Placing Beacons

Introduction

When placing a beacon there are several ways to do so. The most popular way is of course using an SBH for stealth reasons. When doing so it is best to first set your Nuke, then wait at least 5 seconds before placing your timed C4 near it (note that if roles are reversed and you are defusing, ALWAYS, ALWAYS defuse the C4 first - if you don't then you will absolutely never survive defusing the nuke). If you set the C4 before your nuke or right after, it usually will go off before anyone comes near. After you place the c4 hide until you are invisible again, then back off as far as possible, while still having the nuke in vision. When an Engineer or Hotwire comes, do not shoot at them right away, wait for them to start repairing the Nuke then shoot them in the head and kill them.

If a defender I.E. Havoc, comes to the Nuke first stay away from him even if he sees you, you need to stay alive as long as possible, and you do not want the Hotwire to start C4ing you. When you know you have it, leave so you don't have to get killed. The other effective option is to have an APC and a Hotwire/Technician. It is also best to have a teammate in the APC with you. You then approach the building you are targeting, when you reach it, get out and plant the Nuke immediatly. It is good to have a teammate in the APC with you so that no one on the other team can steal the APC and crush you. As soon as you plant the Beacon go into the APC and kill any Engineer that approaches. If your APC eventually gets destroyed place your Mines around the Nuke and defend using your Pistol as best as you can. If you have a good team that is willing to cooperate, it is always good to have several SBH's to cover your Nuke. If you have a well organized team it is also good to place Nukes in multiple buildings at the exact same time. This divides the Engineers and most likely one will work, especially if you Nuke 3 at the same time. And the last method I have, which isn't as good as the last is laying several Nukes on the same building. This is not as good because the Engineers can repair one, then the next in a short amount of time.

Logic

When you are placing a Beacon, you can put it anywhere like a noob. But the odds are, if the base is well defended, that it will be disarmed. But there are certain places in, on top, and around buildings that buy you extra time, are hidden, and hard to get to. The good places also allow little room for many Engineers or Hotwires to disarm them and often have better odds of working.

Nice spots

In Walls Flying it is usually a good idea to place Beacons on the top of buildings. This makes it harder to get to and can be defended well. A Beacon on top of a building also can be defended by snipers on top of the mesa who can kill the disarmers. This is specifically for Walls Flying.

On other levels there are good spots to place Beacons as well. If a building is being bombarded by tanks and there are no base defenses. Sometimes it is best to go right to where the tanks are shooting and place it there. The tank shots produce great cover. Some of my favorite spots indoors to place Beacons are in tight spaces. For example, if the Barracks is not mined, a nuke placed right next to the MCT of the Barracks is a great spot(if it was mined by a noobie and your playing on a flying map just go to the top of the barraks and jump down). It not only is tight but easy to defend from the opposite corner, where you can shoot the Engineers. Another benefit of this spot is that the enemy will most of the time not think the Beacon is inside and go looking around the outside of the Barracks for a long time. This buys you much needed time. And even if they come inside the Barracks, the Nuke is out of view and they will become confused. Whenever someone finally figures it out, you are waiting to shoot at them. A good spot in the Refinery is in the corner opposite the front door of the ref (the side the Harvester unloads on) this spot is small so few people could repair it. A well placed C4 also helps tremendously. In all buildings I find, unless you have outside cover (snipers, APC, tanks) it is better to place the Nukes inside than outside. Even better is inside next to a wall, this confuses the enemy into thinking it is outside. One of the great other spots to place an Ion Beacon with an APC is over any place of the Airstrip the unloading end being better. This is just a hard spot to get to for Nod and a good spot for placing Beacons if there is no one nearby that is killing you while you place it.

• Another great spot is in the PP just behind the little wall by the Mct. Engineers come in but can't see it from the door so most of them don't take the time to do a proper search.
• The following are hard to defend but very effective.

If you plant your beacon between nods Power Plant and the house of the airstrip (ON MESA) and sucessful defend it this beacon will blow up both buildings. (Only works if obelisk is down)

• Next is on HOURGLASS between hand and obelisk... if your team rushes you can place it there or if the pp or the obelisk is already down- hard to plant-

if their base defense dont work any more u could defend it easily by snipers on hill will blow up both buildings :)

• A Nice method to blow the Power Plant is to plant a nuke in front of the bar(behind the small wall with hotwire/tech) and then plant your timed c4 on the bar and and mine yourself around... don't forget to put your remote C4 to explode on the bar.

if they defuse the nuke your C4 will kill the building! A couple lesser known spots for flying maps that are nearly impossible to defuse but require lots of skill and no working base defenses:

• On top of the large hand on the Hand of Nod (GDI only) - This is a small target but if you can land on here and plant, it will never be defused unless Nod has a skilled pilot who can land there too. (Note: Do NOT use an Orca, always use a transport as Nod will get whatever vehicle you use when it drops to the ground.)
• On the Refinery (Both sides)- This is hard to explain, but try to land yourself right on top of the area where the harvester docks, right about where the team emblem is. Then make your way towards the silo, and when you reach the edge, look to your left, there should be a small ledge there to place the beacon on. (Like the last place, the enemy will need a skilled pilot to get up and defuse, and they will get whatever vehicle you use.)

Random Comment: Indoor beacons are usually not detected, but only if you can get inside the building, chances are the buildings are all mined.

Bad spots

There are certain places where you should not place Beacons, these places you may think are good, but are not.

These places include:

• Inside the WF vehicle spawner. This is bad because it is hard to defend, you could get crushed and people find it very easily.
• At the refinery between the main building and the silo, that spot is well known and searched for very quickly.

Nuking the WF first. Unless your team is dominating the level or it is a marathon game it is very unwise to nuke the WF first. Just don't do it. Explain why, please? In most public servers, there are noobish players that buy vecs but dont know how to use them. Since there is a vec limit, this takes away from what the good players can use. If you kill the wf, the noobish players have no effect on the good players. Also, it causes everyone to use infantry, especially havoc/sakura and mobius/mendoza, which can easily kill vecs, while being difficult to hit back. Plus, those Havocs/Sakuras can be a pain if there is no wf since experienced players will buy those if there are no vechs available.

On Walls Flying on the sides of the Barracks. This can be quite popular, and unless you are rushing and setting it there as an added effect to the rush it is not a good idea, this is one of the spots that GDI checks for before near the MCT. Next, don't just place Nukes in places where the enemy can reach them if it doesn't affect buildings. Because it would just be really stupid if the other team got the points for a useless nuke.

This could be the most popular Nuke spot in the game and probably has the lowest percentage of working. On the level Islands it is quite popular to place the nuke on the side of the Barracks. If they hear the beacon in the barracks, GDI swarms to and disarms the Nuke a high percentage of the time. It also has no cover from friendly units other than yourself and possibly another SBH which isn't enough. If you do nuke the bar on Islands, and you must place it on the outside, do so at the back of the Barracks. Here it can be covered by snipers and is looked at less often. Do not fall into the trap of placing your beacons in the previous few places. It only gives the other team 300 points per beacon and makes the situation worse for your team.

Extra: dont put it on a MTC this is n00bish and also almost cheating becouse the beacon can come invisible if put on the right place