Effects of Fire

Shooting at your enemies will cause them to react in two primary ways. (Beyond the obvious keeling-over-dead way, that is.)

Engaged

Point fire will usually result in the engagement of an enemy. An enemy that’s being engaged is incapable of firing at anything except for the soldier that’s firing at him, unless he spots a soldier that’s stranded without cover, at which point he’ll attempt to take a potshot at the free target. Still, though, engaging an enemy is a great way to prevent them from firing at another team while it rushes towards cover.

A single fire team can engage up to two enemies simultaneously. Your three M-Class Rifles are capable of engaging a single enemy, while your SAW can do the job on another enemy by itself. If there are two enemies within a targeting reticule when you engage in point fire, your team will automatically split itself up to engage both enemies. Note that engaging an enemy doesn’t prevent them from returning fire; it just prevents them from firing at another team as it moves. If your other team stops moving, or moves too close to the engaged enemy, however, he’ll be able to change targets.

Enemies that are engaged have an icon featuring a white arrow pointing down over their heads.

Pinned

When you suppress an enemy, that enemy becomes pinned down, and is incapable of doing anything but moving until you stop using suppression fire. A team can pin as many enemies as they can fit into a reticule, as they don’t necessarily aim when firing; they just go crazy and spray bullets all over the damn place.

Your teams can become pinned, as well, but this will never occur as a result of enemy suppression fire--Zekes can’t use this firing mode. Thus, you can only become pinned when you come under fire from a .50 caliber machinegun emplacement or an enemy BMP tank. If your team is pinned, it can’t do anything except move.

Enemies that are pinned have a red X icon above their heads.

Cover

You can’t dash throughout the streets of Zekistan with impunity; if you get shot at, you’ll need to get behind some cover post-haste. When your team has appropriate cover from any Zekes that are around, they’ll get a small shield icon above their head, but be aware that this cover is conditional; if an enemy pops up in a location from which he has a clean shot at your soldiers, they’ll all immediately lose their shield icons to indicate that they no longer have cover from all available threats.

There are two types of cover: permanent cover and degradable cover. Walls, corners, piles of rubble; these are all permanent cover and are the safest places to leave your soldiers if you have to switch to another team for a while. Permanent cover may appear to take damage--corners, especially, will often appear to be chipped away under fire--but you won’t ever be in danger of being shot so long as you stay put.

These fountains won’t last forever under fire--you’d better get to some improved cover quick!

You’ll need to use degradable cover fairly often, especially as you proceed across streets and roadways. Non-permanent cover can take damage and degrade as the enemy pelts it with bullets. As this occurs, the shield icons above your soldier’s heads will slowly begin to turn black. A completely black icon indicates that the cover has completely fallen apart and will no longer protect your soldiers from bullets. Different objects degrade at different rates, of course: metal dumpsters are almost impervious to fire, while cars and refrigerators are excellent as well. Wooden crates are poor hiding spots, and, well, sofas do about as good a job of protecting you as you’d think.

Team Coordination

You don’t have a host of options when it comes to moving your teams; Full Spectrum Warrior is, at heart, a fairly linear game, so your choice of route will largely be dictated by the level design and you shouldn’t expect to be roaming to your heart’s desire. Any legal movement destination is a possible location for an enemy, so you’ll need to tread softly. Luckily, the fact that you have two discrete teams will help you keep both of them safe.

The primary tactic you’ll be using throughout most of the game is bunny-hopping. Anyone who’s played a turn-based tactical strategy game on the PC, such as Silent Storm or X-Com, will be familiar with this strategy. It’s fairly easy to explain: move one team at a time, with the first team providing cover for the second as they move, and vice versa. In Full Spectrum Warrior, this is essentially a mandatory procedure; attempting to move one team under fire, without having another team there to help them, is usually suicide.

To give you an example of how this would work in the game, suppose both of your teams are coming up to a corner. One team move up to the corner, and the team leader peeks out and spots two tangos, who open fire on him. Both tangos have cover, which means that your team won’t be able to kill them by themselves. Neither can the second team move into the road, however, due to the fact that they’d be walking into the tango’s fire. It’s appropriate for the first team to use suppression fire to prevent the enemies from shooting, while the secondary team crosses the road and takes up cover behind a car or other object.

From here, you can alternate your team movements so that one team is engaging or suppressing while the other team moves, until one of your teams is close enough to flank or frag the enemies. Most combat situations in the game are designed to force you to move your teams in this kind of alternating fashion; so long as you take care not to move a team when an enemy is capable of firing at them, you should be able to prevent any unnecessary reloading.