is one run where 2 defenders die and another gets separated for a good JT to have a decent chance of getting out of the base with your flags. Playing passive gives you the best chance at prolonged defense. Having D inf’d in many epicly long Martyr vs Black Dragon Society games against one of the legendary JT offenses, I can say with confidence that giving ground fairly quickly all the way to the turret choke is always the best strategy. Just drain, expose the infil, and get BACK. Don’t let the infiltrator or the O infs get close enough to knock you off course with a thrown repulsor charge. They won’t have the fighting power once you get to the turrets to do anything if you all make it up there alive together, especially if you get some drain done on the way.

Jump Troopers always carry Heavy Power Cell, which means they have slow energy regeneration, but high energy capacity for tanking. This means that energy drain is by far the best thing to use against them! Don’t use anything but your shotgun/caw against a Jump Trooper unless you see them take a bunch of EB, or you are inside the flag room. Once you’re inside the flag room, always switch to assault rifle only. It will finish the JT reliably, won’t tk your turrets, and has a better chance at actually killing him than continuing to sg/caw, because all of your turrets will finish the draining process for you, and getting him dead is the priority.

At D7, there is a golden rule to follow as D inf against a JT offense. Simply never go in the right-side hallway. Ever. Don’t do it. Even if you have Enhanced Sensors, it’s incredibly easy for any offensive class coming in around the door corner to throw a repulsor charge, open the door, and let in the infiltrator/jt speed run down the left side, which WILL leave you stranded outside of the flag room, unable to shoot them effectively. If you ALWAYS fall back along the left hallway and hug the left side near the flag room, you’ll usually get repulsed into the flag room during their flagging run. This is good, because once you’re repulsed into the flag room, you can shoot them with assault rifle as they’re still running towards you trying to get past you to the flags.

Unpopular Opinion

I actually prefer running a defense without a CAW inf. It allows both infantries to always be free to repulse or focus fire AR finish. If both SG D infs aren’t lazy and keep up their fair share of SG drain, I really believe it’s the superior combination.