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With all the items, weapons and armor you can acquire and use based on your certifications, you will have a lot of slots to be able to place those weapons, ammo, and support items in depending on the type of armor you are certified to wear. You gear up for battle at what is called an Equipment Terminal. At this terminal, you are able to use any of the gear you have learned through your certifications. What's nice about this is there is a favorites tab in which you can save up to 10 configurations and load them on demand. Imagine having to funnel through what appears to be endless scenarios for many situations over and over. This feature is very nice to have, and gets you into the action quickly on respawn after you end up getting whacked by an enemy. It adds a nice touch of strategy, as you will find out that a lot of the weapons you might come across serve some purposes better than others. Also in Planetside, your character advancement gets a few boosts along the way at Br 6, 12, and 18 with implants. Implants are devices that will use your stamina bar and give your character an edge in the battlefield. They range from being able to see cloaked enemies, advanced targeting which allows you to see the hit point bar of your enemy, all the way to personal shields and faster running speeds. The nice thing about all the certifications and implants is that if you do not like one of your chosen areas of expertise and want to try something else out in the battlefield, SOE lets you "forget" one of your certifications once every 24 hours real time so you can learn something else -- without a penalty. Implants are also able to be switched out at will without any time penalty either. Finally someone has figured out a way to make sure skill sets do not have to be locked in and found a good sense of balance at the same time. Ok so, we have a huge world, 3 realms all going at it in real time on a massive scale -- we have character progression and a small sense of achievement with gear selection. What else do we need?

Striker... Striker... Striker... Striker... (Snap)... "Ted Striker?"

A point to fighting would be nice. SOE gives players the ability to take over various bases over the 10 continents. You can drop into the battle areas easily via the HART system. This is a shuttle that has a 10 minute timer which will take you anywhere you wish to go. The cool thing is, you actually drop from orbit and witness the view of coming down at mach 5. It's a pretty unique experience to tell you the truth. From there you are either in a squad with people from your outfit or other players on your team (An outfit is just like a guild, and a squad is a 10 person group) or just by yourself solo, where you will proceed to control bases. You do this by "hacking" their computer control center. A 15 minute timer elapses and if you are able to stave off the defenders long enough, the base becomes yours. Once taken, you can spawn vehicles from the vehicle terminal, and depending on the base you may also retrain certifications, change equipment, use medical healing stations, change out implants, and other features you have on your home sanctuary. Bases have turrets all around the perimeter of the base. So when your base is under attack, defenders are usually providing air cover, manning those gun turrets, or possibly even sniping from cover positions. Spawn points usually become an issue in taking over a base. You can spawn via 2 ways while in battle. Hopefully someone has an advanced Mobile station nearby, or AMS. An AMS is a vehicle that when deployed allows you to spawn where the exact location of where it is deployed at. Gun towers are within very close proximity of a base and are also used as spawn points to the tram that controls it. Without these two options and unless you control the base itself (As an invader), you will have to see if there are any spawn points set up in another part of the continent, or you will be stick going back to your home sanctuary and taking another shuttle drop -- which could be another ten minute wait. Just when you think you may have taken over a base, you realize that an enemy just shot out the power grid and you need to resupply the base with power. To do this, you have to drive what is called an Advanced Nanite Transport vehicle to a warpgate which will supply itself with needed fuel. From there you drive back to the base at hand and if you make it back alive and in one piece, you supply your base to actually be able to use any of the features that base has. You also cannot gain experience if you hack a base without power -- so make sure you power that sucker up before the 15 minute timer runs down.