Universal Basic PvP Knowledge

The Respawn Becon

In every game type except for Demolition, both teams will have access to a Respawn Beacon. The beacon initially sits inside your team's dropship until it is picked up by a player (by default, pressing B while standing on top of the beacon will pick it up), at which point that player can carry it to another location and deploy it there (again using B by default).

Once deployed, there is a short set up time (in the vicinity of 5-10 seconds normally) as the beacon builds itself. During this time the beacon is extremely vulnerable to enemy fire (since it begins with almost no health and only gains health as it builds up to full). A Robotics can use their repair gun to speed up the beacon's deploy rate (and also to repair the beacon if it is damaged), but players of any class can pick up, carry, and deploy the beacon.

Once fully built, the beacon entrance within the dropship will become active, and any friendly player standing on the entrance will be instantly teleported to the beacon's location and given a short-duration (1-2 seconds) immunity shield. Effectively this allows respawning players to rejoin the battle immediately instead of having to run/fly across the map to reach the front lines, and thus having an active beacon near the fighting is a very powerful tool.

The beacon itself can be destroyed by enemy fire (or if the player carrying it is killed). If destroyed, the beacon will respawn within your team's dropship and will need to be re-deployed. The beacon can also be picked up and relocated (again with the B key by default), but any damage incurred by the beacon will remain when it is re-deployed. A robotics can repair this damage by using a repair gun on the beacon. Oftentimes if your team's beacon is under attack, it's best to pick it up, carry it until the player that was attacking it is killed, and then re-deploy it once things are safe. This is especially true if you are playing as a Robotics, since you can quickly redeploy the beacon.

Since having an active beacon effectively reduces a team's respawn delays significantly by allowing respawning players to jump straight back into the battle, destroying the enemy beacon can be extremely important, especially in pitched battles for control over a location. Destroying an enemy beacon will earn you a large amount of objective points in addition to helping turn the tide of battle.



PvP Rewards

PvP missions reward both experience points and credits upon completion. The winning team receives a larger amount of both XP and credits, while the losing team receives only a modest amount for their efforts. Therefore it is in your own best interests to try as hard as you can to win each match, as the rewards scale much more with regards to whether you win or lose than to your individual performance. Better performance still slightly increases your reward, but winning or losing affects it much more - even the worst-performing player on the winning team receives a higher reward than the best performer on the losing team.


Match Scoreboard

The match scoreboard (toggled using, by default, Tab) displays a list of all players in a match, including their level, class, name, and various statistics about their performance within the match. Note: when opened, the scoreboard automatically sorts itself by the category in which you did best. Thus, a healing medic will typically see (at least initially) a scoreboard sorted by healing scores; a recon that has avoided battles but has stealthily capped undefended points on a Control map might see a scoreboard sorted by objective points, et cetera. You can change which column the scoreboard is sorted for by clicking on that column's header label.