Skills

Skills are a major feature of Firearms' gameplay. They can dramatically improve your and your team's performance in-game, depending on personal preference and playing style. They can be chosen when joining the battle or respawning, and can be reconfigured.

The Skill System was introduced in Firearms 2.1. Every time you earn 10 points, you will earn a rank. As your rank increases, you can pick more skills.

General advice
It's good practice to bind skills to a key, so you don't have to use the skills menu.

Marksmanship
Marksmanship (Level I and II) will increase your accuracy with any weapon in the game. The first level skill, Marks I, only gives you a +1 boost, but Marks II gives you a +2 boost for a total of +3. Long-range firing with standard assault rifles can be greatly augmented by using the marksmanship skills. Marksmanship will also allow the use of a scope on the .44 Anaconda and M14.

Nomenclature
Nomenclature is your proficiency with guns. Using this skill, you can reduce your reload time by 25%. This is a helpful skill to use if you're only wielding one weapon (with no backups). An additional feature is that the weapon model might change, e. g. on the AK-47 you will see two magazines taped to each other in a "jungle-style" way.

Battlefield Agility
Battlefield Agility allows you to fall from any height and not break your leg. It also cuts your fall damage by about 50% and allows going to, and getting up from the prone position much faster than normal.

Stealth
Soldiers who have the stealth skill can equip silencers to certain weapons (Beretta 92, Uzi, MP5, M4) using the alt-fire key. Their footstep sounds are also greatly reduced, almost to the point where you can not hear them at all. Also, laying claymore mines makes no sound at all, and your damage with the knife is doubled. And lastly, if you capture a push point when you have the stealth skill, no trumpet sound will be broadcast to the players.

Artillery
The Artillery skill comes in two levels. Artillery I allows the firing of any mortar built by your team, and allows you to plant artillery markers (which are now colored smoke markers - new to FA 2.9). Artillery II allows you to build and dismantle mortars. In addition to mortars, any Artillery I user will automatically have a grenade launcher attached to their M-16 or AK-74 (used with the alt-fire key). These attached grenade launchers are free, and thus do not cost any extra credits.

Usage
Artillery is simple in-game but can be complicated to understand at first. Let's keep in mind one important thing before we get into artillery: all artillery MUST be fired at a target (In other words, you can't just fire a mortar and have it land randomly somewhere). These targets are marked by players who have at least Artillery I as one of their skills. To mark a target, you will bring up your skill menu and hit "Plant Marker" (or bind a key to "artillery marker" in your controls). This places a small smoke grenade target at your feet which displays a bunch of smoke in the color of your team (red smoke for red team, and blue smoke for the blue team).

Any artillery being fired by your team will now automatically fire at your smoking target. Markers can only be placed outdoors and not undernearth any roofs or overhangs. If you select to drop a marker again, your first marker will disappear.

Only one marker can be active for each team at any one time. So if two people on the red team place a marker, the last one placed will be the active one, and all fired mortars on the red team will target that marker. Only active markers will display smoke. Also, without having to actually place your marker again, you can recall it by selecting "request artillery" from your skills menu (or bind this key in your controls). This will re-activate your marker, making it your team's active marker, and making it smoke once again. Any marker will become in-active after a period of time, so you will have to re-active it again if you choose to re-use it when this happens.

The only way markers can get removed are if:


 * The player who planted the marker reconfigures their skills without Artillery I
 * The player who planted the marker leaves the game
 * The player who planted the marker plants a new one to replace it
 * Either one of the teams manage to complete a map objective and force everyone to respawn

Anyone who has the Artillery I skill can plant markers and request their marker to be fired upon. In addition, they can also fire mortars and reload mortars. However, they can not build or relocate mortars. Only those with the Artillery II skill can build and dismantle mortars.

Further Notes:


 * Mortar ammo can be reloaded from any ammobox on the level. When loading mortar ammo from an ammobox, you will hear a distinctively different sound than when you are loading normal ammunition types.
 * If you happen to nail someone with a mortar shot, the person who gets the kill point is whowever fired the mortar - not the person who placed the marker or built the mortar.

Tactical

 * The Artillery skill is of best use when chosen by (at least) two team members. As in real artillery combat, there is one unit directing the fire, while the other is the actual firing battery.
 * For continuous artillery coverage on the target location, it's good to place the mortar near an ammobox and operate it with two team members. While one is firing the mortar until it runs out of ammunition, the other one resupplies and takes over when necessary, and vice versa.

First Aid / Field Medicine
Soldiers who go this route are medics and have special medic symbols painted on their helmets. They receive several free bandages on spawn. Two skill levels can be achieved:

Level 1 of First Aid skill allows the player to heal up to 15 health to themselves and teamates (can only be done once per life on each player), give bandages to teamates, plant a medic flag (hospice flag) to mark their location, treat concussion effects on teammates hit with a cuncussion grenade and heal wounded soldiers on the ground. Healing wounded soldiers on the ground gives the medic 1 frag when they are level 1 First Aid. Healing a teamate gives the medic 0.5 frags, and bandaging a teamate gives the medic 1 frag. Level 2 of First Aid (Field Medicine) allows the player to heal up to 30 health to themselves and teammates (this can only be done once per life on each player) and mend broken legs on themselves and teamates. Field Medicine players can also do all the skills from level 1 First Aid, and they receive the same bonus frags for doing each (except for the exception below).

Usage
Medics heal others by walking up to them and using the skill. If no one is in front of the medic, the medic himself is the default target of his skills. All treatment options require the use of 1 bandage. If a player needs health and a broken leg fixed, the first use of the medic skill on them will heal them, and the second use will mend their broken leg. You can bring up the medic skill options by setting a button in the CONTROL menu to bring up the skills menu. Advanced users can also bind 1 key which acts as the medic skill button.

Important note: Healing increases score. Medics with First Aid who treat wounded soldiers lying on the ground will receive 1 frag. Medics with Field Medicine who treat wounded soldiers lying in the open will MEDEVAC their patient, receiving 1 frag and giving their team 1 reinforcement. If they do this indoors, they will only receive the frag. MEDEVACING a wounded player will actually bring a helicopter to lower a stretcher and pick up the wounded player, giving a nice visual effect.

Leadership
New to the leadership skill since FA 2.8 is the battlefield information. Bind a key to this feature in your CONTROLS menu. When you press and HOLD this key, you can see an overlay of all the map objectives, their current status and distance, as well as the current location and distance of all your teamates. This really gives a leadership user a firm grasp of what the battle is like, and allows them to plan out stragedies for their team. The image below shows an example of the overlayed battlefield information.

Leadership also gives you a special skin that ID's you as the team's commander. In addition, you have an increased set of voice/radio commands. These are displayed below:

Team commanders also have a special say_team function that says "LISTEN UP!" whenever they talk.