Toecheese's Guide to Internet Play...

There are two parts to this info- the first part is advice for raw beginners.  The second part is to hone the skills of almost any player.

The most important thing to get right is a car.  Pick a well-rounded car with plenty of armor to learn on.  The best car is the Phaedra Clydesdale. It has plenty of armor, and more importantly: front weaps, rear weaps and a dropper.  Learn to use the rear weapon- you might not use a car with one in the future, but you'll know how a rear weap works and how to avoid it.

People always get the wrong specials, forget nitro and blower and all that crapola.   What you need are non-obvious ones.

Structo Bumper doubles the front and rear bumper to that when you ram or land froma jump, you don't blow up.  It also allows you to reduce your chassis to a lower level because what you do have allocated is doubled.

Cupholders Now what the heck is this for?  Well, let's put it this way, it's 1976, you're driving a musclecar and trying to shoot out the window.  And of course, you _have_ to have a 'road soda', probably a Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Now, you don't want to spill the beer, and when you're shooting the .45, it gets in the way.   So, what you need is a cupholder.  Cupholders help protect against .45 fight.   I don't know by how much, but I can tell you this, in a .45 fight, the guy with cupholders ALWAYS wins.

Heated Seats I don't get the link exactly, but heated seats gives you 10% more ammo.   If you're a gunner, you don't need it, but for mortars or missles, heated seats gives you a cheap upgrade.  With the WP mort, you get 77 morts instead of 70.

Okay, now for the chassis/armor.  Armor protects you against weapon damage.   Chassis, however, is important because fire affects chassis.  Side chassis doesn't seem to matter with fire, so reduce it to a low level and move it to armor.   Since you have a structo bumper, you can reduce front and rear chassis to someting acceptable.  You'll want to have enough to survive some rams, and running into walls and such.  I'd try 45 in the front, 35 in the rear.  Put the rest in armor.

Where in armor to put it is tres importante.  This is really dependant on your weapon layout.  For example, for a gunner, you'll want TONS of front armor, as you'll be driving in reverse much of the time.  But, for our learner car, move more armor to front, some to rear, but don't forget about sides.  When you're under a mortar attack, your sides are very vulnurable, as well as against a gunner.  So, our car armor layout is now:

Okay, at this point, you're ready for weapons.  STP rules don't allow cheese (cheese is more than 1 mort, and/or more than 2 missles), so a really good car will have a variety of weapons.  For our learner car, put a WP or Cluster as the rear weapon.   A turreted 7.62 on top, fire for your dropper and an AIM9 as a front and a DR for your other top missle.   This config by itself won't cut it against a good vigilante, but against your average non-fromaged player, it will do quite well.

Our next topic will be how to use our weapons.  One big hint: a joystick with multiple buttons makes a BIG difference.  I use a MS Sidewinder Pro (eight buttons, hat switch).  But I hate microsoft, so get any other joystick that has these features..